24 Chapter 21: The Lady Vengeance, Part I

Just like that, another month and a half sailed by. So many things were happening and developing in a flurry. For starters, my hastily-trained apprentices began work on the armored carts. They were still a little raw, but for the little training they'd received, they had acquitted themselves quite well. Heck, the vast majority of the casings and bullets they'd produced thus far were good enough to shoot with. However, things were less sunny when it came to the cart- it was a far more complicated build, so their collective struggle was to be expected. However, with enough supervision and feedback, they were starting to get it.

Loki recently reached the size of a typical wolf mana-beast (over 1 meter in length). But his growth spurt seemed to have stalled, not that has stopped the voracious scamp from eating everything in sight, including Beginner-level ice mana crystals. I suppose I should be glad that he had no appetite for the other elements, otherwise my cartridge production might really be in trouble.

Since I had very little time for anything else aside from 'Project 42', Sapphire constructed an underground playpen for Loki in lieu of actual walks in the Wilds. It also had an obstacle course designed to train up his agility and endurance. Of course, he wasn't a fan of being cooped up inside, and I felt very bad for keeping a wolf indoors for that long. But we were in a critical time of the exodus plan- there was no margin for errors.

Things had gone into a holding pattern with Emma. Sapphire started an "Archmage bootcamp" for her and they'd been training hard to take her magecraft to the next level (I was still iffy on trusting Sapphire considering her past, but Emma apparently had a "woman-to-woman" talk with her and they'd become friends). Between that and my MG-42 deadline, we just haven't had much time to hang out with one another (Heck, there were days when I had to operate with just 4-5 hours of sleep). In the few spare moments we had with each other, we'd grab some food and drinks at Mike's tavern. Mike did give us a smug knowing look, but otherwise kept to himself as he didn't want to butt in.

Eventually, I did tell him that I was involved in "something big" and that we should keep our distance for his family's sake. He did seem a little sad about this, but he understood the dangers of the dangerous game I got myself involved in. As a gesture of friendship, I cashed out whatever Mike owed me (from previous mana crystal sales) in supplies and merchandise so he'd get some sales profit out of this transaction. Besides, I wouldn't be needing cash where I was going~

Another major technical challenge I had to overcome was constructing a flare to use for night battles. After all, we would be living next to goblins who specialized in night raids. And even the best machine guns in the world would be ineffective without light. Ugh, even the thought of wasting all those bullets blindly shooting in the dark hurts my soul.

Chemistry was not my specialty, so I'd have to mess around with the formula before getting the optimal compositions. From <<Perfect Recall>>, I did remember that potassium nitrate, sulfur, charcoal, and sawdust being commonly used ingredients for flares. So I could start from there. Good thing Natalia has the capability to import all those things from Clarent. Saltpeter (potassium nitrate) was usually used to cure meats. Sulfur could be found in apothecaries as a topical medicine for people with skin infections or acne outbreaks. I had sufficient charcoal and sawdust, but it never hurts to stockpile these things since we planned on living off the grid very soon. It didn't come cheap, but Natalia understood how crucial flares were to our mission.

I fabricated steel tube casings with a diameter of 2.5 cm and length of 20 cm. Then I packed in various candidate compositions into the casing and prepared a primer of fire mana crystal dust. After a whole day of testing in the underground play plen (and scaring Loki in the process), I optimized the formula. The resulting flare burned with a white fire and lasted about 2 minutes- a fraction of what the modern flares could do, but good enough for my purposes. After all, I planned on ending the battle in 2 minutes with the MG-42.

Which brought me to the next challenge: tracer ammunition for the MG-42. Flares could only turn a pitch dark environment into a dimly-lit one. So tracer ammunition was essential for me to see where I was shooting in that environment. This part was easy- most of the work was done during the flare development. I just needed to add a little bit of it into the casing and mark the tip with white pigment (I chose white because I still have some leftover white pigment from the Cleopatra Project).

I also had to manufacture the metal links for the ammo belt. The MG-42 uses a non-disintegrating metallic link ammo belt, so I had to make the mold for that before casting it. On top of that, I'd have to individually fit each .30-06 Springfield cartridge into the belt. And since I planned on making 6x 150-ammo belts, that's 900 cartridges to fit. Wow, that sounds super tedious. Yeah, I should just get the apprentices to help out on this task (yay for child labor!).

