Chapter 1014 - The Day of Adulthood (1/2)

Chapter 1014: The Day of Adulthood

Translator: TransN Editor: TransN

Neverwinter was busy preparing for Roland’s coronation ceremony.

After releasing the news, the king left the whole thing to Barov. The City Hall Director devoted himself entirely to the preparation job and strived for perfection in every detail. He even fetched Blanche, the ceremonial officer, from the old king’s city to assist him.

As for Roland, apart from occasionally checking the progress of the magic movie, he spent most of his time on the final design of the internal combustion engine.

Because of the difference in measurement systems between the current world and his previous world, he needed to conduct a stability test for each prototype he made to make sure that his design was accurate. Furthermore, since the quality of the oil separated by the fractional process was very unstable, he had to adopt a redundancy design method. Without computer simulation techniques, he had to adjust the prototypes repeatedly.

He created a prototype, tested it and then improved it or scrapped it. He repeated this process again and again, which made him feel as if he had returned to his schooling days. He rushed about between the castle and the north slope backyard every day, living a busy and full life. The knowledge that he had forgotten a long time ago became vivid in his head once more.

Unlike his schooling days, this time he had a great companion, Anna.

She was as enthusiastic about new things as he was.

She was so absorbed in assembling the precision components. Even when she stopped to wipe the sweat from her nose, she would still have her eyes fixed on what she was working on. Seeing this, Roland felt amazed. He found that her thirst for knowledge and creation was as strong as her Blackfire.

And he thought she looked exceptionally attractive when she was so earnest in bringing to life her creations.

Whenever they made a progress, Anna would smile so brightly that Roland would believe nothing, not even becoming the queen of Graycastle, could make her that happy.

She had expressed such a thought before. As long as they could stay together, she would not care about the title.

However, Roland still wanted to give her the title as a way of externalizing his commitment to her.

After all, this was a common practice in human society.

After revising the dimensions of the engine, he put down the quill and rubbed his sore neck.

If nothing else, the design could be finalized this time. The last batch of prototypes had run stably for a reasonable period of time. It had only been a few days but was already enough to meet the current needs of the city.

Internal combustion engines, the second-generation power source, worked much more efficiently than steam engines, but in terms of structure, the former were not very different from the latter, except that the latter needed some external equipment such as a boiler and a steam transport pipe. No matter how well-designed a steam engine was, it could not prevent the energy loss caused by the transportation of steam. An internal combustion, however, contained the fuel inside its cylinder. In this way, all the heat generated by the fuel could be used to push the piston.

The mixture of oil and air would burn violently inside the cylinder. When the air became hot, its volume would increase rapidly to drive the piston. Meanwhile, the air pressure inside the cylinder would fall and thus fresh fuel would be sucked into the cylinder. It sounded like a simple process but it was not an easy project. For example, it had a brand new requirement, the sealing. In an early steam engine, one could easily insert a finger into the gap between the piston and the cylinder wall, and both felt and linen could be used to block the gap. However, such a gap would never be allowed in an internal combustion engine.

This was because it was powered by the fuel inside itself. Once its cylinder had a leak, it would stop working.

Given the high demand for material and manufacturing technology, internal combustion engines came several decades after the electric motors in the previous world where Roland had lived.

Roland had two designs for the first-generation internal combustion engines: cylinder-in-line and cylinder-in-circle. The former one was cumbersome and made of cast iron. It was stable and suitable for the factories. The latter was also known as a star engine. It had shorter crankshafts and a compact structure, so it was smaller in size and very suitable for aircraft. As it was made of aluminum alloy, only Anna could process this delicate engine for now.

Now that he could consult a large number of reference material in the Dream World, he developed these two types of engines at the same time. Compared to the tortuous experience of manufacturing the steam engines, this time, his design job was much easier.

The Senior Demon’s words were another reason for him to speed up the engine development process.

This expedition had already proved that it was hard to rely solely on the ground-to-air firearms to resist all the attacks from the sky.

If his plan could be realized, for the first time ever, mankind in this world would have an air force that could contest with the demons riding flying mounts.