Having paid for the repairs of the city walls, Malin felt the sting of financial pain for the first time.
Malin had no plans to deduct the salaries of the elves; after all, these fellows could already produce finished products. As long as he could control their incurable firearm syndrome in time, Malin and the three Great Craftsmen, including the elven ambassador, declared that no guns larger than 20 millimeters would be allowed—For Malin, it was feasible for these craftsmen to create small-caliber rapid-fire cannons to fill the gaps of 20 mm and 40 mm, but he could not allow them to waste time and energy on constructing 57 mm gun barrels.
This contraption was too big, and in terms of practicality, it was inferior to the grenade launchers and autocannons created by the Half-human and Dwarves teams.
Because the caliber of this thing was neither large nor small; using it to target small objects was like using a canon to kill mosquitoes, and it might not be lethal in one hit against large targets. It could only be fired while lying down, had no elevation or depression angles, and most importantly... the targets killed by this device could essentially be handled with one spell.
And those that couldn’t be killed by this device, could also be managed by one spell.
Thus, its positioning was very awkward; its massive size even prevented it from being mounted on the racks of armored soldiers.
After listening to Malin’s explanation, the three Great Craftsmen felt it made sense. The elven ambassador even thought that modifying it to a 75 caliber brought no advantage; it was better off using the 88 caliber design drawn on Malin’s earlier blueprint, both as a fixed artillery platform or mounted on the reinforced chassis of an armored soldier.
However, Malin thought it shouldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of these young craftsmen. He specifically asked the ambassador to monitor the progress of this group. As for the current gun, it could be considered to cut the excessively long barrel into half, then transform it into a magazine-fed rapid-fire cannon for testing on armored soldiers. If feasible, consider using chain feeding to significantly enhance the firepower delivery per unit of time.
"This is a good idea." The elven ambassador answered sincerely, "We have already built six armored soldiers; Unit 6 and Unit 5 can be used as platforms to carry these two kinds of weapons respectively."
The combat effectiveness of armored soldiers was proven in the last battle against the Rat-men. Though costly to build, every appearance of Unit 1 in subsequent combat against Chaos in the North greatly boosted the soldiers’ morale. When its weapons interrupted Chaos’s charge, almost all the soldiers felt a firm belief that victory was assured in this battle.
In the eyes of Sydney’s military, although these were costly, their presence inspired immense courage amongst the soldiers, and their weapons could deal incalculable damage to the morale and forces of Chaos soldiers. Even the Chaos Demons could not breakthrough the burning zone created by the sprayers of two armored soldiers – these Holy Fuels were blessed, igniting upon fire even demons that normally ignore regular flames.
Regarding that rapid-fire weapon with eight rotating barrels spewing bullets every second... though very costly, the expenditure was completely justified in terms of lethality, and the sight of countless demons being bloodily struck boosted the troops’ morale as if they had been directly blessed by the Deity.
"Since everyone agrees, is there anything else that needs to be discussed with me?" Malin felt that with these Great Craftsmen overlooking the workshop, there should be no problems.
"Nothing more, but if there’s a chance, Lord Malin, could you bring us a few of the skulls of the demons you have annihilated before?" asked the elven ambassador.
Malin naturally had no objections, though he still wondered why.
"Because I’ve never seen such demons before, and I want to test the strength of their skulls," the elven ambassador gave this answer, so Malin agreed to it.
The Dwarves and Half-humans had no objections, so Malin then met with other races’ Great Craftsmen, approved several slips for the Gnome Great Craftsman, offered some suggestions for new blueprints to the Human Great Craftsman, and pointed out some issues with the assault rifle to the Frost Giant Great Craftsman.
Speaking of which, it was said that the Frost Giants used to have a poor relationship with the elves, but why these two had such a twisted greed for creating super-caliber guns was truly baffling—after driving the idea of a 30mm bolt-action rifle out of this Great Craftsman’s head, Malin straightforwardly suggested a 120mm smoothbore cannon.
Heard you Frost Giants like big things? This should be big enough.
Having persuaded him, Malin glanced at the time and chose to make a run for it uncompromisingly—it was time to go back and cook for his pet bunny spirit.
"Did our Malin go to the workshop this morning?" It was in the afternoon when Goethe heard this news; he sat at the dining table listening to Anna bringing up the matter. The father seemed hesitant and somewhat puzzled, "Has he not considered taking a break? I heard that since his return from the North, he hasn’t properly rested even for a day."
"This child understands far more than his peers the challenges that we humans are currently facing," Lady Anna held the report upside down and then tossed it in front of her husband.