Munitions Empire

Chapter 33: 33 sand movers

Tagg led a group of soldiers he had brought with him, along with Wessley Huff Bernard, and their security personnel. Altogether, there were 20 of them, neatly sitting there, looking down at the grass paper in front of them.

"How's it going?" Before Tang Mo even entered the room, his voice had carried inside. Everyone looked up with a frown and shook their heads at Tang Mo.

Tang Mo knew that this couldn't be accomplished overnight and needed a significant amount of time to build up, as well as ample patience, so he wasn't discouraged. He walked to the front of the blackboard and began to explain to them.

These were essentially the foundation of Tang Mo's current military class, so he didn't hold back and shared some of the tactical thinking he knew with them.

These were the distilled essence of battlefield experience accumulated over thousands of years in the future, where each detail had been repeatedly validated and refined to remain.

"I don't understand why you want us to memorize this stuff... trajectories? angles of fire? And then calculating parabolas, right! Parabolas..." Tagg furrowed his eyebrows, looking at Tang Mo who had walked in, and started to complain.

A soldier, equally perplexed, asked, "This makes no sense at all, sir. Each cannon has to be reloaded after firing, and the amount of gunpowder varies, making accurate firing impossible."

In this era, cannon loading was still an incredibly tedious process, with each step being complicated and requiring professional gunners, taking a long time for just one firing sequence.

Similarly, due to the lack of metal cartridge cases and precise powder charges, the range and accuracy of each cannon shot were matters of fate.

Each artillery team could only adjust the firing parameters based on the gun captain's experience, making each shot random and the accuracy far from commendable.

It was only because the opposing lines were densely packed and there were many troops that the precision of the artillery fire did not have to be high to hit the enemy positions; otherwise, these cannons would basically be just for show.

"In fact, if we could produce fixed ammunition, we could resolve this issue," Tang Mo explained with a smile, outlining his plan.

Of course, he couldn't possibly be content with producing only breechloading rifles for a lifetime; he also had to produce more, better, and more powerful weapons—those war machines embodying human intellect! As artillery, the literal God of War, it naturally was one of the first pieces of weaponry he intended to produce.

However, he wouldn't manufacture the current muzzle-loading cannons, but design and make brand new breech-loading rifled cannons from the start, redrawing the standards of artillery weaponry for the world!

With such a plan in mind, he naturally needed to prioritize training officers who genuinely understood artillery, could command artillerymen, and were familiar with the operations of the artillery.

The soldiers in front of him, including Luff and others, were his sparks, the modern soldiers he had to educate and develop for the advancement of modern weaponry!

"Fixed ammunition is available now, but it's still impossible to get the propellant weight exactly the same..." Another one of Tagg's subordinates, equally puzzled, actually had experience with cannon operation before arriving and considered himself quite familiar with artillery.

"I know! But in the future! Our ammunition will be almost identical! What we're learning now is the tactics of the future! Do you understand?" Tang Mo found himself needing to continue explaining.

"Hey! It's time for a break!" yelled a construction worker carrying sand, shirtless under the sun, his muscled body reflecting a healthy glow.

In these times clouded by the threat of war, finding any job was difficult, let alone one with the decent conditions offered by Tang's Weapon Workshop.

He had to haul sand to the designated spots and then help nail wooden boards, lifting the cut planks above his head to hand off to the professional builders.

The work wasn't hard, just requiring strength, which he had plenty of. The pay Tang Mo gave him wasn't meager; the key was that working here came with a meal.

The food wasn't lavish but was certainly ample, which was quite rare. Bosses who didn't pinch pennies on workers' meals were uncommon these days.

Considering the boss's kindness, he was willing to work harder, returning good for good as an expression of his gratitude.

But lately, he discovered that his working attitude could hardly match those of a few builders. Those despicable fellows started hammering nails at the crack of dawn, unwilling to stop for even a moment.

"We still have some time to work..." said a worker climbing a ladder with a wooden board, positioning it where it belonged.

A half-built roof held a wooden box filled with nails, a hammer beside it, and a crumpled piece of paper.

"I say, the boss here may be generous, but you don't have to work yourself to death, right?" The sand-carrying worker looked up, squinting in the sun at the builders on the ladders.

"My son can read! Hahaha! Can you believe it? For that, I should work harder, show Tang Mo that we're grateful folks too! Teach my son more, won't that be another skill for him?" The worker on the ladder proudly boasted to the one below, picking up a nail, sizing it up, then deftly hammering it into the plank.

He had been thrilled about this from last night until now. The paper in the wooden box with the nails wasn't anything special but was his son's test from yesterday!

The paper had thirty characters written on it, all crooked and uneven, but to an old carpenter and builder, it was more delightful than landing a big contract.

In this world, being literate was truly valuable. You could run errands for the nobility, work as a bookkeeper, or even apply for a position in public service.

Even if he continued to be a carpenter like his father, being literate would make it easier to understand blueprints and calculate profits—at least he wouldn't be easily cheated, right?

He had spent his life illiterate, relying on experience to interpret blueprints, barely recognizing any words. For him, a life disadvantaged by illiteracy had now changed because his son could write dozens of words!

How could that not excite him? How could it not fill him with gratitude toward the person who educated his son? So lately he worked even harder, accelerating the progress of the construction project.

"I don't even have a son!" The sand carrier muttered his weak protest upon learning the reason, then went on to mind his own business.