Suddenly, hundreds of transparent spirits rose up from the sea surface where the wreckage of the ghost ship was located, and suddenly rushed towards the Princess.
This immediately shocked everyone on the boat, except Richard and Stephana, who were familiar with spirits, who remained calm.
Although there are a large number of these spirits, the strength of each of them is not very strong, that is to say, most of these spirits were just ordinary people in their previous lives.
As these spirits approached, everyone on the boat could clearly see their appearance.
There were merchants wearing silk, sailors wearing sailor suits, women wearing skirts, and old men leaning on crutches . But all of them looked pleased and smiled slightly.
These spirits quickly circled around the people on the Princess and then rushed straight into the sky.
"Master, these should be the people who were slaughtered by the ghost ship, right? This time we defeated the ghost ship and released all the souls trapped in the ghost ship. They seem to be expressing their gratitude!" Stephanina's crisp voice rang out.
Richard nodded. This world was so ruthless, where the strong preyed on the weak. Among this huge group of spirits, he saw too many unarmed women and children.
But even so, the pirates on the ghost ship did not let them go when they met them.
Captain Balorik and a group of sailors on the side realized after listening to Stephania's words that these huge numbers of spirits were actually people killed by the pirates on the ghost ship.
Because the Princess defeated the ghost ship, the souls that had been imprisoned on the ghost ship for who knows how long were finally released.
This also verifies the old maritime legend! It is said that the souls of those killed by the ghost ship cannot rest in peace, but will always be imprisoned by the ghost ship and become puppets that enhance the power of the ghost ship.
Now, before leaving this world, these liberated souls flew over and circled around the Princess to express their gratitude.
This strange sight amazed the sailors! It seemed that they had more topics to talk about in the future. - The next day.
Richard, who had some free time, finally had time to carefully check the artillery on the Princess.
These cannons are the heroes! Without them, the Princess would not have been able to defeat the ghost ship, and Richard would not have been able to kill the shark monster, Sardin.
The Princess's guns were of three different calibers: 12 pounds, 18 pounds, and 24 pounds.
Obviously, the larger the caliber, the more firepower!
Richard looked at the bronze barrel that was more than one meter long. He did not practice any metal-related witchcraft, so he could not change the caliber of the cannon immediately.
At the same time, he thought carefully that if the caliber of the artillery was adjusted, the corresponding ammunition specifications must also be adjusted synchronously. Such a systematic project would definitely not be completed by him alone on the Queen.
Therefore, Richard could only settle for the second best and study the gunpowder technology of this world's artillery first.
If the gunpowder formula is not optimal, he can rely on the panel to directly find the optimal ratio!
What is quite coincidental is that the two main ingredients of the gunpowder formula in this world are also sulfur and charcoal, and the other is a plant powder called ammonia.
Richard asked Jawloric, and it turned out that this ammonia grass was a plant that wizards created through various hybridizations. At the beginning, no one was interested in the ammonia grass that was circulated.
Just pure roadside weeds, completely ignored.
But then a blacksmith discovered that its powder was incredibly powerful after mixing it with sulfur and sawdust. It instantly went from being an unwanted weed to a rarity!
Soon after, it was planted on a large scale, and now it has become a military-controlled material, with strict control over imports and exports! At present, almost all the kingdoms and principalities of the Commercial Alliance use a unified gunpowder formula: 6 grams of ammonia powder with 1 gram of sulfur and 3 grams of charcoal.
Richard took some raw materials and returned to his cabin.
[I found that the host was preparing gunpowder. Yes/No, I consumed energy to get inspiration for preparing gunpowder? 】
After a brief thought, Richard dragged the slider to 1000 and selected "Yes!"
It's not that he is unwilling to spend more energy, but he is just looking for the optimal ratio, and he can't use too many energy points.
In an instant, Richard arrived in a dream space as if his soul had left his body. This time the space was also a cabin.
The first step was purification. Richard first used a wooden pestle to gently crush a plant of ammonia, then added 100 ml of distilled water, diluted it, filtered it, drained it, and removed impurities. After a while, he obtained turbid ammonia oil.
