Chapter 7
Engineers of the Southern Special Armaments Design Bureau were pulling all-nighters again today.
Whenever Kyle Leopold drew up a design, it was this bureau’s job to make it work within the limits of reality.
It was a place filled with engineering prodigies who could make Kyle’s designs—years ahead of their era—work in the real world.
Those handpicked from even the industrial city of the South for their exceptional talent were, each in their own field, individuals capable of changing the age.
It wasn’t hard to glimpse that talent.
"This is the design proposal for a 76mm anti-aircraft gun sent over by the Design Bureau, Your Grace."
"Oh, that looks pretty decent."
It had been good enough to earn recognition from Kyle Leopold of the South, a man from the 21st century, on the very first try.
The XA-01, a modification of the 76mm naval gun that had been used as the Dreadnought’s secondary battery.
Saying XA-01 made it sound impressive, but in truth it was nothing special.
The X was just an identification mark I arbitrarily attached to experimental weapons, and the A stood for artillery.
Experimental cannon No. 01.
For something hastily modified from a naval gun, it had a fairly convincing design.
It looked just like the anti-aircraft guns we often saw in World War II movies.
In other words, for this era, it was an extraordinarily advanced design.
"This should be fine with a little modification. There are a few disappointing points, but those are things we simply can’t solve on our end."
Of course, Kyle Leopold wanted to increase the anti-aircraft gun’s caliber to 88mm.
88mm FlaK.
He knew all too well the power of the German army’s World War II all-purpose gun, which could serve as an anti-aircraft gun, anti-tank gun, and coastal gun.
But with an armed conflict with the West looming, there was nothing to be done.
A 76mm anti-aircraft gun could be produced at the existing naval gun factories.
But if they started production over at 88mm, they would have to rebuild the entire factory from scratch.
As much as it pained him, he had no choice but to compromise with reality.
And so Kyle intended to put this XA-01 through testing and then deploy it in the field.
That was, until the engineers of the Design Bureau objected.
"I’m not sure a large-caliber anti-aircraft gun would be effective in actual combat."
"Against a wyvern corps that can freely maneuver in all directions in the air, I don’t think simply increasing the number of large-caliber batteries would make them any easier to hit."
"Wouldn’t it be better to deploy more small-caliber anti-aircraft guns and form a wall of fire?"
The engineers, who still didn’t know much about proximity fuses, looked at anti-aircraft guns with skepticism.
So Kyle Leopold headed straight to the Design Bureau himself.
***
Thanks to the modernization drive steadily pursued over the past ten years, Albion, the southern capital, now resembled late nineteenth-century London.
Between the brick buildings, concrete structures could be seen here and there, and the towering factories endlessly belched smoke from their chimneys.
On the brick-paved streets, cars and carriages moved side by side, and gentlemen in suits were often seen.
"It definitely feels like a place where people actually live now."
It was a completely different atmosphere from the streets I had first arrived on, which had been full of trash and homeless people.
I watched the scenery from the car as we headed to the Design Bureau building.
Meanwhile, Lucilla asked me,
"Do you know what sort of standing Lord Kyle has at the Design Bureau?"
"Well, I’m just a fairly popular leader, aren’t I?"
It was a bit awkward to say it myself, but with an approval rating of 85%, I was at least entitled to say that much.
But Lucilla shook her head.
"Hmm... I think you should experience it for yourself."
With her index finger under her lips, Lucilla let a faint smile touch her face, like a cold ice princess.
The barely perceptible lift at the corners of her mouth was a bonus.
As childhood friends. As imperial royalty and maid. As revolutionary comrades. And as the Southern Grand Duke and his adjutant, we had already spent ten years together.
It wasn’t hard to tell what that expression meant.
"Ahaha, saying that makes me a little uneasy."
Though she looked stoic, she liked socializing and had a bit of a mischievous streak.
Especially when it came to me being flustered.
She found it amusing when someone who seemed as perfect and meticulous as I did got taken by surprise.
"But this time, things won’t go your way."
So, playing along, I answered confidently.
Well, no matter how I thought about it, that had to be true.
I’d even given them advance notice that I was coming. In the Design Bureau, where the world’s greatest minds gathered, surely nothing would happen.
"There’s an Eastern saying that says ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch,’ isn’t there?"
So I let Lucilla’s words go in one ear and out the other.
It didn’t take long for me to realize I shouldn’t have.
The moment I entered the Design Bureau, a gloomy girl with deep dark circles under her eyes thrust a letter at me without warning.
"I love you...!"
"Eh"
I forgot everything I had confidently said to Lucilla and froze in place.
"I fell in love with Your Grace’s Dreadnought design! Ahh, I’ve never in my life seen such a grand, magnificent, beautiful blueprint..."
