Chapter 29: Finalization
Outside the Main Base, the fierce battle continued.
Large quantities of full sets of armor were produced, then continuously taken by the Clones emerging from the dormitory buildings, only to be destroyed and discarded either on the outskirts of the Main Base or along the railway lines.
Clone after Clone died, but the Clones who subsequently stepped onto the battlefield remained fearless, still pressing forward relentlessly.
Approximately twenty days had passed since the first battle at Copper Mine Base No. 1.
In just these short twenty days, three of the nine dormitory buildings, each capable of housing 15,000 people, were completely empty.
This meant that in such a short time, nearly fifty thousand Clones had died in battle.
They did not die in vain.
Thanks to their sacrifices, none of the 10 mining bases and 1 Main Base were lost. Furthermore, these 11 bases in total were all operating at full capacity.
Large quantities of minerals and resources were sent from the mining bases to the Main Base every moment, and large quantities of supplies, equipment, and personnel were sent from the Main Base to the mining bases every moment.
It was under these circumstances that the 100 firearm experimental teams finally made breakthrough progress.
At this moment, the first finished firearm was held by a Clone, aimed at a target about a hundred meters away.
Pulling the trigger, with a bang, a bullet flew forward at hundreds of meters per second, arriving near the target in the next instant.
But it missed, going off target.
A clear indentation was left on the wall near the target.
"At this stage, accuracy is not important; power and rate of fire are. Missing the target? It doesn’t matter."
Tom would not play precision sniping with the Monster Birds.
What was his strong suit? It was industrial capability! It was coordination ability!
Since that was the case, he should produce tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of firearms and hundreds of millions, billions of bullets at the fastest speed, and then unleash them all like a storm.
What if the accuracy was poor? When hundreds of thousands of bullets were fired in a single volley, was accuracy important?
However...
To achieve that effect, the firearm currently in hand was still insufficient.
The shape of this firearm somewhat resembled a pistol Tom had seen in human films and TV shows before; the gun body was only a dozen centimeters long, with a barrel and a grip, and a trigger in the middle.
Over a thousand Clones had researched for so long and finally discovered that there was indeed a reason why the human world chose this shape to manufacture pistols.
Because this structure was the most reasonable.
This was true not only in terms of human hand structure, ease of grip, rate of fire, magazine capacity, and power.
However, the internal structure of the pistol Tom was manufacturing at this moment might be different from those made in the human world.
It was not the modern pistol’s mode of firing bullets via a hammer. It was actually a flintlock pistol.
It had a flint specially installed inside; pulling the trigger would cause friction with the flint, generating a spark that ignited the bullet primer, thereby firing the bullet.
Its magazine capacity was 10 rounds, and only one bullet could be fired per trigger pull; it could not fire in bursts.
"My current industrial production capacity is limited; I cannot waste precious productivity on this kind of firearm. No, it needs to be improved!
Using flint to generate sparks to ignite the primer is too slow, and it can’t fire in bursts; the rate of fire is too slow. How can it be improved?
I vaguely heard about something called a hammer or a firing pin ignition before, but what exactly are these hammers and firing pins? What is their structure? How are they applied?"
Not only did the ignition need improvement, but the bullets also needed further optimization.
The current bullets had too little power and probably could not cause sufficient damage to the Monster Birds’ tough bodies; a way to strengthen them had to be found.
And burst fire also had to be improved.
What good was it to fire only one bullet every few seconds?
Magazine capacity also needed to be increased. Not to mention creating the belt-fed machine guns seen in films and TV shows that could fire dozens of bullets per second, I only require it to fire ten rounds per second, or if not ten, five would also work; that’s not too much, right?
Controlling the brains of these more than a thousand researcher Clones, Tom pondered deeply, thinking and trying various optimization and alternative solutions based on the current flintlock pistol.
At this moment, although it seemed like only over a thousand minds were engaged in relevant thinking, what supported this thinking was all the knowledge Tom had accumulated and researched over the past few decades, from scratch, by establishing an entire industrial system, building one Steel Plant, chemical plant, foundry, and power plant after another, and constructing one planting base, dormitory building, and huge factory after another.
Even the most ordinary Clone, responsible for twisting rebar, would always figure out a trick or two for twisting rebar during long periods of work, developing his own understanding of rebar as a material.
And this understanding would also become Tom ’s knowledge reserve.
All the knowledge reserves of numerous Clones formed an enormous, all-encompassing knowledge base.
At this moment, the thinking of these more than a thousand Clones was based on this knowledge base.
Under these circumstances, the firearms manufactured by Tom became longer and longer, their magazines larger and larger, and their bullets rounder and rounder, increasingly resembling the shape of bullets he had seen in films and TV shows.
Of course, he used to just watch and forget, but now, Tom completely and thoroughly understood why bullets had to be this shape and what characteristics bullets of this shape possessed.
Thus, after two more of the 9 dormitory buildings were emptied, with a total of approximately 70,000 Clones dying in battle, the first firearm that met Tom ’s requirements—high rate of fire, large magazine capacity, and automatic burst fire—was finally manufactured in the laboratory.
It had a huge magazine, reaching 20 centimeters in length, weighing about 3 kilograms, and with a capacity of 80 bullets.
Including the magazine, the entire firearm weighed approximately 10 kilograms.
Including three spare magazines, the total weight reached 19 kilograms.
On Earth, a firearm this heavy might have no practical combat significance. But this was not Earth; this was Loshen Star, where gravity was only eight percent of Earth’s!
A mass of 19 kilograms here weighed only 1.5 kilograms!
At this moment, this Clone carried this huge firearm to the shooting range.
Pulling the trigger, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, the muzzle immediately fired all the bullets in this magazine at a rate of 4 rounds per second, in just over 20 seconds.
He casually removed the magazine, replaced it with a new one, pulled the trigger again, and another 80 bullets were fired.
"This is it!"
Tom immediately made up his mind: "Begin mass production immediately!"