93 Beast Weapons Division

(Gerhard POV)

I took a step through the door, and I found the sound of metal clashing, fire cracking the smile of something burning and a lot more that I had no idea what they were. A guy was passing by with a box, I noticed that the box was filled with small metal pieces.

"Hey bro, I'm looking for Russel, do you know where I can find him?."

He looked me up and down with a poker face.

"The blue door at the end of the workshop. Knock the door and wait for him to open."

"Thanks, dude."

The guy made a light bow and continued his way, I started to walk in the direction he told me. Three places areas of the workshop were separated by doors, the open spaces where working in different stuff, I saw a forge and two people using a hammer to work in some blades.

In another place, someone was adding what looked like scales on a leather jacket. Most of the technology used was old, but I was surprised that they were able to work like that.

I arrived at a door and knocked on the door.

I have no idea what this guy Russell was doing inside but when I knocked it sounded like a lot of metal stuff fell to the floor.

A man about 40 years old with disheveled hair, a pair of thick glasses and grease stains all over his clothes opened the door.

He looked at me with curiosity.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm was told to look for Russell."

"I'm Russell."

I handed him Dr. Harting's letter.

"My name is Gerhard, I'll be working here."

"Oh, finally I have been asking for more people for a while. Do you have any experience?"

"I used to work in a garage fixing motorcycles and cars. And after the meteor shower, I have done a couple of projects, solar batteries, some simple structures, and crossbows."

"That's good, come with me."

He left the place where he was, and smoke started to come from the door.

"There is smoke coming out from there."

"Don't worry it's my personal forge."

Well if he says that it's ok…

"Right now we have divided the work into five areas. One is for making classic weapons with the old blacksmith techniques."

He showed me the place where a couple of guys were making blades, now that I was closer I saw that they were a sword and a spearhead.

"We tried to teach more people at the beginning, but unfortunately the methods are complex and teaching people made us waste a lot of materials, so we had to stop. Most people prefer to keep distance anyway."

I nodded in acknowledgment.

"The next area is to make armors and other utility stuff. Do you know how to sew?"

I shook my head, I have never even tried that

"I supposed that. From what you told me I think that you are probably going to be in one of the next areas, they are all related to research."

We were in front of a door with a danger sign on the door, he ignored the warning and just opened the door.

A guy in his middle twenties was there.

"WTF are you doing Russell! I told you to knock before coming in, what would have happened if I was working with poisons!!"

It surprised me the tone that the guy used to his "boss". Russell didn't seem to mind his tone and answered calmly.

"For that, we need actual beasts with poison and the last snakes are being used to make antidotes as a priority."

The guy was still annoyed with Russell but noticed me.

"Who is this?"

"This guy is Gerhard, he will be working with us from now on. I'm showing him around."

"Welcome to the armory, my name is Thomas, most people call me Tom though. I'm in charge of the beast weapon research, as the name says, we try to find ways to make weapons using beast parts, we are 3 in this place, but we usually work in different projects. Do you have any idea about the area you want to work?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure yet, I will see each area does and where I can be more helpful."

"You are welcome here if you feel like it, most of the things that you could have learned about weapons before will not apply here. Usually, we have to figure out ways on how to work with the beasts parts, and they might not be the same as we used to work on other materials, so if you feel like you don't fit the other places, this is the place to be creative."

"Thanks."

"Let's go to the next area."

Just like before he just opened the door, but this time no one came to complain, there were 5 people here. Two of them were working together discussing something, and the others had his own worktable and were checking how smooth the movement of something that seemed to be a hydraulic mechanism was.

"This place doesn't create weapons."

"??."

I should have made a weird face because he saw me and added right away.

"This area work as support for the others, most of the tools we used don't work anymore. The mission of this area is to create those tool for us, we can request something, but usually, they just appear in the other areas with the new prototype for trial."

In a way, it sounded boring compared to the idea of making weapons with beast parts, but it was probably the most important area because they could create a tool that might be used in other areas.

"They seem busy now so I will introduce you later."

We left that area, and I quickly followed him to our last stop.

"The last area is where I usually work, there is one more person there, we are in charge of technology recovery and research. We have two goals right now, the first is to find a way to make bullets, and the second one is to replicate and make the Railgun technology work without the need of external powers, once we manage to recover it, we want to see if we can find a way to apply the technology to handguns and automatic weapons."

That was an ambitious project, the railgun technology never managed to be applied to short barreled weapons, the magnetic force on the barrel is not enough to make the velocity of the bullet high enough to compete with the regular gunpowder bullets.

Automatic weapons that can burst also wasn't possible because the bullet takes a second to be charged before being shot, so the fire rate is too slow. Currently, the best they managed to do was to apply the technology to some DMRs, but they are not capable of rapid burst.

If either of this project is completed, they wouldn't need to worry about the long-range weapons anymore. Unfortunately, I have no idea about the details of how the Railgun technology could be applied on short guns, I might be able to help a little, but I feel like the support or beast division were better for me.

I was pondering, I was good at building things, but the idea of creating things with new methods was more attractive than being in a support role on the development of weapons.

Also, Spencer said that this might be a temporary alliance, so there is the possibility that we leave this place someday if that happens knowing how to work with beast parts could be proven useful in the future.

"I think I'm going to join Tom's team."

"Great I thought you were going to do that. If you ever feel like going to another division, there are no problems with it, even if we have divisions we all work with the same objective in mind."

I gave my thanks to Russell and went to the beast weapon division, this time the door was open, and the clerk was inside talking with Thomas."

"Hey, Gerhard right? So, you decided to join this division?"

"Yeah, I feel like it fits me the most."

"Then you get here at great timing, we have a request for a short spear, you are in charge of it."

Wait … what?

"I thought that we could have our own projects."

"Of course, but from time to time there will be a request for the different areas, in this case, I thought that you would have no problems in working on your friend request."

So it was Spence the one that made the request, and here I wanted to have some practice before working on weapons for my friends.

I started to think about how to make a spear, which form was the best and stuff like that, Tom was looking at me with an amused smile.

"Here you don't think how to make the weapon first… you have to see what material you want to use and work from there."

"What does that even mean."

"Imagine that you want to make a bladed spearhead, but you only have a conic tail from a hard beast and a horn, your design will not work with that, changing the shape can become a nuisance or harm the material integrity. Here you have to get inspiration from the materials to design the weapons and think from there, thinking of what you want to create before looking at the materials will limit you."

I nodded as I understood his meaning.

"There is a work table over there, the beast parts we have are on that cabinet and chest over there. Take this, those are the details of what your friend wants for the spear."

I took a piece of paper that he was handing me and went to the cabinet while checking the details.

I looked at the different parts we had and noticed that he was right… my mind was filled with ideas.

This should be fun.