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Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Thirty Nine
🕑 Added 2024-08-11 17:18:41 +0000 UTCPausing only to ensure the clearing was clear, Isabella wasted no time in dashing to the log at the centre of it and shifting it aside.
A peculiar sight to be sure, if anyone were observing, given that she herself was invisible. To a casual observer, it would seem as if the log just… suddenly decided to move of its own volition. Fortunately for the palace guardswoman, her only observers were a pair of disinterested rabbits, as she dropped into the hole that had been revealed.
Pulling the cover back into place, the woman was plunged into total darkness, the tight confines of the dirt walls around her all but pinning her in place. Fortunately, dropping into a crouch provided her a little more room to maneuver, if only slightly.
Ugh, I hate this bit, she thought as she resisted the faint tingles of claustrophobic dread that tried to rise up – only to be squashed through long experience.
Instead, she focused her energies on the slow, laborious process of gradually turning herself about until she was perpendicular to the ground, the tunnel leading away from the entrance right in front of her face.
Sighing in relief now that the most difficult part was done, she started to crawl – though shimmying might have been a more apt descriptor. Slowly, inch by inch, she squirmed forward into the darkness.
Twelve paces, she thought. Slightly downward angle.
Eventually she hit a wall, and felt with her hands how it veered off to the right – and once more down. She followed, fighting to force her body to squeeze through the tight turn. Then once more on the left.
Which was when she smelled it.
Food.
Grinning, despite the grime sticking to her face – which didn’t matter, she was invisible – she squirmed onwards, turning one final corner and catching a glimpse of her destination.
An opening filled with light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed to take forever to reach it, but when she did, she reveled in the freedom of pulling herself through it and out of the claustrophobic darkness.
Which wasn’t to say the room she was in now was large. The ceiling was low enough that she needed to crawl on hands and knees, and if she stretched out fully, she’d have been able to reach both walls of the circular space.
Still, it was better than the tunnel – and not just because of the pot of stew bubbling merrily in one ‘corner’.
“Andrea?” the woman tending to it asked without looking up.
There was little point, given that Isabella’s potion had yet to wear off.
“Isabella,” she corrected. “Andrea wanted to take the evening shift.”
Moving over to the small pile of bedding opposite the stew, the guardswoman set about pulling off her armor. Which didn’t take long, given it was just a breastplate. A simple steel cuirass stained black. Satisfied, she eagerly shimmied over to the pot – though she was careful to keep her hands away from the heating-stone beneath it.
“Working on the shard again?” Narya asked quietly as she continued to stir.
A small bead of sweat ran down her face as she did. The heating stone might have kept them from filling the entire cavern with smoke while she cooked, but it still put out enough heat that the tight confines of the alcove were just a step below sweltering.
Fortunately, the thing only needed to be turned on long enough to ensure Isabella and her sisters-in-arms got a hot meal.
“Alchemy this time.” Isabella shook her head. “Something to do with the earthblood.”
Narya laughed as she scooped out a portion of the stew into a bowl. “It’s always something with him. Any idea what he’s doing with it?”
Isabella shook her head again as she accepted the food and dug in.
“Is it too much to ask that you use a spoon?” her friend asked. “You just crawled through a tunnel full of dirt and you’re filthy.”
Isabella rolled her eyes, before frowning as she noted that she still couldn’t see herself, or the bowl she was eating from. “How could you tell I was using my hands?”
“Call it an educated guess.” Narya smirked as she tucked into her own food – with a spoon.
Isabella scoffed, but said nothing as the two continued to eat. Truth be told, the food wasn’t actually all that great, given they were limited to what supplies they’d brought with them, supplemented by what the three could pilfer or hunt without being noticed.
Still, it was warm and filling.
“He’s compartmentalizing,” Isabella finally said as she set the bowl aside, watching with some amusement as it flared into existence the moment it left her hand. “Just about every workshop in the province is working on something for him, but none of them know what the end result of each design is supposed to be.”
“A shard, presumably,” Narya said. “Given the first thing he made was that synchronization gear.”
Something the Queen would be interested in. But only passingly so. Sure, it presented a powerful upgrade to front-mounted prop shard designs, but the Royal Navy didn’t have many of those.
Still, given the influx of Mithril the crown had just received, new airships weren’t the only thing the capital was churning out. Shards were too, and it was all too possible Redwater’s synchronization gear would serve to make a new line of front-mounted shards more appealing to her lady.
“Obviously,” Isabella muttered. “Some of the parts we can recognize as being for a shard.” There was, after all, only so many ways one could create landing gear or cockpit glass. “It’s the ones I can’t recognize that I’m concerned about.”
