284 Weapon testing

At the moment, Ken stood atop a mountain near the Everlight castle where the large black cannon he made Benedict buy and fixed stood beside him. Both his hands were placed behind his back as his white robes flapped about in the wind. He looked far across at a tall tree on the mountain opposite him and gazed in that direction. Beside him, the three cubs and Grey were playing chase in the snow.

That would be the target he would use to test the cannon.

Even though he finished fixing the cannon and reverse-engineered it to produce more cannons after spending many sleepless nights, he still didn't see the cannon in action.

If he was right about the cannon, each shot fired from the cannon would have the firepower of a Peak Grandmaster. The strength of a Peak Grandmaster was clearly not one to trifle with. He intentionally brought the cannon up this mountain so that it would fire into an open space. 

Should it accidentally fire towards the residential area of Everlight, it might flatten half of the area. 

…

At this time, Knight, Lia, Arwen, and several people in the army were rushing up.

Knight dragged Lia from her room to see this cannon but she had no idea why she had to be there when they tested their new weapon. To forget about her family, she decided to drown herself in working as she had already started to study the book of arc and design warships to build.

As for the Cannon which took Ken months to fix, Arwen felt extremely excited to finally see it in action. 

"It's better be worth the wealth he spent on the cannon, or we can see Amaryll go berserk on the old man"

Arwen said to his buddies and laughed with them while Lia also let out a small chuckle.

Although cannon was not a new thing to this world, no one used them thinking that it wouldn't do much damage against the cultivators because

the iron ball fired from the cannon was just an iron ball, not something created using Life energy.No one bothered with cannon considering they could use their time learning spells instead of cannon technology. 

No matter how it was modified, it would just be a common spell at best.

So no one tried to integrate Life energy with the cannon considering it's not an easy thing to do. However, the ancients figured out this and now, Ken decoded the secrets of the cannons used by the ancients.

For this reason and they had no idea of how much wealth Ken spent on this cannon when the elves and dwarves behind Arwen scaled the mountain to view Ken's cannon, they all came with the idea of just 'watching fireworks'. They took it as just a celebratory view for defeating Ishikara.

…

Seeing Ken standing next to the charcoal black cannon with silver and golden runes, Arwen rubbed his hands together and walked faster towards the cannon in excitement.

"General Knight, Captain Arwen"

Ken quickly greeted them with a small bow as the cubs stopped playing and meowed at Knight. as their way of saying hi.

"Captain Arwen, I heard you wanted to cut all the trees in that mountain, so there wouldn't be any consequences if I fired this cannon at that mountain right?"

"Not a problem. That mountain is infested with Rotten locust trees, they are poisonous and they are turning the ground poisonous, so yeah, I want to cut all those trees and plant new ones"

Arwen hated to cut trees since they are not only keeping the kingdom cool but also, adorning Everlight. However, the Rotten locus was a type of tree that does nothing but harm the environment.

"Wonderful!, Lady Grey, just like I said, clean the bore first"

Considering she had not many interesting things to do besides play with the cubs and help Arwen survey the realm, she volunteered to help Ken with his inventions. After a few licks to her paw, she poked her hand into the muzzle and cleaned it thoroughly. At first, Ken was reluctant to accept her help but after realizing it would be great to have a Grandmaster apprentice, he naturally agreed.

She fiddled a few times, but her paw did not bring out any debris. However, according to the process, she had to clean it a second time. She poked her other paw and fiddled a few times again. Then the bore cleaning was done.

"Now, we shall fire the first round from the cannon. Let us all witness it together!" Ken spoke out ceremoniously as he walked towards the cannon while Grey motioned everyone to take a step back.

Immediately after reaching the cannon, he opened a small flap on the side of the cannon. He then retrieved a Mid quality life stone from his space ring.

The spirit stones were dazzling within and were transparent. He inserted them into the opened flap on the cannon.

"Huh?"

