Yonicha continued, "These Flowering Shells will let us make better use of the Catapults we already have.
After all, our Mortar production is still too slow. Each gun takes at least half a month to build, and even at full capacity, we can produce only about ten a month.
Flowering Shells are much faster to make. We can easily produce more than thirty a day, or nearly a thousand a month.
If we have enough materials and the workers gain experience, we can raise output even further!"
Victor picked up a Flowering Shell, delighted. "Good! Excellent! This is wonderful, Yonicha!
I'm very pleased with your work. These shells will surely play a greater role in the coming battle than anyone expects.
How many have you produced so far?"
"Not too many. The production line has only just started, and we haven't run it at full capacity. We're still in the trial stage.
We've made more than 280 over the past half month, but after subtracting those used in experiments and tests, we have 180 left."
Victor stroked his chin. "How much do they cost to make?"
Yonicha knew the Marquis was probably considering a larger investment and answered at once. "Each Flowering Shell currently costs about six gold. The casing takes a long time to make because a blacksmith has to hammer it by hand, so the cost is higher."
Victor drew a sharp breath. That was expensive!
At six gold apiece, the 280 shells they had made already cost nearly two thousand gold—enough to pay a regular army regiment for two months.
If they fired these shells from Catapults, the Blue Lake Bay Region alone had more than fifty of them. Ten shells per Catapult would mean five hundred shells, costing three thousand gold. And that didn't even include