NOVEL WEB Chapter 286: Mapping the Territory
George lay on the grass, idly swinging a foxtail grass between his teeth, surrounded by a few soldiers like himself, lazily basking in the sun.
The sunlight was a bit dazzling. Squinting his eyes, George watched several figures bustling about in the distance.
“Hey! Tom, what’s with the higher-ups? It’s just a map, do they really need to make such a fuss?”
“George!”
Before George could finish, a loud roar came from afar.
Hearing this voice, the soldiers sprung up from the ground like clockwork, quickly standing at attention.
“Caught you slacking off again, you rascals!”
Their sergeant, Makarov, thundered angrily from behind them.
George and his comrades stood rigidly, eyes fixed forward, silently lamenting their bad luck at being caught red-handed by the sergeant.
Makarov gave them a harsh reprimand.
“In such a place, vigilance is paramount. If even a single hair of the lord’s precious students is harmed, you’ll answer to me, and I’ll answer to Captain Bryce. Got it?”
“Yes!” George and his comrades responded loudly, their voices tinged with a hint of distress.
“Each of you will write a report tonight!”
“Yes!” They replied, their voices filled with a sense of doom.
The “precious students” Makarov mentioned were the figures busily working in the distance, all from Weiss Academy.
A week ago, their platoon leader was transferred to the staff headquarters, and the new platoon leader, previously working at the staff headquarters, took over—a part of Schroeder’s rotational system. Each staff officer was required to periodically work with frontline units, gaining practical combat and operational experience to avoid the pitfall of being armchair strategists.
Along with the new platoon leader came a group of students, quite extraordinary ones. According to the platoon leader, they were the cherished proteges of Count Grayman. Even Captains Bryce and Joyce had dined with them.
Their purpose was to conduct “surveying” – basically, measuring and drawing to create accurate maps.
Makarov’s company was assigned by Bryce to assist these students with their surveying task.
The students split into groups, working separately, while Makarov and his men ran about, assisting with carrying tools and providing security.
After being caught by Makarov, George and the others dared not slack off anymore, remaining highly vigilant until dusk.
As evening approached, Makarov led George and the others toward the students. They couldn’t let the lord’s cherished ones get tired; it was time to bring them back to the barracks.
Approaching, they didn’t interrupt the students, instead observing their work.
Two students, one taller and the other shorter, stood on a slope, each holding one end of a long bamboo pole (actually a measuring rod), while another held a wooden board (a clinometer), ensuring the bottom of the board was parallel to the measuring rod.
The top of the board was marked with a series of equally spaced notches, forming a semicircle, with the center at the side of the board facing the sky. A line was etched from the center, perpendicular to both sides of the board.
A small nail was hammered at the center of the wooden board, from which a small iron ball was suspended by a thin string. The iron ball pulled the string straight towards the ground, meeting the line perpendicular to the board at its center, forming an angle.
Makarov asked curiously, “What are you doing? Is this what mapping is?”
One of the students, deeply focused on his notebook, looked up at Makarov’s voice, noticing their approach. He glanced towards Makarov and his men with a shy smile.
“Sergeant, we’re measuring the horizontal distance between two points.”
“Horizontal distance?” George asked.
“Yes, you see, this is a slope. The distance measured directly with this bamboo rod is the diagonal distance. We then use this clinometer to find the incline angle—the angle between the bamboo rod and the level ground. The short lines forming a semicircle are the scales indicating the angle size. Using the diagonal distance and the incline angle, we can calculate the horizontal distance.”
“That’s amazing. So, this is all it takes?”
“Yes! That’s the beauty of mathematics,” the student exclaimed excitedly. “The lord was right, mathematics is the key to understanding the universe.”
“Was it the lord who taught you this?”
“Yes, the lord personally taught us trigonometry. Count Grayman knows so much!” The students all looked up in admiration.
However, Makarov and the others had no idea what trigonometry was. “Uh… but why do you need to measure this so-called ‘horizontal distance’?”
“This is the ‘orthographic projection’ method taught by the lord. For instance…”
The student with the notebook enthusiastically explained the principles of mapmaking to the soldiers.
“If you place an object directly under a light source, the shadow it casts on the ground is its orthographic projection. The maps we are drawing use this method to project features like mountains, rivers, houses, roads, fields, and forests onto a horizontal plane, which is represented by a piece of paper. Hence, these maps are also known as ‘planimetric maps.’”
George scratched his head, “I haven’t seen you guys flying up to see the projection, though.”
The student laughed, “Of course, we can’t fly up there. We rely on measuring and drawing bit by bit using these reference points.”
He pointed around, and the soldiers understood what the ‘reference points’ meant—these were the poles erected on the ground, adorned with conspicuous flags.
“To draw a planimetric map, we first plot these reference points on the paper. Then, based on these points, we meticulously map out the areas between them…”
After listening to the students for a while, Makarov and George were still confused. Many terms were beyond their understanding.
They had seen the maps drawn by the students, which were unfamiliar. Unlike the picturesque maps they were used to, which depicted mountains, rivers, and buildings vividly and were easy to understand, these new maps had a sense of seriousness, rigidity, and complexity. The usual illustrative drawings were replaced with symbols, squares, straight lines, and irregular curves (apparently called ‘contour lines’). However, according to the students, these new maps were far more accurate than the old ones.
…
Before the sun set, the soldiers escorted the students back to their barracks, carrying a plethora of surveying tools, including theodolites, leveling instruments, right angle viewers, planks, tripods, and other strange devices.
After dinner, they received new orders from the camp: to temporarily suspend the surveying work. The first and second battalions were to commence a feint attack on Bayland Castle the next day. It was merely a diversion to apply sufficient pressure on the Kent family and attract the attention of the enemy forces near Fort Bidou.
The joint forces defending Fort Bidou were barely holding on…
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