Logistics was the key for any army to maintain hegemony in any theater . Damon had long considered this and had long been drawing up blueprints for several kinds of internal combustion engines.
He was planning on building a car but having an engine is just the beginning of the building process. He needed to procure materials like rubber and oil for fuel and lubricant.
As that was the issue, he moved his thoughts to vehicles that could be produced with the current materials and technology that he currently possessed.
Not knowing the core technologies behind trains, he opted to build a rigid airship like the Zeppelins used in WW2 Germany and the Soviet Union.
Over the course of a month , materials for the production of this vehicle had been prepared and finally, it was time for building to begin.
The first thing to do was to extract hydrogen as it was the core material necessary for making the airship float.
After so many iterations, a contraption was produced that enabled lightning magic to be induced into tank filled with salt water. Two tubes connected to two separate airtight tanks were necessary for the extraction of both hydrogen and oxygen.
Then the extraction process began, one of the red guards who had lightning magic started to induce magic into the salt water which in turn produced a reaction that prompted the hydrogen and oxygen to separate into gas and moving through the tubes into the steel tanks which were being blasted with ice magic which brought down the temperature of the gases turning them to liquid . This went on throughout the day till in the evening when both tanks were filled .
As the area was still below freezing, samples were taken from both tanks in test tubes . I could be seen that oxygen has a blueish color and hydrogen was colorless.
Blueprints for the airship had been provided to professionals who began crafting parts for it while Damon worked on producing an engine that would power the propeller that was responsible for moving the ship forward.
It took another month for the engine to be produced. The engine that was decided on was the inline 4 two-stroke engine all made out of cast iron.
The frame for the airship were made out of light weight metals like aluminum and copper, cabin were made out of wood and glass while the balloon structure was made out of treated leather .
Workers who were put in charge of building the airship worked with vigour as Damon was by their side making sure everything was going smoothly as planned. Because of this the project went on without a hitch .
The only hard part of the production was making the rudders and elevators that made the ship go up , down , left and right. But before long the airship had been produced, even as a prototype it was still so majestic that it almost brought the workers to tears as they were proud to have produced such behemoth.
Soon the time for testing came, the people were given a break from their jobs to watch the testing of the airship which had now been painted red and black.
Soon hydrogen gas filled the hull prompting it to float slowly of the ground with the test drivers already inside the cabin. The elevators were then manipulated allowing the ship to rise in altitude . At about two hundred meters, a hand crank was used to power on the internal combustion engines which was powered by a biodiesel produced by mixing alcohol and vegetable oil.
Citizens looked in awe as the ship cruised away .
According to Damons calculations the speed of the Zeppelin reached at least between 60 to 100 kilometers per hour, causing them to move from Merula to Ronalla and back in a little over three hours.
Truly a breakthrough for the transportation areas as a journey of days or weeks was now finished in hours.
Back in Merula as the ship landed and Damon stepped off the ship with the crew, they were greeted with cheers from the crowd. Damon then raised his hands and announced in a loud voice,
" Today we have created a vehicle that will enable us to transverse anywhere in the region within hours. Places that took days and weeks of journey exposing you to bandits and and wild animals are now within reach .
This happenedthrough the hardwork and deligence of the Kaduna people. This proves the point that hard work is the gate way to progress.
Let us work hard and let our region progress."
After the speech, Damon made his way back to the castle where the leaders of each department and the army were all waiting for him. There he ordered Alaric to liaison with the rune mages and the alchemists to build a hydrogen extraction plant and a biodiesel plant.
Three variants were to be produced for public transportation, materials and goods transportation and military use.
The military were to have two variants, the scouting ship and the air battleship which was to be much more larger than anything that they were to produce as it was going to be transporting both soldiers and their equipments.
And just like that the issue with logistics had been partly solved . But until he could get rubber or anything that acted as rubber, he could not say that he had solved the transportation issues in the region.
Over the course of the next few months, Kaduna was busier than usual, producing weapons, ammunition and airships for both military and commercial use. More buildings were also being built to accommodate the population as it grew.
But even as Kaduna grew in power, there were several forces that would see all Damon had built crumble to ashes. How ge handles the situations would determine if his empire would rise to the top or be crushed before it's rise.