Release that Witch

This sentence caused a great outburst from within the crowd. Many of Timothy’s Knights faces gathered within the hall showed gloomy expressions. Even Knight Steelheart Weimar looked as if wanted to step forward and argue with the alchemist, so Timothy quickly knocked with his scepter against the floor and shouted, “Quiet!”

After the crowd bowed in unison, Timothy turned his gaze back to Rayleigh. “Is your formula exactly the same as the recipe the deserters took away?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Rayleigh shook his head, and then put a lot of disdain in his words, “Although saltpeter is one of the Alchemic Workshops stock items, however, the stock won’t be too big usually. At the time of mixing the snow powder, he just happened to find this formula. Even if he wanted to run more test, the amount of saltpeter wasn’t enough to use it several times. However, the formula for my fast igniting snow powder was developed after going through a large number of test. It is the optimal method and its power is much greater than a product produced by chance.”

“That’s good to know,” Timothy said in a relaxed voice. Although he had known that Garcia had arranged many of her people within all ranks, but he had never thought that she even had some henchmen within the Alchemy Association. The scheme of the deserters was well planned, and at the time he fled he had taken a dozen apprentices along. Usually something like this wouldn’t be a big deal, after all, even though alchemists were relatively rare in other cities, King’s City had more than twenty of them. So, if one had left its impact would normally be something insignificant, but this time the man had discovered a new highly lethal kind of snow powder before leaving. And instead of contributing it towards the Alchemic Workshop, he had left without a trace the very next day.

In the end, Timothy’s spies were only able to capture some of the remaining confidants but failed to intercept the entire group of deserters. The moment he learned about the news, Timothy immediately ordered his Imperial Prime Minister to purchase all of the saltpeter capacities within the city and requested the Alchemic Workshop to reproduce the deserts’ snow powder formula as soon as possible. And today, after waiting for two months, they finally showed some results, which made him feel quite satisfied. Even if this man’s respect for him was a bit lacking, he was still pleasing to his eye at this moment.

After settling his thoughts, Timothy cleared his throat and said, “You did well. For your contribution, I will grant you twenty-five gold royals as reward. Additionally, I will also open a snow powder workshop in King’s City’s inner city, which will be responsible for the mass production of the fast igniting snow powder. However, you cannot become lax and have to further study its usage. If it actually turns out like you said, that civilians would become able to defeat knights, rewarding you with a title and territory won’t be a problem.”

“Thank you very much, Your Majesty!”

After the chief alchemist had left the hall, Sir Weimar, no longer able to hold himself back, stood up and said, “Your Majesty, even though this stuff looked a bit scary, but wanting to use it to defeat a knight, is absolutely not possible. As you can see, it needs to be ignited to trigger, its killing range is also only half a step or so. At that distance, against a civilian, I have dozens of ways to instantly send them to the ground. Even granted that they are able to use it at a close distance, I can still take advantage of the ignition time to strike and kill my opponent, before calmly leaving. According to Rayleigh’s way of speaking, it is clear that he had never been to the battlefield.”

“We also think the same, Your Majesty,” other knights followed up.

“That’s why I let him continue to search for a better way,” Timothy said, “For example, by shortening the ignition time or making it throwable, and so forth. Of course, no matter what kind of weapon they use, I’m also convinced that a Knight will be better than a farmer.”

Although he spoke like this, within his heart, he also had some traces of disagreement. Civilians indeed completely lacked any usage, they were cowardly and ignorant, and also afraid of dying. But if controlled by pills and equipped with snow powder, they could become a powerful weapon. At least that was if they had needed to storm a city gate or a shield wall, they would only have to send out a few militia holding snow powder, and it would be enough to tear a hole in a solid line of defense.