I planned to follow the traditional setup of 4 regular ammunition to 1 tracer ammunition. So an ammo belt of 150 will have 30 tracer rounds. The apprentices had made hundreds of bullet components these past few months, so I could put the cartridges together in a few days (Sadly, I couldn't use the kiddos since they have no mana control training and could potentially blow everything up if they accidentally ignited the fire mana crystal dust with their mana).

Lastly, I've also decided to make a pair of goggles for me and Loki. They were an insurance policy in case things got really rough out there. Clear glass was not a cheap commodity, so thank you Natalia for sponsoring this project. Also, since rubber hadn't been invented yet, I had to make do with leather, which was about as comfortable as strapping a belt on your forehead on a humid summer day.

Now that the side quests were taken care of, it was time to tackle the main quest: building the MG-42 itself. I've solved most of the development issues. Out of the remaining problems, resolving the damn recoil spring issue took top priority. I'd have to…

*CRASH!**CRASH!**CRASH!*

The fuck? Are we under attack? I drew Aurelia from my holster and headed out of the forge-smithy. I saw a slender brunette girl in her late teens dressed in a workshop apron hurriedly rushing towards me. I could see the panic in her adorable brown eyes. That would be my apprentice Nairi.

"Forge-Master Rummy… I… I hear someone break the window!" Nairi reported to me with frightened eyes.

"Calm down, Nairi. Where is Darrack and Prompto? Are they okay?"

"They… they're in the warehouse out back." OK, that was good news. Since the noise came from the front and I didn't hear anything from out back. On top of that, there were no follow-up attacks. I reasoned that this incident was just a demonstration, and not the real thing.

I holstered Aurelia and took a regular bow and arrow. I walked into the front of the Company Store, and saw 2 intruders with yellow arm bands and black cloaks looting the shop while another one stood at the entrance.

"Drop it, criminals!" I shouted as I nocked an arrow and pointed at one of them.

Two of them flinched at my entrance. The one that didn't glare right back at me. "Don't you dare slander us! We are the proud members of the Imperial Restoration Society! We are the heroes that will save this corrupt empire!" This short and thin man about 1.7 meters tall radiated a meager killing intent in a pathetic attempt to intimidate me.

"I don't care if you're the Emperor himself. Drop the merchandise now, or I'll drop you!" I let out some of my killing intent in return. The 2 lackeys were unarmed and the head honcho of this pathetic crew had a dagger. These idiots were about as dangerous as a pile of shit.

He snarled at me in anger. "Who the fuck do you think you are?!?" He unsheathes his dagger. "You only have 1 arrow, and there are 3 of us. Now, back away and tell your bitch boss that this is her last warning before we get rough!"

I saw a shadow about 2 meters tall behind the man. I chuckled a bit and put down the arrow. "Tell her yourself." Oh boy, things were about to get violent. I regretted not having invented popcorn that day~

Skera grabbed the leader from behind and tossed him 3 meters in the air. Then with both hands she power-slapped the 2 lackeys in the face, instantly incapacitating them both. By the time the leader landed on the ground right outside the door with a satisfying thud, it was all over. Man, Skera looks like a badass war goddess right now. With the <<Strength>> enhancement, she man-handled these fools like they were naughty children!

Natalia walked over the groaning bodies of the intruders. "Thank you gentlemen, for delivering the message. Now I must ask you to pay for the damages and be on your way. Lady Skera, please help them find their coin purses."

Skera took 3 coin purses and tossed them at me ("Toss a coin to your engineer, oh valley of plenty~"). She then viciously stomped on the hands of all 3 intruders. Agonizing screams echoed on the empty street. After brutalizing them, she punted them 5 meters away from the door. Wow, remind me to never piss her off.

"Impeccable work as always, Rummy. Skera is simply dominating in that Knight armor." Natalia praised me with an uncharacteristically sadistic smile.

I handed the collected coins to Natalia. "That was a very hostile reply, my Lady. Are you sure you want to escalate things with those vicious idiots?"

Natalia took a look at the broken windows and sighed. "If I had a choice, no."

Natalia then told me that she had "advised" her father to denounce the Yellow Shirts as 'thugs and bandits unworthy of a Council seat' in the negotiations in hopes of getting the opposition to concede more benefits to him. Her father's insatiable greed stalled the negotiations for about a few weeks, which predictably pissed off the Yellow Shirts. And if today's demonstration was any indication, things were about to get worse.Unfortunately, that was the only way Natalia could buy us enough time to prepare for the exodus.

