Release That Witch

Roland made a group of three people from Ministry of Education of City Hall and two teachers bringing Soraya's reprographic books to Longsong Stronghold. Despite his best efforts, he had finally taken the first step to assimilate Longsong Stronghold.     

Although Petrov was not a good battle commander, he indeed behaved excellently in administration. In the short span of two weeks, 2,000 men, under the protection of the knights, had laid a road which reached the town. If not for the fact that the second batch of the 10 groups of furnaces was to be produced, Roland still would not make the decision to build a road between the two places.     

This road was named Kingdom Main Street by Roland and with the full authority of the Minister of Construction, Karl, its construction was the same as the town street which used cement as a stabilizing layer. In this time without heavy vehicles, this road surface was strong enough to undertake transportation tasks. And the drainage performance was good, and it could also be improved further if paved with asphalt or concrete.     

In terms of construction materials, four steam-driven mills had replaced manpower. Every day they could produce tonnes of the gravel. The weakness of the transport capacity that limited production had been negated. So many stones needed more than 100 people with a carriage to transport and it took one day to get to the construction site. Future generations, it could transport the materials in a slag hauler in a single journey.     

In the furnace area, except for four kilns that were firing clay bricks, the other blast furnaces had been assigned to the production of cement powder. Nowadays, whether in quality or stability, the cement that the town produced was better than the original production due to the process of many composition experiments and the iron powder supplied by the mine mountain.     

However, large groups of people transporting gravel and cement also had a negative effect on the town. The most serious problem was dust pollution. By the afternoon, with only a light breeze, the dust would fog the air and the street became a thick yellow. Although the townspeople did not mind the situation, for Roland, there was nothing worse than having to close the windows and doors in the summer.     

As a result, the carriages carrying the cement and gravel were quickly fitted with covers to reduce the possibility of scattering during transport. Meanwhile, with the help of Leaf's ability, the street was lined with the greenery and thick shade of sycamore trees in a short few days. Roland also instructed the townspeople to pour water on any dust they saw and the situation improved quickly.     

The perpendicular distance between these two places was about 70 kilometers. However, to circumnavigate the Impassable Mountain Range, the total length of the road was around 100 kilometers. The work was predicted to take around a year to complete, and due to the high quality of the surface, the road would be open to new forms of transport such as bicycles and steam cars.     

Under his aspirations, developing education and building the road were just a means to connect the two places, like the urban integration that later generations greatly promoted. After the development of the land between the two places finishes, Roland's plan was for Longsong Stronghold and Border Town to merge into a big city. If he could make the southern uplands become a part of this city too, it would provide access to the sea.     

Of course, developing so much land required a growth in population. And in response to any possible war in the future, the city must provide enough workers for industrial production while maintaining self-sufficiency in agriculture. According to Roland's preliminary calculations, he needed about 100,000 people to immigrate to the city. The Kingdom of Graycastle's biggest city, the king's city, had around 20,000 to 30,000 people.     

Roland focused on the north of the Kingdom of Graycastle and the Southern Territory. These two places had been through war and when winter came, it was possible that a lot of refugees would head towards the city. Only by supplying food and warm rooms, could Border Town appeal them. Even the refugees of the Kingdom of Everwinter and the Kingdom of Wolfheart were under his consideration. Thinking of this, he wrote a letter to his business acquaintance, Margaret, asking her to inquire about the situation of these two kingdoms.     

...     

After writing the development plan, Roland put the folded paper into the drawer and stretched. He then decided to go Anna's room in order to see how her lens had been cut.     

Since learning of the causes behind Soraya's revolution, he was going to make a microscope that could observe cellular structure.     

If the witches could observe the fantastic microworld with their own eyes, maybe it could trigger more witches to evolve new abilities. If nothing else, it would at least trigger their interest in learning.     

To make a microscope, two convex lenses that were used to enlarge targets were not difficult. The difficulty was the focal distance of every hand crafted lens. So it was a precise operation to match the eye lens to the objective lens, it required constantly adjusting the distance between the two lenses.     

After describing the image-forming principle of the convex lens, he gave Anna several crystals with excellent quality and let her try to slice the optics and measure the focal distance. After three days, Roland was full of anxiety and wondered to what degree Anna had managed.     

Arriving at Anna's room door, he saw Nightingale smiling at him. She stood against the wall, as if indicating that she would not follow. Since she reduced the amount of time that she spent in the Mist, Roland also did not have to guess her whereabouts. When he and Anna were together, Nightingale always chose to stand at a distant location.     

Opening the door, he saw Anna sitting beside the table and tinkering with a metal tube.     

"How's it going?" he went ahead and asked.     

Just as he was about to speak further, Roland was startled. He saw several instruments that looked like the microscope drawn by his own hand on the table.     

"According to the drawing that you gave me, I made several trial products. Indeed I could see details that I couldn't find at ordinary times." Raising her head, her fringe slipped down one side. "I used it to observe paper, leaves and ponding, and found they're different from their ordinary appearances." After their hot air balloon trip, Anna did not use honorific language when Roland and herself were alone, which made him feel quite relaxed.     

"How could you make that?" Roland asked surprisingly, "That diagram is only a rough silhouette."     

"The outline was enough." Anna laughed. "You see, you can magnify objects using the eye lens and the objective lens and fixing them at the right distance. After fixing them in an iron tube, the main body of the microscope is done. When I tested the lens magnification effect, I found that the objective lens and the observation target must be kept within a certain distance to see a clear image. The slightest flick of the hand would make the image blurred. As you can see from the schematic diagram, the tube is fixed and the table below the target can be moved up and down to get the best possible object distance." She paused. "The bottom of the sheet is harder to understand. Can you tell me what it's for?"     

Roland looked at the drawing and found that was actually a mistake of his. It was a retroreflector used to increase the ray of the light going through the target. At this time, the mercury mirror had not been invented. Generally the nobles still used bronze mirrors or iron mirrors to check their appearance. There was silver behind a sheet of glass in the imperial palace in order to obtain a better reflected image. Even without a mirror, sunlight was sufficient for the microscope to work.     

He carefully made an explanation, and he was shocked by Anna's great perception. Only using a rough diagram, she could make a complete product. This was impossible.     

While looking down the barrel of the microscope, Anna's neck became exposed. Roland could not help himself but want to kiss Anna. But Anna gently pushed his face away with her hand and said, "Wait, Your Highness, I'm busy right now."     

"Well... Okay."