Claude didn't stay at home to spend more time with his wife and children. He called Weyblon over and after two days of discussion, a workshop called Lanu Military Manufacturing was set up. Its main products were grenades and revolvers.
Weyblon was grateful that Claude allowed him to invest in the military industry. It meant that his family was connected to one of the five giants of the theatre and would be one of the most influential families in the theatre of the colonies.
Weyblon used to be a normal member of the mining and commerce association, a small mining business owner.
But after he got to know Claude, especially after he rented his manor to Claude to help his family settle down, he became his friend.
He quickly caught Claude's eye and worked with him to set up an iron mining workshop. From mining to producing steam engines, to producing grenades, his status and assets skyrocketed.
Even in the mining and trade association, his words carried a lot of weight, as he represented one of the five titans of the theatre, General Claude.
Now, Claude wanted him to invest in the new military industry. When he found out that the other four generals of the theatre each had a hundred percent of the shares, he was so excited that he patted his chest and guaranteed that everything would be done to perfection to reassure Claude.
After leaving the establishment of the new military industry to Weyblon and Eiblont to replenish Thundercrash's forces, Claude went to the workshop and started working on the grenades and grenades.
This time, he planned to make three types of grenades and two types of grenades, one for offense and one for defense.
The grenades were light, medium and heavy. They were numbered A, B and C.
The light grenades were the grenades used by the theatre's subordinate forces. The medium grenades doubled the amount of gunpowder in them and made them larger.
Heavy catapults were equivalent to the iron pumpkins produced by Shiks, albeit a little heavier and more explosive.
The three types of grenades were quickly finalized and could be mass produced.
The development of the projectile was completed in just three days. But the problem was that the projectile had to be thrown at the required distance. That made the projectile a little difficult to develop.
The defensive grenades could be modeled after Shiksan's catapults. It didn't matter if it was a little bulkier. That was easy to solve.
The requirement for a defensive thrower was for the Type A thrower to have a throwing distance of 250 meters or more, and the Type B thrower to have a distance of 200 meters.
The heaviest grenade could be thrown at a distance of 150 metres. The C grenade had to be used with as few people as possible. The distance could be adjusted and the direction of the projectile could be changed at will.
The most difficult part was the offensive grenade. Claude's requirements were rather strict.
First of all, there could not be more than four people. Three was the most ideal quota.
Next was the throwing distance. The grenade needed to be thrown at a distance of 200 metres, 150 metres for B grenades and 100 metres for C grenades.
The grenade didn't have to be of a fixed design. Separate models were also fine and could be assembled on the spot. That was mainly for the sake of being light, agile and quick on the battlefield.
Weyblon's workshop was currently focused on producing steam engines and steam engines. Thanks to the boom in workshops in the colonies, the steam engines and steam engines produced by the workshop were the hottest items in the market. Most of the orders were due half a year later.
But overall, the workshop's income wasn't enough to make ends meet. That was mainly because Liboyd had invested too much into the locomotive. Even so, they were still a step away from success.
If the locomotive could be developed successfully, the railway company would be able to start planning for it.
However, in the past year or so, the iron ore workshop had produced seven locomotives. However, after running for a period of time, they would run into all kinds of problems and malfunctions. The longest one had lasted for 11 hours, and now, six locomotives had been scrapped.
The research team led by Liboyd could only improve it bit by bit. He estimated that it would take at least a year before they could produce a working steam locomotive.
After the "Gray Tower Sorcerer Assassination Incident", the theater of operations conducted an investigation on all the colonies and found 17 rogue sorcerers living in seclusion in the colonies.
However, the theatre wasn't as concerned about magi control as it was in the kingdom. After checking that they didn't break any laws and didn't collude with Greytower magi, they were released.
Indeed, the war zone did not treat the rogue Mages as enemies. The reason why the rogue Mages were discovered was that they sold magic items and used magic to improve their living conditions.
A few of the rogue Magicians were guests of some powerful families in the colony. After the assassination, to avoid being implicated, these local families reported it to the war zone immediately. Because of this, the war zone conducted an investigation on all the colonies.
However, no one knew what to do after the seventeen rogue Magicians were found. General Bolonik had some insider information. A few of the Magicians were once registered Magicians of the Kingdom, but because they wanted to study magic freely without being restricted by the Kingdom's special department, they went to the colonies to live in seclusion.
So, after some consideration, Bolonik ordered for them to be checked to see if they had any criminal records. If they didn't, they were to be released.
But after Claude recovered from his injuries, he found out about it and got a list of the magi and gave it to Angelina.
Angelina then asked Bloweyk to investigate the 17 rogue magi and recruit six of them. They were all rune magi and became assistants in Blackstone Firearms Workshop.
They signed 20-year contracts with the magi and had their families under their control.
As Madam Sonia's father, Liboyd knew the inside story of the Black Stone Gun Workshop, as well as the mages on the loose.
He felt that it was a good method and told Weyblon about it. Weyblon then asked Claude for help and got him the list of the remaining 11 magi.