Nor was she alone in that. Many of the workers creating the parts were more than a little unsure about what they were doing – even as they continued to follow Redwater’s absurdly precise instructions.
If she were being honest, she could admire it in a way. Even if someone were to create copies of all the parts currently being constructed, they’d still need to piece them together bit by bit – without even being sure if they had access to all the pieces they actually needed.
Still, it made her job of keeping an eye on the boy’s plans a lot more difficult.
“Nothing we can do about it but keep trying to find his personal notes” Narya shrugged.
Isabella scowled, not least because the fact that the boy made getting into his personal workshop all but impossible. She and the others were rightly leery of stumbling across whatever trap he’d used to destroy the storehouse back at the academy last year.
Sure, eventually it was claimed that the explosion was an accident borne from thieves tampering with deteriorating alchemy materials, but the Palace Guard knew the truth.
The explosion was too similar to the kraken slayer in function not to have come from William.
Which is why we can’t be too invasive for fear of ending up a red stain, she thought.
“Ugh,” she lamented. “I hate it when the targets know they’re being watched.”
For one thing, they started making countermeasures – and while William’s had proven a lot less lethal than the Blackstone’s, they were still annoying.
She certainly didn’t appreciate being shooed from rooms like a housecat any time the boy felt the need to have some private time. Nor did she enjoy scrubbing pink paint off her armour, after one of his earlier attempts to counter their invisibility. Because while the paint did seem to disappear when it struck her, that was only from the outside. Even if it turned invisible, she still had pink paint all over her that needed cleaning off the moment her invisibility wore off.
Idly, she wiped at the sweat covered grime on her face, noting the outline of her hand as she did. The spell was starting to wear off now. She gave it a few more minutes before she was fully visible.
“Do you think he’s harrowed?” Narya asked quietly, apropos of nothing.
Isabella shrugged. “That’s the thousand gold question, isn’t it.”
“I mean, he has to be, right? The spell-bolt. The flashbang. The Kraken Slayer. And now this?”
Isabella leaned back against the warm soil of their little den. “Eh, the bolt-bow and flashbang, I could see them being a derivative of the same concept. It’s just a ‘boom’ applied in different ways. The slayer’s a bit more of a leap with the alchemy, but it’s still just a ‘boom’ of a different sort.”
Isabella was familiar with alchemy – all of the royal guards were, they had to be to search for poisons or other threats.
As a magic system, it wasn’t all that complicated. In short, it worked by combining two or more items with conceptually similar attributes. Healing potions for example, needed dragon scales and gazelle hearts. Two potent symbols of health and fertility. Truth be told though, the dragon scale was doing most of the heavy lifting there. The more potent the ‘conceptual weight’ of the items used the more effective they’d be.
And thus expensive. And few things were more expensive than dragon scales.
Not least of all because they’d been driven to near extinction – along with a lot of other magically inclined beasts that made for good alchemy ingredients.
Which was a large part of why alchemy had grown less popular than enchanting over the years. Yes, alchemists theoretically could churn out as many potions as there were hours in the day if they had the ingredients, but that was the rub. The ingredients.
Which were expensive. Especially when compared to enchanting, where applying the enchantment was free but for the aether spent in the attempt.
She frowned.
Except whatever powered the kraken slayer wasn’t enchanting or alchemy as they understood it. For one thing, alchemy failed near kraken scales just like enchantments or conventional spellwork. More to the point, of the list of ingredients William had handed to Griffith, nothing in them held the kind of conceptual weight needed to achieve the kind of explosive power the kraken slayer held.
Potassium. Sulphur. Charcoal.
Of the three, only the second could even be seen as explosive given their relationship to volcanoes and fires respectively. Beyond that, they were common ingredients, which lessened their conceptual weight.
“That’s not alchemy,” Narya muttered, unknowingly echoing her thoughts.
“As we know it.” Isablla shrugged. “Perhaps those rituals he outlined changed the conceptual properties of the ingredients.”
Narya stilled, before she glanced meaningfully at a crate, one containing the team’s stock of invisibility potion. “…You mean like?”
Isabella shrugged.
Yes, it was true that one half of the invisibility potion could be considered… a less monetarily expensive ingredient, but Isabelle would never consider it cheap. Nor did the palace alchemists who created the potion, otherwise it wouldn’t work.
With that said, it was only used as the binding agent, the other half of the potion was unicorn blood - which was the furthest thing from cheap one could get.
Isabelle glanced down at her hands. “Perhaps there’s a similar cost incurred with the kraken slayer we’re not aware of yet.”
