Chapter 309 — The Rail Accelerator Cannon

Gao Yang understood at once, and felt it was only fitting. Only Rebecca, who had come up from hard times, could keep the principle he had taught her—"compress costs to achieve mass production"—foremost at all times. How could Camille, who had lived in an age of tycoons, possibly harbor such a painstaking cost-cutting mentality? Back in the old days of the Gondor Empire, those filthy-rich grandees would have considered it frugal austerity not to carve a single shell out of an entire block of blue crystal...

Gao Yang praised Rebecca a few words, and once the girl was beaming with a goofy grin, he turned to look at the several soldiers waiting by the rail cannon. "We'll discuss the technical details later. I can't wait to see how it actually performs. Shall we start with the test shell?"

"That's the most procedure-compliant approach," Camille said, while controlling his Mage Hand to deliver the test shell before the soldiers.

Following the operating procedures they had learned not long ago, the soldiers immediately began loading the enormous war machine.

They opened the loading port on one side of the gun mount, pushed the shell inside, used a ramrod to seat the shell into the rails, then closed the loading port, adjusted the angle of the acceleration rails, and activated the charging structure used for overloading (academic name: the Rebecca Augmentation Module)...

The magical lines on the gun mount gradually brightened, followed by the rune arrays along the entire acceleration rail. A strange, low humming began to sound.

Another soldier operating the cannon had already taken his place at the rear flank of the mount, his hand resting on the firing lever.

Knight Byron gave the order: "Fire!"

The soldier threw the lever.

The shell was pushed by the base repulsion mechanism into the acceleration section, then rapidly accelerated under a series of repulsion runes. All the sounds merged into a single shrill report, and as the entire acceleration rail recoiled violently within its base, a gleaming metal device burst from the rails wrapped in a pale cyan vortex, flying into the clear sky with a piercing whistle.

Compared with "cannons" that relied on gunpowder explosions to propel their projectiles, this rail accelerator cannon was far quieter, but the sudden report still startled Rebecca and Hetty, and Jenny even gave a soft cry, belatedly covering her ears.

Then, several dozen seconds later, on a distant hillside serving as the target, Gao Yang saw a sudden plume of dust rise.

He smiled. "If the cannon's fine, let's use a live round. That'll be more intuitive."

Several technicians from the Machinery Research Institute immediately stepped forward to inspect the rail cannon, and a report soon came back: "Rails in good condition! Charging structure and overload structure in good condition! All moving parts securely connected!"

"Load the live round!"

The soldiers once again repeated the procedure of the first firing, and this time, what was pushed into the acceleration rails was a live round loaded with several dozen kilograms of Rebecca crystal.

Rebecca, knowing full well the commotion her handiwork could make, dived behind Hetty at the first instant, while Hetty instinctively ducked a little behind Gao Yang. Amber looked at the reactions of the two, thought it over carefully, analyzed it calmly, and her whole body began to turn insubstantial—ready to hop straight into the Shadow Realm if things went wrong.

Then the rail cannon fired.

Another abrupt report, and a metal device like a miniature obelisk, wreathed in pale cyan airflow, shot out of the rails. Even Gao Yang and Camille could only barely track its flight path. The shell did not detonate the instant it left the "barrel"; its body and fuse safety mechanism withstood the test. The whole shell traced a long parabola through the air, and several dozen seconds later, it slammed heavily into the distant hillside.

A tremendous boom, as if thunder had burst, and countless clods of earth and stone rose into the air amid the explosion, while a blast of fire born of the magical eruption billowed skyward.

Amber, just about to slip into the Shadow Realm, froze where she stood.

She stared blankly at the hillside, now swallowed in smoke, dust, and flying stone, with a colossal fireball rising into the sky—and all at once she understood what Gao Yang had meant by "a means of negotiation."

If anyone, under any circumstances, tried to negotiate with her using this thing, she would cooperate absolutely...