Chapter 151: The First Shot
Gawain finally spoke the name of the weapon he had been mulling over in his mind for a long time. Nicholas Egg didn’t seem to react much to the term, but Rebecca, sitting beside him, immediately brightened up. “That name sounds awesome!”
“Just because you understand it means it’s awesome?” Amber shot Rebecca a sideways glance. “How did you even manage to mash those words together like that…?”
“That’s how our ancestors do it,” Rebecca said proudly, as if boasting about her own brilliance. “They always come up with names that sound powerful even if you don’t really get what they mean. If you have a problem with it, it’s just jealousy—after all, you don’t have such impressive ancestors.”
Amber’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, no matter how impressive your ancestors are, I was the one who dug them up!”
Seeing these two about to derail the conversation again, Gawain quickly stepped between them. “Quiet, both of you! We’re here to get serious work done!”
The huge silver-white metallic sphere had been silently hovering nearby the entire time, observing. Now that the two “female humans” had finally quieted down, it calmly spoke up: “Alright, let’s talk about this ‘Thermal Ray Gun’… I can handle the parts fabrication, but I’ll need blueprints first. If the structure is simple, you can explain it to me on the spot, but it’s best to have some physical references.”
“The main components have actually already been handcrafted,” Gawain said, pulling out the magic capacitor board, mana storage crystals, the thermal ray board, and several blueprints with schematic diagrams. “Now we need to figure out how to securely combine them and design a ‘shell’ suitable for human use.” He turned to Nicholas Egg. “Egg, take a look at these. Let me explain the principle behind the Thermal Ray Gun…”
The silver giant emitted a low hum. “Why do you keep calling me ‘Egg’?”
“Don’t mind it, just imagine it as a nickname,” Gawain said with a smile. “First, let’s talk about the rune trigger placement…”
Gawain’s concept for the Thermal Ray Gun wasn’t new—it had been brewing for quite some time. In fact, ever since the crystal grenade was developed, he had been thinking about what the second weapon, one that could be widely issued to soldiers, should be.
The crystal grenade was a throwable explosive with decent power and a remarkably simple structure. After the basic machine tools were built, it had already entered small-scale production. Byron was training soldiers to get familiar with this new “magical gadget.” But the grenade had obvious limitations: throwing distance was limited by arm strength, making precise targeting nearly impossible; it required a large throwing motion and preparation time; and there was a delay before detonation.
Clearly, the soldiers needed another extraordinary weapon to complement the grenade—preferably a ranged weapon. After all, this world had already advanced far in swordsmanship and melee combat.
Gawain’s first thought was firearms, but in this world, they were extremely difficult to realize.
Without gunpowder or even steam propulsion, launching solid projectiles at high speed was a huge challenge. Gawain had tried many methods to generate instant high-temperature, high-pressure gas, but with little success. He also considered magical propulsion, like using repulsion runes to push bullets, but quickly realized that current technology couldn’t miniaturize repulsion runes enough to fit inside a gun barrel. Even if it could, a single repulsion rune’s instantaneous thrust wasn’t enough to give the projectile lethal power.
He also toyed with the idea of a “magnetic railgun,” using wind-earth hybrid runes to create an accelerating magnetic track to launch projectiles. But he soon found that there was no fast enough “control circuit” to rapidly switch the numerous rune groups on and off during acceleration. Traditional mechanical rune triggers couldn’t handle sequential activation along the entire track, and rune connections to simulate clock circuits were still a complete mystery.
The differences in physical laws made some breakthroughs easier here than on Earth, but at the same time, many things that were simple on Earth became incredibly difficult.
As for traditional bows and crossbows, Gawain had considered magically enhancing them, but no matter how much they were improved, they couldn’t meet all the requirements at once: cheap, mass-producible, rapid-fire, continuous fire, low training demand, and high potential effectiveness.
Maybe when magical industrial technology advanced further, traditional bows would come back into his plans, but not yet.
After many trials and errors, one day Gawain absentmindedly touched his hairline and suddenly had an epiphany:
Why must it be about shooting bullets?!
What triggered this realization was Rebecca bouncing past him—more specifically, a bouncing fireball launcher.
He suddenly understood where his thinking had been limited: no matter how he tried to propel solid bullets, even with magic, he was constrained by Earthly experience. Since this world already had all kinds of powerful spells, why not just set aside the idea of bullets and focus on those magical attacks?
After gathering and organizing data on various basic spells, what caught his attention was fireball launching—or rather, thermal ray projection.
Once the thermal ray board was made, he had to fight against his ingrained experience again.
What form should this new weapon take?
The group sat around a workbench in the mechanical workshop. Nicholas Egg hovered opposite them, while the boards, crystals, and blueprints lay on the table. Looking at these palm-sized hexagonal metal plates, Gawain realized that the classic gun shape from Earth wouldn’t work here.
These plates had no barrels, magazines, bolts, or chambers. Compared to the long, traditional gun shape, they were better suited to being assembled into something more like a disc.