Narya chuckled humourlessly. “What a lovely thought.”
“My point is, two novel applications for magic and a one-off bit of incredible alchemy do not require a harrowing. Just a bit of uncommon intelligence and creativity.”
“Or it could just be a harrowing at work. Something to do with explosions.”
“Except he’s not raving mad.”
Narya laughed. “Stillwater would disagree with you on that point. As would his family. And me for that matter. Plus, he’s got the signs. All signs say he was a total layabout prior to attending the academy. I don’t know about you, but nothing I’ve seen in the past few weeks screams ‘layabout’ to me. That kind of change in behaviour would fit a harrowing.”
Narya glanced up. “It’d be easy done. Our playboys finds out he’s being shipped off to the academy to straighten up and panics. So he decides to go for the easy way out.”
It was a common enough story. No matter how many times people were warned against it, the fact that the ‘answer’ to any given problem was just a question away all too often proved too much of a temptation for some. The stupid and the desperate.
“Except he’s not mad,” Isabella reiterated. “He’s wilful and impulsive, but that’s it.” She paused. “You’ve… not seen a harrowed person. They’re not… they’re barely there. Him though, he’s talking, he’s lucid, he’s making plans. He’s aware of his surroundings. He isn’t… half elsewhere.”
Narya eyed her. “And the bit of nonsense he’s building? It’s all coming out of his head.”
“Again, all within the realms of someone clever.” Isabella shrugged. “The synchronization gear is clever, but obvious in retrospect.”
“I note you’re making no comment on the other stuff he’s having his people put together.”
“Stuff that’s yet to be seen that they succeed. They could be experiments on his part. He did claim that was his plan, and it would explain why he’s doing it all in a billion parts. Because he’s not making a single shard, just lots of… add-ons.”
Narya hummed in consideration. “I still think he’s harrowed.”
Isabella snorted as she crawled over to her bed. “Well, I think I’m going to grab a nap.”
Narya scoffed, but didn’t say anything else as she set about taking down her cooking equipment.
For her part, Narya couldn’t wait to be back to her ‘official duties’ as a palace guardswoman. Eating proper meals. Not skulking underground to maintain the illusion they weren’t present to a man who obviously knew about them.
---------
Tala grunted with exertion as she finished pushing yet another orc corpse over the railing. Idly, she watched the body fall, twirling about as it fell, before hitting the forest below and disappearing out of sight beneath the treeline.
Soon enough, it’d be a feast for the creatures within.
Though it might take them a while to get around to it, Tala thought with grim satisfaction. After all, there’s plenty to go around today.
As if to punctuate her thoughts, she glanced up to see other members of the crew leveraging a wyvern overboard, the massive batlike lizard’s corpse proving difficult to shift due to its weight.
Well, that and the sheer amount of blood staining the Judgement’s deck. Even as she watched, one of the sailors started to slip in a puddle of the red fluid, before catching herself at the last second.
All around her, sailors and marines were at work shifting the many bodies strewn about. Mostly orcs and their mounts, but a few blackstone marines and sailors were present too. Naturally, the latter were being treated with the respect they reserved, the honored dead laid out in neat lines on one side, rather than being cast overboard.
No, they’d take the human dead with them when they returned home, to be buried with honour as they deserved.
…In graveyards already overflush with the dead of the north, Tala thought venomously.
“Ack!”
Glancing over, she allowed herself some quiet satisfaction to soothe her soul as she watched a pair of prisoners being lead below deck in shackles. The pairs green skin was mottled black and blue where they’d been beaten into submission during the melee, but they’d look worse before the night was through.
That there were only two wasn’t ideal, but it was enough for the brig mistress to work with. Tala knew from experience that the pair would be separated and each used to confirm the answers of the other.
That would hopefully be enough to get an answer on where the nearest orc base was.
Though if they expire before then, there’s likely more prisoners on the other ships in the fleet, Tala thought carelessly.
She was just about to set about shifting another corpse when the sound of someone moving up behind her had her turn.
“Some part of me still can’t believe it worked,” Captain Hayfield said without preamble. “Normally getting the greenskins to commit to a real fight against anything other than lone ships is like pulling teeth.”
Under normal circumstances the woman wouldn’t have been talking to her given that Tala was supposed to be ‘just another member of the crew’ as per her mother’s instructions. Hence why Tala was shifting corpses along with the menials, while the other marine-knights were toasting a well-earned victory.
In the time since her banishment though, they’d managed to build up something of a rapport with the older woman – owed in no small part to the fact that Tala had never once complained or shied away from her reduced duties - and as such the captain often took a few moments here and there to confer with her future liege lady.
