“What’s the use of it?”
“It is for building houses, or repairing bridges and the roads, it can be used in many other places too. If it is successful, afterwards the people will be unafraid of the wind, or that their homes could be destroyed, by the cold, rain or snow.” With his other hand, he patted the girl’s head, “This was only possible thanks to your ability.”
Anna lowered her head, Roland did not know if it was or wasn’t an illusion, but he felt that the girl’s breathing became faster after he patted her.
According to the theory, it was important to fire the ground materials together with the gypsum, with this it would be possible to adjust the hardening time. But now it would be needless to think about it too much, after a short break Roland took the shovel again and grabbed some more cement. He then called Carter who was standing outside the courtyard over, letting him prepare three different mixtures of the powder with the sand to compound cement mortar.
The chief knight completely didn’t mind this manual work, to him, doing this kind of work was many times better than the substitute fights he had for his Highness, every time he got into a brawl with the other young lords while he was on an outing with young ladies (prostitutes) in Graycastle.
Because it was already inside, iron powder was not added to the raw material, the color and luster that came out of it was lighter than normal, appearing to be an ashen gray. Roland spread the grout over a brick, and he then put down another brick on top of it. The cement solidification process would take around four hours, but taking into account the instability caused by the production of the cement, he intended to simply wait until tomorrow before seeing the results.
The second day early in the morning, Roland, Carter and Anna all hurriedly rushed to the firing place in the backyard. When he opened the door, he saw that the cement had the appearance of solidification condition, the two pieces of brick were tightly bound together. The consolidation appeared to be uneven, and on some places, it appeared frosted over.
Roland crouched down, scraping off the aroused frost, and trying to press his finger into the hardened cement, the touch made his heart feel pleased, the cement surface was solid, completely different from the touch of rammed earth, namely, using his nail to scrape against it didn’t leave any traces.
Carter repeated the action of the fourth prince, attempting to move the rock, but he also did not succeed. He even resolutely kicked against the side of it with his foot, until the connection between the cement and earth broke, but the two pieces of bricks were still firmly bonded together. At last, he swung the hilt of his sword against the brick, but only a small piece at a corner broke away.
“This is the effect of ‘cement’,” Carter immediately realized its purpose, “This is incredible. Yesterday it could flow like a melted candle, just one night later, it’s like a rock. With this kind of material, building the city wall will go much faster. As long as we have enough stone, we could even build a wall around the border within five years!”
“What’s the use of that?” Roland did not accept the suggestion, “A tall wall would be unable to stop any enemy coming at us from the inside. I would rather turn the old wooden homes of Border Town into solid concrete rooms, so that my people no longer need to worry about a natural disaster turning them homeless.
“……” the Chief Knight was speechless; he really did not expect the fourth prince with all his kinds of bad habits to say this.
“In the future, you will see,” Roland reaffirmed himself one more time about the importance of the road he would walk on — with regard to the numerous battles he had to fight in the future, science and technology were his best allies. And knowing this, the help of the witches was the first step on the path he had to walk.
Soon the cement production got on the right track, in order to permit Anna a sufficient amount of rest, the kiln was only used two to three times per day. To obtain the most out of each calcining process, they had to gather more raw materials. For this, Roland once again issued orders to recruit more workers, until their current numbers were doubled.
But he also knew that he could not only rely on Anna to do all the firing. People who were working long-term in a dusty environment, would eventually become sick; furthermore, once the scale of future production increased, Anna alone would not be enough to satisfy the demand.
The witches should not be used as consumables. Instead, they should serve as an engine to promote the development of civilization. Although Roland was already aware of this fact, at the moment, he could only invest all of his energy and manpower in building the city wall. After all, If they couldn’t stop the demon beasts, everything else would soon become unimportant.