The second step is drying. A plate is placed on a vessel similar to an alcohol lamp. Then Richard gently pours in turbid ammonia oil. Under the burning flame, the moisture begins to evaporate.
However, Richard discovered that the dried ammonia plant powder produced using the method that Barrorick told him still contained many ineffective ingredients.
But this is not the focus this time.
Richard plans to complete the optimal ratio work first.
Since it was a dream, Richard kept trying to optimize and make mistakes, and he had the general formula of black powder in his memory, so the experiment progressed very quickly.
The sound of explosions of various sizes could be heard throughout the dream space! "Boom!"
The power has become weaker!
Richard shook his head.
After testing hundreds of times, Richard has optimized the ratio to single digits. The current ratio of ammonia powder, sulfur and charcoal has been optimized by Richard to 75:10:15.
It can be said that this is very close to the optimal ratio.
In other words, in terms of single-digit precision, it is already the optimal ratio.
"boom!"
As expected, Richard was very satisfied with the last explosion in his dream. It was the strongest explosion so far.
According to the current ratio, the new gunpowder formula can directly increase the explosive power by 23%.
Richard thought about it and decided that further optimization at the decimal level was completely unnecessary because the quality of the material itself would fluctuate.
Afterwards, Richard used the best ratio of gunpowder to test fire the artillery on the Princess! The five most experienced gunners fired 10 shots in a row.
The results of the test launch shocked everyone around, including Captain Baloric and others.
Unexpectedly, in just one day, the wizard Richard optimized the gunpowder formula and directly increased the lethality of the artillery by about 10% to 15%.
After the power of gunpowder explosion is increased, not only the initial velocity of artillery projectiles is increased, but also the range!
Therefore, the lethality is the comprehensive result after calculating these points.
Richard thought about it and decided to hand it over to Melo's father, Earl Norris, after returning to the Loras Peninsula at the end of this voyage, and let him sell it to maximize the profits.
After all, a maritime power would be willing to pay a considerable price to purchase this formula. ——One month later.
At this time, Richard and Stephana were chatting with Balorik in the captain's room.
Long-term ocean voyages will make people a little tired of the unchanging deep blue of the sea.
"Lord Richard, we are now halfway through our voyage. In about a month, we will reach Basileus Island." Captain Balorik thought for a moment and introduced while pointing to the nautical chart.
"It'll take another month?" Stephanie on the side was a little discouraged.
"Haha, Miss Stephana, are you feeling a little bored after such a long sea voyage?" Captain Balorik couldn't help laughing.
"Yeah, it would be better if we could have some sea monsters to fight!" Stephanie said with a smile.
Just a few seconds after Stephanie finished speaking, the Princess's hull suddenly shook violently and sank about ten centimeters.
Everyone on the ship was immediately shaken! "Not good!" Captain Balorik's face instantly changed, and he said, "My lords, we have encountered a sea monster!"
Apparently, the weather outside was clear and the only problem was at the bottom of the sea.
The Princess is currently in the deep sea, so it's impossible to be a reef. What can cause the Princess to vibrate so violently must be a large creature in the ocean, such as a sea monster! "Master, I..." Stephanie's face suddenly turned pale.
She had just made a joke, but she didn't expect it to come true in just a few seconds.
Richard couldn't help but shook his head when he saw Stephana's expression, and said with a smile: "You! You really are a crow's mouth, it's too effective! Remember not to talk nonsense next time."
As they spoke, the two of them quickly came to the deck.
The sailors were seen looking into the sea in a panic from both sides of the ship, wondering what kind of monster they had encountered, but they found nothing! At present, they could only confirm that the attack came from the bottom of the sea, but they could not be sure what kind of creature it was.
Richard thought about it for a moment and came up with an idea.
He chanted a spell softly, and the next second, a light green inverted pentagram magic circle suddenly lit up on the deck in front of Richard, and four skeleton archers were summoned by Richard at once.
Richard pointed at the sides of the ship, and the four skeleton archers instantly divided into two groups, two on each side, and came to the side of the ship.
