Chapter 11: Welcome to the World, Aurelia

A/N: Took the poor man 12 chapters to get his first gun. Things are slow when there's no convenient System to get you stuff, huh? On an unrelated note, my g****e search history now looked like that of a gun nut's after all that gun manufacturing research~

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Whoosh! Another 3 years passed me in a blink of an eye. Unfortunately, I’d be lying if I said it had been 3 good years. As it turned out, Stanfur’s forge-smithy specialized in Knight armor, especially for noble brats, so my plan to keep my head down and avoid them crashed and burned big time. Luckily, I hadn’t offended any of them enough to want to kill me.

Shockingly, working at Stanfur’s actually made me miss my old job. The hours were demanding, and my middle class colleagues were openly contemptuous of the peasant orphan who came from nothing. Hell, at least my old managers had the decency to hide their contempt. And don’t get me started on the clientele. At this point, I was almost looking forward to a pitched battle against those smug bastards down the road. I’d love to teach them the truth: before the .45 Auto hollow-point, all human beings bleed out equally.

Why did I violate the Hague Convention of 1899 and make the .45 Auto hollow-point? Because fuck ‘em, that’s why! (Also, I knew that Life elemental mana crystals could quickly heal wounds, so I had to increase the wound lethality to counter that.)

On the upside, I’ve learned a lot from this job aside from Expert-level forging techniques (Thanks, <<Perfect Recall>>!). Hell, that was the main reason why I hadn’t quit yet to become a full-time mana crystal supplier. Here are the key highlights:

You could only cast spells when you are “connected” to a mana crystal. Physical touch wasn’t the requirement- if you channel your mana through Artorian Silver that was touching a mana crystal, the spell would activate just like normal. However, the rule that you could only activate one mana crystal at a time still applied.

There’s a higher element called “Force”, and it was the secret behind why the Knights and nobles were so strong and fast when they donned the armor. By attaching the Force mana crystal to the armor and linking it with the body via Artorian Silver like an electrical circuit (I shall call this design “Mana Circuits”), Knights were free to utilize its enhancements without having to devote a hand to holding the crystal.

There was a minimal size requirement for mana crystal use. Crystal fragments below 3 grams were considered “dust” and couldn’t be used for spells. At “dust” sizes, any connection with mana would ignite the crystal, causing a small elemental explosion of the corresponding element (ie: fire mana dust → fire explosion and air mana dust → burst of wind).

A lot of implications in what I’ve learned these past 3 years. First, even the best Archmages and Knights couldn’t fuse spells. That was important because it limited the grand total number of spells (8 elements x 4 levels = 32 spells) that I’d have to worry about in this world. Although with training or accessories, they could consecutively launch different spells at me, a true spell fusion would never happen.

Second, if I could “borrow” some of this Silver, I could make my own weapon/armor function very much like theirs. Trouble was, this stuff was highly controlled. Only noble families could legally buy this stuff, and they provided this stuff to the forge-smiths only during commissions, and we even had to return the leftovers. Embezzling this stuff would take some time and effort.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I just found my alternative to gunpowder (that I couldn’t chemically produce for now)! If I could embezzle enough fire and air elemental dust, all I had to do was to stuff them in cartridges and ignite the powder by injecting my mana into an Artorian Silver firing pin as it strikes the primer (which would also be elemental dust). And since the forge used up fire elemental mana crystals like a crack addict going through their supply of crack, there would always be plenty of fire elemental dust in the shop!

I supposed I could design a trigger-less gun for increased shooting efficiency, but there were three major reasons why I decided against it. First and foremost, I liked having an additional safety feature. Gun safety is no joke, and I'd be damned if I became the first idiot to accidentally shoot himself in this world. Also, gun design wasn't my field of specialty, so I'd have to spend more time on R&D than I'd like if I went off-script. Lastly, if I ever had to switch back to using traditional gunpowder, I wouldn't have to radically redesign the pistol.

This was a huge step forward for my firearms project! Needless to say, I volunteered to sweep the forge-smithy floors whenever I could~

Stanfur was a complicated man. On one hand, he was a selfish egomaniac that saw me as an expendable pawn to manipulate his other employees. On the other hand…nope. I got nothing- he was just a manipulative bastard with smithing talent. In a way, I was glad he was just like all the bosses I’ve ever worked under. I felt zero guilt about embezzling from him- after all, he was using me as well. I didn’t owe him any loyalty.

***

Today was a momentous day. If things went right, I would’ve built this world’s very first firearm. The journey to get here had been difficult. The short-recoil operated mechanism had been a pain in the neck to get right without any modern production equipment. Hell, it took weeks figuring out what the optimal temperature is for tempering the recoil and main springs (hint: it was a big-ass number that forced me to use up a few fire elemental mana crystals until they “dusted”).

Knowing that I’d have to handload and reload the .45 ACP bullet casings, I melted down bronze crown coins and poured it into a pre-made mold so I could make brass casings (sadly, steel casings deformed easily after firing). The .45 ACP has a centerfire design (hole in the middle for the firing pin), so the mold obviously accounted for that. For the bullets, I had to make an 185 grain (~12 grams, with emphasis on approximately) hollow-point bullets with mild steel jackets.

