183 Last hours

19th June 1574

"So this is the day…"

Standing in front of a table, I once again allowed my thoughts to fly with the clouds in the sky rather than focusing on the matter at hand.

"Excuse me?"

With how the local managers were already used to my dreamy character, they quickly learned when they were supposed to interrupt my train of thoughts to stop me from distancing myself from the world, and where those thoughts of mine could be productive.

And today, they had to constantly keep a watch on me, because the topic that we were discussing was of utmost importance.

"Ah, my bad. For some reason, I feel like something terrible is about to happen today. But let's go back to the topic. We can either go with the salvo weapons, repetitive weapons or big weapons. Regretfully, all of them will require us to find a new means of producing the gunpowder, and as long as all the sulfur supply is monopolised by the crown, we won't be able to achieve this point. How does our stockpile look like?"

Turning my head to the side, I looked at the Matsu, who finally got time to come to this place for the first time. While she still has her duties as the general manager of the breweries in Tarnow, thanks to my generous split of income towards her and her underlings, she decided that it was due time to let her managers take care of that place themselves, as she went along with all her students to the mining town to oversee their practical training.

"So far, we have five times the usual storage for all the cities and the castle. I'm worried that unless we will announce the construction of the city and a fortified keep to secure the perimeter, obtaining any more might cause quite an unrest."

Giving out the requested number as soon as I asked for it, Matsu once again proved how capable of an econom she was back then, once again reinforcing me in the decision to make her the very first Ceo in the entire world. 

"A perimeter, hmm… As long as we will finish our current projects, or at least reach the point where the cement mix won't be all that necessary, we might do one just for the sake of it. Like, we might use building a small fort beside the town as buffer time to promote the usability of the mix, pulling merchants to trade it just as they trade with our beer. After all, the production plants can't stop working!"

While I was worried about this aspect when I first thought about producing a luxury, cashable item like furniture, I couldn't have guessed that it would be the concrete that would pose this problem!

"But even if we will build a keep, we need a way to defend it. Since you came up with a way to shoot fast, maybe you have some ideas to shoot far?"

Sensing that my thoughts once again derailed from the original topic of this discussion being the necessity of arming up all the investment areas to guard them both against the bandits and greedy nobles. 

"Hmm… That could be done, but I'm not sure if I can create the machine… Or wait, we don't really need a machine for that. How is our steel output looking?"

The easiest way to improve the range of a weapon didn't lie in increasing the gunpowder amount behind the bullet itself, but by improving accuracy. And the simplest way to do so was by rifling the barrel of a weapon!

Yet while this process while fairly simple, was overwhelming at the same time. When one would look down a properly rifled barrel, then nothing but a feeling of awe and desperation would be evoked in his soul. To this day I could remember the time when I saw someone posting a picture of a strange barrel on the forum with the hopes that someone would answer just what the heck is this, only for a random soul on the internet to point out that due to the precise barreling, size and shape of the item, it was nothing else but a damned tank's rifle!

The impression that the pictures that this random soul posted to prove his theory made on me back then, were the reason why I was quite hesitant to attempt the rifling myself.

Yet after thinking about it for just a short while, all I had to do, was cast a long, steel tube and as many drilling blades as it would take to luck out with making one from the highest grade of the steel that the Bessmer furnace of mine could produce. 

Then, by mounting the drill on top of a long, wooden pole, that would be in exchange mounted on a special rail, the steam engine would push it forward while slowly rotating it around its own axis and forcing it through the entire length of the long tube. With that done, the barrel would be cut into fitting sizes and used in making all sorts of guns!

But just like when I first wanted to create a better gun that what people had in these times, I realised that even with rifled barrels, I would still have to come out with a way to increase the speed at which my troops could shoot!

It seemed that unless I found some alchemist capable of finding the proper formula of creating the initiating fire charge for the fused ammunition, I would have to find a way to go away with using the manual fire again!

And with how the king's escape was about to happen in just a few hours from now on, I was slowly running out of time to prepare!