Stephanie on the side looked at this scene in confusion and said, "Master, you summoned archers? The monster is at the bottom of the ship and can't be attacked now."
"You'll know when you see!" Richard smiled mysteriously.
After saying that, he continued to cast a rare zero-level witchcraft - the vision of the undead.
All of a sudden, four small "screens" opened in Richard's field of vision, just like turning on a "surveillance system", and the images showed the sea outside the ship on both sides.
“Plop!!”
The four skeleton archers, under Richard's command, immediately jumped into the sea.
Captain Balorik was also looking at Richard in surprise at this time, thinking to himself, "To be honest, even he can deal with these normal-sized skeleton archers. He doesn't know why Richard sent these weak skeleton archers to the sea."
The seriously injured orc Otombo and a group of melee team members who were originally resting in the cabin below also went onto the deck to prepare for the attack of the sea monster.
When they saw that Richard did not summon the huge abomination, but instead summoned four weak skeleton archers to go into the sea, they were also confused!
They couldn't understand why these skeleton archers were not enough to fill the gaps between the huge sea monsters, let alone defeat them!
A few seconds later, Richard saw different details from four angles on the "surveillance".
One of the skeleton archers had just jumped into the sea when it was caught by a tentacle and crushed immediately!
This caused Richard's mind to feel a slight pain, but at least he could see the enemy's appearance clearly.
"Another giant squid or some kind of octopus?"
But soon, Richard discovered something was wrong.
Because the overall appearance of this tentacle is very strange, it is thin at the top and thick at the bottom, and the surface is rough. There seems to be huge black spheres on the surface of the tentacle, which look very much like human eyeballs.
At this time, several other skeleton archers also passed on what they saw to Richard! "Is this... a hundred-eyed starfish?"
Richard had also learned a lot about sea monsters during this period, and he immediately figured out what kind of strange marine creature had attacked the Princess.
I didn’t expect it to be a starfish!
"Captain Baloric, it's the Hundred-Eyed Starfish! Please leave the deck if you are not necessary to prevent the opponent's mind control skills."
"What? It's a hundred-eyed starfish?" Balorik's face changed. At the same time, he was extremely surprised that Richard could find out the identity of the monster under the ship so quickly.
But he did not doubt what Richard said, and immediately began to issue orders! "Gunners and sailors who are not determined enough, all go down to the deck! Quick! It's the Hundred-eyed Starfish!!" Captain Balorik shouted.
At this time, Stephanie had already realized that the people Richard sent down were his spies.
The purpose of their master sending the skeleton archers to jump into the sea was to find out who the enemy was so as to make targeted arrangements.
The hundred-eyed starfish has five thick soft tentacles, with black eyeballs of different sizes on the tentacles and the main body, and has a unique mental ability to control living things.
In addition to the eyeballs, the main body also has a large suction cup with amazing suction power! It seems that the other party has firmly sucked the suction cup to the bottom of the Princess, intending to drag the Princess into the sea, but the displacement of the Princess is too large, and the Hundred-Eyed Starfish can't drag it all at once, so it is deadlocked here.
The effect of the level 0 sorcery, Undead Vision, was immediately demonstrated, allowing Richard to instantly judge the enemy's strength. Otherwise, Richard would face an unknown enemy, which would greatly increase the difficulty of the battle.
Now that he knew who the enemy was, Richard turned to Captain Balorik and said, "Prepare the alchemical depth charges!!"
This is the product of Richard's casual research during this month.
“Plop!!”
Three large brown wine barrels that had been prepared in advance were thrown into the water.
These barrels have their own buoyancy, but Richard placed a large amount of improved black gunpowder in them, mixed with Fire Dancing Stars and Silver Moon Dust, making their weight slightly exceed the buoyancy.
Thus, if thrown into the sea, it will slowly sink! In addition, Richard's mental shock acts as a delayed fuse.
“Boom boom boom!”
With three violent explosions, the starfish under the ship screamed shrilly! Unable to withstand the horrific damage of the depth charge, a huge starfish with a diameter of more than ten meters suddenly crawled up from the bottom of the ship.
(End of this chapter)