Of course, Gawain could force them into a weird shell modeled after Earth guns, since he knew that classic shape was the result of countless years of battlefield testing: the grip made it easy to hold, the long barrel helped with aiming. But the problem was…
Considering the actual thermal ray board and the efficiency of magical energy supply, the gun’s muzzle would probably be a stack of palm-sized metal blocks. The whole weapon’s center of gravity would be at the front. Forget aiming—it might be more reliable as a war hammer.
Plus, future weapons might fire ice arrows, spherical lightning, or even unleash storms, summon elementals, or generate shields. So sticking to Earth’s classic gun shape was even less necessary.
Gawain looked at the metal boards and tried to erase all gun-related images from his mind, repeating to himself: This is a magical device. This is a magical device…
After nearly hypnotizing himself, he picked up the boards one by one and gestured on his arm. “How about we assemble them into an arm guard?”
Rebecca imagined it excitedly and grabbed Gawain’s arm. “That sounds so cool! I was just thinking about how to make these plates into a staff shape, but I never thought of this!”
Amber scoffed. “Hmph, I thought of that too—the Sleeper’s hidden blade is basically this shape. I just didn’t get a chance to say it…”
For once, Rebecca’s thinking was stuck in a rut, and Amber had outpaced her.
Nicholas Egg looked utterly confused. “What’s a hidden blade? And how do you assemble it into an arm guard? By the way, I still haven’t figured out how your hands work or what their structure is…”
Gawain gave the iron sphere a strange look and suddenly realized its biggest weakness: it was fine having it build parts from blueprints, but when it came to ergonomics, it was completely lost. Being a sphere, how could it understand how hands worked?
But that didn’t matter. Gawain quickly sent someone to fetch an arm guard, then sketched out his idea while explaining to Nicholas Egg: “Like this—put the thermal ray board at the front, the magic capacitor at the back, connected by a red copper conduit for mana flow. The rune trigger control can extend from the side of the arm guard as a metal wire, pulled by the thumb. Of course, to prevent accidental firing, we’ll add a safety similar to the crystal grenade’s between the capacitor and the thermal ray board. That’s the safest setup…”
“Simple, simple,” Nicholas Egg buzzed, bobbing up and down. “Any other requirements?”
Amber chimed in, “Don’t make the arm guard one solid piece. The lower part should be adjustable for tightness.”
Gawain glanced at her in surprise. She rolled her eyes. “Don’t think I’m clueless—I’ve used hidden blades before.”
“Alright, alright, your suggestion is useful,” Gawain said with a wry smile, then nodded to Nicholas Egg. “Let’s start with this. The main thing is to get a prototype and see if it works. We’ll know what to improve after testing.”
Nicholas Egg emitted a low hum, and nearby metal ingots and the two boards on the table floated up. “Leave it to me! It’ll be done in no time!”
The iron sphere was right. With low precision requirements and only a few components to process, the metal ingots and boards were shaped and assembled in less than a minute.
The result was an unremarkable, even somewhat bulky arm guard by traditional standards.
To fit the rune boards inside the protective shell and leave room for the rune trigger to move, the assembled Thermal Ray Gun made the arm guard at least twice as thick as a normal one. Its upper half bulged into an elliptical shape, with an opening at the front. Below the opening was a small metal guard—that was the safety device. When slid back in, mana flow was cut off, allowing the user’s hand to move freely and preventing the gun from firing. When pulled out, the Thermal Ray Gun was ready to fire, but the user’s hand was restricted from bending upward, preventing accidental burns from the scorching beam.
As a first prototype, it wasn’t exactly elegant, but Gawain still felt a surge of excitement as he strapped the bulky arm guard onto his arm and adjusted the fit.
He flipped open the safety at the front, slipped a metal ring onto his thumb for firing, and pointed the arm guard’s front toward the ground ahead.
Nicholas Egg rotated slightly, and a dark gray metal ingot floated over, landing where Gawain was aiming.
“How many soldiers do we have in our territory now?” Gawain asked Rebecca casually as he took aim.
Rebecca thought for a moment. “The new recruits we’ve been training haven’t graduated yet, so they don’t count as knights. If we only count the combat soldiers… that makes one hundred and six.”
Gawain pulled the trigger on the mechanism. With a soft “pfft,” a scorching beam of light shot out from his arm armor, striking the metal ingot on the ground directly. The small explosion triggered by the magic caused it to tumble and roll several times, scattering sparks and shards of metal along the way.
By the time it came to a stop, the surface was glowing bright red, with a deep crater melted right into it.
“So, we have one hundred and six second-tier supernaturals capable of using the Scorching Ray.”
(Recommended read: My Daughter is a Ghost Official — a lighthearted, imaginative story about raising a daughter. Perfect for curing a reading slump. Come to think of it, does this count as a ‘dad raising a mischievous kid’ genre…?)
(End of chapter)