“They don’t normally have three airships to call upon,” she said as she glanced meaningfully at the two downed and smoking hulls that had crashed into the forest and a mountainside respectfully.
Already gliders were floating down to recover the cores within – and likely the hulls as well given time.
The third was still in the wind, but it wouldn’t get far before they chased it down. And hopefully in the process they’d discover how the orcs had managed to keep the three ships hidden for so long. Certainly, the Snowback mountains weren’t small, but neither were three airships. Yet of the three sorties House Blackstone made into ‘orc territory’, not one managed to find even a hint of the stolen vessels.
Until now, but that was because the orcs chose to come to them this time.
“Nor as tempting a target as we provided,” Haysmith allowed. “I’ll admit part of me was worried when your mother presented her strategy. I’m no coward, but the thought of entering the Snowbacks with just three ships certainly had me feeling uneasy. Especially with one of the craft untested. Even if he is a big bastard.”
Tala glanced up towards the massive Brimstone overhead, the thing’s bulk dwarfing his two escorts.
“Mother’s always been audacious,” Tala allowed.
And using their newly constructed carrier as bait to lure the orcs into a real confrontation was certainly nothing if not audacious.
It had worked though. Oh, how it had worked.
“That she has,” Hayfield laughed. “That she has. Though I can’t say it hasn’t paid off. I can’t say I’m a woman unaccustomed to seeing the skies turn black with flyers, but I can say with surety that this is the first time I’ve ever been happy to see it happen.”
Tala smiled in turn. “I can’t imagine the orcs expected their little swarm strategy to be turned back on them.”
True, it wasn’t quite the same, given that the Brimstone’s twenty shard complement was still outnumbered by the thirty or so wyverns the orcs had sortied, but that hadn’t availed the brutes any.
A shard was normally a match for any five wyverns, given their improved speed, armament and armour. The only area a wyvern could be said to have an advantage was in agility, and even then, only in low speed turns or deceleration. If one of the massive lizards wanted to catch a shard that was banking away, they needed to be in a dive – which severely limited their ability to turn.
That combined with the fact that their only weapon of worth being a short ranged spurt of natural napalm meant they were only really dangerous when they had an overwhelming numbers advantage and the ability to force a shard into a turn fight.
…For example, by threatening the airship said shard was expected to escort.
Tala glanced over to where a small patch of sticky liquid fire was still burning merrily against the metal outer plating of the hull. Positioned where it was, it wasn’t actually a threat to anything, and as such was being ignored in favour of other tasks. It’d burn out by itself soon enough.
Still, the sight of one of those batlike head sticking its way through a gunport and bathing an entire gunnery crew in flames was one that all too many Blackstone’s sailors was familiar with.
Along with the sight of some leather clad greenskinned barbarian diving through said porthole a moment after to lay into what was left of the crew with her wicked hooked blades.
That was how the orcs had managed to take three ships. Ambushes involving massive swarms of wyvern-riders. The wyvern would swoop in, strafe the deck a few times with fire to thin out the external defenders, before landing just long enough to allow their riders to dismount. Then the wyvern would return to the fight, the trained beast relying on instinct more than the directions of their riders to chase down the remaining shard escorts. Meanwhile, the boarding orcs would set about butchering the crew, their shamans proving an annoyingly able peer to whatever marine knights happened to be aboard.
It was an effective, if crude strategy. One that had worked for the orcs for years.
Until now.
The Brimstone’s twenty shard complement had cut a swathe through the beasts before they even got close to the carrier or her escorts. What few of the drakes did manage to land, were cut down with their riders in short order, while the shards moved on to savage the orc’s stolen ships with aid from Blackstone-Marine Knight boarders.
“Turnabout is fair play,” Tala said finally. “And while I don’t doubt the wily beasts might be able to create a counter to our new carrier doctrine, we’re not about to give them the time to let that happen.”
No, a storm was coming to the Snowbacks – and with the orcs now missing two of their stolen ships and a significant swathe of their drake population, the greenskins were in no position to resist.
For the next few years at least, the orcish ‘rebellion’ had been neutered.
This is the end of the greenskin threat to my people and our lands, Tala thought. And as soon as we’re done here, we can turn our attention to the elvish threat.
…And William Redwater.
Comments
MaybeASquid
Wasn't the first dedicated shard carrier called the Eternal Dawn? Did the name get changed or is there another ship?
Peter Henrichsen
"Just addons" can be extremely powerful, especially when they're things like more powerful weapons and engines, or something like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_gunsight
The Fire Piper
Hoorah!
