thomasdarkrose
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Vol. 4 - Growth - Chapter 29
🕑 Added 2019-03-10 18:45:20 +0000 UTCIt didn't take long for Darren to realize it would be flat out impossible for him to remember how to make a revolver from memory. The more he learned about them the more complex he realized they were. Even though a revolver was a relatively 'simple' gun, it was still amazingly complex and if a measurement was off by just a few millimeters it could cause some serious complications. The worst case would be if he misaligned the barrel and the cylinder of the revolver.
Darren made a simple plan. He already knew what the gun was supposed to look like so he could flub most of it and not worry about things like the exact shape of the handle. He wasn't going for a perfect recreation or replica after all. First, he memorized the measurements of the most complex piece of the revolver, the frame. He spent a good amount of time looking over every measurement of the frame and committing it to memory. He took the time to write down the measurements and check them. When he could write them perfectly, he stood up and moved over to his gaming pod.
Thomas opened his eyes inside his cabin on the ship. The ship was swaying gently as it made its way toward Ulvstad. He'd only been logged out for a couple of hours but four times that much time had passed inside of the game. It was already early morning and the ship was already underway. Thomas immediately opened his 'Magitech Engineering Blueprint System'. He hadn't used the system a whole lot yet but expected he would be using it a lot more from now on.
Thomas immediately opened a new blueprint in the system and began transcribing the notes he'd memorized for the revolver. For now, his plan was to get all the notes on the measurements of the revolver transferred into the system and convert those notes into a blueprint when he was done writing them all down. He would kill for the option of just importing the information into the game. Sadly, that would have to remain a pipe dream.
After writing down the notes he needed to check one last thing before he could log out for the next batch of memorization. He pulled two of the unused ingots from his inventory and held one in each hand. He knew he could reshape the iron, but could he merge two pieces together to form one whole piece? Thomas set the two flats sides of the iron ingots against each other and activated his 'Transmutation' and 'All Seeing Eyes' simultaneously.
He willed the tendrils of mana formed by his 'Transmutation' ability to work on the seam between the two ingots and fuse them together. He watched closely with his 'All Seeing Eyes' as a tendril stroked between the seam and 'softened' the metal. The metal seemed to flow and ripple as the tendril of mana worked at it. Slowly the seam between the two ingots began to vanish as the two ingots seemed to fuse together into one piece.
After several minutes passed the whole seam appeared to be gone. Thomas deactivated his 'Transmutation' but continued to use his 'All Seeing Eyes' to examine the ingot. Even with his vision zoomed in so close that he could see the grain of the iron he couldn't see any sign of the seam. He rotated the fused ingots around and saw no seam on any side of it. However, he could not see inside of the ingots to see if the merging was surface only.
He would need to wait until he arrived at Hekrin's place to test the merged ingots. He could do so with just an anvil and a hammer. If he hammered on one side of the merged ingots while the other was secured to the anvil he could put a good amount of stress on the area where the seam had been. If the ingot didn't break under the stress then he could be fairly confident that the seam had been completely merged and turned the two ingots into a single, larger, ingot. Thomas placed the merged ingot into his inventory.
With all the notes he'd memorized written in his blueprint system and his experiment finished, he lay back down and logged back out of AoG.
Over the course of the next few hours, Darren logged in and out of AoG while transcribing the notes he memorized on the construction of the revolver. It was a complete pain in his ass but was a necessity if he didn't want to blow himself up the first time he pulled the trigger on the revolver. Darren copied down every measurement he could find, such as the angle between each chamber of the cylinder, 60°, the diameter of the interior of the barrel, 11.5mm, and many more. The most important part was making sure the barrel, cylinder alignment, and bullet diameter all matched perfectly. Everything else could be slightly off without causing too much trouble... or so he hoped.
With all of the measurements of the revolver now inside of his system inside of AoG, Darren relaxed on the couch in his living room to let his mind wind down. Memorizing all of that information had been a complete pain and constantly logging in and out of AoG had been extremely annoying to him. It was done though. The next time he logged in he could begin drawing the diagrams for the revolver.
Right now his biggest concern was trying to think of a way to get the primer of the bullet to function in a world where primers didn't exist. His first thought was to enchant the bullet casing and using the hammer to transfer the mana necessary to set the enchantment off. He quickly dismissed that thought though. Having to carve an enchantment into every single bullet casing would be a pain in the ass and would make it nearly impossible to mass produce bullets. Not that he intended to mass produce them, he just wanted to produce enough to be able to use the gun for a while. At least until he thought of something based less on a real-world weapon.
The whole point of the revolver was simply to learn and gain some experience. He had no real experience in making a gun from scratch. Any game he'd played with guns in it had been in a more modern setting giving him access to all kind of fabrication machines. Those machines had made the entire process require very little actual input from him. Within AoG he would have to do everything himself without the assistance of machines like a lathe, mill, or drill press.
