After sending Oliver away, Perfikot returned to her own laboratory.
She took off the long dress she wore for visitors and changed back into more convenient clothes, donning a lab coat as she returned to the lab, deciding to do something else to clear her mind.
Lately, she's been busy dealing with apocalyptic disasters, which left her feeling exhausted and pressured, making her mind feel rigid.
After all, thinking about the same issue for a long time can easily make one feel fatigued.
She needed to do something unrelated to apocalyptic disasters to relax her brain, lest she stretch herself too thin.
Generally, according to her habits, Perfikot would tinker with something that piques her interest, like mechanical birds that can fly or singing dolls, creations of alchemy.
This can both relax the mind and hone her skills, allowing her to create interesting things, achieving multiple goals at once.
However, even though she's casually tinkering with interesting little things, Perfikot usually sets a broad theme and goal for herself during this leisure time.
For example, what she's working on right now is a large-caliber automatic sniper rifle, somewhat beyond this era's scope.
In the original world, during the first industrial revolution, flintlock guns hadn't completely exited the stage yet. Barrels lacked rifling, and bullets were pushed into the muzzle with rods, firing once then requiring about half a minute to reload.
Being able to fire three shots within a minute was already considered highly efficient for seasoned veterans.
At that time, usage of muskets consisted only of line infantry disparaged by future generations as forming firing squads.
It wasn't until after the second industrial revolution that humans began using single-shot breech-loading rifles like the Dreyse needle gun and Mauser Model 1871, transitioning from paper cartridge black powder bullets to smokeless powder in brass casings.
As for automatic rifles? Those were only used on a large scale after two world wars ended and resulted in millions of battlefield deaths.
One could say, in the original world, wanting to create automatic rifles during the first industrial revolution? Theoretically possible, but practically implausible.
Yet in this world, relying on alchemy, which can be considered a world-defying entity of sorts, Perfikot could handcraft a large-caliber automatic sniper rifle.
"12.7mm Gas-operated Automatic Sniper Rifle"
"Materials used: Exceptional"
"Craftsmanship: Exceptional"
"Effects: Effective range of 1.2KM, with a maximum range of 1.5KM, capable of precisely killing a singular living target within 800M."
"Evaluation: An automatic sniper rifle with a rate of fire of 300 rounds/minute, entirely surpassing the weapon standards of this era. You're using large caliber full-power rounds, enough to blow a fully armored distinguished knight in half. Do you plan on using it to hunt dragons?"
In the Eye of Omniscience, the rifle Perfikot painstakingly crafted by hand had such a sensational evaluation.
This performance could hold its own against capabilities before Perfikot's crossing in the original world, not to mention during the era of paper cartridge ammunition.
If Perfikot truly brought this to the battlefield, it could genuinely change the war's outcome and direction.
Though quite satisfied with the weapon, Perfikot doesn't actually intend to bring it to battle.
On the one hand, she's an Alchemist, Langton's greatest alchemical genius in history, sending her to war would be a real waste.
Another reason is that this rifle wasn't made as a personal weapon for her, but intended as a gift for Foster.
Foster is an Extraordinary, a knight who reached the level of a Grand Knight, something Perfikot had known for a long time.
The old caretaker was the attendant knight of Perfikot's grandfather, old Baron Brandelis, different from knight attendants in apprenticeship. Attendant knights are tightly bound to the knights they follow.
Unlike knight attendants, however, who can depart from the knight they serve upon receiving an official knight title.
Generally, knights wouldn't treat their attendant knights harshly, even allocating them a small territory if feasible.
For instance, Perfikot's grandfather, old Baron Brandelis, a powerful distinguished knight, earned a hereditary baron title and a vast territory due to battlefield achievements. He allocated a village from his fief to Foster and granted him an official knight title.
Yet Foster remained at Brandelis Manor, serving as a caretaker, attending to the Brandlis Clan for three generations.
For such a distinguished elder, Perfikot sought ways to help him break through the level of a Grand Knight to become a distinguished knight and crafted a complete set of equipment for the old caretaker based on her ideas.
Perfikot more or less finished other parts, ensuring Foster a massive surprise.
Originally, Perfikot hadn't intended to make this rifle because of the existence of alchemy; knights of this era, with their armor, can withstand flintlock gunfire.
Even Grand Knight level knights could, with full armor, withstand small-caliber front-loading cannon fire with flesh and blood.
Therefore, for knights of this era, guns might not be as practical as the hand crossbows hanging on their waists.
At least some well-made hand crossbows have a repeating function, capable of firing through a 50-bolt magazine, taking out the heads of an entire line of infantry in a minute or turning a certain lucky target into a pincushion.
Contrary to what most people think, the end of the Age of Knights wasn't brought by muskets in Perfikot's original pre-transmission world, but by the productivity advancements and societal structural changes brought by the industrial revolution, which completely eradicated the fertile soil for knight's existence.
Moreover, large numbers of cheap, quickly trainable soldiers broke the monopoly and rule knights had on force, with more efficient modern armies replacing knights, thus ending the Age of Knights.
Ultimately, if I can train a qualified soldier in just three months, equipping them with rifles made in a mere dozen hours of labor, overwhelming a formal knight trained for over a decade in heavy armor by sheer numbers, wouldn't you consider the so-called knights rather trivial?
And in this world, although knights possess higher combat power, with multifaceted great powers concentrated into one body, the essence hasn't changed, when quantitative change leads to qualitative change, knights will still be replaced.