Extraordinary Voyage-Chapter 689 - 593: Assembly Complete

In today's era of sailing battleships dominated by giant ship cannons, theoretically, the larger the size and the more shipborne artillery a ship has, the stronger its combat power.

This is also the origin of the initial classification standards for Level 6 battleships by the militaries of various countries.

A typical representative of this is the Hilus Empire's long-gestated but ultimately stillborn warship, touted as the most powerful battleship in human history, the legendary battleship— "Sea Monarchy".

Designed with a displacement of 5,826 tons, four layers of artillery decks, and equipped with 170 shipborne artillery pieces, constructed by the "Curse School".

Currently, the strongest Level 1 battleship of any sea power country has no more than 110 shipborne artillery pieces. In the high-level plans of Hilus, if this "Sea Monarchy" could truly transform from blueprints to reality, it would undoubtedly become a true sea overlord, with no other warship worthy of being its opponent.

The ship engineers' mindset is clearly limited to the attack methods of muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons, striving to maximize the power of the firepower. In an era where accuracy depended entirely on luck, being a floating artillery battery at sea meant the more cannons onboard, the stronger it was.

But all of this is based on the current level of technology.

At least from Aiven's forward-thinking perspective, the relationship between a warship's combat power, battlefield adaptability, and size is not directly proportional. Even if an aircraft carrier wishes to unleash its combat power, it needs the cooperation of an entire carrier battle group, not to mention these mere sailing battleships of this era.

From sailing battleships to steam ironclads, then to modern warships. Aiven's mind has a complete technology upgrade roadmap, naturally prepared to skip directly to the end.

What about the problem of only half-understanding shipbuilding technology? When technology isn't enough, witchcraft compensates.

If witchcraft isn't sufficient either? Spend money!

However, the specific shipbuilding steps are still conducted in a general manner: processing hull components → assembling hull structure → launching → outfitting → sea trials → construction completion.

If conforming to the standard requirements of normal shipbuilding facilities, the docks of Hatrafa Port would undoubtedly be inadequate.

During construction, the hull is oriented towards the sea with a 1/20 inclination; here, the keel blocks and bilge blocks are arranged... and the hull is assembled on top. Most slipways will pre-determine the launching position considering the need when launching, some even set up structures and tracks for launching.

Throughout the years-long construction process, a series of complex equipment, facilities, and construction steps were all replaced by Aiven using witchcraft at this moment.

Moreover, his first shipbuilding plan wasn't in years but a few hours.

Whoosh—

In the vibrant green light encompassing everything, the rustling sound of plants growing incessantly echoed throughout the large dock.

Pieces of "Treasure Tree" with their bark stripped off, with only the dark core remaining and of slightly inferior quality, were being reinvigorated, continuously writhing and regrowing together with the surrounding ship materials.

In the awestruck eyes of the onlookers.

First, they completely fused into a giant tree lying horizontally, then slowly transformed into a spindle-shaped wooden cocoon supported by twenty thick roots, one meter off the ground, and nearly 140 meters long.

At this point, the right to control the growth direction of this "giant tree" was completely handed over to Aiven, with Angie only assisting in stabilizing the "Activated Spiritual Light".

For ordinary people, the extraordinarily ship materials, which are nearly impossible to precisely process, were as soft as clay in his hands.

The first step, the shaping of the keel.

This marks the initial step of shipbuilding: laying the keel.

The reason why a sailing battleship must have a keel is because using superior wood to splice into square lumber, used as the longitudinal hull structure, greatly facilitates the construction of wooden ships and ensures the subsequent structural strength.

This kind of keel extends to both the bow and stern, and with the planks' splicing, it serves as both the end connection of the planks and the largest structural support of the hull, ensuring the battleship won't disintegrate in storms.

However, for modern warships, they are entirely built using high-strength steel structures, with stress distributed throughout the entire hull; although still called a "keel", it is no longer equivalent to the "keel" of a sailing battleship.

In Aiven's "V" shaped hull design for the battleship, aside from the internal keel or centerline girder within the ship, the bottom plate along the centerline is also part of the keel, known as the flat keel, extending to connect with the stem and stern posts.

In fact, most modern large warships are constructed in sections first and then welded together later, with superior materials ensuring the hull's structural integrity.

One can only wonder how much of the kingdom's resources were expended to build the "Steam Fortress", a fully metal 120-meter-long, 5,000-ton displacement warship.

Rushing sounds...

The spindle-shaped "wooden cocoon" suspended in mid-air, under Aiven's guidance, began to slowly metamorphose from the ship bottom into an overall "V" shape, with internal keels, rib plates, limber holes... in sequence forming.

Under the precise control of "Data Visualization", not even a deviation to the second decimal place could exist. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Indeed.

As naturally grown material, the "Treasure Tree" couldn't escape the common flaws of wood. Internally, it's composed of many wood fibers parallelly arranged, and the connection strength among these fibers is far less than within a single fiber.

