Two days after Ashes left, Maggie unexpectedly returned to Border Town and once again appeared in front of everyone.
After finding out the reason, her return was warmly welcomed, and the Witch Union had a new member.
What moved her greatly was that the welcome banquet was held in the castle's back garden. On a long iron shelf, hung all kinds of meat, which could be taken down and roasted at will. The seasonings were also very rich, including salt, oil, chili powder, pepper, and the barbecue sauce prepared by Roland himself – it was stewed with mushrooms from the Concealing Forest and a whole chicken, and then mixed with salt, sugar and wheat flour, which could make up for the regret of not having MSG. Maggie almost ate until her stomach was full.
In the afternoon, Roland tested her ability.
According to Nightingale's judgment, her total magic capacity was at an average level among the witches, and her ability was to change into a variety of birds – provided that she had seen them before. The magic consumption was quite large, and she could continuously change 4-5 times a day. Maintaining the state of transformation consumed very little magic. It was a summoning ability, which was affected by the God's Stone of Retaliation. Her favorite bird was pigeon, but Roland noticed that no matter what kind of bird she changed into, her body would be a lot bigger. For example, a sparrow, in his opinion, was the same size as an ordinary pigeon. As for a pigeon, it was almost the size of a sea eagle.
Maggie could not change into the imaginary flying beasts, such as the Phoenix, Griffin, and Kun Peng that Roland had drawn, which made him feel quite regretful.
In addition, Ashes' plan was also worth his attention, and that was, what kind of abilities did the numerous witches that Tilly had gathered? If there were assistant witches that could greatly improve the efficiency of farming, he did not mind exchanging their skills.
For this reason, Roland decided to write a long letter to Tilly, first explaining the natural alliance between the two sides, then warning her of the Church's intention to unify the continent, and finally extending an olive branch, expressing his desire to cooperate and make progress together. When Maggie went to the Fjords next month, he would let her take her there.
The next day, the Prince received another good news.
The construction of the factory for the production of the steam engine was finally completed. The factory was located on the other side of the Redwater River, on the west side, next to Leaf's experimental field. The entire plot of land had been surrounded by wooden fences, and a simple road leading to the side of the pontoon bridge had been leveled. According to Roland's plan, this place would be the town's industrial park.
In order to expand the building space as much as possible, the factory was built with lighter wood, covering an area of about one thousand square meters. The machine tools made by Anna had already been transported in. There were two steam boring machines, two manual milling machines, one manual grinding machine, and one manual lathe. Although the principle of these machines was simple, the workmanship was first-class. Other than the base or pedals, which were made of wood, the other parts were made of wrought iron or steel. It could be said that with the current level of materials, they had achieved the highest precision of processing.
At present, there were only a pitiful dozen workers in the factory. They were originally blacksmiths and apprentices of the town's blacksmith shop, but now they were recruited by Roland with a high monthly salary of 50 silver royals to learn how to operate high-end machine tools. Their smithing tools and blacksmith shop had also been moved to a brick building outside the factory. In addition to making some unimportant parts, the production of the steam engine would all be completed by machine tools.
Roland held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the entrance of the factory. In order to strengthen the momentum, he summoned a group of officials from City hall and gave a short speech. In the midst of Echo's simulated gun salute, the establishment of Graycastle Industries was officially announced.
In the next few days, as the head of the company, Roland would run to the factory whenever he had free time, personally demonstrating the operation of the machine tools, as well as the manufacturing process of the steam engine. In order to let the illiterate blacksmiths master how to process and assemble a steam engine, the best way he could think of was to illustrate the process, similar to the assembly manual of a model, indicating the name, number, and size of the parts one by one, and then depicting their installation order and connection method in the form of a diagram. In this regard, Soroya helped him a lot.
In the first few days of production, as he had expected, almost none of the parts met the requirements, let alone putting together a complete steam engine. However, Roland did not care about the failure rate, in the hands of Anna, these defective parts could be recast into new plates in the blink of an eye. He believed that after repeated practice, these blacksmiths would master the production methods of the new era sooner or later.
In addition to the industrial factory, the Prince transformed the firing room of the North Slope Mine, together with the backyard, into a military factory, mainly for the production of revolving rifles and bullets – after the arrival of the "furnace expert" Losiya, who was recommended by Carr, in Border Town, the temperature of the new batch of blast air bags had greatly increased, and they could independently fire cement powder, so there was no longer a need for the firing room to exist.
However, due to the limitations of the technology, the production of revolving rifles and bullets was still completed by Anna. Roland was designing a steam punch for stamping bullets, although the efficiency was not as good as Anna's cutting and molding, at least it could reduce her burden.
In order to thank Anna for her busy work in the past two weeks, he decided to give her a gift.
*****
"A gift?" Anna put down the cut parts in her hands, smoothed the hair that had slipped to her forehead, and showed a bright smile, "Okay."
"Aren't you going to ask what the gift is?" Roland teased her.
"Well …" She thought for a moment, "I like all the gifts you give me."
After more than half a year of recuperation, there was no trace of the first time he saw Anna in the dungeon. She was thin and weak, but now she was slim and graceful, her blue eyes were full of spirit, her plain dress looked fresh and neat, and her whole body was full of youthful vitality.
This was what an 18-year-old girl should look like.
Seeing the other side couldn't help but raise the corner of the mouth, Roland's mood became a lot better.
The "gift" was placed in the castle courtyard, and in order to surprise Anna, it was also covered with a layer of linen – when he was making the messenger of Ashes, he had this idea in his mind. Since he was a prince, the gift naturally had to be special, like jewelry and the like, finished products would seem too insincere, he thought for a long time before he came up with this idea.
Roland opened the linen, and a rattan basket appeared in front of the two people, the top of the basket was connected with a lot of hemp ropes, and the other end of the hemp ropes was a huge canvas.
"What … is this?" Anna walked forward and circled around it, curiously asking.
"A hot air balloon," he replied with a smile, "It can take you up to the sky, like a bird looking down at the earth."
"Fly to the sky?" She turned her head, her eyes flashing with excitement, "Is it really possible?"
Soaring in the sky was the dream of mankind since ancient times, from the glider to the hot air balloon, from the airship to the airplane, people had paid huge sacrifices in the exploration and challenge, and had never given up the pursuit of this aspect. Although witches existed in this world, flying was still the right of a few people. The scenery seen from a high altitude was bound to leave a deep impression.
"Of course, as long as the hot air fills this air bag, it's fine."
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