Trebuchet

"Where is unusual?" Damian couldn't help but be curious.

Jeffrey patted his chest, saying, "I guarantee with my reputation, they are strange. Although these guys dress like bandits, they are incredibly brave in battle, and they understand tactics. They even raided a border castle in groups! Is that something ordinary bandits can do?"

Raiding a castle?!

Damian found it somewhat unbelievable. For bandits with no siege capabilities, even a simple 3-meter-high castle wall with seven or eight archers could make dozens of bandits retreat in failure. That's the backbone of the medieval castle economy.

So, if bandits have systematic ability to raid castles, they're not bandits anymore; they're an army. Even if one assumes they are just passing bandit knights, they would be an elite and formidable knight legion.

"Thank you for the information. Jeffrey, go to Gothingen Castle. Explain it to the countess." Damian blinked, "And prove your strength while you're at it. I promised her that you are worthy of a fief."

Jeffrey's face flushed with excitement. He gratefully knelt before Damian, made an oath, then hurried out. After so many years as a bandit knight, Jeffrey finally had the opportunity to obtain a fief.

As for the changes after being enfeoffed, Damian believed the system wouldn't cheat him. He even vaguely looked forward to it. Since there are elite administrators, why can't there be elite generals?

...

"One, two, three, pull!" And by the riverside of the small town, the residents were working together to erect a huge waterwheel, intending to place it in the river as the power source for the mill.

This was also a small innovation by Damian.

As a significant building that affected the lives of residents and the level of food, the presence and size of mills influenced the evolution of local civilization.

As early as the 1st century BC, the Romans were using waterwheel mills to grind grain. However, in the unfortunate medieval Western Europe, while inheriting many aspects of Roman culture, they stagnated in basic technology. Not only did waterwheel mills not evolve much, but in many places, they regressed to donkey mills.

Damian, drawing on some engineering knowledge he learned at university, designed a system of manually operated treadmills to avoid situations where insufficient water flow would render the mill useless.

This pursuit of stability was also seen during the Industrial Revolution when steam engines spent considerable effort addressing fluctuations in water flow.

Trade master Grace, the merchant girl, was currently directing citizens with a bright smile.

As Damian approached with a furrowed brow, he could hear her chanting, "Mill tax, mill tax…"

The mill tax, famous for its name, was the tax levied when every farmer wanted to grind their wheat into flour. They had to pay a certain tax here, leaving only a portion for themselves.

Don't underestimate this part. Cumulatively, each mill was a money tree, to the extent that nobles would prohibit farmers from building mills privately.

[Mill (Level 1): Mill tax +1 gold coin, increases trade income, increases citizen happiness.] When the mill was completed, the system appropriately popped up a prompt.

It even added a message: Exploration of hydraulics will further change the mill.

"Right!" Damian looked at the rudimentary mill and suddenly thought of something.

What kind of wonderful chemical reaction would occur if he put the wooden wheel and treadle used in the mill on a primitive trebuchet, which is essentially a primitive trebuchet where a group of people pull ropes together?

The primitive trebuchet, a machine that requires dozens to hundreds of people to pull ropes, throws stones that are not only light but also close-range. Otherwise, how could there be so many seemingly impregnable earth and wood castles?

If Damian could modify a large trebuchet using mechanical structures, it would only require two people to operate, and it could throw heavy stones far away.

In this small place like Gothingen, it would be an absolute killer weapon.

And the mechanical structure of the mill, like the drawbridge and portcullis of the gate, was very common and easy to modify.

Damian lifted Grace high and said, "You are my lucky star!" Grace blushed shyly but was put down by Damian. But by the time, Damian suddenly put her back on the ground. When Grace caught up to look again, Damian was already studying the mechanical structure on the wooden turntable.

"Fool man!" With these words, the blushing girl walked away sulkily.

In fact, Grace had been researching what products could be sold in this territory recently.

In a poor and barren free city, it seemed that only convenient transportation was a condition. This was an insurmountable problem for most people.

However, as a trade master, Grace quickly discovered signs of bee colonies in the forests near the Duck Pond Riverbank.

If people could learn to tame bees and produce honey regularly, the free city wouldn't need to consider specialty products. The value of honey far exceeded materials like cloth and wood.

In medieval Europe without sugarcane and sugar beet processing knowledge, honey was the only luxurious commodity available for obtaining natural sweetness.

This secret, Grace had not yet announced.

She wanted to see how far Damian could go on his own.

On the other hand, Damian gathered a few carpenters. "If we add a winch to the trebuchet, can we save a lot of manpower when winding it?" Damian asked curiously.

The carpenters called in a blacksmith, and after discussing with a group of inexperienced craftsmen, they gave an estimated answer, "It's probably possible to save most of the manpower for pulling ropes. But wood can't bend too much, so even with a winch, stones won't be thrown far."

They believed that the distance stones could fly was constant, and my Lord, you can't expect more.

But Damian felt something was off.

If a winch could save manpower when winding, then during firing, what method could make it shoot farther and more forcefully?

After thinking for a long time, Damian still couldn't figure it out. He tried using a winch to hook the throwing arm, but the effect was poor. Then Damian thought of ropes.

Although the characteristics of wood limited the performance of Damian's trebuchet, using ropes to tie the throwing arm to form a torsion structure, assisted by winches, would enhance the combat effectiveness of this trebuchet to some extent.

He installed wheels on the cart and named the trebuchet "Damian's artillery cart."

In fact, this was an improved version of the Roman Empire's torsion trebuchet.

[Discover new war machine: Damian's artillery cart. Send reward: Random building blueprint.] The system recognized Damian's interesting modification and sent a reward.

But what Damian didn't know was that if he could apply the principle of levers he learned from books to this trebuchet, it would become a Terror weapon——

Mongolian trebuchet, also known as the firecracker.