The pair of dwarves gave a surprised sound. Weren't cannons supposed to be fitted with gunpowder and artillery iron rounds first before igniting the thread attached to the gunpowder? They've never seen anyone placing life stones within the cannon, especially their bodies trembled when they saw him placing Mid quality life stones.

Lia and Arwen paused in surprise as well. They never thought that the cannon was supposed to consume life stones to work.

"It uses Life stones to work huh? I can't wait to see what it can do"

Knight didn't care much about the life stones as he wanted the cannon to be extremely powerful and an unstoppable weapon. He considered the amount Ken was spending on the cannon as an investment to earn more wealth.

"swoosh!" 

Ken raised his fist and conjured a small flame upon his fingertips.

"Here goes"

After Ken put the fire close to the fuse, the spark shone immediately and soon drilled into the cannon barrel in a short time.

Then there was a loud noise...

"zzzzhhhh!" 

The cannon gave off a sound that sounded like it was vibrating. The numerous golden and silver runes around the cannons lit up in bright light as it glimmered brightly on the dark mountain top. It seemed to be getting brighter with each passing second.

"Ai… What's happening?"

Everyone including Knight was clearly taken aback. This was nothing like the ordinary-looking cannon they knew of! Lia's tiny mouth was opened wide, her face was full of shock.

At the same time, the golden inscriptions had reached their maximum brightness. The entire cannon was shrouded in golden light as it illuminated the dark snowy night around them.

"Boom!"

Soon after, the bright golden light transformed into a single beam of light as it exploded out from the cannon and shot towards the mountain.

The entire night sky turned into a flash of white which hurt all their eyes due to how blinding it was. Except for Knight, the rest of them couldn't help but shut their eyes.

"Boom-doom!"

At the next moment, an earth splitting sound rang out from the cannon beside them. It was so loud that it felt like their ears were going to explode after they heard the ringing sounds. The cubs shivered in fear and tightly clutched Grey's legs as they gawked at the cannon.

When they opened their eyes, the bright white light seemed to have become weaker and didn't hurt as much as before.

When the entire group of them regained their sight, they were astounded!

The tall and huge mountain across them seemed like it had been sliced off from the ground. The cannon's attack disfigured the mountain and all the trees Arwen talked about turned into nothing but ash.

Such terrifying powers were exhibited from the cannon. Even Knight doubted that he could damage the mountain as the cannon with a single attack.

"It all worth it"

Seeing the damage the cannon did to the mountain, he knew the wealth they spent didn't go down in the drain. Arwen's excitement turned into horror when he saw the power of the cannon.

"impossible!"

How could it be that with a single round, acres of land were annihilated and reduced to just dust and ashes?

"I think we cannot compare the cannon with a Peak Grandmaster"

"Yeah no shit"

Grey's fur stood straight when she thought that she was fiddling her paw inside this terrifying weapon carelessly.

"Ken, can we use low-quality stones, we are going to mass-produce the cannons right? It's not very cost-effective to use Mid quality stones"

Knight's plan to equip ships with these cannons and that was the reason why he asked Lia to come here, so she can adjust her designs to fit cannons in the ships.

"General Knight, of course, we can use low-quality stones, but it won't be as powerful as mid-quality stones. A single low-quality stone would enable the cannon to fire 10 artillery rounds"

"Then we can have one cannon that uses Mid quality stone in one ship and the rest can use low-quality stones"

In that instant, Lia's brows raised as she realized why he asked her to come. She completely fell into a daze thinking how powerful a ship equipped with these cannons would be.

"Lia, can you design an ancient ship with these cannons as weapons?"

Arwen's heartbeats started to increase when he heard Knight's words. When he went to Mairis, he saw their sizable powerful fleet and subconsciously felt jealous of their naval power. But if they could build ancient ships with these cannons, they could easily defeat Mairis's naval fleet.

"I have to adjust some aspects, it's doable, but I need this cannon and its specification"

"You can take coordinate with Ken and plan your schedule and Arwen, keep this as a top-secret, I don't want anyone to know about this until we finish mass-produce them"