While the other researchers who came rushing over belatedly covered the girl’s mouth and dragged her away, a famous saying naturally came to mind.
That genius and madness are separated by only a thin sheet of paper.
And this place was where only the continent’s greatest geniuses gathered.
***
Southerners live on wheat and fish.
But the engineers of the Southern Special Armaments Design Bureau lived on something a little different.
"Ughhh, senior... no more coffee?"
"That last cup you just drank was the last one."
"Huh...? But I still have so much left to do..."
"You’ve already had ten cups today, you know? Why don’t you just sleep?"
"If I did that, my future self would resent me quite a lot..."
When the higher-ups gave an order, the engineers made it happen. Under that simple principle, the ones who got ground down in the end were always the engineers.
Pulling all-nighters while fueling themselves with coffee instead of wheat and fish had already become a common sight in the Armaments Design Bureau.
The magic craftsmen who made the impossible possible got the job done one way or another, even if they had to wear themselves down to do it.
- Hey, you guys up top, don’t you know modern engineering can’t make something like this??
- "I know."
It was an open secret that if they succeeded, the response was always, “Oh? This works too? Then try this.”
If they were ordinary people, they would have quit the Armaments Design Bureau long ago. A company would gladly hire these geniuses at a premium.
But everyone gathered here was an engineer who could rightly be called one of the empire’s greatest minds.
Their way of thinking was slightly different from that of ordinary humans.
"Hee, hee, hee... Blueprints... so pretty..."
"All phenomena in this world can be explained by physics...! Numbers are god..."
"At last, at last it’s finished! Everyone who said this was physically impossible, get your asses out here!!!"
In the first place, the engineers of the Design Bureau hadn’t come here for the money.
Backed by the South’s wealthy and effectively unlimited financial support, they had gathered here to make the things they themselves wanted to make.
And right in the middle of such a place, the Dreadnought’s blueprints were dropped.
"Everyone, attention! This is the blueprint for the latest battleship Lord Kyle has entrusted us to review!"
The largest war machine in human history.
A fortress on the sea, operated solely by the power of machinery, without the aid of magic.
And with naval guns that possessed firepower incomparable to that of a mage.
Nothing expressed the word “romance” more perfectly than this.
The largest and strongest war machine created by humankind—the battleship—was the very romance all engineers dreamed of.
That was why Kyle Leopold, at the Design Bureau, was almost a godlike existence.
A transcendent being who could see the far future, beyond even what they themselves could grasp.
When such a man came to the Design Bureau with blueprints for a new weapon, every engineer there, forgetting sleep, gathered in the conference room with pounding hearts.
"I heard your opinions on the anti-aircraft gun’s accuracy. Coincidentally, I’d been worrying about the same issue, so I brought a blueprint... though the welcome was a little intense."
As expected, this proposal did not disappoint the engineers.
"1. Install a machined mana stone inside each shell. These mana stones begin functioning the moment they are fired from the anti-aircraft gun."
"2. The activated mana stone periodically emits mana into the surroundings."
"3. When there is nothing nearby, the mana waves scatter into the air, but when they hit a knight clad in aura or a wyvern, a living creature that handles mana, the waves reflect back."
"4. Sensing the reflected waves, the mana stone releases all the mana it has been holding."
"5. The mana release acts as the trigger, causing the shell to explode right next to the enemy."
"The unavoidable shell. A proximity fuse."
Originally, it was a weapon that could only be used once vacuum tubes had been invented, but in this world there were mana stones, a natural semiconductor.
And magical engineering that used mana stones and modern technology was exactly what the engineers of the Design Bureau loved.
The dead-looking eyes of the engineers, which had been dull only hours earlier, now sparkled with life.
"We’ll finish it within three days, no matter what!"
The sight of engineers with dark circles glued to the blueprints was... honestly, a little scary.
***
From that day on, it took only three days for the XA-01 anti-aircraft gun and the proximity-fuse shells to reach my hands.
I decided not to think about how many engineers had been ground down in the process.
Thinking too deeply about it would only make me feel more guilty.
In any case, the XA-01 anti-aircraft gun and proximity-fuse test was conducted on an uninhabited island with no one around.
In the wide firing range, there was a captured adult wyvern and a target set five meters away from it.
The purpose of the experiment was to see whether the proximity fuse would function properly even with an error of about 5 to 10 meters.
And whether a shell that exploded at that distance could still inflict effective damage on the wyvern.
In front of the officers gathered at the test site, the 76mm anti-aircraft gun flashed with light.
The result was devastating.
Torn apart by blast pressure and shrapnel, the wyvern was reduced to a mangled pile of meat.