Crossbow (1)
On the way here, I had walked Aunt Sophia through the principles of suspension and a whole heap of related knowledge.
By the time we reached the Principality, the way she looked at me had flipped a full hundred and eighty degrees from our first meeting.
"You really thought all of this up on your own?"
"I did."
"You really are…"
Once we arrived, the West Gate guards greeted us like old acquaintances. The captain merely poked his head out from inside the wall and flicked a lazy hand for them to let us through; the men hauled the gates open.
"Who is that guy, treating us so casually? He has to know we're from Bladewyn."
"Name's Racal. Odd one. Unless you're the head of your house or His Grace the Grand Duke, he always acts like that."
"And that's allowed?"
Wasn't the usual script that nobles would explode over treatment like that—screaming about cutting the insolent dog's head off on the spot?
"Racal is the kind of man who gets to do it. Anyway, we made good time. Bladewyn manor to the capital and we only had to swap the mana stone once."
"We've got enough left to make Vulkan without swapping again."
"While we're at Vulkan, it'd be nice to knock out a weapon or two. Auntie, can't you just ask the blacksmiths for one little favor?"
"Shut it. You think that'd fly?"
"Where's the 'Auntie loves me' energy?"
"Since when did I ever treat you like a proper nephew?"
"Tch."
I had thick skin. Still, we weren't on bad terms; she didn't look the least bit put out.
"So this is Vulkan. Whoa…"
The awe lasted about three seconds. The moment we stepped inside, a battery of stares locked onto us.
"That's the brat who messed with the Black Terrahole?"
"Looks pretty scrawny."
"Wrong guy, right? No way someone like that rebuilt a Black Terrahole!"
"You blind to the blue hair? Bladewyn written all over him!"
The heat on the first floor was a different beast from the air outside. Everywhere you looked, forges roared and muscle-bound smiths hammered away. They flexed biceps that could put bodybuilders to shame and struck poses at us—deeply uncomfortable.
"Hey, kid. Wanna work a job with me?"
"What are you on about! I'm better than that lout."
"Hahaha! Better than the lot of them, me!"
"Can it, all of you. This body is Vulkan's finest smith—"
Thwack!
Aunt Sophia cracked their skulls with her fists, and only then did the noise die. For all their bulk, they didn't dare move against her.
"You idiots… Robon, with me."
"Yes."
I followed her up to the third floor, where the magitech research labs sat. Experimental gear and apparatus filled a space so wide that dozens of researchers could live and work there without ever feeling cramped. Across the way lay the labs dedicated to mana stones.
"Every leap in mana-stone efficiency across the Principality started here. You'll not find a better method for extracting mana energy anywhere in the country."
"Impressive."
Watching the luminous mana energy pour from the extraction units made me itch to dive in and get my hands on the machines right then and there.
"Going in and touching things is off-limits, I take it?"
"Who said that?"
"Really?"
"Go ahead."
With her cool permission, I stepped straight inside.
Roughly two and a half meters tall—a little taller than me—a tower-shaped apparatus rose before me: a cylindrical core clad in muted black iron plate, capped top and bottom with glass. In the glass-enclosed center, a mana stone poured blue energy in every direction. That energy ran along conduits into a massive machine to the right.
"That's an Arcanos Separator. It liquefies the mana inside a mana stone and extracts it."
"How do you turn it into liquid?"
"It's complicated if I get into it. Simply put, it borrows the same principle mages use when they shape mana into spells."
I had skimmed something like that in a book once. Mana was the fundamental energy of all things; mages absorbed it, stored it, and converted it to cast.
"Hmm… I'm not really following."
"Of course you're not. Glance at it and understand it, and you'd be a mage yourself. I'll show you the rest. Come on."
Besides the Arcanos Separator, the third floor held an array of machines built to analyze mana energy itself.
"This one's a Mana Flow Analyzer. You set a mana stone inside, draw the mana out, and study how it moves."
"Did Vulkan build all of these?"
"…Half right, half wrong."
I tilted my head.