In this aspect, unlike steel at a microscopic level being a crystalline state and macroscopically continuous, which grants steel excellent macroscopic mechanical and transmission properties.

However.

For wood that has already grown and been harvested, ordinary people may have no solutions, but it presents no problem for Aiven.

During the re-growth and shaping process, strands of wood fibers, more flexible than steel wire, wove themselves like snakes into a mesh reinforcement within the ship's structure.

This unique physical structure, difficult to achieve even with modern craftsmanship, made it more solid and resilient than purely specialized steel.

In this process, there were no tenon or mortise structures, no need for iron nails or braces, let alone welding. The ability to squeeze and mold the ship materials at will, as if the battleship had grown from a living tree, left no structural weak point.

Step two, construction of the lower deck.

The Sailing Battleship's requirement of dozens to hundreds of side cannons was unnecessary, so Aiven eliminated the transparent fore-and-aft cannon deck design, opting for a more reliable watertight compartment design below the waterline.

Step three,.....

Amidst the flickering spiritual light, none among the onlookers could bear to look away.

Just like that.

The "Tree" grew continuously for a total of three hours, and as the verdant green light marking the [Activated Skillful Hand] finally began to fade,

the "wooden cocoon" originally supported by twenty roots had thoroughly transformed into a different appearance—an elongated warship with a strong futuristic feel.

The hull surface glowed with a matte black metallic sheen, showing no trace of the original wooden ship materials.

The upper structure had almost no vertical plane sections, all structures were slightly sloped, as if composed of massive rhomboid blocks.

In the middle position of the upper structure, a towering tower close to twelve meters high had formed, while the front and rear were low and smooth, with large and small regular holes peppered across the deck—clearly positions reserved for the later installation of certain equipment.

Even just from the surface, it almost completely overturned this era's Sailing Battleship design concepts, not to mention the even more complex internal structures of the warship.

"Although it looks somewhat strange, it doesn't even have side cannon ports, if there's a word to describe it, it would be... cool!"

Calvin's words drew unanimous agreement from the crowd.

Not to speak of the core of the battleship, just the transcending design aesthetics was already enough to conquer everyone.

At this moment, the ship's total length was 132 meters, with a beam of 16 meters. The thickest part of the hull was nearly one meter thick, comparable to a Level 1 Battleship, with a designed displacement at full load of 2,800 tons.

In reality, the steel plate thickness of a modern ten-thousand-ton warship is just over 1 centimeter, and even large sea vessels have shell plate thickness normally ranging from 2 to 5 centimeters. Aiven was clearly bullying with the "Treasure Tree's" superb performance, as the ship's defense wasn't much less formidable than one-meter-thick steel plates.

One could imagine that in this era, even with an alchemy cannon with a muzzle velocity of 933 meters per second, projectile weight and range of 95.9 kilograms and 40 kilometers respectively, seeing such a defense would bring grief and tears.

After all, even special armor-piercing shells measure penetration ability in millimeters, and being able to penetrate 160-mm armor at a distance of a thousand meters was already remarkable.

Even the M829A3 depleted uranium alloy armor-piercing shell, claimed to be the strongest in the world, could penetrate at most 900 millimeters.

With armor stacked to this level, this warship could almost ignore all conventional weapons of this world.

Of course, the "Legendary Battleship" will always face only "Legendary Battleships," and what sort of attacks it might encounter could not be said.

Finally, Aiven mysteriously inserted two components, completed earlier, with surfaces flashing with Extraordinary Spiritual Light like steel axles, into slots reserved at the ship's stern. Then two golden clover-shaped paddles, each as tall as two people, were mounted.

Thus, the main body of the warship was officially declared completed.

Long since one of the pillars of the Far Sails Territory was shipbuilding and transport, it certainly wouldn't waste the peak productivity represented by Nymph. As for shipbuilding technology, this Great Wizard held a notable position in the entire human world.

Yet at this moment, this elegant noblewoman looked at the peculiar warship body and couldn't help but wonder:

"Aiven, does this warship have no masts and sails? How is it powered?"

Pulling Angie away from the rough warship, Aiven gave Nymph a mysterious smile:

"Come, let's see if it can move by ourselves?"

Snap—!

With a snap of fingers.

Amidst the swirling azure mist, like ripened fruit dropping naturally, twenty roots withered up, and the warship disappeared from sight, reappearing in the lake at the outskirts of the [Witchcraft Garden].

The water entry process caused no ripples, maximizing the avoidance of damage due to mechanical movements, which was also the main reason "outfitting" was scheduled after "launch" in the shipbuilding process.

The next moment.

Everyone in the dock had already fallen onto the deck of this warship, carefully following Aiven into the tower, reaching the place he referred to as the ship's bridge.

Once the ship's complete assembly was finished and launched successfully, the next step of work was outfitting the warship.

Just like decorating a blank house, water and electricity pipelines, flooring, furniture... all installed and complete. For a warship, it meant the installation of combat, support, and navigation systems; of course, the most critical step was—activating the Ship Spirit!