Found&Lost
Beta readers need to hurry up!
Blue Fishcake
Beta readers have it :D
Conrad34xdsa
Yes, I read that. Still doesn’t make sense. Chapter 31 had his team say it has been six months ago since the dual. They are saying this while at his family county. When he bargains for his sisters life in exchange for the black powder, it was immediately after finding out and failing to convince his family to pull out. This was chapter 33, and to quote William: “I’ll write up the method once I land in my new territory,” he muttered. “And present it to one of your palace guard.”. The queens response: “Enjoy the rest of your trip, William. As promised, your new territory is primed and ready to receive you when you land. The alchemist guild in particular are most enthusiastic to repay your interest in their organization.” In Chapter 34 from Piper’s POV : “ Which was why it had likely come as such an unexpected surprise for the rural knight when Stillwater arrived SIX MONTHS AGO with a royal writ appointing the human woman as the wood elf’s replacement.” Chapter 35: William request a aircraft to study and to fly After being thrown in jail. In Chapter 36: they receive said aircraft plus a new ship the next day. In Chapter 38: Griffith leaves after a few weeks with the Formula. In Chapter 39: apparently a 5 1/2 months has gone by instead of 2 weeks. The timeline can easily be fixed by having Tala say “Last year” as assuming the winter break means that it is the start of new year and she can be referring to just the six months or so she’s been gone as simply being events that happened last year, instead of saying it has been a full year in the Blackstone fleet. Great story. I just am confused where the 5 1/2 months went. Some clarification could go a long way. Thank you
Spintool
The release date should always be Wednesday so that we can Get it on Saturday
Harrison F
Don't tell him that, otherwise Blue will mentally set his release date to sunday, and we won't see the chapter until next wednesday!
Harrison F
As usual!
Floplays
no problem man, i was thinking sunday was the releasedate of the next one anyways
The Fire Piper
Lol!
Drunk Pop-Tart
I got 10 on tomorrow
mike wade
You are very predictable in this.
Blue Fishcake
Yeah, yeah. You all knew this was coming. I'm calling it for the evening. I'll finish off the chapter tomorrow. As ever, thanks for your patience :D
John
cant wait for the chapter that will release today on friday and not on any other day that is not friday!
Asherlee
I think you made a typo there, I think you mean "not even Blue knows" instead of "Only Blue knows"
The Fire Piper
Its almost time boys! Shall we bet on Sunday, or will it be Friday? Or will it be a rare Saturday? Only Blue knows for sure!
DownhillRabbit6.1
Bi-Plane Wyverns
Folly Industries
I didn't realize how much time was passing between chapters until another comment specifically mentioned it! I guess it came as kind of a shock it given how much detail we were given about the first year of school.
Ollie Fairweather
And the people are better written
Duncan Sharp
Chapter has been misspelled "Chaper"
Sea Wolf
My guess is try they’re either misinterpreting chemical processes and material processing as rituals *or* William has framed them as such to make it easier to understand and more likely he will be obeyed. Unclear which is more likely.
Luke Payne
If I remember correctly, harrowing is the practice of asking the fae for knowladge and being given every single detail about what you asked, overloading the mind with information. As such, harrowing wouuld always be subject spacific, unless someone remained sane enough to harrow multiple times.
Trevayne
Fair enough. I fully agree that the pool of potential pilots in the general population is much bigger than the pool of mages. In addition, there are lots of roles for mages that do not involve piloting a shard.
mike wade
Because he isn’t sloppy with the premise and actually puts some effort in.
Ryan Gammon
Its crazy how much I hate Isekai style stuff normally but love everything Blue has put out. How's this dude put out such good stuff?
Business Casual
Blue said in a comment further down that it was a year since the duel and about two weeks since the previous chapter.
mike wade
Harrowing isn’t a taboo in the same way jumping off a cliff while fighting a polar bear isn’t a taboo. If you want to commit an entertaining form of suicide, there’s not much anyone can do to stop you. If anything he’ll be considered even more of a genius for being able to harrow and stay sane and functional. Everyone will want to know how he survived it. They’ll be very dismayed to find that will effectively didn’t survive the harrowing.
Conrad34xdsa
Hello blue. Great episode. Glad we got more info on the Spies and that we got some idea as to what Tala has been up to. So can we get clarification that it’s been a year since Tala was beaten because when team 7 visited Ashford County, they said it was 6 months. How long was he in the County? Is William taking trips from the academy to his County on the weekends to work on other projects? Has it truly been a year or are we retconning the early chapter or was Tala’s section non-sequential?
