Chapter 1323: Flaw

A week later, a strange-looking vehicle drove slowly into the test explosion site.

It was the first crawler tractor ever constructed by Neverwinter’s Ministry of Industry according to the complete blueprints provided by the Design Bureau of Graycastle. However, the only thing that was the same was the base plate, its outer appearance did not resemble the prototype at all. The sides of the car were wrapped in thick armor plates, causing it to look somewhat like a moving box.

After it drove into the center of the test explosion site, it stopped before the melted metal tower for about half an hour, and then turned around and drove back south in the direction it came from.

After it covered around five kilometers of ground, a truck drew up close and picked up all the passengers on the tractor. The box-shaped tractor was directly abandoned in the snow.

The passengers were restless throughout the journey, returning to Neverwinter from the Great Snow Mountain the next day.

Upon receiving the news of their arrival, Roland immediately summoned them into the castle.

“How was it, you didn’t run into any trouble right?”

“Rest easy Your Majesty, everything went well.” Phyllis smiled and brought a sigil before him. “Summer found the scene of the explosion really quickly so we stayed there for a shorter time than we thought we would.”

“I-It’s because I was given a specific time so it wasn’t very hard,” Summer said shyly, “Compared to my other sisters, my control over my ability is pretty bad…”

“Enough, you don’t need to be modest.”

“I-It’s true…”

His expression still solemn, Roland took the sigil and then turned and looked over to Momo who was beside him, “Sorry to trouble you.”

“Not at all, you exaggerate, Your Majesty.” Momo partially blocked her eyes with one hand in order to avoid looking at the king while she was using her ability. A while later she lowered her hand and gave Roland a bow. “Everybody’s numbers and colors have not changed noticeably and are pretty much the same as when they set off.”

It was only after hearing these words did Roland heave a sigh of relief. He smiled and said to everyone, “Thank you, you’ve worked hard.”

“You too,” the witches replied in unison.

“Why don’t you go and fill up your stomachs first? Your meals are already ready in the parlor and you can have as much Chaos drink as you like.” Seeing the faces in front of him light up, he shook his head with a smile. As for the Taquila witches who had also participated in the mission, there was no need to give them any other reward as they were frequent visitors of the Dream World anyway.

Using Summer’s past event recreation ability to closely observe the changes that had occured in the instant of a weapon’s activation had always been what the Ministry of Engineering relied on the most for making improvements to weapons. By adjusting the speed of the replay, they could clearly see the trends in the changes that occured every second, allowing most problems and mistakes to be spotted in an instant.

But as mentioned before, the Glory of the Sun was completely different to all the other weapons. Especially for dirty bombs that had not finished reacting completely yet, many substances that gave off fatal radiation would remain at the site. If someone were to rashly enter, they would inevitably suffer severe radiation injuries.

To tackle this, Roland didn’t hesitate to sacrifice his first crawler tractor prototype and convert it into a radiation-blocking vehicle—he covered all of its sides including the bottom with several layers of lead plates with gold foil and beryllium sheets sandwiched between them. The thickness of the entire thing was ten centimeters, causing it to be a highly effective shield against photon, electron and neutron rays. The increased weight due to the protection required the Cube-powered steam engine to drive it, as only that was the only thing that could handle the weight.

The inside of the vehicle was provided with its own oxygen so it was basically completely separate from the outside of the vehicle, removing the risk of radioactive dust entering the vehicle through its ventilation channel. In order to observe the scene of the explosion, a large slate of lead-containing glass was attached to the front of the vehicle, and had a shocking thickness of thirty centimeters.

He had also considered that the tractor’s tracks and armor plates might be contaminated when entering and leaving the test site, and especially ordered them to immediately change vehicles after the armored vehicle left the dangerous zone and abandon the armored vehicle in the snow.

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It could be said that Roland took all the safety measures that he could think of. However, even so, he was still worried.

Thankfully, the final results showed that the observation mission had been a complete success.

After the data was in his hands, Roland, Anna, and Celine immediately started their experimental analysis.

…

They used the Sigil of Recording to repeatedly replay the recreated scene which had been made to play hundreds of times slower. Gradually, the flaws of the No.1 experimental configuration emerged.

“The performance of our explosives are too poor,” Anna said in a low voice.

“I noticed too, the force from the explosion didn’t seem to travel successfully to the barrel of the ‘gun.'” Celine nodded her main tentacles. “Can we use batch detonation to solve this problem?”

“I’m afraid it’s unlikely we can achieve that within a short amount of time.” Roland rubbed his sore eyes. Watching the live explosion recording for two days straight had made him feel as if there were only two colors left in the world—white and blue.

Although the problems with the explosives had been anticipated, he didn’t think that it would be so obvious.

Up until now, Neverwinter had been mass producing double-base smokeless powder. Although it wasn’t as powerful and fast as high explosives such as RMX, it was sufficient for the purposes of the army. Even if the power was lacking, they could make up for it with numbers. However the fallbacks of it became evident when using it in the experimental configuration.

Over a thousand kilograms of explosives was most certainly not a part of the original blueprint. When they were piled up, they were as large as a safe. In order for the energy of the explosion to travel towards the piece of Uranium, Roland specially created a lens that looked like a funnel in an attempt to focus the energy of the blast to one point.

There was nothing wrong with this idea, but a problem occurred before the detonation reached this step. As the size of the cluster of explosives was too large and every point exploded simultaneously, the energy waves created by the bombs on the front and back cancelled each other out partially—this could be clearly seen in the slowed-down recreated scene. The colliding waves warped the entire steel lens and even the outer shell. This meant that a large amount of energy was used up outside of the ‘gun barrel,’ and naturally less was used to push the piece of Uranium.

Next was the chain reaction.

The pressure inside the barrel was not enough to quickly stop the fission reaction and most of the Uranium vaporized due to the high temperatures; this in turn weakened the effect of the neutron source.

“We can only search for other means,” Roland said with his hands spread out. Without electronic explosive control technology, detonating all of the explosives within a millisecond in order to render the front and rear waves impossible to overlap, was unachievable. Even if they changed them into high explosives, it would only attenuate but not solve the problem

He could get the Ministry of Chemical Industry to try and develop low-speed explosives and position them in front of the lens in order to possibly decrease interactions between the explosives, but the process of creating it would involve a large number of experiments, and it might not even be successful. The most reliable method at the moment was obviously to make up for the lacking detonation technology with structural design.

“It looks like we’ll have to work overtime tonight as well,” he stretched and said weakly.

“I’ll be here with you,” Anna said with a smile, “How about I reward you with a Blackfire massage?”

“I suddenly feel full of energy.” Roland jolted. “Is there any other reward?”

“For example?”

“Let me think… Oh yeah, how about the one you mentioned last time…”

Was this also knowledge that they learned from the Dream World…

Celine covered up her large, hot and flushed face with her main tentacles, and then quietly left the North Slope lab.