Chapter 309: The Railgun Accelerator

Gawain always had a habit of blurting out strange phrases and words. Sometimes, even if the words made sense to others, when they came out of his mouth, they’d be jumbled into something nearly incomprehensible. Amber had long since gotten used to this, and her way of dealing with his cryptic sentences was simple—she just stopped trying to make sense of them.

“Just tell me what this thing is,” Amber rolled her eyes. “A new magitech device? An alchemical apparatus? Or that weapon you mentioned last time?”

“Neither magitech nor alchemy reports would carry the military engineering department’s seal,” Gawain said with a smile, pointing to the header on the report. Then he stood up. “Come on, let’s go see this brand-new weapon.”

At the weapons testing range on the southern bank of the Baishui River, preparations were already complete.

What was handed to Gawain was a report indicating the finished product had been fully assembled and was awaiting the lord’s inspection. Along with the report, Hetty had already ordered the mechanical research institute and the weapons testing personnel to prepare for the first trial. By the time Gawain and Amber arrived, the area had been cordoned off by soldiers from the Cecil Combat Legion, and residents in the city’s northeast district had been notified in advance about the weapon test—new equipment from Lord Cecil’s forces often came with loud explosions, so prior warning was standard procedure.

This was a weapon Gawain had high hopes for, and it had been fast-tracked as an “urgent priority” project after the second defense of Cecil. Naturally, it attracted a lot of attention. Almost everyone involved in its development or qualified to observe had gathered on site, including Knights Byron and Philip, technical leads like Jenny, Kamail, and Nicholas, and of course Hetty and Rebecca.

That’s how it was in the early days of a startup—just a handful of top-tier team members, often cross-helping each other due to limited manpower. So whenever there was a major breakthrough, everyone showed up to witness it.

As soon as Gawain appeared, Rebecca came running over excitedly. “Ancestor! Ancestor! The ‘Artillery of Art’ you wanted is ready!”

Last time, when Gawain had casually mentioned to the “silly stag” that “explosions are art,” this girl had taken it quite literally…

Gawain ruffled Rebecca’s hair and then turned his gaze to the war machine that had just been rolled off the assembly platform.

It was huge, with a three-meter-long acceleration rail and nearly two meters tall. Its shape closely resembled the theoretical model Gawain had built in the “simulation arena,” but with significant differences in detail.

There were four parallel metal rails arranged in a cross pattern fixed to the base: two acceleration rails and two directional rails designed to stabilize the projectile’s trajectory and reduce friction. Unlike the virtual model, this entire acceleration-direction structure had been reinforced with three sturdy steel “fixing rings” binding the rails together. From the glowing magical runes etched on these rings, it seemed they also helped dissipate waste energy and reduce magical interference.

The whole acceleration assembly was mounted on a roughly triangular base covered in steel plates. Though still a prototype, Nicholas’s powerful metal control skills had made the base look precise and well-crafted. Along its sides, faintly glowing lines of mana-conductive material traced intricate patterns. At the rear were control levers and handles. Where the triangular base connected to the acceleration structure, Gawain noticed massive gears and shafts—clearly mechanisms for adjusting the rail’s elevation angle.

“I redesigned the adjustment mechanism based on your blueprints and suggestions,” Nicholas’s voice, tinged with metallic resonance, floated from his spherical form. “Now it can adjust pitch over a wider range. The base also reserves a rotating plate to connect with the gun mount, allowing the entire cannon to rotate freely. We added the ‘cannon sight’ you mentioned to the upper positioning rails. Besides that, Kamail redesigned the rune layout on the acceleration rails to better release waste energy, which should extend the rail’s overall lifespan.”

Gawain glanced at Kamail, thinking to himself that the ancient mage really did have a fixation on “service life”…

“These are the ‘shells’ it fires,” Kamail said, seeming to guess what Gawain was thinking. Breaking the silence, he used his plastic mana hand to bring a metal magitech device from nearby over to Gawain. “I prepared both inert test rounds and fully armed live rounds—except the explosives are replaced with equal-weight gravel, the test and live rounds are identical in every other way. This is the test round.”

Gawain looked down. The magic-based projectile was completely different from the cylindrical, conical shells he remembered from Earth.

It wasn’t a cylinder with a pointed tip, but more like a small, oddly shaped obelisk.

The projectile’s body was rectangular, with indentations on the top and bottom to fit the directional rails in the accelerator. The front and rear ends resembled tiny golden pagodas, etched with “Wind’s Blessing” runes that were currently dim—obviously, it wasn’t charged.

There was no visible mana conduction structure connected inside the shell.