However, he had a plan to kind of cheat. Transmutation. Rather than spend weeks making the various machines and tools he would need he could combine his blueprint system with his Transmutation ability to reshape the steel he intended to make directly into the finished shape of the parts he needed. Once the pieces were formed and shaped he could harden and temper them. If his ability to fuse, or weld, items together with his Transmutation ability was real then he wouldn't need as many, or maybe even any, screws to hold the weapon together.
Overall, it looked possible that his Transmutation ability could potentially save him dozens of hours on the gun alone. Let alone the hundreds of hours it would take for him to create the large machines he would need to cut and grind a hunk of steel into shape. If his Transmutation welding was no good it could easily take him an entire month to make a lathe, mill, and drill press machines from scratch. Not to mention figuring out ways to power them and the modifications he would need to make to compensate for the lack of electricity. He didn't even want to imagine trying to make something as complex as an electrical generator.
Yes, it would be best to just use Transmutation. Even if the fusing process wasn't any good he could just transmute the screws he would need. Right now Darren felt unbelievable grateful to Hekrin for sending him to the academy. Even if the magic lessons had been a little boring, the new use of his Transmutation ability was worth the trip by itself.
Once he felt like his mind had recovered from the minor bout of abuse, Darren got off of his couch and changed into some gym clothes. He'd made a promise to himself and intended to keep it. Though there had been no gains from going to the gym yet, that was to be expected as this was only his third visit in nearly two weeks. Darren spent a good hour working out at the gym doing light exercises and working up a good sweat.
Once he returned home he took another long and relaxing shower. No matter how good his shower spell got it wasn't an accurate replacement for the real deal on his real body. Once he was clean, Darren made his way into the kitchen to make himself something hearty to eat, preferably with a nice hunk of meat. Darren made himself a nice meal of steak, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Sadly all of it had been frozen. It was hard to keep fresh food in the house when he only ate in the real world on one day of the week.
After his meal, Darren checked the time. He'd only been logged out for a total of eight real-world hours. That translated to just thirty-two hours in the game. It would still be around another full game day before the ship arrived at Ulvstad at the earliest. Instead of spending the remaining six hours just lazing around, he made his way over to his gaming pod while stripping down to his boxers. He could spend the next day getting some sleep and working on drawing out the plan for the revolver in the game.
Thomas opened his eyes and looked around his cabin on the ship as he felt the world around him swaying gently. It was still daytime in the game so he resisted the urge to roll over and go to sleep. Instead, he opened his blueprint system and went to work converting his notes into a three-dimensional drawing of the revolver he intended to create. Over the course of the remainder of the day, he slowly created the model of the gun. He was extremely happy to discover that the blueprint system had tools that allowed him to draw things like perfect circles. The blueprint system reminded him a lot of what he'd heard about CAD design programs.
Thomas realized it was rather strange for him to be using a system like this within a fantasy setting like AoG. He just wrote it off as a necessity when he considered just how complex the machines designed for an engineering profession could end up being. Without a tool like the blueprint system at his disposal, it would be nearly impossible for him to make something like the revolver without spending a long time on it. If there was one thing gamers hated, it was wasting time. If the gaming company got a lot of complaints about forced race changes, they would be absolutely flooded with complaints if people had to waste time. People could be weird like that.
In the middle of his work, Thomas took a short break to reheat some food with his heat magic and enjoy a lunch. The food he'd made himself was pretty good but even the reheated monster meat blew it completely out of the water. He actually worried that the sensations being fed into his brain would ruin his perception of what tasted good and what didn't back in the real world.
A few hours after his lunch, he relaxed and let out a sigh. The completed drawing of the revolver floated in front of his vision. He couldn't be sure that it was a hundred percent accurate, but it was as close as he could get it. He'd made a few modifications here and there to make the weapon fit his personal style and desires a bit. Especially to the handle. He'd converted that into a more ergonomic grip, though he hadn't been able to modify it a whole lot as a spring integral to the function of the gun's hammer was hidden within it.
Thomas examined his work with a smile, when Hekrin saw what Thomas was making it was going to blow his mind. The last step was giving the file a name when he saved it. Thomas crossed his arms over his chest as he thought. The revolver he'd copied was an American classic and very popular even to this day. If he blatantly copied the name he felt like a lot of people would give him a hard time. It was also possible the game would punish him for using something that was likely copyrighted. Still, it felt wrong not to give it a similar name...
After thinking a bit, Thomas gave a shrugged his shoulders and entered a similar, though still different enough, name.
System Notice: Magitech Engineering Blueprint 'Peace Maker' has been saved.
Comments
After thinking a bit, Thomas gave a shrugged his shoulders and entered a similar, though still different enough, name. (Perhaps you ment 'Thomas srugged his shoulders'?
"The worst case would be if my misaligned the barrel" In the first paragraph.
