Chương 33: Fire and Steel.

Her newly-crafted workbenches lay before her, made from heat-resistant wood and stone, an anvil and some kind of circular mold castings. Uh, how do I do this exactly? She tugged on [Shellwright] and got no response. She pulled again. Nothing. That would be because it's still level one. Ok well, they have to be kind of circular right? I'll just fill these molds with metal.

"Try not to kill yourself while forging, let your blood guide your hands." Talvik suggested. She scowled. What blood? Let me do my damn shit, stupid bird. She heated the forge, feeling the room swell with heat and smoke, the too-small chimney already failing to clear the air. More heat. She fed the furnace yet again, log after log, until it was radiating power throughout the room. The iron was heated, turning to liquid. She lifted and carefully poured it into the cast. Oh shit shit shit.

Half the iron poured out onto the table.

"FUCK IT!" She screamed, trying to hold the tongs correctly.

"No no no no". She poured out the rest of it, threw the tongs on the ground and tried scraping the semi-molten iron off the table with a shovel.

"Yes yes yes yes" the shovel scooped up most of the iron, she moved to dump it back in the scrap pile. Thank Kronan I managed to get it off the table before it cooled. It was stuck to the shovel.

"Shit shit shit. Lance is going to kill me." She kicked the end of the shovel. Again and again, until the iron clump dislodged and went tumbling off. Alright, again, I have to try again. I can't show anyone this, I'll die of embarrassment. She turned back to the forge. The sound of boots on stone came from behind. She swiveled to face the door. Rowen was standing there, unabashedly looking down on her, as if she was some rat. The shovel dropped.

"Look, I have never done this before, ok, and that iron? It was bad quality, really bad quality, I was just disposing of it, nasty iron really. No good at all." She stammered. He walked straight up to her face. Then grabbed the tongs, scooped up the piece of iron, and started reheating it.

"The iron is fine, you just suck at blacksmithing." he remarked flatly. In short order, Rowen had the cast cleared out and a new batch of iron ready to go. He steadily poured out a new cast, shoving a ball of salt straight into the middle as he closed the casts on each other.

"There, we just need to wait for it to cool, then get the salt out and we can fill it with powder or alchemicals." He explained, wiping sweat from his brow. Shellwright (lvl 1 > 2) Heat Resistance (lvl 1 > 2) Two levels… not bad, if I put up with this prick maybe I can get something done. They sluiced the salt out of the cooled molten shell, washing it into a ditch.

"So, have you even tested this yet? Do you have something with which to launch this? What are you filling the shell with?" Rowen asked, fiddling with the now-empty core. And Nythera didn't have answers.

"Well I have this cannon construct and I think maybe I could load these shells into it? I don't know what to fill the shell with, something explosive? Very explosive maybe?" Nythera looked away sheepishly. Rowen sighed.

"Can't do anything right, ok I'll go get the blasting powder, we can start with that." They carefully filled the shell with gunpowder and capped it off.

"Alright lets go, forge the next one." Rowen commanded.

"We don't have all day to dally." This fucking guy. I; m going to use him as target practice later… I do need to test the lethality of the shells after all. Nythera filled the next mold, holding the tongs steady.

"Now put the core in." Rowen said and held out the salt ball. No, I don't think I will. Nythera reached beneath her cloak, craning her neck at odd angles to see the interface, and then clicked on [Quartz Piece]. A small chunk of quartz popped into her hand. Well it's not really circular… I'm sure it'll be just fine. She plunked the jagged piece down in the center and slapped the molds together.

"What do you think you're doing? What is that?" Rowen snapped. Nythera stared back at him… from his shoulder height.

"It's a better core, trust me." She answered, not breaking from his gaze. He snorted, "we'll see, try not to waste too much iron, we don't have much left after you blew up Rustreach." and sulked off to a corner, watching her work. Nythera forged yet another shell, and another, and another, all with quartz cores. If this doesn't work, I'm going to look so stupid. Shellwright (lvl 2 > 4) Heat Resistance (lvl 2 > 3) Her blood flowed, she no longer felt the heat of the forge.

The metal couldn't melt fast enough to keep up with her, she melted down sword after sword, scrap after scrap, and churned out shells at a maddened pace. Her blood boiled, this was where she was meant to be. The forge. Twenty shells sat before her, a single shell was filled with blasting powder, nineteen were filled with bits of quartz.

"If you kept this up for five more years, you might actually make a decent smith." Rowen spat. Was that supposed to be a compliment?

