Chapter 299: Clockwork Gun Order
After staying in Joan of Arc for a week and arranging all the affairs there, Horn and his officers prepared to return to Joan of Arc.

But before that, he went to find Shilov to say goodbye.

Under the gable of the Mechanical Palace, hiding behind the gate, Shilov quietly listened to Horn's decision to leave.

Although Shilov didn't say anything, Horn could still see her disappointment from her tail dragging on the ground.

"You have a lot of friends here." Horn squatted down and held Shilov's hand. "One day you will be able to go out by yourself."

Looking up, Shilov looked at Horn's face and turned the wheelchair forward.

Horn took a few steps back, confused.

Parking the wheelchair in front of the door, Shilov opened her arms and stretched out her hands to Horn.

Horn was stunned for a moment, but he still walked over and gave Shilov a big hug.

But what he didn't see was that Shilov's tail and ears suddenly stood up straight, and her eyes, which rarely changed, widened unconsciously.

Letting go of Shilov, Horn sensed her surprise: "Didn't you want a hug just now?"

"I just wanted to show you that I can reach my hand out the door." Shilov's human ears gradually turned red, while her animal ears drooped limply.

"So do you want me to hug you?"

"Actually, I don't really want you to hug me." Shilov turned her head away stubbornly.

"Okay, I get it. If you want a hug again, you'll have to wait until next time." Horn saw the children's army bringing the horses over and patted the back of Shilov's hand twice. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye." Shilov barely regained her previous elegant posture and waved to Horn like a lady.

She leaned against the door and watched Horn's back on horseback gradually disappear from her sight.

Looking down at the marks left by the door panel, Shilov once again reached her hand out through the door.

She was able to accurately judge that from a physiological point of view, her hand had not suffered any damage.

But the pain and fear of having her legs chopped off by her mother more than ten years ago once again flowed in through her fingertips.

With her body trembling slightly, Shilov still stretched her hand out of the door.

"Hu——" After exhaling a long breath, Shilov persisted for five minutes and then withdrew her hand as if she had been electrocuted.

She turned her head to look at the clock behind her, as if muttering to herself: "I persisted one minute longer than yesterday..."

…………

Thanks to his research on the dragon bone flute, Horn's journey back to Chateau Jeanne d'Arc from the Wild Spider Forest was exceptionally smooth.

There are people playing dragon bone flutes at each military station in the Wild Spider Forest.

This time Horn and his companions traveled on horseback, much faster than before, and arrived at Mayo Town in a day and a half.

After changing horses in the town of Mayo, Horn set off again without stopping.

When they reached Gray Furnace Town, Horn stopped.

After dismounting with his guards, Horn greeted the head of the local guild and walked directly to the back room of the blacksmith shop on the west side of the town.

Huilu Town makes its living from metal processing industry and there are a large number of craftsmen, the largest of which is the blacksmith industry.

Standing at the door of the big blacksmith shop, Horn looked inside.

Various tools are neatly hung on the wall, including hammers, pliers, chisels, etc., and the arc-shaped openings shine with metallic luster.

Next to the medicine jar, several blacksmith apprentices were sweating profusely, pulling the huge bellows to fan the fire, making the hot peat dance with vigorous flames.

In the flames, bubbles gurgled out of the medicine jar, and the iron ingots in the potion gradually began to emit bright white spots.

When the light spot evenly covers the surface of the iron material, the blacksmith lifts it out of the medicine tank.

On the anvil, the iron ingot with a bright white glow was hammered repeatedly, and the fluorescent light splashed everywhere.

These iron ingots that are hammered into iron sheets will eventually be gathered onto a steel core, and through continuous hammering, they will gradually become the shape of iron pipes.

Unlike the craftsmanship of Horn Autumn Dusk Island, the blacksmiths here do not have electric welding skills, so naturally they cannot use the spiral barrel technology.

However, as experienced craftsmen, they still have some tricks up their sleeves.

The process they used was to wrap a thin layer of softened iron around a steel core to form an iron pipe. The joints of the iron pipe were naturally not as strong as those of electric welding, so they wrapped another layer of iron around the inner pipe.

In this way, the joint of the inner tube is wrapped by the outer tube, and with the hammering process, a gun barrel that meets Horn's requirements can be created.