Groinfist
It's time to reform the alchemist guild into the Cult of the Omnissiah
Tony
For now it's probably only the crown that´s been spying on him but I guess once more and more of his inventions get out he will probably get more than one full set of spies, from other factions and countries to try and spy on him, who knows if in the future he might have to shoo more than one spy team when he wants some privacy and his lawn might get infested with holes... not to mention perhaps a temptress or two to try and convert him to another team.
Tony
I wonder is William´s particular kind of madness will work out well for him in the future or sooner or later will need to depend more on capable people to help with minor tasks ion the begging and probably major ones later once the production of some of his inventions ramps up. I have seem people who love to micromanage fall apart when escalating projects and having everyone depending on them for decisions and instructions fully eat up all their time.
Indexo's Vault
Can’t wait for Will to be like “oh you guys made carriers as well?, shame I’m not gonna even let you get them out the in the air.” *nukes enemy ships with conventional missiles*
Marius Petrauskas
good stuff
Hue Man
Speaking of unicorns, I think it would be a funny bit if unicorns hated William. Since unicorns only like virgins, and William is a cougar chasing whore.
Hue Man
More information about Harrowing. And everyone can’t tell if William is committed a taboo to gain knowledge or a genius. Nice to the what the invisible guards are going and what happened when Will tried to spray them with paint. And get get to see what Tala the Villainess is up to.
Hue Man
That one person who was asking about getting the perspective of other characters and how they see and think about William, must be quite pleased with themself.
Hue Man
I think the queen asked him about it, but it was the first the readers would have hard of it. And it has the definition and side effects.
Kaywye
Yes, but using the advancements produced by a Harrowed individual is not the same as allowing that individual to walk free, let alone allowing said person to be the head of his own house.
MarakEvans
Quick Question: Did I remember correctly that the effects of this "Invisibility Potion" can be dispelled by the user? Back when Her Majesty decided to show herself, and her guards, in Griffith's office? Edit: Second, possibly longer, Question: What kind of cost or penalty could avoided by allowing the "Invisibility" to wear off?
Hikaraka
While harrowing is technically illegal, the vast majority of this worlds technology comes from harrowing. Shards, mithril, airship, and alchemy are all products of harrowing. I would put money on that invisibility potion coming from harrowing. Also, no one can really stop it. It's probably illegal in the same way suicide is illegal. By the time anyone's found out about it the deed is done.
Jason Dortch
Best I can praise together is that an academic year also spans a calendar year with first semester being spring and second semester being fall. So, after summer break, year-2 semester two (Sept) starts and would be over a year from when his team faced Tala end of semester one year-1 (June?)
Jason Dortch
Earlier chapters suggest that people usually ask for knowledge of a topic, which can come from any realm, race, or universe. A discordance of information or extreme volume of data can fracture a mind, like knowing about all types of explosions in all realities could give you memories of bird people doing bird stuffs. William got lucky because he only knows everything about his previous life, in which he was also human. His new found wisdom enables him to ask very specific questions and visualize the specific item he want to learn about. Such as, WW2 spitfire engines, is very different from the vast knowledge of “all engines” which would include all ever made in any universe.
Trevayne
I expect the time skip happened between his meeting with Yelena when he told her he wanted a countship and his actually arriving as a count. In chapter 36, he requests a two seater shard and a shard frame. Those are delivered in chapter 37, along with his new ship. At that point, he and the team are a couple weeks away from the new semester but we don't know which semester it is, the start of the second year or the start of the third. I suspect that it took most of the second year to get the Alchemists guild moved out to Red water and facilities built for them and William's research. I expect the big problem with the whole school arc is that the MC's main character issue so far (getting out of his betrothal by beating Tala's team) was completed in the first year. The next big set of challenges is developing and building the weapons and crews to defeat the Blackwoods.
Jason Dortch
I’ve read all three and each is getting better. This one is now my favorite!
Kaywye
I have a question. I can't remember if it's ever been said, but is there a societal stigma against people who are known to be Harrowed? Obviously those who turn into raving lunatics, but I can't believe that William is the first to keep his sanity after the ordeal (although I realize that 'keep his sanity' is a misnomer as his entire personality was destroyed and overwritten with someone else). I guess what I'm asking is, if it ever gets out, would he be subject to removal from his position and sent to an asylum somewhere?
Morpheus
huh? He beat her at the end of the semester, then took the summer off or whatever and now is BEFORE year two starts. How has Tala been gone for more than a few months?
Morpheus
IDK why but your comment made my think of this video https://youtu.be/IVIzcMF2Kc4
Morpheus
not that I've ever heard. Maybe it's a geographical thing?
