The next morning, Solomon took two barbarians to check out the Fire Mountain.
They found iron ore pretty fast, and it was high-quality hematite.
"Is this iron ore? How do we use it?" The priest looked at the barbarians carrying baskets of reddish rocks and asked with confusion.
He knew there were lots of these rocks on the island, but he didn't know how to use them.
Leo was in a good mood and smiled, "This stuff can really change your life. You can let these barbarians learn how to forge too."
"Really?" The priest's cloudy eyes lit up. He now believed everything Leo said.
Iron ore is used a lot. You can make tools and weapons with it, but these barbarians don't know how to use it.
Leo nodded. He needed these barbarians to help him forge iron. How much they learned was up to them.
In two days, a big furnace was built by the shore.
Leo had to admit the dwarves were good at this. He had some knowledge, but not much experience. If he did it himself, he would have to figure it out slowly.
Of course, that also needed the help of the barbarians.
Dang! Dang!
The sound of hammering kept going. It was very busy here.
In front of the big furnace, barbarian warriors were topless and sweating a lot, hitting the iron ore.
When they found out that the iron was for the human soldiers' armor and weapons, they got even more excited.
The dwarf Solomon didn't hold back. He taught the barbarians carefully.
Leo wasn't idle either. He and Lilia explored the Fire Bat cave, looking for Flamestone.
Flamestone can speed up the hatching of dragon eggs and improve gunpowder. It helped him a lot.
And they found a new Fire Bat cave. There was a lot of saltpeter there, even more than in the previous cave.
The most excited one wasn't Leo, it was Anna.
This little witch secretly studied gunpowder, did crazy experiments, hunted, and even blew up fish.
The whole Flame Island was full of explosions. It scared the barbarians so much that they often fell to their knees and prayed.
Once, it almost caused a fire.
Leo got angry and took all the gunpowder from Anna. He made Lilia watch her every move.
"Leo, can I have some more gunpowder? I thought of some cool ways to use it."
Anna kept asking Leo, blinking her innocent big eyes, looking really helpless.
Leo didn't care.
Crash!
Suddenly, a loud explosion made Leo jump. He looked at Anna.
"It wasn't me."
Anna shook her head and stretched her neck to look at where the explosion came from.
It seemed to be from the direction of the distant cliff.
"Sir!" Solomon ran over with a happy face.
Leo thought he knew what it was.
" We did it!" Solomon took a deep breath, his eyes full of wild excitement. "We made the hollow iron tube Sir asked for!"
"Really? Take me to see it." Anna jumped out before Leo even had a chance to speak.
"It's at the cliff." Solomon led a few people and ran toward the cliff.
Leo was also excited. It had taken almost a week, and finally, he had the Smoothbore cannon he needed.
Ava and Marina heard the noise and came over too.
At the cliff by the shore, there was a big cannon barrel set up. Dwarf Barnett had messy hair and beard, red eyes, but he was super excited. His hands were shaking as he wrote something down with a charcoal pen.
A few barbarians were kneeling in front of the cannon, praying and muttering.
"Leo Sir." Barnett saw Leo and quickly put down his notes. He ran over and bowed respectfully.
"Barnett, you should take some rest."
Leo nodded, looking at Barnett's messy appearance. It was clear he hadn't slept much.
" Don't worry, Sir. I'm strong." Barnett smiled, his forehead lines deeper, but he didn't care.
" Priest, is this the Smoothbore cannon?" Anna ran to the cannon and looked at it with curiosity.
Barnett nodded and looked at his notes before speaking. "Sir, the first test data is ready. The iron ball used in the Smoothbore cannon weighs seventy jin, and the range is roughly over a thousand meters. But the damage is hard to estimate. But I feel that except for some giant beasts made of imperial steel, no warship can survive one shot from this cannon."
" What, a thousand meters?" Lilia couldn't believe it. She thought she had heard wrong.
The farthest attack of a trebuchet on a ship was only around 150 meters. Even Magic Artillery only had a range of 500 meters. Only some big crossbows could reach a thousand meters.
But after that distance, the attack power and damage of the crossbow was almost nothing.
Barnett was still super excited. "Not just a thousand meters. I don't have the right tools to measure it exactly. Sir, this thing completely changes the way wars are fought. No, it changes everything."
He could feel the terrifying power of the Smoothbore cannon. This world-changing thing had been made by his own hands.
" Mr. Barnett, how do you use this thing? Let me try one shot." Anna was excited, even changing her way of calling him.
Leo was also curious about the power of the Smoothbore cannon and didn't stop her.
Barnett calmed the barbarians down and ordered two of them to load the gunpowder. Then he put in a solid iron ball and said, "Anna, just light the fuse."
He handed her the torch, but his smile had a strange look on it.
The cannon had scared him a lot just now. He wanted to scare this arrogant elf princess too.
" Well, I'll try." Anna had no idea at all. She took the torch and lit the fuse.
Lilia was cautious. She pulled her and protected Leo, moving to a safe place.
The fuse lit, then a big bang. The ground shook a little. The cannon barrel lit up, and a huge iron ball shot out, flying far and hitting the sea.
Crash!
The iron ball hit the water and made a huge splash of fire and water.
The barbarians all fell to their knees again, muttering to themselves.
The girls were shocked and speechless.
Leo was prepared, but this was his first time seeing the real Smoothbore cannon. He was still a little scared.
" Oh my god, this thing can really kill a dragon!" Anna was the first to recover. She walked up to the cannon and touched it, so excited.
Kill a dragon?
Barnett's eyes lit up, but then he shook his head in disappointment. "The damage should be enough, but it's too heavy. It might work for sneaking up on a dragon on the ground, but it's almost useless against one flying in the sky."
Leo also spoke up. "Right. This is just a temporary solution. To kill a dragon, we need to make a much stronger Rifled cannon."
"Sir, is that Rifled cannon really that powerful?" Barnett asked curiously. Leo had mentioned it more than once.
Dwarves were capable of engraving rifling inside the cannon barrel, but there were no proper tools here. The situation was too rough to do it right.
And he felt that carving rotating lines inside the barrel was kind of unnecessary.
"You'll find out soon enough." Leo didn't explain more. He continued, "We need to improve this Smoothbore cannon a bit more. We should also test its lifespan as much as possible to make sure it doesn't blow up."
He pointed out a few more issues, but the most important ones were the cannon's lifespan and safety.
A blown-up cannon was the most dangerous. He didn't want to have a time bomb on board.
"Got it," Barnett said, then went back to his experiments.
Leo and the others left the cliff. Anna wasn't happy. She hadn't had enough fun yet.
"Sir, I think you're even scarier than me," Marina said, shivering after hearing the explosion behind her.
"Don't be silly! Leo Sir is a good guy!" Ava immediately protested.
To her, Leo was perfect. She wouldn't let anyone say bad things about him.
"Love-struck fool!" Marina teased under her breath.
The girls had gotten close enough to know Ava and Leo's relationship. In the barbarian tribe, they were officially married.
"Little brat, you're getting bold. You even dare to tease me? I'll show you!" Ava lunged at her, claws out.
"Ava, I'm sorry! Don't tickle me..."
Marina laughed and begged, her clothes fluttering as her white chest was briefly visible.
Leo turned red and coughed, quickly looking away.