The price is that the yield rate is low and the products need to be re-melted repeatedly, and only one out of five meets the requirements.

Considering the time it takes to smelt iron ore in Mayo Town, it takes an average of ten days for a blacksmith to produce a finished gun barrel.

Adding small parts such as the firing rod, it takes about 15 days to make one shot.

However, the head of the Blacksmith Guild in Huilu Town swore on his entire family that this was only because the blacksmiths were inexperienced.

Give him some time, and he can definitely shorten the time to less than ten days.

Horn finally decided the day before yesterday to place an order for 1000 clockwork gun barrels with these blacksmiths.

In addition, he placed an order for 500 clockwork gun barrels with the welding wizards on Autumn's Edge.

Despite losing Jeanna, the most powerful welding machine, the remaining five welding wizards can still produce 2-3 gun barrels per person per day.

According to the production capacity of the Holy Gun Workshop on Qiumu Island, it would be no problem to produce 50-500 gun barrels in 600 days.

There was no welding wizard to help in Grayfurnace Town, and it took about ten days for a blacksmith and their apprentice to forge a gun barrel.

Although their production efficiency was not high, they had a large number of people, and it was still acceptable for 200 blacksmiths to make 50 clockwork guns in 1000 days.

At the current rate of progress, Horn will be able to collect 1200 to 1500 clockwork guns by the end of May.

According to Horn's precise calculations, each clockwork gun uses 20 pounds of iron, and including labor, material and other costs, the total price is around 25 to 30 dinars.

The pricing profit of weapons in the imperial market is 50% to 70%.

The Salvation Army purchased them at a price of 45 dinars each, costing a total of 375 gold pounds.

This price does not include the orichalcum spring.

The cost price of a mountain copper mainspring box is 90 dinars, which converts to a purchase price of 1 gold pound.

So in fact, the total price of a clockwork gun is about 1.5 gold pounds, which is about the same price as a knight's sword.

With the current number of the Salvation Army, there are only 4500 Holy Gunners among 1000 people.

Even if we expand two more legions according to the plan, it will be 5500 people.

According to the current organization, there are at most 1200 Holy Musketeers. Even if those damaged in the war are included, there is not even a big gap of 1500 rifles.

Horn did this not only to support these blacksmith shops and prevent them from going bankrupt, but most importantly because he did have a shortage of 1300 clockwork guns.

While on Autumn Island, Madeleine sent a letter from Jeanne d'Arc. The data attached to the letter showed:
In the month after the war, the extraordinary rate of Salvation Army soldiers soared from 3% to 10%, and it was even rising.

The rate of Holy Favor has soared from 25% to 52%. Among the active war monks of the Salvation Army, there are more than Holy Favorees.

However, what is strange is that this time the Holy Favor disease is more serious than before, and there have even been many cases of war monks dying because of the Holy Favor.

For the time being, Madeleine could not be sure whether these war monks who died of the Holy Favor Disease were due to injuries and physical weakness or other reasons.

This really confused Horn. I am not in Jeanne d'Arc, so how did you get the Holy Favor Syndrome?
The Holy Favor Disease cannot be passed on from person to person. Only Horn can pass it on.

If the Holy Favor Disease could be passed from person to person, the empire would have been conquered by the army of witches' followers long ago, right?

With this question, Horn set off again. Since he couldn't figure it out, he decided to stop thinking about it for the time being.

The group set out on the road again, and Horn still stopped to observe and ask questions at every place he arrived at.

They passed by a farmer who was weeding and learned that the land distribution team had advanced to the vicinity of Huilu Town.

They passed by a hanged priest at the entrance of the village and learned about what happened a few days ago when the knights colluded with armed farmers to assassinate the land distribution group and were defeated by the Black Hat Army.

Passing by laborers carrying soil, building water conservancy projects and reclaiming wasteland, I learned that the two major monasteries of the Holy Hoe and the Holy Scythe had officially opened.

Near noon, looking at the smoke rising from Chateau Joan of Arc, Horne couldn't help but smile.

"Your Majesty seems to be in a very happy mood." Martin asked.

"Of course! We have enough food to get through the spring famine, the land distribution is going smoothly, and the craftsmen are working so hard." Horn pointed to the winding road in the distance. "Although we don't know where we will go in the future, as long as we don't stop, our road will continue to extend."

(End of this chapter)