The Path to Lordship Begins in the North

Soon, Flora and the nuns, wearing bird-beak masks, received their first task from the lord.

Many people were excited, finally able to contribute their strength to the goddess's new messenger, the great lord.

However, the moment Flora received the task, she grabbed the hand of the scribe who had come to issue it and asked, "Excuse me, Your Excellency, I need to confirm again, is this really the task the lord issued? A bunch of...math problems?"

To be precise, it revolves around the construction and related research of a second-order fire spell model.

“Yes, Your Grace, do not underestimate these math problems. They are all related to the future of the territory. These are the Lord’s words. The Lord said that they must be treated with care, and each number and coordinate must be verified at least twice to ensure that they are correct.”

The clerk answered Flora's question very politely.

Flora looked at the thick stack of math test papers in her hand and wondered if she had never been saved at all, and if this was all a hallucination before her death.

Although there was a mask between them, the scribe could see Flora's confusion and simply said, "The lord said that if there is anything you don't understand, you can go here to find the lord, and the lord will answer your questions."

Unable to understand why she had to do math problems, Flora took the test paper to the laboratory in her territory. After explaining her purpose to the knight at the door, she found Lind inside.

"My lord, please forgive my rudeness. I just don't understand why our task is to solve math problems instead of healing the sick, saving lives, or spreading your fame."

When Linde saw Flora arrive, he didn't rush to answer her questions. Instead, he introduced her to the magic trigger and the arcane magic circle, which made Flora somewhat apprehensive.

This was the biggest secret in the territory, but he told it all to Flora, who had only been in the territory for a few days.

After all, he was someone closely related to the female lead, so Linde chose to trust him without reservation.

After briefly explaining the principles of the Olympiad magic circle and the magic trigger, Lind began to tell Flora about the laboratory.

"Actually, in the previous review, Lena and I both felt that our Gray White Collar won this battle largely by luck. Although the grenades with a range of only about 30 to 50 meters are very powerful, they are completely unsuitable to be our main weapon in the future."

As Linde spoke, he stroked the cannon in the laboratory and continued, "So we need to continue to upgrade our weapons, not only to enable our soldiers to fight against those demons who use bloodline magic, but also to be able to fight against mid- to low-level professionals."

Flora's first reaction was that Linde had gone mad. The technology and weapons Linde had shown were already crazy enough, but now he was saying that he wanted ordinary soldiers to be able to fight against low- to mid-level professionals.

This is absolutely...fantastic!

Doesn't that mean that with these weapons, support roles like nuns can go to the battlefield?

Flora's hands trembled with excitement. She had always thought that as a support class, she would only be able to stay in the rear for the rest of her life, at most serving as a field medic on the battlefield. She never expected that she would have the opportunity to personally kill the demons in the future.

Linde arrived at a device that looked like an enlarged version of a musket. It was made by Lisha and Rena overnight and could be considered a prototype of a future weapon.

Pulling the trigger below the weapon, the large musket connected to the magic stone in the magazine fired a scorching ray that struck the armor in the distance.

Black smoke could be clearly seen rising from the armor.

This is a second-tier fire spell, or rather, a modified version of a second-tier fire spell; it's a completely new spell.

Essentially, it's a modified molten ray with altered launch angle, increased launch force, and enhanced stability.

This power is far beyond what ordinary demon bloodline magic can achieve, but it cannot be fired continuously yet because there is no way to deal with the problem of the barrel overheating, and it is simply too large, almost the size of the "big slingshot" that required two people to operate in the late Qing Dynasty of my previous life.

However, since it is still a prototype, there is still a lot of room for improvement. If it is successful, it can solve the problem that ordinary kinetic weapons are difficult to damage fully armed knights.

After discussing it in detail with Lena, Lind discovered that the reason why the knights' enchantments were mainly focused on impact was because there weren't many spellcasting professionals on the actual battlefield.

Apart from the Kingdom of Anjou in the south, which has organized mage units, the main battlefield combat is still knight melee. Therefore, armor enchantments are generally geared towards reducing impact. Simply put, the current mainstream for knights is to stack resilience and physical resistance, rather than specifically stacking magic resistance.

After all, most of the bloodline magic that is terrifying to ordinary people is just a little trick and it is difficult to cause effective damage to elite knights.

In other words, as long as this weapon that can fire molten rays can be successfully developed, it will be able to counter all current mainstream enchantments.

"This is absolutely insane."

Flora exclaimed in admiration, this was the first time she had ever felt that a weapon used for killing could be so aesthetically pleasing.

Lind, unaware of Flora's thoughts, added, "So your task is to optimize the spell structure of the Molten Ray. I will send Lisha to liaise with you and compress the arcane magic array that converts the Molten Ray's spell structure to its maximum."

Linde patted the percussion musket on the table next to him: "It should be able to fit into a weapon of this size."

There is a lot of room for optimization in these low-level spells, but no one has specifically optimized them. Or perhaps the construction of spell models is inherently quite free, and with everyone having different casting habits, most spell models have not been explored to their fullest potential, and no one has proposed what a standard spell model should look like.

"Can it be done?"

In truth, Linde wasn't entirely confident either, since the arcane magic arrays currently used in the territory were all designed to be fast and powerful, with no need for optimization.

It's like all the projects were originally running on a 4090, so everyone didn't need to worry about optimization and even wanted to max out ray tracing. But now you're telling me that the new project needs to run smoothly on a 1060 or even a 960.

Furthermore, the lack of formally trained developers on the territory led Lind to have very low expectations. As long as it could be carried by a single soldier, Lind would accept it even if it was made to the size of a mortar.

Think carefully about the educational backgrounds of researchers in the gray and white-collar jobs today.

The leader, Lisha, is a true self-taught practitioner. She learned a lot from her father and the Holy Symbol Society, but she is not a professional and knows nothing about traditional magic. She is very unbalanced in her studies.

Isa, the most reliable one among them, has only completed three years of study at the academy in the capital. Her basic skills are probably the most solid, but she is essentially at the level of a recent graduate, and she can no longer use divine magic (but she may be able to use the Great Meteorite Immortal Magic).

Lena is probably the strongest overall and has the most active mind, but she is very abstract. She always talks about this and that. Many advanced mathematical arrays can only be deciphered by Lena and cannot be taught to others.

Linde's main role is probably that because he spends every day with Lena, he can understand some of Lena's thoughts and occasionally translate what Lena is trying to say, as well as provide research ideas. He has never seriously studied magic.

The rest were a group of frustrated rune artisans who had been dumped like trash by the capital and the Lars family; it was a complete makeshift operation.

“It’s worth a try. It’s just a second-tier spell, and the spell model and theory are not complicated.”

Flora nodded. Compared to the research team of white-collar workers, the nuns, who were all trained by the Vatican, were much more reliable.

"Then I'm relieved. You can contact me directly if you need any materials."

Lind nodded slightly, somewhat relieved that Flora didn't think she was about to rebel like Laurie did when she saw these weapons, and didn't notice the fanatical look in Flora's eyes behind her mask.

Flora truly had no intention of rebelling. The goddess's great disciple was returning to his rightful place; how could that be considered a rebellion?

The old beliefs can no longer reconcile the current contradictions. People now need a new belief. Perhaps even Flora herself did not realize that she was gradually becoming more extreme after experiencing a series of events.