Unless… they have an even stronger card held back and just don’t care if something like this was to happen.
Coming to this conclusion Roland could only sigh. With his attack on the Longsong Stronghold, he had intended to end his problem of population and capital shortage in Border Town. Afterwards, he could start focusing on developing the education level, the production and the farming process, turning Border Town from a town into a city in a very short time. As for him developing a new weapon systems, he had planned to put it on hold. But now it seems he couldn’t stop the development of the First Army, expanding the First Army, increasing the flintlock production and developing new weapons was now back on top of his priority list, for example a breech-loading rifle with a new kind of bullet.
The mechanism of a breech-loading rifle was actually quite simple, the cachet for the bullet was also quite easy to produce, he could make it out of paper or a very thin copper case.
Only to find for the right powder mixture, Roland still did not have even a trace of a clue. He only knew that the ingredient was called mercury fulminate, according to its literal meaning, the raw materials must have nitric acid and mercury. As for the need to mix it with other materials, he couldn’t remember it. Furthermore, it had a special temperature and humidity requirements, so the chance was relatively high that it would explode in one’s finger if handled carelessly. So, he decided that it would be better to spend a lot of money to recruit a number of alchemists and give them their own laboratory in a secluded corner of Border Town, where they could ponder over the right mixture.
*
After the dinner, Roland took Anna and Scroll back with him to his office.
Now that Border Town financial situation was like a bulging purse, Roland would soon place more than half of his assets into compulsory education, even if it only yield slow results.
An industrial society needed a base of educated civilians, rather than the brute force of illiterates. Without universal education, the rise in population could only change into a burden for the population.
Taking this in consideration, Roland intended from this day on to take some time each evening to start teaching. Only waiting until Scroll had a basic understanding of natural science, while at the same time the town had almost completed its first batch of literacy tasks.
Since Scroll would become the future education pioneer and all-round teacher, Roland naturally taught her everything he had learned during his whole life. While Anna was just added in because of his own preference.
Even so, Anna wasn’t gifted with an extraordinarily retentive memory, but her desire for knowledge and her self-initiative to learn was the strongest of all witches. He could often see her going through the books in his bookcase, six months down, he was afraid that there weren’t any books left that she still hasn’t read. In addition, her acceptance of new things and her logical way of thinking was also rare in this era.
Taking the primary mathematics and physics textbook from Scroll, Roland began to talk about today’s teaching content.
At the beginning when Roland taught addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, to a slightly more complex equation calculation, Anna’s ability to understand was significantly better than Scroll’s. But when they changed to physic, Scroll showed that she could remember Roland’s prior explanations word for word, and now only needed to slowly understand it. And Anna as well would also raise some questions from time to time.
For example, how elementary particle looked like, why the elementary particle that formed all livings things had nothing in common with each other, and so on…
Some of the questions Roland could answer, some of them he couldn’t.
For example, in the end what is magic?
He could only tell them his own speculation that he had previously come up with; that magic may be a kind of energy, similar to electrical energy or thermal energy, but which was only be accessible by witches. But it couldn’t be ruled out that after storing this kind of energy it could be even used by ordinary people.
Hearing this Anna had a thoughtful expression.
While teaching women, especially such outstnding type of women, time would always fly by fast. Unconsciously, the candles had already been replaced twice, and the new ones were also nearing their end.
Suddenly, Roland heard a subtle snore, and when he turned into its direction, he could see Nightingale lying unconscious, asleep on the sofa, perhaps this kind of lesson is just like a lullaby to her? No longer sheltered by her fog, her completely inelegant sleeping posture was exposed to the three of them.
The Prince shook his head dumbfounded, decided it was now time to end the class. He took off his coat and gently covered Nightingale, blowing out the candle and with a smi