Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

27th September 1659

Akhand Bharatiya Empire, Underground research facility of the Bharatiya Academy of Military Sciences

It was the month of Ganesh Chaturthi, and it was drizzling throughout the week. Early in the morning before daybreak, numerous carriages passed through the city of Bidar. Most of the people slept soundly because of the rain, but some were awakened by the noise. They looked at the entourage of carriages passing through the city with doubt, but as there was no response from the local police, it did not cause much commotion.

It was naturally Vijay who was passing through the carriages. He was currently heading to one of the secret underground laboratories of the Bharatiya Academy of Military Sciences.

Sitting in the carriage, Vijay's expression was complex. He was both apprehensive and curious. Ever since he learned about the new weapon of the Dutch, he didn't know how to feel. 'I guess I should not be surprised by the butterfly effect caused by my involvement in this era,' he thought. 'But it is still unbelievable that a weapon that should have come out of the late 18th century had already been invented in the mid-17th century,' He lamented, resting his chin on his hand and looking at the beautiful and cosy scenery.

As they moved forward, Vijay could visibly see that the number of buildings reduce, and the entourage quickly left the core area of the city and came into a remote village side. Surprisingly, as if awaiting Vijay, a cave-like entrance opened up within a hill. The carriages escorting Vijay stopped, but Vijay's carriage passed through the opening, and he was inside.

Suddenly, a middle-aged man wearing a white lab coat opened the door for Vijay.

"Welcome, Your Majesty. I've been waiting for you."

Seeing the man, Vijay laughed. "I haven't seen you in a long time, Manoj. How are you?" The person who opened the door was naturally Manoj Reddy, the scientific talent who started out as a chemist and transitioned into an explosives expert and the dean of the explosives department of the Bharatiya Academy of Military Sciences.

Manoj Reddy felt flattered. "Due to your kindness and the gods' blessing, they're doing very well, Your Majesty." His face was blushing. He really didn't expect His Majesty to still remember him. After contributing to the empire by producing gunpowder and manufacturing the frag grenade, it seemed like he had hit a bottleneck and had no inspiration for anything new. He felt like he had peaked in his professional career and had nothing else to give. He even at one time considered retiring as a researcher and taking up a post as a professor at a BIT university. Now, seeing how His Majesty still remembered him, he felt really touched and was glad that he didn't finally make the choice.

Vijay could see the look of worship and gratitude in those eyes. He smiled, feeling a little cheerful.

"Manoj, has the Dutch weapon been deconstructed? Can I watch it now?" Vijay said.

Manoj suddenly woke up from his reverie. "Ah!" He rubbed his head in annoyance. "Oh, look at me, making you stand in the entrance for so long."

"Please come inside, Your Majesty. Let me show you the work directly."

He invited him in with a hand gesture.

Soon, Vijay and Manoj arrived at the lab and joined other researchers who were working on the secret project.

Vijay was taken aback as soon as he saw the mine. 'It's more mature than expected,' he thought to himself. In his last life, Legend has it that the Chinese had invented sea mines as early as the 14th century, but Vijay couldn't find any records of it in his memory. However, from documented facts, he knew that actual sea mines put into battle were invented by David Bushnell in 1776, but they were simply watertight gunpowder barrels that were made sensitive to any physical touch.

It wasn't until the 19th century, when Robert Fulton improved on it, that sea mines gained prominence in battles. In fact, Robert also coined the term torpedo to describe his underwater explosive device that could destroy a ship.

But what Vijay was looking at was definitely not just a gunpowder barrel strapped with a physical touch-sensitive trigger. It looked much more complicated.

Vijay looked at Manoj. "Explain," he said while pointing at the parts lying on the lab bench.

Manoj quickly nodded his head. "Your Majesty, from what we could learn, it is safe to say that the Dutch have based their design completely on our frag grenade."

"It looks like the battle we had with them in the forest left them a deep impression."

He took out a stick and started to point at the parts. "This weapon, which we code-named the Dutch sea bomb, is divided into three parts."

"The wooden casting,"

*Tap! Tap!*

"is a watertight cylindrical-shaped container made from sturdy oak."

He then tapped at what looked like a container.

"This container was found in the core area of the wooden casting. This is the gunpowder charge used as the fuel for the explosion."

