Chapter 33: Population! Population! And More Population!

Su Na had always wanted to get a foothold in the military industry, but her connections in this area were quite limited.

The Zhuge repeating crossbow was a pure toy, created as a temporary measure to deal with the goblin threat.

Crossbows made from ordinary wood might not even last a month, and the wear on the bowstring was exceptionally high.

It was just a temporary product born out of necessity, cheap to make, simple in structure, and easily repaired by the farmers themselves.

Aside from bullying unarmored goblins at close range, it was barely useful even for hunting, lacking any real value for optimization.

But if you wanted to build the real thing instead of toys, even if your quality was better, power greater, and price lower, someone still had to dare to buy it.

Compared to the deeply entrenched Church and a newly emerged family, any noble with a functioning brain knew which side to favor.

Many things could not be bought with money alone.

Su Na’s initial thought was to negotiate with the Church, leveraging their good cooperative foundation to subcontract some of the Church’s downstream supply chains, such as raw material supply and machinery provision.

But on second thought, she dismissed the idea.

After all, if you really analyzed the basic structure of a religion, you would find that competing with the Church on labor costs was incredibly foolish.

Even if you kept slaves, you still had to feed them or they would starve to death.

The power of faith, however, allowed believers to bring their own food and work themselves to death!

By comparison, her half-baked assembly line might not actually beat these religious “wetwares” in terms of cost control.

Since entering the kingdom’s military industry normally was hard, she might as well release some new big toys early to force her way in, making the Church accept it whether they wanted to or not!

Su Na finally set her sights on the God of War: artillery.

Because this world had mages, the development of conventional artillery had lacked fertile soil from the very start, though magic cannons were not uncommon.

Unfortunately, the firing principle of magic cannons was similar to that of mages; they used pre-engraved arrays fueled by mana crystals to fire.

They were basically mages fixed in place, with their power tied directly to the array and the barrel material, and they were extremely wasteful.

Although magic cannons were stationary mages, unlike mages who used their minds to guide mana and resonate with environmental elements to attack, magic cannons relied entirely on mana crystals.

So even if both cast the same spell, the consumption of mana was worlds apart.

Moreover, the strongest magic cannon to date could only reach Tier 7, barely entering the level of an advanced mage.

And a single shot burned through a magic stone costing about five thousand gold coins.

With this cost, let alone a ten-thousand-cannon barrage, if the King personally ordered a ten-cannon salvo, he would never shake off the label of a foolish tyrant for a hundred years.

The city defense cannon Su Na had in mind, however, would probably only have the power of a standard intermediate mage—similar to her upgraded fireball spell from last time—but it was incredibly cheap!

If one wasn’t powerful enough, how about ten?

If ten weren’t enough, how about a hundred?

She also build some big guys based on clients’ needs; setting aside the power, the sound would definitely be loud enough.

The deafening roar of a giant beast was incredibly exciting to hear~

Moreover, it wasn’t truly powerless.

Mages were too precious to appear on the battlefield often; formerly, the main battlefield forces were ordinary people with weapons.

Intermediate mages were of little use and quickly ran out of steam, and using advanced mages was like using an anti-aircraft gun on a mosquito.

The cannon’s positioning fell right in that golden middle, perfectly meeting the needs of lords in conventional warfare, especially high-angle bombardment in siege defense.

It offered a faster rate of fire than traditional giant ballistas, lower projectile costs, lower maintenance costs, and fewer labor requirements.

Action followed thought!

Though full of passion, Su Na had not lost her head; taking too big a step could still backfire.

Her initial idea was to build a clay-molded, muzzle-loading cast iron cannon as a test platform.

This would allow her to train her newly formed officer guard in new-era technology and test the weapon’s power while calculating costs and manufacturing difficulty.

Using artillery wasn’t just about lighting a fuse and throwing a shell to explode; there was an entire scientific system supporting it.

Although primary artillery could indeed be fired blindly, Su Na was not stupid.

How could she waste such a great hands-on training opportunity for the new generation?

If the kingdom’s future truly deteriorated as she predicted, her future artillery units would definitely be her core fire support, especially mobile artillery pulled by horses.

To hit whatever they aimed at in unfamiliar territory and complete her tactical missions, she had to have a highly qualified artillery crew educated in artillery science.

After all that talk, the problem returned to education…

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