I woke up in my bed, my memory hazy and foggy from yesterday’s… idea. I gripped my right shoulder with my left hand as I looked at my right hand in amazement. I clearly remembered the pain of it being cut off, the taste of vomit still stained my mouth as my headache. The most annoying thing was
“Grrrrrr”
I was famished. I got out of bed with what felt like the worst hangover ever as I was about to leave my room, I looked at the window at the far side, it was dawn, but it was still young. I sighed as I deemed it was too early to cook and I didn’t know if this world had the concept of snacks, but I tamped down my hunger as I walked to the desk with the book I had left there for the last day.
‘Mana crystals and utilizations of Mana crystals’
I chuckled at the title of the book, it sounded like a case study more than an actual book. I looked to the side of the desk that had the 4 bags of necessary items I would need. I took a deep breath as I began to put clothes in the dresser across from my bed, and arranged writing supplies and paper on the seat. A few necessary books on the bookshelf and other such needed things to make this room feel more homey.
“Sigh…”
I let out a deep breath as I ran my hand against the wooden desk with my right hand. I looked at it as if it were unfamiliar as I still had faint memories of staring at it across the training ground as the dirt slowly was dyed red.
“I probably passed out from pain…”
I mumbled as I began thinking back to the fights yesterday. Mana could wait, I didn’t have a weapon now. I could use a staff of swords, all I could use was my fists. I roughly ran my hand down my face as I tried to think of some weapon I could use. Guns were out of the question, I could use them but had yet to figure how to make them. Consumables were an option, grenades and the like, but that was a bandaid on a dam, destined to fail. I taped my fingers on my desk as I tried to think of a solution, then, several weapons came to mind as I smirked
Rose’s POV:
We all sat at the table like usual, Mark had been asleep for about 36 hours at this point, and we all were beginning to worry.
“What… if he couldn’t deal with healing because he…”
Lance had been mumbling to himself for a while now. We checked on him every two hours but he had just been bundled up, sleeping without a care in the world. As a buzzer rang Tetra got up from the table she spoke
“I’ll check on him.”
I and Lance nodded, we all assumed he would be fine, but after 16 hours we all had a question
‘What I’d because he lacked mana and aura, healing wouldn’t work?’
Before I could follow this rabbit hole of a question again I heard Tetra shout
“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN AWAKE!?”
Me and Lance looked at each other before darting down the hallway, we all three looked at Mark who was sitting at his desk with a pen in hand as he looked at us in confusion
“It’s morning? I slept… 12 hours at most.”
“36.”
Lance replied, he looked at us as we stared at him. He pulled out that black slab again and stared at it before looking back at us with a tight-lipped smile
“I didn’t hear anyone so didn’t want to wake you…”
He spoke with a regretful tone as we all sighed
“What do you want to eat?”
Tetra asked and he shrugged
“If it’s edible, I’ll eat it.”
Tetra nodded as she hurried to the kitchen, Lance looked him over once as he asked
“What are you doing?”
There were pieces of paper scattered all across the floor, he looked around as he shook his head
“Trying to come up with a design to make a weapon to artificially cast magic. I’m struggling with the firing pin as I’m limited in the knowledge needed like how to make a bored barrel and such. How do I make a repeating motion, does magic have functional recoil, can I use gunpowder as an external source to power a bullet made of mana crystal? If I can, will the mana crystal blow up or just shatter?”
He sighed as he looked at us, I stared at him blankly from behind Lance but he smiled bitterly as he spoke
“That’s what I’ve been working on for the last hour and a half,.. how to make a gun without knowing the limits of what I can and can’t do…”
He sighed deeply as he got up from the desk. He grabbed 2 scolded pieces of paper and tucked them into his pocket as he spoke
“I have 2 ideas, one for a proof of concept for a gun, one for a melee weapon for me.”
As we walked to the kitchen Lance asked
“What’s a gun?”
I had to agree with him, such a weapon’s name didn’t exist so I was curious about why it was. He took a second to think before explaining
“It’s a weapon that used an explosive of some sort to fire a projectile down a barrel… that’s… the best I can explain it… but it’s…”
He took a deep breath
“It’s complicated… I know what it is and what it does and how it works but I don’t know how to put it into words for you to understand…”
He sighed
“And that’s why this is a proof of concept…”
He held a scroll-like piece of paper
“It’s a blow gun, but I have no clue if it will work, if it does, I can explain guns to a much greater level.”
“Can we see it?”
I asked but saw his face contort into many expressions before he shook his head
“One thing I don’t want is to let these things leak to the public. I've made the blueprints in such a way that I can give the parts to 2-4 blacksmiths and assemble the thing myself, but… if this were to leak to the public…”
He shook his head as he sighed
“One thing I don’t want is to revolutionize this world's weapons… I… don’t wanna know what could happen if you made a magic-powered nuke, or a particle accelerator into a weapon.”
His face was bitter and we were quiet when Tetra asked
“I’m guessing that… you jokes about weapons from your world being able to destroy a city in a second weren’t jokes, were they?”
He shook his head
“Nukes… are simple or complicated, technically, I could make one… if I had the supplies… but I wouldn’t survive the blast with what I would make.”
He looked at the ceiling as he spoke
“But the smaller ones leveled cities… islands were for the larger ones. And that’s just the larger ones that were tested and known about…”
I felt a chill run down my spine, in some regards, someone who knew how to make weapons was an outstanding help, on the other side, if he had that level of knowledge it would be a double-sided blade. I realized why he was being cautious about his knowledge before I asked
“Was war all your world was?”
