“You don’t know what it is? This thing can respond to a magic stone, allowing the holder of the stone to locate your position.” Maggie suddenly stopped, “No, why should I even tell this to you? Just now, you wanted to eat me!”
“Do you have such a magic stone?”
“There are,” Maggie nodded her head.
“So, can you find my position?” Lightning asked curiously.
“No, it must match the magic stone to be able to locate the corresponding mark.” She replied very agilely this time, “and only us witches can use this. If you don’t know this already, how were you even able to get one?”
“It was my dad who gave it to me,” Lightning returned the bead to Maggie. “What about you?
“I won’t tell you,” Maggie answered grudgingly, but then she stared curiously at the other girl. “You belong to the Witch Cooperation Association, and Ashes said, that you do not want to leave Border Town.”
“You belong to her side?” Lightning curled up her lips in disdain, “And I thought you were a new witch who was attracted by the rumor. Us witches here have a good life, why should we leave?”
“Because of the danger ah, the church may come here at any time, bringing their Army over with them.”
“An explorer will never shrink away from something because it is too dangerous,” When Lightning spoke out aloud, her face turned slightly red,
“Furthermore, His Highness Roland Wimbledon has a lot of incredible invention, as long as you have seen them once, you will immediately become attracted to them. One can turn a fist-sized ball into a weapon, and when someone is hit by it, they are torn into pieces.”
“Really? Can you take me to see them?” Maggie exclaimed in admiration.
“That won’t do, unless you join the Witch Alliance, and become one of us.”
“But I have to go back with Ashes…” Maggie hesitated.
“Then you can come back later, ah,” Lightning continued her coaxing. “Here you can have a lot of fun. We have machines which move on their own using heated water, there are also weapons which are able to attack over a distance of a thousand meter, uh… are you asking yourself how far a thousand meters is? All in all, it is very far, if you look at people from one kilometer away, they will seem to be about the size of a tree branch.”
Making many gestures with her hands and feet, “and there are even many more possibilities to go play within the Concealing Forest. Things like poking honeycombs, gathering so many mushrooms that you couldn’t even count all of it, and hunting birds and the wild boars are all so very interesting. Peeling off their fur and roasting them over the campfire. You only have to sprinkle a little salt and pepper on them, and you can relish and eat as much tasty meat as you would ever want.”
“Really?” Maggie couldn’t help but start licking her lips.
“Why should I lie to you,” Lightning hooked her arm around Maggie’s shoulder, “On the other hand, we might even go hunt a bird and roast it, right now!”
On the fifth day after their agreement, Roland had finally readied all the raw material he needed for the production of the gun-cotton.
He had made some serious mistakes in the beginning with the electrolysis of the salt water, he wanted to take advantage of the left-over copper strips from Anna’s bullet production and use them as electrodes, but the final result was that the electrodes had dissolved in the water, giving birth to the possibility of forming chlorine during the electrolysis. With this the whole basin of saltwater was wasted.
The electrolyte was generally saturated salt water, but the problem was that the salt in this era was not as cheap as the price of cabbage. Therefore, when the water was drained and Roland detected that the copper ions had mixed into the brine, turning it also into waste. Roland felt as if he was throwing away gold royals instead of just salt. In the end, he was able to solve this problem by replacing the electrodes with carbon.
By adding caustic soda to the boiling water to dislodge the oil, he obtained an absorbent cotton gauze. He then later brought over the leftover caustic soda back to the chemistry lab.
The esterification of the gun-cotton was the most important step in the production process, but he didn’t exactly know how he could achieve this. Roland only knew that he would have to soak the gauze in the mixed acid and when the nitrification process was complete, he could then take it out.