"I want to get a hold of some more substances to test shells with, maybe have Edwin put together some poisonous cores, and maybe try something with more flux density." Nythera said, examining the powder core shell. This blasting powder barely has any flux at all. She scowled. She could feel her blood cooling off, the fury of the forge leaving her. Rowen examined her newly crafted shells "Barely passable, but we shall see at the testing site if you wasted the iron or not."

He scooped them up into a sack and led the way out of the forge. Wow, those are heavy, his Strength must be pretty high for him to do that so easily.

"Where are we going? The testing site? Is it far?" she asked.

"Yes, the testing site, the last thing we want is Grandport blowing up again." Rowen replied. They made their way through winding roads and out into the countryside. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Clear, harvested fields lay before them. In several, newly sprouted Geldgrain was already growing. Huh, so they can harvest multiple times in a year? There's no winter?

"Myrraval does not experience winter, although some of the mountains do get snow caps, the fields are bountiful year-round except in Gods' Wrath." Rowen read her mind. Is he… a mind reader? She glanced at him with a look of disgust, she had heard tales of plenty of despicable nobles who used mind-abilities for… disgusting ends.

"What? What's wrong?" He asked, stammering. Within the hour, they reached a wooded area surrounded by fields, Talvik soaring above them, scanning for trouble.

"The farmers have given us permission to blow this to smithereens, or maybe dent it a bit, depending on the efficacy of your shells." he said. She brought forth her Aether Culverin a few yards outside the area. As the spell formed, she intercepted and yanked on the flux forming the shell. I don't think so! I should be able to stop the shell from forming so I can load my own in. The half-formed shell wobbled, then broke apart. And detonated.

Nythera was thrown back several meters, her cannon contained most of the blast, but was completely annihilated in the process. Dirt flew everywhere as a small, smoking crater was blown into the earth. She glared at her failed cannon. Rowen laughed.

"This is the so-called "Sinker of Ships"?" he tried to stop his laughter to no avail. He's not even trying to hide it, just pretending to. She glared at him. We shall see what you say in a minute. The next time, Nythera intercepted the shell formation earlier, unthreading it before it could properly form a shape. The flux leaked out of the barely, dissipating into the air. A shame to waste so much flux. She took the blasting-powder shell and loaded it from the front of the barrel.

Both Rowen and Nythera backed up several paces.

"FIRE!" She commanded. The cannon roared to life. A high pitch whistle pierced the air and several trees at the front were engulfed in an explosion. That was… anti-climatic, that's not even as potent as my regular flux shells. Nythera loaded one of the quartz shells in and then ran back to Rowen.

"FIRE!" She yelled. … What the fuck happened to it?

"FIRE!" She yelled again. … Rowen sneered "I did not realize it was possible to have skill constipation.".

"You're the only one constipated around here, my cannon is an incredibly complex flux construct, if one of thirty factors go wrong, it won't operate properly." She huffed. Nythera peered into her cannon, looking past layer after layer of interwoven flux. Huh. The blasting chamber had no propellant, no flux, no concentrated material. The shell forms… along with the flux "blasting powder", without the shell formation there's nothing to launch it. Nythera pulled on her skill, feeling for the reload trigger.

There it is! She tugged on it, gently. Flux drained from her pool, the same forty flux that it always drew. This time, she fought back, pushing the flux that would have formed the shell into the propellant chamber. Her head squeezed, as if being crushed between two walls. The more she yanked on the flux, the more her head compressed. I need to end this, now! Gripping both sides of her head she shoved the last of the flux into the blasting chamber and loosened her grip. Blood dripped from her nose.

That was not the goal… I was just trying to prime the propellant, not redirect all the flux from the shell into the blast chamber. Shit. She wiped the blood from her nose and ran back to Rowen. He gave her a curious look, but she ignored him.

"FIRE!" she shouted. The cannon thundered to life. The shell shot forward into the tree line, but before she could even focus on that. The cannon exploded. The flux-construct shattered, dissolving into the ambient flux almost instantly. The forest patch erupted, chunks of wood exploded out of trees at random. She and Rowen ducked down, wood shrapnel flying overhead.

"Are things always so chaotic around you? Can you not even control your own skills?" Rowen hissed.

"Shut up, it was an experiment, sometimes experiments… have accidents." She replied. Nythera got up and went to survey her destruction. The cannon itself had left a sizable crater of tossed dirt and scorch marks. I'm going to have to try to push that flux somewhere else, if I did this with hyperflux, me and Rowen might not even be alive anymore. The tree forest patch was now the shattered tree forest patch. Nythera destroyer of forests, can't wait for my new title. Giddiness rose up in her.

The shell had exceeded expectations. Trees had been blasted to pieces, random chunks of them had exploded into shards of wood. Very little was left standing. If I unleashed this in a closed space? Everything would fucking die, shit, the roof would probably come down too. Rowen caught up with her.

