Chapter 566 - 349: Insufficient Firepower Phobia

Chapter 566: Chapter 349: Insufficient Firepower Phobia

The first day of war preparations for Deepwater City and the Northern Alliance. Sunny. Nothing major happened.

Zog stood at the window, admiring his city, which stretched so far he could barely see its borders.

Last night’s Shadow of Evil screening had gone pretty well. The image of the Dragon Race proved to be quite endearing, and the Dragon Race-themed dolls that had been sitting in inventory for ages finally sold out.

Nick’s dolls even sold out within a single day.

He was ecstatic now that he was so popular among the Humans.

"Those foolish little Humans finally know how to appreciate the great Giant Dragon Nixela!"

At least, that was his take on it.

It was hard to say what he would think when he found out that in the eyes of Humans, he was just a big, dumb, lovable goofball of a Dragon.

Oh, and speaking of other developments, Galina’s Little Fireball Platform had finally expanded beyond the campus after securing an investment.

Quite a few media outlets ran stories on the young campus entrepreneur.

However, Galina was not fond of the publicity.

Zog could understand why. The wording in those articles was indeed a bit mean-spirited.

"Washed-Up Talent Show Singer, Talent Exhausted, Turns to Entrepreneurship..."

The problem was, you couldn’t really argue with the facts.

Galina really was a "washed-up talent show singer." After a brief moment of fame on Feilin’s Best Songs, she had faded into obscurity.

The variety show was still running, with one season a year, unearthing new hidden gems each time.

And at the same time, there were plenty of contestants who were just a flash in the pan.

The only time Galina was ever associated with the show anymore was in online listicle videos, like "Ranking the Talent Show Artists Who Faded the Fastest."

Her situation was different from the Zor Band. Those Elves had strong vocals and songwriting skills of their own.

In the Feilin music scene, you still needed real talent to survive.

For now, the Little Fireball Platform primarily handled same-city transactions. Most were local pickups, and the few that required delivery only used local couriers, not the inter-city Dragon transport service.

Thus, it wouldn’t compete for the already scarce shipping capacity.

But this secondhand platform was bound to grow. Given the financial situation of most people, a secondhand marketplace might even be more popular than an ordinary one at this stage.

Once order volumes grew and it expanded to inter-city transactions, it would need the Dragon Race as well.

At that point, shipping capacity would surely be in severe shortage.

Express delivery would basically be express in name only.

’Where am I supposed to find that many Dragons?’

The Adventurer Guild might bring in a new Dragon every couple of weeks, but the small increase in numbers wasn’t making a significant difference.

’Have the Dragon numbers really gotten that low?’

Zog was puzzled.

He had never paid much attention to the survival of the Dragon Race. As long as he himself was fed, that was all that mattered; he had no one else to worry about.

Logically, even though the Dragon Realm had fallen, the number of surviving Dragons hadn’t been particularly small. ’Could it be that they haven’t been reproducing all these years? Have their numbers actually been dwindling?’

’Don’t tell me the Dragon Race has basically become an endangered species!’

This sucked.

It seemed his goal of creating a continent-wide express delivery service anytime soon was out of reach.

’I’d have to wait for the Dragons in my territory to produce enough offspring, and then for those offspring to grow to adulthood.’

’Forget it.’

’By then, who knows how many highways would have already been paved? Heavy-duty trucks with enough cargo capacity would be in mass production. I’d have to find a new line of work for the Longlongs anyway.’

"Boss," Elsa said, walking into the office, "Figxin and Gelda are here."

"Alright."

Zog had come to the Lord’s Mansion early today specifically to wait for Figxin.

He had promised yesterday to show her a demonstration of the new equipment. Zog was eager to see what someone accustomed to traditional warfare would think when they saw the wondrous little gadgets from the Deep Research Institute.

Zog led Figxin—the Princess who had no intention of remaining just a princess—along with her great steward from the Northern Domain, Gelda, and several high-ranking officers from the New Northern Army to the testing grounds.

The new testing grounds were located west of Deepwater City, more than ten kilometers outside the city, in a wide-open field.

The weapons being tested here weren’t like the firearms from the Gun Works, which could be tested at a shooting range near the city. There was even a range open to tourists for a shooting experience.

This stuff made far too much of a racket.

As for the really good stuff still in the planning stages—things that would make several times more noise—they would have to be tested deep in the uninhabited areas of the mountains and old forests.

’What? Why research so many high-powered weapons, you ask?’

There was no helping it. If fear of insufficient firepower was a disease, Zog’s case was terminal.

On one side of the testing grounds, the R&D team was ready. Two rather large devices sat shrouded in red cloth, looking very mysterious.

"Ladies and gentlemen, behold! The first product from the Deepwater City Research Institute: the ’Court-Martial’!"

Like a performing magician, Zog struck a theatrical pose and whipped the red cloth off the weapon on the left.

It looked like a machine gun scaled up several times, too large to be carried. It was fixed to the ground on a pedestal, which also had a simple steel seat for the gunner.

Aside from its size, the weapon’s most prominent feature was its six flat, rectangular barrels.

"Er, Court-Martial?" Figxin found the name unbelievably strange for a gun.

"That’s right. It’s a multi-barrel anti-aircraft machine gun, mainly for air defense. It doesn’t need bullets. It uses Magic Energy as a power source, which is converted by a Magic Array into high-temperature Element particles."

The idea was inspired by Zog’s own heat-cutting claw strike.

He patted the huge, magazine-like compartments on either side of the gun. "The conversion happens right here. It’s then compressed into a particle beam and fired from the barrels."

Air defense was not an unfamiliar concept to Figxin. After all, Feilin had plenty of flying creatures.