Ultimately, due to Theodoro's still fragile economy, Manuel was forced to abandon his reforms of the official system under the strike of reality.
However, while systemic issues were put aside, material issues received support.
After the war plan was revealed, Alexius began to mass-produce this mature black powder, with Manuel's gunpowder makers as the core and based on Manuel's recipes.
But merely using this black powder as an ingredient for ammunition was far from enough in Manuel's eyes.
Theodoro was at a significant disadvantage compared to Genoa in terms of military strength, financial resources, and manpower, and this could not be solved by advanced fuel and ammunition alone.
To effectively increase the lethality, breakthroughs should also be sought in the cannon and gun barrels.
In fact, firearms with lethality had appeared as early as the 14th century, such as the famous Tannenberg hand cannon.
But they had short range, low accuracy, and insufficient power, and if the barrel material was poor, they were prone to bursting.
Now, with the new gunpowder, although the lethality has been effectively improved, the range and accuracy still have major problems.
How exactly to solve these problems?
Now, Manuel was in the barracks, holding a hand cannon, with a pile of raw materials and iron gun barrels of different specifications beside him, and in front of him was a row of old but still hard cast iron plate armor.
"How can I penetrate all these plate armors at once?"
This was Manuel's third day of deep thought.
In these three days, he had tried various methods, attempting to install a fire striker, fuse, firing line, hook, and so on, on the hand cannon to improve its structure.
But--
"Congratulations to myself, this is the 49th failure."
Manuel collapsed to the ground, feeling dizzy.
"How can I effectively improve the performance of the hand cannon?"
Although he had memorized the structure of the hand cannon in his previous life when he fantasized about the revival of Rome, this knowledge was too distant for him to recall immediately, and he had to try to restore it through practical experiments.
As for why he started thinking about matchlock guns, it was because although European countries later widely crushed Eastern countries in the field of thermal weapons, the gap in gunpowder weapons between East and West in the 15th century was actually not large, and Europe could even be said to be the lagging party.
In official history, European firearms would not show their power until the 16th century.
"Damn it, didn't that pink-haired goddess say she would preserve my knowledge from my previous life when I was reincarnated?
Why do I still have to recall it myself?"
Manuel began to complain to himself, but no matter what he did, there was no movement.
Finally, he could only hypnotically motivate himself, trying to encourage himself, and silently thought: "If I don't succeed by the end of today, then the matter of improving firearms will temporarily wait until later."
After motivating himself, Manuel made improvements again.
This time, he changed his research direction, no longer making impractical improvements to the ignition device, but instead directly carving a groove in the upper side of the long-barreled gun stock.
A curved iron rod was installed in the groove, with one side of the rod fixed and the other side burned into a trigger shape with charcoal fire, and installed so that it could rotate freely.
Then a small powder pan was installed at the rear of the barrel to hold black powder...
Then, as expected, it jammed again.
"What should I do next?" he muttered painfully, "Iron trigger, black powder, curved thin rod, slender barrel, black powder, rotatable hook, black powder, nitrate, fuse, hemp rope, black powder, nitrate, combustible matchcord..."
"!"
Suddenly, Manuel felt that something in his mind had become much clearer.
He knew he had remembered it, and inspiration surged.
At this moment, he was like a second-tier game player who had made it to the last minute to claim a reward for a single-character collaboration event, shouting at his taxi soldiers in the barracks:
"Quick, quick, quick, give me saltpeter water and hemp rope!"
The first to react was his adjutant, Vladimir.
He was originally a Rus' white slave who was abducted by Tatars in his youth and sold to the Black Sea.
Later, he ended up in the Philaka Legion and was appointed as a legion officer because he was quite clever and obeyed military orders.
His quick mind came into play at this moment.
The young Rus' man nimbly found a hemp rope, and thoughtfully soaked it in saltpeter water before handing both to Manuel.
Manuel took them, quickly drew an orthodox cross for Vladimir, then connected the saltpeter-soaked hemp rope to the other end of the curved rod.
He then quickly set up the gun, aimed it at the plate armor, and shouted:
"Hurry up, everyone look at me!"
The soldiers immediately turned their gaze to him, curious to see what their commander was going to do.
Manuel loaded the iron bullet from the muzzle, then used an iron rod to compact the bullet and gunpowder.
Then he lit the matchcord and pulled the trigger.
After a loud gunshot and a dazzling flash of fire, the soldiers were surprised to find that the plate armor, which was usually extremely difficult to penetrate, was directly blasted through by the bullet.
They were first stunned by the shock, and then finally realized something, beginning to cheer: "Long live the Crown Prince! Long live Theodoro!"
Because they knew that they would soon be the first users of this divine weapon.
On the other side, Manuel, who was a bit exhausted, finally happily fell to the ground, face to the sky, enjoying the moment, while muttering: "Matchlock gun, it should be a matchlock gun.
It really is...
"So it can be solved like this? I never thought of this method..."
"Just kidding, this is how I should have thought!"