After studying the investigation records, he hired three rogue mages to be Master Liboyd's assistants at a high salary to develop the steam engine and locomotive together.
Claude was working on the thrower in the workshop with the help of Liboyd and the three magi. After more than ten days of experimentation, he finally came up with an offensive and defensive thrower. Claude then handed the blueprints to Weyblon and had him start production as soon as possible.
The most important thing was to produce a defensive thrower that could be deployed in the various mountainous areas on the frontlines.
After resting for two days at home, Claude set off for Port Vebator to inspect Blackstone Firearms Workshop.
Sometimes, Claude felt sad when he thought about it. Grenades could already be thrown more than 200 meters away, but the grenade launchers and mortars he wanted couldn't be developed at all.
Had he known that he would transmigrate, he would've paid more attention to the military forums in his past life and learned more about the construction of weapons. That way, he wouldn't have to worry about such simple weapons.
Claude's current research on weapons was like a blind man trying to figure out an elephant. He only knew how it looked on the outside and didn't know its internal structure.
He wasn't a military enthusiast or a science major to begin with. The only reason he was able to develop the new rifles was because of Sonia's interest in firearms and research.
Now that he was moving from firearms to grenade launchers and mortars, which he hadn't even heard of before, it would be strange if he could get any results so quickly.
As expected, Angelina and Sonia didn't have much of a clue about their research. Fortunately, Claude already had the new thrower and grenade launchers, so he wasn't in a rush.
The main reason he was there was to urge Angelina and Sonia to speed up the production of the two new weapons, sniper rifles and landmines.
Before the war, Blackstone Firearms Workshop had ordered a thousand sniper rifles, but they couldn't be produced mechanically. They had to be made using alchemical runes.
Angelina personally crafted ten sniper rifles and found it boring to do so tediously, so she delayed it. Claude had no choice but to bring ten sniper rifles to the battlefield.
Claude understood the frustration of crafting a thousand sniper rifles in the alchemical runes. No rune magus could endure such tedious work.
After all, they had to put in a lot of effort into the alchemical runes in order to produce almost identical parts.
Mechanized production at the moment wasn't able to reach that level of precision. The new rifles barely met the mark, but the more precise sniper rifles were out of the question.
Due to the need for secrecy, Angelina and Sonia didn't arrange for the six rune magi from Blackstone Firearms Workshop to participate in the production of the sniper rifles.
If they only relied on the two of them to refine the sniper rifles in the alchemy array, who knew how long it would take to complete the production of the thousand sniper rifles.
Claude had no choice but to tell them that they could leave most of the parts to the six rune magi while the two of them would only be in charge of assembling the rifles.
As long as the parts were up to standard, they could still keep it a secret. In fact, they could even add a few irrelevant parts to confuse the public. There was no need for one person to craft a sniper rifle from start to finish.
The production of the sniper rifles was finally settled. Sometimes, he didn't understand what Angelina and Sonia were thinking. The new rifles were already being mass-produced, so what was the point of keeping the sniper rifles a secret? They were nothing more than weapons made from alchemical runes. They were all killing weapons, and in his eyes, there wasn't much of a difference.
Apart from that, he also needed Sonia to add a bullet production line. The new rifles consumed too much bullets on the battlefield, so Sonia had to make the necessary arrangements.
The bullets for the sniper rifles were also custom-made, so he had to arrange for a bullet production team to produce them.
This was different from the new rifles. Snipers needed to be able to hit an enemy with every shot, instead of wasting bullets like the soldiers who were equipped with the new rifles.
However, when Claude told Angelina about increasing the production of the mines, Sonia seemed troubled.
She told Claude that Blackstone Firearms Workshop didn't have the manpower to produce the mines anymore, mainly because they couldn't spare any manpower.
Most of the thousand mines sent to the frontlines in the first half of the year were the work of the six new rune magi. The workshop really didn't have the means to arrange a production line for the mines.
Actually, the profits from the mines were quite high. Now that the theatre had the money, they couldn't be bothered to haggle over the price. They placed an order for ten thousand mines and prepared to set up a defensive line along the coast to reduce the pressure on their manpower.
All in all, the profits from the production of ten thousand mines amounted to ten thousand crowns.
The price Claude reported to the theatre was two crowns per mine, so the cost wasn't even three thales.
Claude gave it some thought and had his guards send a letter to Weyblon. He was going to hand over the production of the mines to Lanu Arms in exchange for ten thousand crowns and ten percent of the shares. The shares would naturally be split equally between Angelina and Sonia, with five percent each.
He wrote to Weyblon to tell Bolonik and the others about it and get their approval.
It was business, after all, and he had to keep his private interests separate. Letting Weyblon tell Bolonik and the others about it was also a way for Weyblon to win the favor of the other four shareholders.
After all, it would be snatching something from Claude's pocket. Blackstone Firearms Workshop belonged to House Ferd and could be considered Claude's personal property.
Lanu Arms, on the other hand, belonged to everyone and everyone would have a share of the profits.
Bolonik and the others naturally didn't know that Blackstone Firearms Workshop was unable to arrange for the production of the mines and was focused on the production of the new rifles.