"Say, Nythera, how many times can you launch this skill? The damage is a bit more than I had anticipated, almost worth being called a proper skill." He looked away, but the hunger for an answer was painfully obvious in his eyes.

"Hundreds of times, less if I have to constantly reform the cannon, more if I can figure out how to stop wasting so much flux on every shot and use the pre-built shells." She said nonchalantaly, as if the answer was irrelevant.

"Hundreds? Hundreds of… this?" he gestured around to the clearing… well what had become a clearing. She nodded. Seeing the aghast look on his face alone had been worth coming all the way out here.

"I'm going to need way more shells… maybe there's a way to further refine the quartz before we use it? Having random blasts of flux could get people killed… And what about the potential for alchemical cores? I need to go talk to Edwin…" Nythera mused as she walked around her blast field. Rowen stumbled behind her.

"Ok Rowen, let's go back, I need you to get me more metal, and can you bring Edwin to the workshop? They made quick time back to town, the sun now setting against the mountains. At some point Talvik came to perch on her shoulders. She squinted. Is he happy? Is that a look of approval? She could swear there was an approving look in his eyes. Nythera hit the forge hard, a new idea rolling through her skull.

The shells she had made before were about the same size as the ones the spell naturally formed, but with that much blasting force, she could launch much larger shells. The tube of the culverin was big enough for a shell nearly twice the length, and if she refined the point on the shell she might be able to increase the penetrative force. She set about the workshop as if possessed.

"Rowen, get me paper.".

"Rowen I need measurement tools and material to make new casts, now please." She ignored everything around her, turning Rowen into nothing more than a delivery boy. He whispered not a word. At one point Borris entered "I hear you need a new cast and that it had to be done today. No need to rush so much.". Nythera silenced him with a glare and he got about devising a new mold to her specifications. At one point someone moved a bed into the forge, why, she wasn't sure.

"Borris, when you're done with the cast, here's twenty chunks of quartz, I want you to refine them into disks, as dense as possible with width appropriate to the shell." she moved back over her to her design bench and waved away a system notification.

"Rowen, fetch Edwin and tell him to bring a list of all lethal alchemicals he has." she ordered without so much as turning her head. The gas shells will be effective everywhere I need to worry about ceilings… but I may need a mask of some sort to avoid killing myself in enclosed space. The large shells will be highly effective anywhere with no roof. I can't wait to see what they do when they impact a ship, but I am worried about accuracy. Ugh.

Nythera hammered her way through design after design, approved Borris' new shell casts and was mid-process with modelling a new potential shell with scrap metal when Edwin slipped in.

"Nythera, I heard you were in a frenzy, I've brought over a list of alchemicals, but I'm concerned about the effect some of these could have." Edwin said, reaching for a teacup that wasn't there. It pained her, but she turned away from her most recent designs to face him.

"This is war, Edwin, if we don't win, we die. Or worse. Do you want to be a slave? To Damien?" She stared at him, unwaveringly.

"No, but alchemicals are incredibly dangerous, some of the things on the list could affect the surroundings for years, surely you recognize the danger." he pleaded.

"I'm not trying to salt the earth, sift through that list and find me the best options for our task, I want fast-acting deadly air-based toxins. The bigger the area, the better." she said..

"Milord, The attempts at refining the quartz succeeded, is this up to your specifications?" Borris approached with a flattened disk of white quartz, the edges rounded.

"That remains to be seen, I need … how about four more for the large shell and then we will run a test." Nythera said. Hours later and after two failed casting attempts, a huge shell sat in front of Borris and Nythera. The tip sharpened to a dull point, it would barely even fit in her culverin. Next to it sat two smaller shells with alchemical mixes Edwin had brought over. Six failed attempts at pouring had caused workshop evacuations. Can I even fit this in Boxy?

I don't want to lug around massive shells on my back… Rowen rounded up several factory workers, it was well past shift, but people were interested in seeing what the new Lord had been up to. Before long they were on a path to a different forested patch, several workers in tow carrying shells on carts. Nythera watched as one worker handled the huge projectile like it was nothing. Must be nice, having tons of strength and endurance…

She brought forth her culverin, redirecting the shell energy, this time keeping all of it in the culverin. The worker loaded the shell in very, very carefully.

"Back up, I don't want to blow anyone up if this goes wrong." Nythera commanded. Everyone including herself backed up well away from the Culverin and patch of trees. They had angled the cannon upwards, to a near vertical tilt, so the shell would be lobbed and fall straight down. She breathed in.

"FIRE!"