“Where does the energy for the wind runes come from?” Gawain asked curiously.

“It charges during acceleration inside the rail,” Kamail explained. “Since shells are consumables, we have to save costs. The wind runes only need to keep the shell flying for a few dozen seconds after activation, so there’s no need for an independent power source. For a basic level-one spell effect, adding some crystal dust to the materials when drawing the runes gives the array basic energy storage. The energy accumulated inside the array is enough to power the magic for about a minute.”

Gawain was a bit surprised. “That’s a clever idea—was it yours?”

“I wish it were, but it was Rebecca’s,” Kamail said humbly, shifting aside to let Rebecca step forward. “I have to admit, your descendant’s talent for invention is enviable.”

Rebecca immediately beamed with pride, practically grinning from ear to ear. “I got the idea from your mana capacitor! By adding extra mana conduction structures to the acceleration rail, diverting some energy from the gun mount, and treating the crystal-dusted runes on the shell as weak mana storage crystals, the whole acceleration rail becomes an open mana capacitor. Although the shell spends only a short time in the rail, combined with the contact during loading, the charging process is more than enough!”

Gawain understood immediately and thought it made perfect sense—only someone like Rebecca, who had grown up in lean times, would always put his teaching of “compress costs to enable mass production” first. Kamail, living in a wealthy era, could never have come up with such cost-cutting ingenuity. Back in the days of the Gondor Empire, those nobles wouldn’t have batted an eye at carving a whole chunk of blue crystal just to make one shell…

Gawain praised Rebecca a little, making her so happy she started giggling foolishly. Then he turned to the soldiers standing by the railgun. “We’ll discuss technical details later. I’m eager to see how it performs. Let’s start with the test rounds.”

“That’s the proper procedure,” Kamail said, sending the test rounds to the soldiers with his plastic mana hand.

Following the newly learned operating procedures, the soldiers immediately began loading the massive war machine.

They opened the loading port on the side of the gun mount, pushed the shell inside, used a ramrod to secure it onto the rails, then closed the port, adjusted the acceleration rail’s angle, and activated the overload charging structure—officially called Rebecca’s enhancement module.

The mana lines on the gun mount gradually brightened, followed by the runes along the acceleration rails. A strange, low humming sound began to resonate.

Another soldier stood at the rear side of the mount, hand on the firing lever.

Knight Byron gave the order: “Fire!”

The soldier pulled the lever.

The shell was pushed into the acceleration section by the base’s repulsion mechanism, then rapidly accelerated by a series of repulsion runes. All the sounds merged into a sharp blast, accompanied by the acceleration rail violently recoiling within the base. A shining metal device, wrapped in a pale cyan vortex, shot out of the rail, whistling sharply as it soared into the clear sky.

Compared to traditional cannons that relied on gunpowder explosions to propel shells, this railgun’s sound was much quieter. But the sudden blast still startled Rebecca and Hetty—Jenny even gasped softly and belatedly covered her ears.

A few seconds later, on a distant hillside serving as the target, Gawain saw a sudden plume of smoke and dust rise.

He smiled. “If the gun’s working fine, let’s try live rounds—it’ll be more straightforward.”

Technicians from the mechanical research institute immediately stepped forward to inspect the railgun. Soon, a report came back: “Rail status is good! Charging and overload structures are functioning well! All moving parts are securely connected!”

“Load live rounds!”

The soldiers repeated the loading process, this time pushing a live round loaded with dozens of kilograms of Rebecca’s crystals into the acceleration rail.

Knowing how much noise her crystals could make, Rebecca immediately ducked behind Hetty, who instinctively moved behind Gawain. Amber observed their reactions carefully, analyzing the situation calmly—ready to slip into the Shadow Realm if things went south.

Then, the railgun fired again.

Another sudden blast, and a small obelisk-like metal device wrapped in pale cyan energy shot out of the rail. Even Gawain and Kamail could barely keep up with its flight path. The shell didn’t explode immediately after leaving the barrel; its body and fuse mechanism held up under the test. The projectile arced through the air in a long parabola, and after several dozen seconds, it slammed heavily into the distant hillside.

A thunderous explosion followed, like a crack of lightning. Countless rocks and soil were hurled into the air, and a fiery blast of magical energy erupted skyward.

Amber, who had been ready to dive into the Shadow Realm, froze in place.

She stared blankly at the smoke and debris cloud enveloping the hillside, with a massive fireball rising above it, and suddenly understood what Gawain had meant by “negotiation tactics.”

If anyone ever tried to negotiate with her using this thing, she’d cooperate without hesitation…

(End of chapter)