So, letting Weyblon tell them that he had snatched the mines from Blackstone Firearms Workshop would give him more credit in front of the other four generals and they wouldn't see him as Claude's agent.
The development of the grenade launchers and mortars hadn't come to fruition yet. The production of the sniper rifles was given to the six newly joined rune magi. Without the production of the mines, Angelina and Sonia felt much more at ease.
Angelina could teach her students and didn't slack off much.
Sonia, on the other hand, was rather bored after two days of pestering Claude. So, she asked Claude to come up with a few new projects.
Claude did have new projects. This time, he wanted Sonia and Angelina to work on three new projects, two for the military and one for civilian use.
The two for the military were the grenade launchers and the rocket launchers.
Claude's biggest thought from the battle was that light infantry cannons had lost a lot of their usefulness in the face of projectiles.
Apart from canister shells that could only be fired at a hundred metres, the iron pellets that could reach seven to eight hundred metres were no longer a threat on the battlefield.
Birkin had mentioned in his post-battle summary that light infantry cannons could be used to attack the enemy's grenade launchers and personnel, but the Shiksans only needed to set up a few wooden planks in front of the grenade launchers to block the cannon fire.
The speed at which iron pellets the size of a fist could destroy a wooden plank wasn't as fast as the enemy setting up a few wooden planks in front of it. In the end, they could only use grenade against grenade and the new rifles to kill the operators of the grenade launchers. Only then did they manage to suppress the Shiksans' momentum of throwing iron pumpkins.
It was the same when Claude attacked the Shiksan camp at the northern border. Apart from being ambushed at the start, Claude had the Shiksan captives build mud walls that were half a man's height on top of the trenches.
As a result, the light infantry cannons on the second defensive wall were rendered useless. They could no longer fire solid shells at Thundercrash. In the end, they were blown to smithereens by the grenade launchers, allowing Thundercrash to easily take over the position.
It seemed that Claude's invention of grenade launchers had caused the development of warfare in this world to take a different path. Cannons weren't as powerful as grenade launchers.
Cannons without explosive shells were indeed not as threatening as projectiles on the battlefield. Hundreds of years of war had taught the soldiers of various countries how to deal with cannons. Mud walls, sandbags, wooden shields, these could all withstand the bombardment of medium and light cannons.
On the contrary, grenade launchers that fell from the sky and exploded on the ground were much more threatening and destructive.
Claude wanted to reinvent the explosive shells. He remembered that they existed during the Ming Dynasty, so he didn't believe he couldn't develop one himself.
He believed that the difficulty lay in the composition of the shell. As a poor weaponry idiot, he drew a picture of the modern shell structure for Madam Sonia: a bullet and a barrel, the barrel would fall out after firing, and the bullet would explode when it hit the ground or hit the target. As for why it would explode, he had no idea what the structure was inside …
But the more he explained the cannon to Sonia, the more confused she became.
The cannon he drew was the same as the modern mountain artillery he saw in anti-Japanese dramas in his past life. It was completely different from the light infantry cannons used in war zones.
In the end, Sonia chased Claude out of the lab in a fit of anger, believing that he was talking nonsense.
The second military research project was the long-barrelled rocket. Claude recalled reading about it on the internet in his past life.
The main character transmigrated to the end of the Ming Dynasty. What followed was a grand plan. He recruited famous generals and officials as his subordinates, recruited beauties, opened a harem, created guns and cannons, and massacred the Tatars. In the end, he pacified the bandits and sat on the throne, ushering in a golden age. The plot was so vulgar that Claude forgot the name of the main character and the title of the book.
However, the long-barrelled rocket mentioned in the book was rather unique. When the main character first gathered his troops, he lacked funds and equipment and couldn't stop the Tatars' advance.
So, he built the long-barrelled rocket. He rolled up a long metal tube, loaded it with white phosphorus, and added three fins to the end. He placed it on a wire rack and ignited it.
Just like a two-kick kick, this iron-skinned long-barreled rocket could fly as far as one li. It plunged headlong into the Tatars' camp and exploded, white phosphorus splashed everywhere, setting fire everywhere.
The main character relied on the crude long-barrelled rocket to stop the Tatars' attacks twice. He was promoted, became rich, and even won the favor of the brothel beauties.
It was said that the only flaw of the long-barrelled rocket was that it couldn't accurately control the target. Sometimes, it would move in Brownian motion, threatening the life of the person firing it.
Sonia was rather interested in the long-barrelled rocket and decided to research it first.
However, she didn't want to hear Claude's detailed explanation lest it messed up her thoughts.
The final civilian project was simple. Claude planned to leave it to Angelina.
The project was to manufacture cigarettes. Claude rolled a cigarette in front of Angelina using a thin piece of white paper. Without a filter, he made an ivory cigarette holder instead.
Claude needed Angelina to develop a machine for hand-rolling cigarettes. That way, he could mass-produce cigarettes.
Claude believed that as long as he could popularize cigarettes, House Ferd would never lack money again.