The MG-42 couldn't come soon enough! I was getting sick and tired of this shithole!

***

After we cleaned up and settled down, I went back to the forge-smithy to finish developing the MG-42. As I was pondering before I was rudely interrupted, one of the sticking points thus far had been the recoil spring. I remembered from my previous life as a reenactor that the MG-42 recoil spring was actually a triple-braided spring (With a firing rate that absurdly high, a triple-braided spring is a must). Why was it a sticking point? Well, I literally had no bloody clue how to make it.

As a result, I had to blindly experiment these past few weeks. I'd tried tempering the metal wire before attempting to braid. I'd tried braiding the wires together prior to tempering it. I'd tried different braiding patterns. After weeks of intermittent experimentation and testing (And becoming much better at braiding than I'd care to admit), I'd come up with the best spring design I could muster given the time and resource constraint- a triple helix braid that was tempered post-braid. An hour later, I finished the final version of the triple-braided recoil spring.

However, the most difficult technical challenge in this entire project has been the bolt, which operates based on a roller lock system. It was an extremely intricate system that can catastrophically blow up the machine gun if poorly designed or built. This risk was magnified since I replaced the original cartridge (Mauser) with a longer cartridge (.30-06 Springfield). After 4 months on this problem, I'd come up with a dozen prototypes to test with.

Since I didn't want the whole town to hear the supernaturally loud gunfire, I would have to borrow the underground playpen as a testing range (Sorry, Loki! I'll give you lots of treats as compensation!). For this experiment, I would also need to make a dozen triggering mechanisms and barrels to pair with the experimental bolt. Dang, this was gonna take a lot more steel than I had in stock.

I walked out of my office and called my apprentices. "We're almost out of steel. Nairi and Prompto, go to the warehouse in the Market District tomorrow morning to pick up some wrought iron and charcoal. Remember to pick out the good ones like I've taught you. Darrak, we're going to get started on the remaining supply and make what we can."

Nairi looked at me with apprehension, afraid to say what was on her mind. I bent over, looked into her eyes, and tried to reassure her. "Look, I know things are a little scary now with the Yellow Shirts, but you'd be with 12 Galahad men-at-arms in the middle of town in broad daylight. They would have to be insanely stupid to attack. They'd lose a whole lot for just a cart."

Considering the ongoing-but-tenuous truce, the amount of blowback of killing 12 Galahad guards and robbing a supply cart in the middle of a busy street would be massive. Unlike my old world, truce-breaking was considered very dishonorable in this world that prided itself on chivalry. Parties that break truces are typically subjected to a consequence-free retaliatory attack. These Yellow Shirts weren't intellectual giants, but surely they had to have some baseline rationality if they managed to get this far.

Nairi seemed a little less nervous and nodded. With that out of the way, I had to pivot to other issues, like thinking of a bolt design that wouldn't blow up in my face. After that, I should take a long sleeping break. I had a depressing feeling that I'd be too busy tomorrow to sleep.

Field Inventory

Primary Weapon

M1D Garand v.2.0 [Christened Severance Pay]

Secondary Weapon

Colt M1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol v.3.0 [Christened Aurelia]

1x mithril parrying dagger [Christened Swordbreaker]

Armor

Crystal-modified dragon leather body armor set {<<Reinforce>>, <<Sap>>, <<Minor Heal>>, <<Heal>>, <<Pocket Dimension>>, <<Slow>>}; Crystal-modified dragon Leather boots lined with wolf fur { <<Air Blast>>, <<Updraft>>, <<Blink>>}

Mana Crystals

1x Adept-level fire elemental mana crystal

1x Adept-level ice elemental mana crystal

2x Adept-level ice elemental mana crystal

1x Adept-level space elemental mana crystal

1x Expert-level earth elemental mana crystal

1x Expert-level space elemental mana crystal

Stash of various mana crystals

Misc.

1x storage bracelet, 2x goggles

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

1x .45 ACP steel centerfire pistol suppressor

1x .30-06 Springfield steel centerfire rifle suppressor

1x crude telescopic sight

10x en bloc clips of .30-06 Springfield armor-piercing ammo

5x magazines of .45 ACP hollow-point ammo

1x leather holster

Spare ammo

3x mithril dagger

1x mutated wolf mana-beast [Christened Loki]