Morpheus
maybe. Still he was ticked off that they pried it out of him. I would REALLY not be surprised if he put... less than essential things, alongside the real safety advice and what not.
Jacob
"Rust and some powdered aluminum is obviously alchemically worthless...... WhyTF is 4000°F molten iron coming out?!?!"
Jacob
Ritual #1: For the love of the Gods, don't use candles above where you're mixing this stuff
Jacob
I actually don't think Will is joking about the "rituals" for working with gunpowder. I'm imagining instructions like how to keep it powdery without risking a spark, etc.
Jacob
Given how much this world discounts "chemistry" in favor of "alchemy" I'm now wondering how they'll react when/if William introduces *thermite*
TeFiLeDo
Wait, how many academy years have passed by now? I thought the first half year was before the duel. Then we skipped past the second half year, before coming to Redwater county. If it's been a year since the duel, that would mean we are now halfways through the second year, right? When did that time skip happen? Did I miss it somehow?
Jesse Gilbert
"Pausing only to ensure the clearing was clear, Isabella wasted no time in dashing to the log at the centre of it and shifting it aside." It's a little rough to read, using the same word in different contexts. I'd write "Pausing only to ensure the clearing was empty" or "ensure the meadow was clear". But you're the writer here not me! Thank you for the chapter, really enjoying it so far. Would be nice to have clear timelines, as reference to big events - "One year after Tala's defeat", "One week after the Kraken was turned into tentacle sushi".
Trevayne
I don't think it matters. She is making the gesture of no (shaking her head) as she is saying no. Since it is a routine gesture, she is probably just forgetting that the gesture may not be visible.
Trevayne
Thanks for the clarification.
Blue Fishcake
Feel free to go ahead and point them out here. I make a lot and I generally try to fix them when I see them :D Also, thanks for saying this is your favorite. it tickles me pink that each series is the favorite of at least one person :D
Blue Fishcake
It's been a year since William beat Tala in a match and she got 'banished' up North. It's been about two weeks since the last chapter.
NeoJungleLover
Getting exciting!
Luke Payne
It was more a comentarry on the fact that William is going to be able to field any meanial with suffencient training, where as Tala will need mages to fly her twenty shards. Even if said pliots are better, quantity is it's own quality, especally if William can make the shards themselves better. At the end of the day, He wouuldn't be able to field every menial in his territory, as he would need some of them working the production and supply lines.
Trevayne
Did both of the sections happen at the same time? Clearly Tala's section is roughly a year later since it says she has been serving on her ship over the last year. However, the section with Isabella and Narya is less clear. If it has been a year that would explain why there was no mention of of the affair with Griffin. On the other hand Narya has only been in contact with William for a few weeks and the only thing he has produced is the interrupting gear. Even if he is just passing out tasks to produce subassemblies, over a year there should have been something new. Especially since he is trying to "invent" new tech like internal combustion engines and machine guns.
Trevayne
Not that many because I expect flying a shard is harder than driving a car. It will certainly be higher than the mage population, but I doubt they can literally put everyone in a shard cockpit and get them to fly successfully.
Quixotic
easy done is fine, it's common slang
22junk
Narya glanced up. “It’d be easy done. Our playboys finds out he’s being shipped off to the academy to straighten up and panics. Was that supposed to be “our playboy finds out”?
Baron Von Mott
Well, Blue has certainly spiked my interest about those invisibility potions now... And a good explanation for why a world with dedicated alchemists never figured out gunpowder on their own - they're still fixated on magical properties, not direct chemistry.
Trevayne
Yes, at least per the guardswoman, he is too sane to be harrowed. While some of his attitudes and actions may seem crazy, they fall into the crazy like a fox category. How many other harrowed people manage to convince the queen to create a new count ship for them before they are 18?
Andrew Lechner
Yep, but if the amount of tech is varied enough, then it will seemingly no longer fall under the pattern of harrowing, which seems to work based on concepts.
Andrew Lechner
I wonder what the youngest instance of success harrowing is so far, because the fact William did it at so young an age is probably what saved him. Rather than being half into another world like the others, his mind was so undeveloped that George was able to overtake it completely, leaving one mind, one body, even if it might not be the mind the original William might have wanted.
Morpheus
rituals he outlined less monetarily expensive ... never consider it cheap similar cost incurred not aware of yet. So making the invisibility potion exacts a cost on the makers that is very much not a 'lovely thought'. Willian also outlined 'rituals' as part of making the black powder that the spies theorize may be exacting an unknown cost on the makers as well. This feels very 'fullmetal alchemist' on the 'cost' department, and has me VERY intrigued on what the cost would be that carried the concept of 'transparency'. As far as the 'rituals' goes. My guess is that he's fucking with them.
