Release that Witch

Neverwinter was busy preparing for Roland’s coronation ceremony.

After releasing the news, the king left the whole thing to Barov. The City Hall Director devoted himself entirely to the preparation job and strived for perfection in every detail. He even fetched Blanche, the ceremonial officer, from the old king’s city to assist him.

As for Roland, apart from occasionally checking the progress of the magic movie, he spent most of his time on the final design of the internal combustion engine.

Because of the difference in measurement systems between the current world and his previous world, he needed to conduct a stability test for each prototype he made to make sure that his design was accurate. Furthermore, since the quality of the oil separated by the fractional process was very unstable, he had to adopt a redundancy design method. Without computer simulation techniques, he had to adjust the prototypes repeatedly.

He created a prototype, tested it and then improved it or scrapped it. He repeated this process again and again, which made him feel as if he had returned to his schooling days. He rushed about between the castle and the north slope backyard every day, living a busy and full life. The knowledge that he had forgotten a long time ago became vivid in his head once more.

Unlike his schooling days, this time he had a great companion, Anna.

She was as enthusiastic about new things as he was.

She was so absorbed in assembling the precision components. Even when she stopped to wipe the sweat from her nose, she would still have her eyes fixed on what she was working on. Seeing this, Roland felt amazed. He found that her thirst for knowledge and creation was as strong as her Blackfire.

And he thought she looked exceptionally attractive when she was so earnest in bringing to life her creations.

Whenever they made a progress, Anna would smile so brightly that Roland would believe nothing, not even becoming the queen of Graycastle, could make her that happy.

She had expressed such a thought before. As long as they could stay together, she would not care about the title.

However, Roland still wanted to give her the title as a way of externalizing his commitment to her.

After all, this was a common practice in human society.

After revising the dimensions of the engine, he put down the quill and rubbed his sore neck.

If nothing else, the design could be finalized this time. The last batch of prototypes had run stably for a reasonable period of time. It had only been a few days but was already enough to meet the current needs of the city.

Internal combustion engines, the second-generation power source, worked much more efficiently than steam engines, but in terms of structure, the former were not very different from the latter, except that the latter needed some external equipment such as a boiler and a steam transport pipe. No matter how well-designed a steam engine was, it could not prevent the energy loss caused by the transportation of steam. An internal combustion, however, contained the fuel inside its cylinder. In this way, all the heat generated by the fuel could be used to push the piston.

The mixture of oil and air would burn violently inside the cylinder. When the air became hot, its volume would increase rapidly to drive the piston. Meanwhile, the air pressure inside the cylinder would fall and thus fresh fuel would be sucked into the cylinder. It sounded like a simple process but it was not an easy project. For example, it had a brand new requirement, the sealing. In an early steam engine, one could easily insert a finger into the gap between the piston and the cylinder wall, and both felt and linen could be used to block the gap. However, such a gap would never be allowed in an internal combustion engine.

This was because it was powered by the fuel inside itself. Once its cylinder had a leak, it would stop working.

Given the high demand for material and manufacturing technology, internal combustion engines came several decades after the electric motors in the previous world where Roland had lived.

Roland had two designs for the first-generation internal combustion engines: cylinder-in-line and cylinder-in-circle. The former one was cumbersome and made of cast iron. It was stable and suitable for the factories. The latter was also known as a star engine. It had shorter crankshafts and a compact structure, so it was smaller in size and very suitable for aircraft. As it was made of aluminum alloy, only Anna could process this delicate engine for now.

Now that he could consult a large number of reference material in the Dream World, he developed these two types of engines at the same time. Compared to the tortuous experience of manufacturing the steam engines, this time, his design job was much easier.

The Senior Demon’s words were another reason for him to speed up the engine development process.

This expedition had already proved that it was hard to rely solely on the ground-to-air firearms to resist all the attacks from the sky.

If his plan could be realized, for the first time ever, mankind in this world would have an air force that could contest with the demons riding flying mounts.

”Your Majesty, don’t move.”

Nightingale suddenly spoke.

Roland immediately froze up and moved his eyes to look back.

Is there...an enemy?

Soon he saw Nightingale approach and reach her hand into his hair, and then he felt a little pain from his head. It turned out that she had just plucked off a hair.

”Ugh, is it a white hair?” Roland did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Since his hair color was light gray, a white hair should not be very conspicuous on his head. But Nightingale could easily recognize this white hair because it was dry and lost all its luster from its root.

”And there’s more on your head.” Nightingale continued to search inside his hair for a while. ”Have you been having trouble sleeping recently?”

”Have I?”

”You used to sleep late in the winter, but recently you’ve been getting up earlier than me every day. At night, you have to enter the Dream World to study. That isn’t really sleeping, is it?” Nightingale said. ”You’ve yawned a lot recently, which means you are very tired. You are getting white hair in your twenties. That’s not a good sign.”

Roland felt very relieved looking at her even to the point that his work-induced weariness faded. She still cared about him as much as she did previously and his coming marriage did not affect her very much. Roland guessed that it must have had something to do with the agreement between Anna and her.

”Don’t worry. I’ve not reached my limit yet. I’ve experienced it before.”

”...” Nightingale looked puzzled, but apparently she could tell that it was not a lie.

Roland did tell her the truth. ”Generally speaking, when I reach my limit, I’ll have a palpitation and feel as if my chest is empty. After that, I need to be extra careful since I’ll feel weak and sometimes, I’ll start coughing a lot and even cough blood—ahem—”

Halfway through the speech, he suddenly coughed violently.

”Hey, are you alright?” Nightingale got nervous and patted his back. ”Do you need me to fetch Nana for you?”

Roland took a deep breath. ”No... I’m fine. I just choked on my saliva.”

”Really?”

”Relax, I—”

He turned around and stiffened with embarrassment at once. He was surprised to find that Nightingale was so close to him at this moment. They looked into each other’s eyes and simultaneously held their breath.

”Your Majesty.” Just at this moment, Wendy opened the door and walked into the office. ”I need to tell you something... Uh? What are you doing?”

”What?” Roland blinked only to find that Nightingale had already disappeared. Now, he was bending backwards while holding his head back, which was a really weird-looking posture.

”His Majesty is practicing gymnastics,” said Nightingale, who was lying on the couch beside the tea table and chewing her dried fish leisurely. ”He’s been in his chair for a long time and got sore, so he decided to be the first to try his gymnastics.”

”Oh, I see,” Wendy said thoughtfully. ”Is this the gymnastics you wanted to promote in the school? But... do you really think that such a strange pose will work?”

”Ugh, it works. Trust me.” Roland returned to a normal sitting position. He felt that Nightingale, who was acting innocent, was trying her best to hold back laughter. ”Well, what did you want to tell me?”

”Your Majesty,” said Wendy, while leafing through the record book in her hand. ”According to the records of the previous year, today is Lightning’s Day of Adulthood.”