He smirked
“No, but right now it’s mainly what I can think about. We… We were civilized for the most part. But, when you come to a new world and the first thing you are told is ‘Hey, we’re at war, we need help’ you are going to start thinking how to survive.”
His smirk vanished as he looked back up at the ceiling
“I do have to wonder if other weapons I know would work. Acids, thermite, nitroglycerin, napalm… what about cryogenics?”
As he began to mumble words that I couldn’t understand he sighed again before he asked
“Today, we can just… take it a bit easy?”
He spoke uneasily, I nodded
“You didn’t cope well with the pain.”
He nodded as he grabbed his shoulder, Lance looked guilty but soon Mark smirked
“That hunk of metal you used, what do you call it?”
“My sword?”
Lance asked but Mark shook his head
“It’s too big to be a sword… is it a magic item or.”
“Nope.”
Lance spoke
“It’s custom made but I needed a large weapon to use as an alternative just in case.”
Marie stared blankly before asking
“How much does it weigh?”
“It’s 140 lbs so it can cleave through anything!”
Tetra exclaimed, she always liked Lance's sword as it’s one of the few weapons she struggled to deal with in battle but Mark looked at her with a smirk
“You don’t say? Wish I could know what that’s like.”
Mark’s words seeped with sarcasm causing me to chuckle as the other two froze still making me laugh even harder. Mark smirked as he spoke
“I’m teasing, my arm being cut off was my decision, plus, it’s better to know that I’ll sleep for 36 hours after such a large injury rather than in some important situation or something.”
The other’s nodded but Lance’s face was still a bit pale, Mark also noticed this as he smirked
“If you still feel guilty about this, just know that when it comes to a weapons power test, it’s better to hit a more durable target, so you can look forward to my payback.”
I raised an eyebrow in a quizzical look as I asked
“Exactly how powerful of a weapon do you plan to make? You’ve said that you don’t want to make those so-called ‘nukes’ but what about other weapons?”
He sat there for a moment, thinking in depth before saying
“I’ll limit myself to guns and handheld explosives… assuming that… maybe… theoretically… it depends on the weapon made… rail guns were the weapons with the most penetrating power but we never weaponized a particle accelerator to my knowledge… let’s just go with an anti-material rifle and say about 1 yard of stone would be vaporized… but I don’t know, physics wasn’t my strong suit…”
I took a moment to think about his words, he casually spoke of a weapon capable of performing something of that level but also hinted that he knew of weapons that would put that to shame. He shook his head before looking at us and smirking
“Those kinds of weapons, I would need a lot of time to set up, the most I can make is a shotgun or elephant rifle.”
He let out a sigh as he spoke
“If metal is fast enough, can it pierce your defenses?”
He looked at Lance who quirked a brow
“I can become more durable, not invincible. I can still take damage.”
Mark nodded his head again before sighing
“Well… we will see if my stupid ideas are good or bad sooner or later.”
At his words, Tetra spoke
“Well, food is done so I can finally join this conversation. Sounds like your world focused on ranged weapons rather than melee, but were there any fun melee weapons?”
Mark laughed as he grabbed the pancakes Tetra made after me and Lance had grabbed a few ourselves. As he pondered the question in his distracted state of mind I couldn’t help but wonder more about him and his world. Soon, he spoke
“Not really? Maybe like… tri-blade knife things but here’s a question for you Tetra? Would you use a spear against an enemy that can take your head off from 500 yards away?”
She was silent as he shrugged
“Melee weapons fell off as soon as we made guns, no point in swinging metal around if you can chuck it at the speed of sound for hundreds of yards.”
“How does a gun work exactly?”
Lance spoke, it was a weapon we were all curious about as he had brought it up a few times. He took a second to think about his answer before speaking
“Using something called gunpowder, we create a small explosion behind a piece of metal inside a large tube of metal. This allows the gas from the explosion to increase the speed of that piece of metal in front of it to create a projectile that goes fast. If I remember correctly… some cannon designs even fired 60-pound cannon balls…”
We were silent for a moment before I asked
“Why did your civilization rely on explosives so much? From transportation to weapons?”
He looked at me with a blank expression as he asked
“Why do you guess really on mana so much?”
Before I could speak Terra spoke
“Because we know how it works and can… utilize it.. for various means…”
“Bingo.”
He snapped before pointing at her with a smirk
“We knew how they worked, modify how an explosion works and you can use it in many ways… but it took hundreds of years of trial and error so…”
He laughed
“But we don’t have that type of time I’m guessing so I’ll just make guns and bombs, scrap cars and plans, and not even going to attempt helicopters.”
He laughed at his own words
“How the heck do those even work?”
He asked the air, breakfast was silent, I kept my eye on Mark, making sure everything was fine, but much to my surprise and horror, he ate 3 pancakes in 2 minutes. I began to wonder if I needed to worry more about him choking rather than him figuring out how to fight. When he finished he got up and brought his dishes to the kitchen as he began to clean them. I looked at the other two who looked at me with the same expression of surprise as he spoke from the kitchen behind me
“It was good, but I eat fast. My bad.”
He chuckled as he spoke
“I was just really hungry.”
I then realized he had been asleep for 36 hours after receiving a copious amount of healing, normally the hunger from healing isn’t bad, even for major wounds a few meals and a few days rest but that’s because they can normally eat immediately after being injured, he must have been suffering the equivalent of a weeks worth of starvation, and with those thoughts, he ate quite slow. After he finished washing his plate and silverware, he sat back at the table with us. Breakfast was quite normal, we cracked jokes, he teased Lance about how his sword was too big, and Lance jabbed him about his hair being a mess. I smiled as I realized that he had fit into our group perfectly.
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