*'Klink! Klink! Klink!'*

He ruffled around the metal parts within the gunpowder fuse. "These are all the frags, all made up of metal."

He then took over a long sphere-like wooden object from a researcher.

"Your Majesty, these pointy things are actually the trigger mechanism for this weapon."

Manoj attached the wooden spear to a stand, kept a rough metal object on its bottom, took over a hammer, and hit the tip of the spear with all the force he could muster.

*' Bang!'*

Nothing extraordinary happened, but Vijay could not be mistaken—he saw a spark coming from the bottom.

Curious, Vijay quickly turned over the spear and saw a metal casting attached to the bottom. "This is...!" Enjoy new tales from empire

Manoj nodded with a smile. "Yes, Your Majesty, they used the flintlock mechanism for this mine."

"As soon as a ship of suitable size rams into the mine, the wooden spear immediately decompresses, and the metal casting attached to its bottom hits the gunpowder chamber like a flint, causing a spark. The very flammable gunpowder immediately ignites, blasting away anything that is in its radius."

He even had a look of appreciation in his eyes.

"Combining the idea of a frag grenade and a flintlock, it's a very clever tactic."

Then he suddenly felt a little pity.

"Although this way it makes the manufacturing costs much cheaper, it is still prone to water damage."

He looked towards Vijay. "We have calculated, Your Majesty. With this design, out of ten mines, almost three are ineffective due to water seepage, and one more fails to activate. So overall, with this design, the failure rate is at 40%. And this is on day one. If we consider these mines after multiple days, then within two days nearly 90% of the mines become ineffective, and after 12 more hours, all the mines are ineffective."

Vijay was deep in thought, then he suddenly decided. "Manoj, we should have this weapon at any cost."

"The area our navy has to cover has reached a staggering 70 million square kilometres. This is not possible with warships alone; we need measures like these sea mines."

"Form a team and design a sea mine for the Bharatiya Empire."

"Make them bigger, more powerful, and stronger."

"There is no need to add frags into it. The hulls of larger ships can easily withstand these frags without much trouble, so instead, pack as much high-density gunpowder as possible."

"Also, improve the waterproofing methods. Instead of using wooden casting, use metal if needed. Leave a lot of space inside hollow to increase the buoyancy."

"Paint it black so that it is not easily detectable."

"More importantly, change the trigger mechanism. I like the protruding wooden spears—keep the design, but instead of wood, use metal for better water tightness. And instead of directly using the flintlock mechanism, form a research team with the chemistry department and work on some compounds that are highly reactive when coming into contact with gunpowder or something similar."

Thinking of something, he added, "Fulminate of mercury should work for our requirements. Run experiments and produce results as quickly as possible."

Manoj Reddy and his team of researchers immediately nodded in agreement. They had already written down all the necessary conditions put forward by His Majesty.

Vijay stayed for a few more hours as he inspected a few other projects, like smokeless gunpowder, nitroglycerin, dynamite, trinitrotoluene research, and finally pentaerythritol tetranitrate.

In fact, only he knew what these explosives were. All the research projects conducted in this secret research institute of the Bharatiya Academy of Military Sciences were explosives that had been invented in the 19th century, some even in the 20th century—almost 300 years in the future.

Explosives are weird things. Although in human history gunpowder was invented as far back as the 9th century, for it to be upgraded qualitatively it had to take a millennium. Even smokeless gunpowder, which is the second generation of gunpowder, only came out in the 19th century, and that too after the invention of nitroglycerin. So Vijay had no hopes to suddenly producing these explosives in the next moment since he knew that all the explosives he mentioned required advanced chemical knowledge and advanced chemical machinery—something the current Bharatiya Empire, which was only going through its first chemical revolution, could not produce.

Most importantly, knowledge is a tower—one cannot go from the first floor to the 10th floor in a single step; it has to be climbed floor by floor. Unless the basic knowledge of chemistry is discovered, it is almost impossible for the scientists to uncover the production methods of these explosives.

The reason he put forward the project was to take advantage of his golden finger—that is, to guide researchers in the right direction through intuition and ideas so they could come up with more discoveries as soon as possible with the explosives and other advanced technologies as an anchor, ensuring that he wouldn't have to die without seeing a rocket launch.

P.S. IA 3 is ongoing 2 subjects per day so only 1 chapter per day, ill make it up in the future