6.8 Bootstrapping

"That's one part of it, young Rouge," Baccus said as he sat down on the dirtied metal floor and began drawing, the thin layer of soot functioning as a makeshift drawing pad. "As we all know, the bigger the Seigel, the more Wesen it requires to power, correct?"

"Y-Yes," I nodded, my thoughts clearing of the revenge fantasy I came up with as I knelt down beside. "Is that why you replaced the wind Seigel with three smaller ones?"

"Partly," the elder replied as he began drawing some sort of formula down on the ground. "Have you been taught the Law of Shifting Wesen?"

Law of what-now?

I cocked my head in confusion as the term never registered in my mind. Father gave me all of the basic Seigels to remember and that was it. I couldn't recall him ever talking about laws and other theoretical stuff like that.

"N-no, I don't recall it," I answered truthfully.

"Truly?" Baccus asked in disbelief. "By your skill, I'd have thought you already knew your basics."

"I only have the Seigels memorized," I admitted as I scratched my head in resignation. "Father died before he can teach me the more advanced techniques."

"Oh," his tone softened as soon as he heard of Father's passing, his hand still scribbling down on the ground. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"It's fine," I waived his condolence off before switching the topic back on track. "Now what is this Law of Seigel... shifting?"

"Ahh.. yes. And it's Shifting Wesen."

With a flourish, Baccus lifted his hand out of the ground, exposing what seemed to be... a mathematical equation?

"The Law of Shifting Wesen states that for a Nenner to imbue power to an Elemental Seigel, they must pour the amount of Wesen that's equivalent to at least five to ten times that of the Seigel's occupied surface area."

W-W-Wait... What now?!

"As such, we Nenners have to account for whoever's going to use our items, as Zahlers have a vastly more potent Wesen than that of ours," Baccus explained as if it was common knowledge. "As we know, while a Zahler's Wesen would overwhelm rudimentary Seigels, it's more than adequate to power their chosen Elemental Seigels."

I put a hand on my head as my mind spun at the sudden offload of information. It... sort of made sense, I guess? Zahlers couldn't make Seigels due to the sheer power of their Wesen, but they could use it to power Elemental Seigels? If so, then did they use raw Wesen if they wanted to manifest their elementalism? But if that was the case...

Then why bother with Elemental Seigels in the first place?

"Young Rouge?"

"O-Oh! Yes?" I hastily responded as my eyes focused on the old man's figure. Damn, did I seriously just space out?

"As I've said, for us to determine the size and number of Elemental Seigels to apply on any given item, we must calculate for the surface area that we have available for etching," Baccus enthusiastically droned out as the ground beneath him seemed to explode with equations now. "Then we equally distribute the Elemental and Rudimentary Seigels in about a ratio of one to four."

I strained my brain in ways that I never thought I would do so again as I tried my hardest to understand just what in the world this old man was saying. The equations on the ground were just straight-up gibberish. There was no denying that about my limited knowledge. Baccus did say something about ratio though... And from what I've seen on the ground, just underneath all of the advanced algebraic stuff that I couldn't remember, there was something that I did recognize, which was a fractional symbol of one-fourths.

So there shouldn't be more elemental Seigels than there were rudimentary ones.. That would explain my fvcked-up design.

"So if we reduce the surface area, the energy requirement would also be reduced..." It would also explain why Lise's design took up so much Wesen to fire.

"Exactly," Baccus waved a finger at me before returning to his makeshift blackboard. "Little Lise's design was bigger and required a substantial amount of Wesen to power it all. The trigger being in its previous shape also didn't help."

I zipped my mouth about the larger design being a leftover of my work as I mulled over the specifics of this thing. So the triangular trigger actually helped how exactly?

"Singular points are only used to store Wesen in the long run, young Rouge," the elder chided as if he read my mind. "As in your design, while it may help in pouring in the desired amount, it also wasted it needlessly in powering itself to full capacity."

"I... didn't know that."

"And now you know, young Rouge," he chuckled as he stood up from the ground, placing a hand on my shoulder as he turned his back to me. "It seems that you still have a lot to learn yourself. There'll be some of our fellow Nenners coming here soon to help you."

"W-wai-"

"Just tell me what you need for this rebellion of ours," his gravelly voice echoed in my ears, a deathly serious tone replacing his grandfatherly vibe. "Our people will support you in any way they can."

I couldn't even say anything else as the old man strolled on his merry way, disappearing back into the Furnace's outer edges with his trusty hammer on his back.

"Support, huh..."

I'll probably need it, seeing as I clearly had more to learn about this thing called Seigelcraft. And I still didn't have any sort of plan beyond arming ourselves with rifles and calling it a day.

Turning towards the range, I aimed Baccus's rifle and placed a thumb on the trigger. Immediately, the gun glowed with power as wind manifested itself on the arrows.

"Nifty..."

With a breath, I released the trigger-

"BOOM!"

"WOAH!"

With a thud, I landed on my back as the recoil of the boomstick overwhelmed my increasingly sore shoulder. In my hand, the rifle smoked with power, looking as if it had just fired an actual round with gunpowder. What the hell was that?!

Sitting up, I rubbed whatever dust I could reach off my back as I hefted the smoking rifle in one hand. Did I even want to know why the damn thing just fired off a much stronger blast than when the old man did it?

"Owww..."

Rubbing my shoulder, I stood up and slowly made my way toward my own makeshift cot beside the water tower. Taking my place beside my still-sleeping sister, I laid my head against my arms and drifted off to sleep.

Ehh.. I'll think about it tomorrow.

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