Chapter 390 We Don’t Need God
Hughes grinned but didn't answer directly.
He waved to a Skitarii nearby, and the young man ran over excitedly, saluted, and occasionally glanced at the prince with curiosity.
"Give me your gun."
The Crusader immediately took the gun off his shoulder. It was an ordinary bolt-action rifle. Since he was on patrol and the cathedral was a very secure place, the gun was not loaded. Several magazines were also handed over.
Hughes skillfully opened the receiver cover and took out the recoil spring and bolt assembly. In just a short while, the bolt-action rifle was reduced to pieces.
Many people noticed the commotion here and gathered around. Even Monica and the other banshees curiously poked their heads over to look over here.
After dismantling it, Hughes found another older Crusader and dismantled his gun into pieces.
The prince frowned in confusion. The bolt-action rifle is the most powerful musket at present. Ever since Zeus gave him one, he has played with it from time to time. After studying it carefully for a long time, he can also disassemble it like Zeus did.
There didn't seem to be anything special about these two guns, and he had seen every part of them before.
Then he winked at the prince and began to assemble it - mixing the parts of the two guns together.
No way. The prince suddenly realized what he was going to do and couldn't help but take a deep breath.
It didn't take Hughes long to assemble the two guns, but it was hard to tell which gun belonged to the young man and which belonged to the other.
The parts of the two guns were completely mixed together.
After loading, Hughes took the magazine, loaded a bullet into each gun, motioned for the crowd to make room, and opened fire at a garden in the atrium.
Bang! Bang! Both shots went off.
The prince swallowed and said nothing.
The fact that the parts of two guns can be interchanged is almost a fantasy in this era.
It’s not that there are any difficulties in the craftsmanship. If the prince needs it, he can order the craftsmen to make such guns. Not to mention two, even ten would not be difficult.
The key point is that these are two randomly picked ones. There is no need for Hughes to deliberately show off in such a place. If the prince guessed correctly, all the bolt-action rifle parts of Castel can be interchanged at will.
The entire Castel, all the guns. Anyone with common sense in industry knows what this means. Although the prince once held the highest power in the empire, he has worked hard to study industrial production.
The shock he felt from seeing this scene was no less than the shock he felt from seeing the Banshees appear like gods descending from heaven at Blood Harbor.
The people around him didn't think there was anything wrong, as if it was just a normal little thing. They were applauding and praising Hughes's skillful disassembly and assembly of the gun.
It took the prince a long time to recover. He licked his dry lips. Although his tone was much weaker, he still asked:
"This is indeed an amazing thing, but what does it have to do with the Banshee? I still think it is a waste of efficiency."
Glancing at the still stubborn prince, Hughes picked up a brand new magazine and asked casually, "How many bullets do you have left in your bolt-action rifle?"
".Three shots."
This surprised him a little. Zeus didn't give him many bullets in total, and now he still had three bullets left. This could only mean that the prince had tried his best to save.
I can't tell, but sometimes I can be quite stingy.
"So what's the use of a gun after you run out of bullets?"
The prince's eyes flashed, and he seemed to understand what Hughes meant.
"Banshees are very powerful and invincible on the battlefield. There are also a lot of them, so they can really change the situation of the battle."
"But everything on the battlefield is consumable, including human lives. No, especially human lives."
"I can indeed build an army with Banshees as the core, but just like the bolt-action rifle in your hand, after the bullets are used up, it is just an iron rod."
"And Castel will have plenty of battles to fight in the future." Hughes handed the two guns back to the Crusaders. "Sir William, it is true that you know a lot about industry, but you haven't grasped its core yet—"
“Anything that is irreplaceable, difficult to replicate, and hand-made in a small workshop can never become the true core of an industry.”
"No matter how powerful they are, they must be eliminated without hesitation."
"The bolt-action rifle is very powerful, but its strongest point is not its firepower and accuracy, but that it can be produced on an assembly line, with interchangeable parts. All you need to do is provide the materials, and the assembly line can produce it continuously."
"Sir William, you just said that this is a waste of efficiency, but I excluded the Banshees from the tactical system precisely for efficiency reasons - they are not yet strong enough to subvert this system."
The prince pursed his lips tightly; these theories of Hughes were like a bolt from the blue to him.
He has always been a pragmatic and efficiency-oriented person, and sometimes he even does things by any means necessary.
But this was all due to his subjective will. Hughes also pursued pragmatism and efficiency, but his thinking was completely different from his.
Hughes built the entire system to work efficiently.
No matter how powerful a prince is, he is still a human being. He can push a project, or even drive the entire empire, with his own strength, just like driving a rotten carriage forward.
Hughes removed the broken parts and did not allow the existence of rotten, chaotic and inefficient things from the beginning.
He doesn't need to handle everything personally, but everything can go according to his ideas. He doesn't need to be the savior because these disasters will never happen in the country he built.
The prince suddenly remembered a sentence written by Hughes himself on the title page of the Imperial Truth.
【We don’t need gods.】
The prince stood in the church courtyard for a long time.
He just stood there thinking as if no one was around. No one knew what he was thinking. He was a smart man, perhaps even the smartest man in the entire empire. No problem had ever troubled him for so long.
Then the thing that made him think so carefully must be very important.
Hughes stood aside, watching with great interest, without any sign of impatience.
The person in front of him was the supreme ruler of the Principality of Tis, the lord of this dark and chaotic era of low productivity.
He was a feudal nobleman who grew up in a country ruled by the church and the aristocracy. Industry and science were out of reach for him.
But he just yearned for these things. He had never seen the modern society on the blue planet, but he was pursuing these things spontaneously.
So if Zeus opened a new door for him, where would he go?
(There are two more chapters to come today, but it may take quite late to finish them) (End of this chapter)
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