"Pardon?"
"We finished them from blueprints recovered at a Tesreia ruin."
If I hadn't already seen the Black Terrahole, I might not have grasped it. Several of the machines on this floor packed technology that left the Black Terrahole in the dust. It finally made a kind of sense. Still…
"Having blueprints doesn't mean you can just build them."
"…Ahem. It took a long time, yes. But if you've got the plans, you can force it somehow."
The heart of magitech was designing mana circuits, and their circuit-etching technique seemed solid enough. The real problem would be comprehension—hit even a small snag and they'd have no idea how to fix it.
"Fascinating. Are there other places researching magitech?"
"Mm… I can't swear to it, but I doubt anywhere else on this continent is as serious about magitech as Vulkan."
Pride filled her face as she said it.
"Come on. The world isn't just the Mardin Principality."
"What are you talking about? Don't tell me you think the Arken Empire or the Hyber Kingdom are researching magitech?"
"…They could be, couldn't they?"
Sophia narrowed her eyes and gave me a long, skeptical look. Had I put my foot in it?
"The Empire sneers at anything that smells like science. Magic alone is the truth of the world, as far as they're concerned. Hyber sits in their shadow and pours everything into magic; science doesn't even register. As if those people would ever advance magitech."
"But magitech is the fusion of magic and science, isn't it?"
"To them, science is heresy. Idiots."
Something ugly must have crossed her mind. She clenched her teeth and clicked her tongue under her breath.
"The Stens Coalition is at least open-minded. Somewhere over there you might find people interested in magitech—like that Hector earlier."
"Ah! Speaking of which—what if we sold our magitech goods to Hector? Stens ought to have decent demand."
"Hmm… You think so?"
"Please. Park a single Black Terrahole on their market and it'd cause a riot."
"A Black Terrahole isn't something you just knock out."
"Then we sell other things."
"…Haa. That's part of why I brought you here."
She led me into the lab and showed me the products under development.
"Mac. Come show him a few of the things you're working on."
One of the handful of researchers in the room nodded with a haggard face and waved me over.
Researchers look the same everywhere, huh.
The half-dead expression tugged at something almost like pity. It was like looking at the grad students from my old lab. Thinking back, I felt a twinge of guilt. Had I worked them too hard?
"Here it is."
He brought over a long sword. A square device set with a mana stone was fixed to the guard.
"If you look here—ah, maybe you can't see it? We etched a mana circuit into the blade and packed a heat-venting unit inside. Like so!"
He gave a light chop to a scrap of cloth laid on a steel plate. The cloth parted, edges scorched.
"A sword that burns what it cuts. For now we're calling it the Flame Sword."
He set it down with a blank face. I was so dumbfounded I had to ask again.
"…Are you serious?"
"Yes. Still in development, of course."
I shot Aunt Sophia a look. She gave an awkward little smile.
"It is still in development."
"Have you field-tested it?"
"Not yet. The costs are steep enough that we can't risk breaking it…"
I pressed a hand to my forehead. Didn't the knights around here wear full plate? What was the point of this thing?
"Show me the others."
Just in case, I decided to look at more.
"These boots boost jump height, and these greaves—press a button and blades pop out…"
The quality was so abysmal I genuinely wondered how they had ever produced a Black Terrahole. I was starting to understand why the Empire dismissed magitech entirely.
"And you're calling this development? Forget the production cost—the sword's weight balloons, durability tanks, and the actual performance is next to useless. Burn damage? Who cares? The cut already causes bleeding. And jump boots? A few clicks and those are scrap. No safety locks, either. Greaves with spring blades? You want a knee to the face?"
Frustration poured out of me in a rapid-fire catalog of every flaw. Under the barrage, Mac and Sophia flinched and started looking anywhere but at me.
"Don't even think about exports. If Hector shows up at Vulkan, do not—under any circumstances—show him the development line. Clear?"
"…If we just develop them a little further—"
"Aunt Sophia. Do you want to tank Vulkan's reputation?"
"No…"
"Then do as I say."