To do that, I made the mold for the mild steel jacket and used it to mass-produce the jackets. Then I poured molten lead into the jackets (Fun fact #1: I had to buy lots of lead from the apothecary because the locals liked to use lead to sweeten their otherwise disgusting herbal concoctions~) (Fun fact #2: Since mild steel (~1300 C) had a way higher melting point than lead (~600 C), it served as a great material for the mold).

I loaded a mixture of 75% fire elemental dust and 25% air elemental dust (a ratio I settled on after a whole day of fun experiments in the Wilds) into the casing, and pressed everything into one cartridge. Since I didn’t have any modern lubricant, I had to settle for animal grease for lubrication of the barrel and casing.

Lastly, I had to embezzle enough Artorian Silver to make the trigger, the sear, the hammer, and the firing pin. This way, I could inject my mana into the cartridge through the firing pin as I pulled the trigger, igniting the dust (which served as both primer and powder charge) and firing the bullet through the barrel.

The only remaining obstacle was making a gunbarrel with rifling patterns without any modern equipment. My previous 2 attempts failed when I tried to use <<Air Blast>> to power a drill that would bore a rifling pattern onto the barrel. The results weren’t pretty, or functional.

This time, I would use a more modern method- electrochemical machining (ECM). My ECM setup was very loosely based on the FGC-9 ECM rifling setup, except with no modern equipment. I’d spent the last 2 weeks making a makeshift electric generator using the magnet trinket I looted from the Elf village and copper-alloy wires I had to make by melting down even more bronze crowns (sigh…). The generator was powered by a wind turbine hit with <<Air Blast>>. For the solution, I used table salt with water (I felt bad stealing a whole case of salt from Mike’s tavern, but desperate times called for desperate measures). The 3D printed parts used in the FGC-9 ECM setup had to be substituted with hand-carved wood. And instead of a pump, I was using a spare waterskin to dump the ferric chloride solution into the creek next to the workshop (good thing there wasn’t an EPA in this world~) and manually replacing the solution with more salt water.

After burning through half of my mana, and most of the stolen salt, I’ve finally made a rifled barrel! I assembled the barrel with all the other parts I’ve already made these past 3 years. After putting it all together, I felt a sense of pride that everything seemed to fit together. I violently shook the pistol, and the fact that I didn’t hear a rattling sound was a bloody good sign.

I inserted a magazine of 7x .45 ACP hollow-points into the pistol and pulled the slide back to cock the pistol. I heard the slide stripping off a cartridge from the magazine and feeding it into the chamber. This pistol had successfully been loaded!

Walking outside of the Sequoia Locker, I disengaged the manual safety and aimed the 1911 at a sequoia tree 10 meters away. I aimed (no iron sights yet) at it, squeezed the grip safety tightly, and pulled the trigger as I sent my innate mana towards the firing pin.

*POP!*

A loud popping sound erupted from the 1911. A spent casing ejected onto the side as a little smoke leaked out of the gun. It was a successful fire sequence! I fucking did it! I’ve made this world’s first functional firearm! Not even my migraine could spoil my jubilant mood.

As much as I liked to call this pistol the Colt M1911A1, this bootleg design wasn’t actually a real 1911. It’s merely an adaptation of one based on the limitations of this world. In fact, I seriously doubt that this pistol could accurately hit at 50 meters like its modern counterpart. Since it felt wrong to keep referring to it as a 1911, I’d need to give it another name. After some pondering, I’ve decided to name this world’s very first pistol, Aurelia.

Did I just name my guns like some cringey chuuni? You goddamn right I did!

I put the first pistol of this world back in a leather holster I’d made and attached it to my belt. Thanks to the field cloak, nobody should be able to notice it.

Welcome to the world, Aurelia. This world was chock full of vicious beasts and even more vicious people to shoot. You’d love it here~ <3

Field Inventory

Primary Weapon

Recurve bow made from Champion mana-beast sinew/Quiver with arrows

Secondary Weapon

2x Short throwing spear

Colt M1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol v.1.0 [Christened Aurelia]

Armor

Champion mana-beast leather body armor, bracers, and greaves; Leather boots lined with bear fur

Mana Crystals

1x Adept-level air elemental mana crystal

1x Adept-level fire elemental mana crystal

1x Adept-level earth elemental mana crystal

1x Beginner-level ice elemental mana crystal

Stash of various mana crystals

Misc.

Utility belt, grappling hook, rope, dark green cloak, field satchel, waterskin, rations, boarskin map and steel knife

3x magazines of .45 ACP hollow-point ammo

1x leather holster

***

Do I enjoy time skipping every chapter? Nope. But if I wanted a realistic development schedule of a firearm with only medieval components, then it's gonna take time. Besides, the dude has a very demanding day job on top of his side project.

Hope the increased pacing isn't too jarring for y'all. Here's a quick timeline to orient yourselves:

Aug 245- Ronnie's soul is transmigrated into Rummy by [CENSORED] for reasons

Sept 245- Rummy joins the 626th Imperial Ranger Legion as required

Sept 248- Rummy completes his 1st tour; opts for another one as a forge-smith

Sept 251- Rummy completes his 2nd tour and musters out; joins Stanfur’s forge-smith

Oct 254- Rummy builts Aurelia, the world’s first pistol

As usual, please leave comments, suggestions, and reviews if you can. I'd really appreciate it!