Dancingrage
Dirt on head that hadn't turned invisible yet, and her own invisibility fading as she noted a sentence or three later.
Dancingrage
I would imagine a harrowing to be less 'wikipedia of war technology' and more Rom the Vacuous Spider, an 'Almighty Idiot'.
Morpheus
I've been pointing things like that out for awhile. So probably go ahead.
Morpheus
Ok then, so Harrowing? Is it normally topic specific? As she mentioned his early work was very 'boom' centric. That wouldn't apply to the gear though. Also makes me wonder what the other harrowed folks are really like, and what is done with them. Also, I'm glad the spies are getting some characterization. I wonder what role they will play going forward.
Morpheus
Its a bit like Jack's situation being so out there and difficult to prove that he wasn't ever challenged for a long time. It would be hard to PROVE that he did anything, but with every new bit of tech it would be more and more suspicious.
22junk
Relatively new to Patreon. If I think I’ve found a grammar mistake should I point it out here or are there designated editors for that sort of thing? Love this series by the way. Favorite of the three.
Hikaraka
"The only people who harrowed are stark raving mad!" *insert survivorship_bias_plane.jpeg*
White Neko Knight
How long do you think it'll be before someone corners him about his Harrowing?
Morpheus
Narya glanced up. “It’d be easy done. Our playboys finds out he’s being shipped off to the academy to straighten up and panics. So he decides to go for the easy way out.” Minor grammar points 1. "easily done" (add the L) 2. "Playboy" (singular)
Dragoongfa
Petty that the royal guards have to remain virgins for their office and in order to ride their unicorns, would have been an amusing side quest for our MC, to seduce and bed the invisible guardswomen who may or may not be there at any given moment.
Dragoongfa
One year timeskip, probably for the best since there is viable antagonist candidate left in the academy. Although I am surprised that the royal snoopers didn't comment on how young Redwater scored with Griffith, even if they weren't present to witness it. It's a great gossip topic for gutter talk and all that, while the invisible guards do look to be under a semi stressful mission. Would have been funny if on the background William had come to an unspoken agreement with them: don't snoop on my fun times with Griffith and in return I will have some delicacies forgotten somewhete where they won't be missed.
Oneofmanynames385
I cannot wait for the shock Talia will have seeing William’s shards when the inevitable confrontation happens.
Drew Monney
Is the tunnel parallel to the ground or perpendicular to the point of entry? I’m picturing a trap door under a log with a like 4 foot pit to land in based on your description of the character “dropping in” If the tunnel is perpendicular to the ground that would be a straight drop.
Nicholas Roberts
Godspeed orcish freedom fighters! Sadly it seems that you will no longer suffice as a distraction for the slavers. The race for air supremacy between the Royalists and the Slaver factions is on!
Luke Payne
Twenty shards huh? Rookie numbers, try the enire menial population of Redwater county.
Blue Fishcake
Does her companion need to see her shake her head for the passage to make sense? Edit: Having woken from a nap, the tone of my comment seems passive aggressive. Please know that I didn't intend it that way, I genuinely meant it as a question :D
ChaosAndBunnies
"Isabella shook her head again" How does she see this when it mentions Isabella's still invisible a couple lines later?
Blue Fishcake
Not trying to word of god it, but I can't help myself. It's less the carrier being some superweapon and more it being... more dangerous than expected for a single ship. The Blackstones always had the ability to take the orcs in a straight fight, the issue was getting the orcs to take a straight fight when they knew they'd lose. Enter, a ship that counters their doctrine and could act as part of a small enough taskforce to bait them into a fight. Three ships against three with wyvern support should have been a win for the orcs using conventional logic. Except the Brimstone's fighter complement counters the wyverns hard. Point is, with the loss of those ships, the orcs have lost what gains they've spent years achieving by basically becoming overconfident. Again, I know I shouldn't stick my oar in, but I couldn't help it :D
Slade
It does still count!
Andrew
Thank you!
Brian Roger
Oh wow, didn't expect that severe of a changing tide on the orcish front from a single carrier. Still, it doesn't seem enough to change the balance of power against the elves on its own. Does Blackstone have more up their sleeves, or are they just supremely confident in themselves?
werotan
EU here Sunday evening, p
Oreo-belt25
I'm in Canada, it's Sunday morning. You're good.
Bert Peeters
you are technically correct the best kind of correct
Blue Fishcake
It's still Sunday, it still counts!
