Until the way to the backyard of the North Slope Mountain, Roland kept echoing this sentence in his ears. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

He felt a gap in his heart being opened little by little, yes, he thought, he was no longer the ordinary person who used to deal with mechanical drawings all day long, this was not the world he was familiar with in the past, he had gradually become a big lord who led one side now, and even became the ruler of the kingdom in the future, when the situation changed, it was undoubtedly no longer applicable to bind himself with the previous concept.

It would be good to follow what was in his heart, and he told himself that if he forced each other for some non-existent rule, he would do nothing good except continue to hurt Anna and Nightingale.

Thinking of this, Roland's mood suddenly opened up a lot, he took a deep breath of cold air, and slowly pushed open the backyard door.

The iron door opened like a crack in the bottom of my heart, opening a new world in an instant.

"Ah...... It's Your Highness," Hummingbird and Lucia ran forward and saluted.

"Are you here?" Anna smiled sweetly, seeing a faint red mark on her fair neck, Roland couldn't help but think of the other party's fiery enthusiasm last night, but since he had made a decision, he didn't care about waiting for the last bit of time.

"How's it going, has the model been made?"

"Of course," Anna gestured to follow me, and the two of them walked out the back door of the courtyard, where they saw an iron boat floating in the middle of a pool surrounded by snow. The iron ship was about a meter long and about twenty centimeters wide, which was much longer than those clumsy cement ships. The bow is distinctly fusiformal, the rear end is flat, and the most distinctive feature is that the bottom of the boat is covered with criss-crossing support strips, which look like countless squares are spliced together.

"That's what I want," Roland lamented, adding that the steel boat has a unique sense of sophistication compared to a stone ship made of reinforced concrete, especially when paired with a dense array of staggered beams, which is almost like a work of art. He knew that each module of this ship model was completely cut from black fire after being scaled down to scale, and not a single connection point was omitted, and if it was placed in the future generations, it would also be a fine product worth tens of thousands.

"Is it a new ship you're going to build?"

"Well," he nodded, "the town's first regular warship, too." ”

Originally, Roland planned to use cement ships as the hulls of shallow water heavy gunboats, but he found that the speed of cement ships became the most significant disadvantage when the power of the steam engine was insufficient - with only fuel and personnel on board, the average speed of the entire fleet on this expedition to Changge Fortress was only eight to nine kilometers, and if it was equipped with a rotating 152 mm fortress gun, plus the necessary ammunition and other combat weapons, the speed would probably fall below the five kilometers mark. If converted into knots, the speed of even three knots cannot be guaranteed. The reason is that the dead weight of concrete is too heavy, and it doesn't matter how fast or slow it is when it is used for transportation, but as a warship, it is naturally better to be brisk.

If there was a serious shortage of steel production capacity two months ago, no matter how slow he was, he could only pinch his nose and admit it, but with the Steel Star put into production, today's steel reserves can support him to build a real ironclad warship. In terms of structure, Roland chose the simplest modular assembly method - that is, the steel plates are welded together with transverse longitudinal beams to form a large hollow box structure, and then many flat boxes are spliced together to form the hull floor. This method of building a building block did not require a keel, and it had nothing to do with classical methods, and the enemy did not threaten his own artillery at all, so he did not need to worry about defense, and the side was almost surrounded by thin iron sheets, which minimized cost and weight.

As for the power, Roland decided to invest in propeller technology on the new ship instead of the paddlewheel drive of the cement ship...... The power unit was still a steam engine that drove two propellers by turning gears. However, in the design drawings handed over to Anna, he reserved space for the modification of the three-rise steam engine, and planned to wait until the future batch construction, and then convert it into a new steam engine that is more suitable for marine use.

Back in the yard, Anna began cutting the first steel plate.

The black fire was like the most accurate ruler in her hand, and when it flew up and down, a piece of steel one meter square instantly turned into seven or eight thin plates like a potato being peeled, each of which was five millimeters thick, no more than a little less than a little less.

Next is welding, in which the hummingbird places the lightened steel beam between two steel plates, and Anna's black fire is inserted into a filament invisible to the naked eye, binding the three together like a suture thread, and raising the temperature at the same time - unlike the original open flame welding, this inside-out heating allows the flowing molten steel to completely fill the gap between the plates, and when the three are fully combined, the longitudinal beam has sunk slightly by about a millimeter, which is proof that its bottom melts and fills the gap between the two steel plates.

A staggered cross-shaped beam connects the four steel plates, while more crossbeams form a hollow box unit that will be transported by the hummingbird to the Chishui River for final assembly in the dockyard.

Roland's gaze stayed on the busy figure of Anna, the girl's long flaxen hair swaying back and forth with the cutting action, like a dancing elf in a pure white snowy scene.

......

In the afternoon, Roland meets the newly awakened witch, Asha.

If she can appear in the office, it means that she has passed the nightingale's review. Wendy had already recorded her strange abilities very clearly, so Roland didn't test them any more, but put the contract in front of her.

Ah Xia picked up the pen and stiffened for a moment before he said with a red face, "I...... Can't write. ”

"It's okay," Roland smiled, "just press your handprint." ”

She carefully pressed her ink-stained thumb to the end of the parchment, "That's it?"

"Well," Roland said, taking the contract, "I've learned about you from Wendy, so even if you sign the contract, you don't have to live in the castle." As long as you come over every day to practice your abilities and listen to lectures, Wendy should have told you about the characteristics of magic in the past few days, right?"

"Yes, Your Highness," Asha's expression relaxed a lot when he heard that he didn't need to stay in the castle, "Lord Wendy said, if you don't release the magic power you accumulate every day, your life will be in danger by the day of awakening. ”

"That's right, so you'll have to practice well, and I'll teach you the connection between the precise manipulation of magic and the corresponding abilities," Roland didn't correct the honorific in the other's mouth, and it wasn't a bad thing for beginners to stay in awe, "If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask any member of the Witch Alliance." ”

"I see, Your Highness," she said, bowing her head, "but ...... I asked Wendy this question, and she said that only His Highness knows the answer. ”

"Of course not," Roland laughed, "you're a detective with an ability, and you're invincible in fighting crime." ”

"Name...... Detective?" Asha looked confused.

"It's okay, it won't be long before you know," he called out the nightingale in the mist, "and from this day forward, this witch will be your immediate boss." (To be continued.) )