"All right…"
She deflated on the spot, lips pushed out in a pout.
Maybe my expectations had simply been too high.
Development, when you thought about it, was trying this and that, stumbling onto something decent, and occasionally walking away with an unexpected prize. Of the ten or so pieces I'd seen, eight were garbage and maybe two could become useful if rebuilt properly. Right now, of course, they were still garbage.
"Was that everything you wanted to show me?"
"No, not that. The springs you demonstrated this time—I think we could use them to build a much stronger bow. I've actually had something in the works."
Claiming it was her own project, she took me and Mac into her personal lab. A long wooden stock of a bow lay waiting.
This is…
She spread a blueprint, shaped clay into a spring, and held it against the bow.
"We seat a spring here to raise the bow's firing speed. And if we add a latch here, we can cut the force and time needed to reload, right?"
Her eyes lit up as she turned to me for my opinion. Mac, standing beside her, could only tilt his head in confusion.
Not a bad angle of attack.
A crossbow—also known as a mechanical bow. What she had sketched was aimed squarely at exactly that. Of course, without a full grasp of spring behavior it was still only theoretical. Plenty would need fixing. Even so, it wasn't bad. Fold in the mana-circuit techniques I'd just seen, and I had the sudden gut feeling we could build a bow that outclassed any modern crossbow.
"What? Is something off?"
"No. It's excellent."
Color flooded back into her face.
"Really?"
"Yes. And Mac—"
"Yes."
"The foundation of development is not cramming in every feature you can think of. Simple is best!! Keep it as clean and easy as possible. That way, when something breaks, you can fix it—and it breaks less often to begin with. Understood?"
"Yes."
"And for now, this should be the main line."
The mechanical bow born in the transition between bows and firearms: the crossbow.
This would make money for certain. This era favored armor built for defense, and from what I'd seen, knights could push their physical abilities to extremes with aura. Against people like that, a crossbow with the draw weight cranked as high as it would go—and the stopping power to match—might just do the job.
"Build it right, and it'll be the finest weapon in the Principality."
After offering a few more pointers, I took the Black Terrahole to the place Aunt Sophia had pointed me toward.
"Nice not having to step in filthy gutter water."
"You ride around on horses all the time—what's the difference—"
"It still splatters when you're on a horse! Do you know how disgusting that is?"
The city streets were dirtier than I'd expected. The heart of the capital was kept reasonably clean, but the outskirts were choked with refuse. Small wonder people barely walked there. Hard to tell if it was a dump or a place where humans actually lived…
Screeeech!!
We arrived at the spot Aunt Sophia had recommended. A shabby little house. Could a mage of any real standing truly live in a place like this?
"I'm going to keep the Terrahole where no one can mess with it."
"You're going in alone?"
"It's fine. Aunt Sophia vouched for him."
"I want to come too!"
"No. If this thing gets wrecked, Father will be furious."
"……Tch. Hurry back."
"I will."
If Wendy hadn't come along, I would simply have walked. Far too many eyes were already locked on the Black Terrahole in the street. But after seeing her combat strength firsthand, every last worry had evaporated.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Anyone home?"
A moment later, an answer came.
"Who's there?"
"I've come on the introduction of Lady Sophia Bladewyn."
Creak—
The door opened on the groan of old hinges. Through the gap, a middle-aged man in a pulled-up hood looked me up and down.
"Robon Bladewyn."
"What's a noble lord doing in a place like this?"
"May I come in?"
"…Very well."
Inside was not much different from outside. In the dim room he set out tea and went straight to business.
"State your business. Quickly."
"I heard you were a Sixth Circle mage. Is that true?"
"…Not anymore."
His face hardened; he drained his water in several hard gulps.
"In the past, then?"
"I said state your business quickly."
"This is important."
"…It is true."
"I have a question. Can magic temporarily amplify an object's magnetic force?"
"It can."
I let out a silent cheer. With that, the first gate on the road to my comfortable research environment had swung open.
"Would you like to come with me to Bladewyn?"