“Your Royal Highness, I suggest that we sentence all of these people who have tried to flee to death,” Barov said calmly, “Since they still decided to leave, even considering their situation, they must be people who have been deeply affected by the Church. So, for the foreseeable future, they will never choose to side with Your Highness. In all likelihood they will become firm believers of the Church, for people like them, there is no need to show any kindness.”
“This is not necessarily the case… the truly devoted believers of the Church should be those three hundred people who decided to not leave King’s City and instead face the demonic disease.” The Prince closed his eyes, “Perhaps these people are just unable to change their minds, still thinking that the witches are evil and this made them want to flee.”
“Even if that’s the case, they are still your potential enemies,” Barov insisted.
In fact, if he met that group of people on the battlefield, Roland would defeat them without any hesitation, but that didn’t mean that he was following this era’s backward way of thinking, wantonly swinging the butcher’s knife to kill a group of civilians. Something like that would be against his ethical belief. So after a short hesitation, he finally rejected the suggestion, “I will let Nightingale go and interrogate the runaways, in case there is a hidden spy or scout in their ranks, they will be seized and hanged, all the others will be expelled from the Western Territory.”
Hearing his words, Barov gave him a meaningful glance and then lowered his head, only then did he slowly agree, “As you bid, Your Royal Highness. “
“Do you have anything else to report?”
“For the time being, no, Your Highness,” he coughed twice. “I’ll now go and deal immediately with the allocation of the houses.”
“It isn’t urgent, you can take your time with that issue,” Roland opened his eyes then stood up, “First come with me to take a few pictures and we can relax the mood.”
“Taking… pictures?” Barov asked shocked.
“You’ll recognise it immediately,” the Prince answered with a smile.
Entering the castle’s front yard, they saw that Carter, Iron Axe, and Soraya who he had previously called had already arrived. Placed in the corner of the garden were several pieces of four to five meter long planks, while an item on the ground that was covered with canvas.
“For now, Border Town is still considered small, but when the land in the south is developed, and the road between Longsong Stronghold and Border Town is finished, it’s scale will be dozens of times larger than it is now. By that point, you will have to spend one or two days on the road if you want to walk from the eastern side to the western one. Therefore, we need something that allows us to travel faster from one place to another. However, breeding horses is not only very expensive, but it is also impossible for every citizen to invest a lot of time for learning how to ride them.” Roland said as he opened the canvas, “Because of this, I plan to promote this new type of transportation method in Border Town, it is easy to use, and its price is also much lower than a horse.”
“What is this…?” Carter was instantly attracted to the novelty, “It has two wheels and an iron shelf, is it a cart?”
“The two wheels are placed in front of each other, instead of side by side, it will be tough to maintain balance,” Barov shook his head. “I do not see how it will be able to replace horses.”
Only Iron Axe kept silent, calmly waiting for the Prince to explain further.
Roland smiled, “This thing is called a bike, I will demonstrate how you should use it.” He placed both feet on top of the pedals, assumed a standard starting posture, one foot on a pedal, then he began to ride the bike along the path of the flower garden.
With Anna’s welding technique and Soraya’s coating skill, producing a bike manually wasn’t challenging at all. Its principle and structure didn’t hold any difficulty, for example, the rubber required for the inner tubes had been replaced by coating, which was directly drawn over a paper roll. With regards to this, Roland even customized a simple and easy to use bicycle pump. While the outside and the breaks of it were made with a hardened leather coating. The frame was made out of hollowed pipes, and for the brake wire, they had used a copper wire and an anti-corrosion coating. The only issue was with the chain, for it, he needed to completely rely on Anna, cutting and shaping one chain link after another and afterward connecting them all to a string. As for the kind of pedal, which were directly installed on top of the wheel as had been used for the first bicycles, he didn’t even consider them.
