I Created Scientific Magic

Bang... Bang... Bang!

In the Mist District, within Fire Oil City, a series of thunderous explosions echoed continuously across the training field.

Over ten imperial soldiers were arrayed in a long column, awkwardly pulling the triggers. Lead bullets flew out of the fiery muzzles of their guns, striking the targets fifty meters away. The solid armor was instantly penetrated by a large hole, and the wooden stumps behind it were smashed to pieces.

"Impressive power, no wonder Edwell's imperial expedition army suffered a crushing defeat at their hands," Joshua said in a low voice as he watched the soldiers handling the muskets.

"Have you shown these to the craftsmen? Is there a way to replicate them?" Lucia said with interest.

"We can replicate the other parts of this weapon without an issue, except for this particular steel barrel," Joshua took a musket, shook his wrist, and used Divine Arts to disassemble it, leaving only the barrel.

Lucia reached out and took it, examining it closely for a while, and found nothing out of the ordinary. It was a common steel object with no traces of Magic Power or Divine Arts.

"It has no cracks, nor any signs of joints!" Joshua reminded her softly.

Lucia paused for a moment, then came to a realization.

An ordinary craftsman wanting to turn iron ore into hard steel must melt it at high temperatures and then forge it repeatedly.

Yet, the steel barrel in front of them was a meter long with a bore just a few dozen millimeters wide, looking completely integral, and its interior even had a threaded-like structure, which indeed was quite magical.

"Could it have been made using magic?" The Cardinal, Sirid, suggested from the side.

"Unlikely!" Lucia shook her head.

Only a great Wizard would have the ability to control metal elements, and creating such a steel barrel wouldn't be an issue. However, as far as she knew, there were only thirty great Wizards in the entire council, while there were tens of thousands in the musket squads. How long would it take with just a few dozen great Wizards? They would have to do nothing else but produce steel barrels all day. It just didn't seem feasible, that would be an underuse of their talent…

After pondering for a while, Lucia felt there were two viable solutions.

For example, find an incredibly hard substance, place it in the molten iron, and then forge it, or prepare a mold to pour the molten iron into.

After Lucia finished speaking, Joshua tactfully informed her that the craftsmen had already tried similar methods!

The result was that the manufactured steel barrels were simply substandard. Once reinstalled on the muskets, their accuracy became very poor, and one of the muskets even exploded.

Lucia was quite surprised; it seemed the Wizards really had come up with some interesting things. "What about those captured? Do they not know either?"

Aside from seizing a large number of muskets, the battle also led to the capture of several hundred musketeers. The method of using the muskets was also extracted from these individuals' minds.

"They were previously peasants who tilled the land and fished, only knowing how to use them, but having no understanding of how these weapons were made."

As he said this, Joshua paused momentarily before continuing, "These people have already had their souls corrupted by demons. Unless we use forceful methods, we cannot get any information out of them..."

"Are there no exceptions?" Lucia raised an eyebrow. It would stand to reason that out of these several hundred people, there should be a few weak-willed ones.

"No exceptions!" Joshua said solemnly.

He had searched through these people's memories and roughly identified the reason.

These musketeers had all been a group of starving and freezing poor folk, nearly all with families to support, and joining the musketeer squad was nothing short of a meteoric rise!

The council had offered a high wage, ensuring that musketeers could earn fifteen to twenty silver coins every month, enough to enjoy a life of meat at every meal.

If they were to fall in battle, they would receive a hefty casualty compensation, and their families would be well taken care of, being placed into jobs in the workshops.

This treatment was even better than that afforded to the empire's most elite guards, nearly on par with the Divine Punishment Knights, which is why most musketeers were in a state akin to a fervent faith, their spirits corroded by money.

One could only say that the Wizards, in order to cope with the empire's suppression, really went all out.

While the two were discussing, the empire's soldiers demonstrating the muskets had laboriously loaded their projectiles and fired another volleys, directly smashing the targets in front of them.

"Loading the projectile takes more than a minute, and in my opinion, these Wizards' weapons are nothing special... On the battlefield, they are less useful than a bowman," Sirid couldn't help saying, seeing how concerned the two lords were with this evil invention named the musket.

As a conservative bishop, Sirid had always been extremely cautious about these witchcraft weapons. According to the church's doctrine, the right thing to do upon discovery was to destroy them.

Moreover, taking more than a minute just to fire one shot was a fatal flaw. If that shot missed its mark, then what followed was complete helplessness.

Sirid prided himself on having a hundred ways to kill an entire squad of musketeers, even to toy with them at will.

Joshua was well aware of the drawbacks, but this did not obscure the advantages of the musket. "Do you know how long it takes to train a qualified empire bowman?"

"About... half a year?" Sirid hesitated.

"Three to five years!" Joshua corrected. "And the requirements for personnel are very strict, selecting from the strongest soldiers."

"But it took them only two to three hours to learn to operate a musket!" Joshua pointed to the soldiers who were testing the weapons.

The key thing was that muskets had a strong armor-penetrating capability, something that crossbows could not match.

In past battles, a knight clad in fine armor could rampage across the battlefield unchallenged, with stray arrows unable to penetrate the protection.

But now, the situation was different. A single musket shot could potentially bring down such a knight!

This enhancement was undeniably terrifying!

It meant that the Wizards only had to randomly grab a poor person off the street, train them for a few hours, and they could possibly kill a knight on the battlefield who had perfected his craft over decades!

"According to reports from several Divine Punishment Knights, the Wizards have mounted a special musket on a moving iron box that can fire dozens of projectiles in one second, and even a bishop can be shredded on the spot by it," Joshua said with a grave expression.

Clearly, the Wizards had found a way to overcome the drawbacks of the musket, but had not yet equipped it on a large scale.

(PS: Chapter two will still be around two or three o'clock. There's just a bit of instability this week due to work, please forgive me.)