I’m Now a Terrorist.
10: MVM Ch 10: Thank You, Internet.
I’m Now a Terrorist.
“Mr.
Quinn, here’s what you requested.” Jack placed the purchased items on the desk, curiosity evident in his expression.
He couldn’t fathom why this gentleman needed so many chemicals.
“Thank you.
Rose, would you please settle Jack’s bill?” Luca nodded slightly, motioning for Rose to handle the payment.
Heaven as his witness, he truly hadn’t entertained any designs on this heroine.
The system task had nothing whatsoever to do with her, and he wanted no unnecessary complications.
He had clearly miscalculated the combat effectiveness of a lovestruck fool, however.
Upon learning that Luca traveled alone, Miss Rose had leveraged her identity advantages to install herself as his self-appointed chief financial officer.
In her own words.
“What if Mr.
Quinn has journeyed thousands of miles across the ocean without a single helper by his side?” Caledon had practically turned purple with fury, yet found himself powerless to forbid it, especially after Luca explicitly stated that Rose would serve only as his secretary, and only during daylight hours.
This offered the jealous fiancé some small measure of relief.
Whether Caledon grasped the full implications of what a ‘secretary’ might entail remained decidedly unclear.
“Thirty-two pounds, total.” Jack quoted triple the purchase price without missing a beat.
He’d briefly entertained genuine feelings for this girl, that sensation of Cupid’s arrow striking directly through the heart.
After several encounters, however, Jack realized he couldn’t keep pace with her mental circuitry.
Rose now dwelt entirely in the world of poetry Luca had introduced, completely blind to Jack’s flattering advances.
Following two failed performances, Jack had fully liberated himself.
The Titanic carried countless Gypsy girls in third class, after all, and his handsome face required minimal effort to work its magic.
Why hang himself on a tree that clearly didn’t want him?
Besides, his current priority was making money.
Once wealthy, he could play whatever games he pleased.
“Here’s thirty-two pounds.” Rose withdrew the notes from her purse and handed them over.
Jack accepted with a smile, even testing one note between his teeth, genuine, with that distinctive inky fragrance.
“Anything else I can do for you, sir?” Jack stuffed the money into his pocket, his tone noticeably more fawning.
Twenty pounds profit for a single day’s running around?
This kind of business fell straight from heaven!
“Not at present.
I’ll find you when something comes up.” Luca waved him away.
He no longer needed this so-called man of destiny.
His current preoccupation was far more pressing, how to simplify the formula for nitroglycerin.
He possessed a certain familiarity with miscellaneous knowledge… cement manufacturing, glass casting, gunpowder composition, hybrid rice.
Such technical tidbits were the protagonist’s classic path to fortune.
Easy enough to say, but considerably more difficult in practice.
Take the simplest black powder, everyone knew the ratio… one part charcoal, two parts saltpeter, three parts sulfur.
Yet without hundreds of trials, achieving the correct formulation remained elusive.
Moreover, given the Titanic’s massive scale, black powder would struggle to inflict serious damage.
He needed something more powerful.
Yellow powder.
The explosive invented by that alchemist Nobel.
The medications he’d asked Jack to procure were all treatments for angina pectoris.
Their basic active ingredient?
Nitroglycerin.
With minimal processing, just careful filtering, one could obtain extremely high-purity nitroglycerin.
Then, simply add a little egg white, rust, and fine sand to the nitroglycerin, stir thoroughly, mix in some plant ash, and air-dry.
The result… fearsome yellow explosive.
In the twenty-first century, anyone with internet access could discover such methods.
But in this era, this knowledge remained the closely guarded secret of major laboratories.
He had no fear of discovery, even if someone observed him, they wouldn’t comprehend what he was doing.
As for the formulas and data written in his diary?
If there happened to be a chemist proficient in reading Eastern script aboard the Titanic, well…
then he could only conclude the system was maliciously increasing the difficulty.
Initially, he’d planned to purchase explosives directly from the black market.
After learning more about what was available, however, he abandoned that approach entirely.
True, black market merchants didn’t concern themselves with legality.
And yes, those merchants possessed explosives.
But their inventory consisted of scattered black powder pellets in laughably small quantities.
Luca suspected that gathering every speck of explosive from the ship’s entire black market might barely fund a respectable fireworks display.
With that amount of black powder, he’d be lucky to scorch a hole in the Titanic’s hull plating.
One must understand, for a giant like the Titanic, the bottom steel plates alone measured five centimeters thick.
Add various structural layers, and the total thickness exceeded half a foot.
Merely burning through would accomplish nothing.
A two or three square meter hole might prove fatal for smaller vessels, but for the Titanic?
Insufficient.
The builders had anticipated water seepage, designing twenty watertight compartments specifically for this contingency.
Even if four compartments flooded, the remaining sixteen would keep the ship perfectly stable.
In the original story, the Titanic sank because the iceberg breached five compartments simultaneously.
The resulting massive water intake caused the stern to rise, eventually snapping the ship in two.
Considering this, Luca felt utterly helpless.
He rubbed his forehead wearily, this task seemed increasingly impossible.
The explosives he could manufacture might, at best, destroy two compartments.
Spread across five?
They’d likely barely scratch the steel plating.
As for collecting more materials to produce larger quantities?
Never mind whether sufficient raw materials existed aboard, he couldn’t possibly manage the workload alone.
Explosives manufacturing wasn’t brick-laying.
One slip, and he’d blow himself to kingdom come.
Even Nobel, the alchemist who perfected this formula, had essentially sacrificed his entire family in the process!
“Quinn, have you conceived some wonderful new poetry?” Watching Luca scratch his head in frustration, Rose found even his moments of consternation impossibly handsome.
Such is the nature of obsession, when someone is utterly infatuated, even watching you defecate becomes evidence of your unique magnificence.
Rose stepped lightly behind Luca, leaning in gently.
“Mr.
Quinn, I—” Caledon Hockley burst through the door without knocking, immediately encountering a scene that painted his forehead an unmistakable shade of green.
Why, exactly, was Mr.
Quinn’s head resting against his fiancée’s…
substantial assets?