The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 534 - Adequate Pasts, Silent Futures, & The Loud One In The Middle Of It All

Chapter 534: Chapter 534 - Adequate Pasts, Silent Futures, & The Loud One In The Middle Of It All

After calculating the force and time of fall precisely from her throw, the eldest daughter of the Goltbred family stood and gestured for the former assassin to follow to a safer spot. A second weapon was pulled out for the inspection, placing it firmly in Adhesion between them so that the scout could see the twisted profile it had. A spiraling square cruciform that left fluted grooves running the full length of the third-of-an-inch thick spike.

"Twice the density than steel and harder than most forms of it. Tungsten carbide that I sintered together myself. The coating is a carbon lattice bonded by - actually, you’ll just be bored of that, I can tell. You can see and feel the effect on your own."

Mint eyes flicked upward briefly, tracking something the scout couldn’t see. She’d left a tiny fragment of her spirit on the weapon she threw, to make certain of the theatrical timing. So that she could end her talk before the next show began.

"The rifled profile adds rotation during flight and helps stabilize it. But the bigger point is it *also* gives your Air Element something to grip, much like the Flurry Ring we played with the other day."

Sevra’s fingers reached out and traced the almost imperceptible texture along the groove. The coating was nearly frictionless, but the spiral was actually serrated at a scale her eyes couldn’t completely resolve... despite her spirit suggesting there was more to it. Her trained touch could recognize the deliberate sense of roughness here but not the reason why it existed - something Elua was more than happy to elaborate on in the seconds left to them.

"If you’ve ever studied certain avian feathers, like that of an owl, you will find they have micro-serration. Breaks up turbulence so that they don’t hiss in the wind and announce themselves. They simply arrive to the prey... like a throwing needle to a harmless stone bench."

Turning back toward the place they’d vacated and pointing one finger at the empty seat, she wielded a slightly ’vicious’ smile that was meant to match the capability of what she had engineered through material science and sigil enhancements. A sharp crack came a heartbeat after the scout noted a high-speed blur, followed by a cloud of pulverized rock dust that puffed upward from the center of the bench seat.

For an entry point, it was deceptively small - a fairly clean puncture the size of the spike surrounded by hairline fractures caused by its torque that spidered out almost like a heavy step onto a barely frozen river. However, the sound of debris clattering in a dance against the training ground foundation, beneath the bench, told more of the story about the force that had just hit from twenty seconds of climb into the sky... and twenty seconds of gravity assisted acceleration on a quarter-pound of aerodynamic object.

The scout moved closer and crouched down to look. The underside of the stone had been blown out and downward, leaving a grapefruit sized crater where the projectile had exited in a violent shockwave. Hovering now only inches above the ground, caught in a shimmering vortex distortion of a compressed Gas that made the air look almost liquid, was the perfectly intact black needle... and some of the spalled fragments of brittle stone suspended in the highly dense engineered substance.

Elua was as proud of her own new ’toy’ as she was for the weapons she’d made, considering it was all part of a lesson process with her chemistry assistant. While the lake under the cliff was a rich source of minerals and mining paths, the scout next to her had mapped a few other cavern entrances during her original time there which the reincarnator’s constructs had excavated of their potential over these years.

In one, she had found the crimson-pink crystal blood-flowers of cobalt bloom - erythrite. Using that... and making plans for the waste arsenic smoke burned off in processing, the two women had generated a pinkish dust of a material... after treating the black oxide dust with hydrofluoric acid. Which then became a nice brown when correctly blasted with elemental fluorine gas and would be a lovely metallic carrier that allowed her to generate all sorts of fluorocarbons.

’Working together with two different complimentary Elements is always a joy.’

In another area of the Astral Exclave, a pocket of crude oil had been found. Separating and storing the fumes into various alkane hydrocarbon liquids - through what she liked to refer to as her patented glassless chemistry - the cultivator had produced enough butane to pass over the fluorine donating brown powder and turn it back into pink. Producing in the process a stable, inert gas like her Sulfur Hexafluoride... but even denser. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

...And more hydrofluoric acid, but that just gave Rezzue more practice and work with her Element!

Perfluorobutane was nearly half as much more in molecular weight of the latter gas, though she found she liked having both on hand. The containment system and ritual for her full-body gas armor she once devised, when avoiding her dress while making tree-sludge edible, wasn’t particularly worth reforming *entirely* with this new substance in mind. However, keeping an orb of the new one on hand as a mobile shield, catching glove, or force hammer depending on the situation was a nice gift to herself.

’Also it’s hard as heck to control, feels like I’m moving liquid using the wrong kind of ability. What a fun stressful exercise!’

Mint eyes watched the older woman bent over in her dusty cloak, something she also thought about ’upgrading’ - but not before a different project with her beloved in mind had the time to be completed. She may have been an accomplished artisan in so many fields with her thousands of years of living... but some things she liked doing and others she did not. Her own touch ups with the gossamer silk on her silver dress had reminded her that full-scale tailoring was *not* one of them.

"I didn’t launch it at speeds that would break the sound barrier. So that you could hear - or not hear - the effect I spoke of. The tip of it has also been reinforced with similar sigils to all my weapons, so it shouldn’t deform from the profiling I’ve given it unless you have a reason to launch them at... oh, at least three times the speed it just fell from."

"How fast... you know what, nevermind. I don’t want to know. I also don’t want to know what I suspect."

"Yes, I threw that by physical force alone. Now I need a snack before I show you how to do it with an Air Element styled pneumatic piston, frontal vacuum, and assistive vortex spin."

"I said I didn’t want to know. The first part. I’ll gladly take the other tips while you are being generous."

Letting the needle drop gently into the scout’s waiting palm, Sevra stood back up and began comparing it with its twin... or rather, its duodecuple - as there were two thigh holsters holding six each. The design was certainly different from her original ones, though she didn’t doubt that these were improved. Only doubted the purpose of giving them to her.

"Your current ones are adequate for most purposes, I’ll admit. Steel alloy of some sort, balanced for throwing, a few divots probably meant to be coated with unpleasant toxins from a family recipe. However, what is sufficient is often a matter of opinion or perspective - and in mine, these new ones feel like the bare minimum I should allow you to carry."

The former assassin’s hand moved unconsciously toward her old thigh holster. She’d kept the leather cared for and the weapons within it clean and oiled. They were taken from the family storage and had served her well ever since her last mission for her clan... mostly for incidental use cases, as she had not had a lot of reason to actually throw them into living people.

’I’ve probably thrown them more in Dranuil’s general direction than I have at anything else at all in a decade.’

Sevra knew she was right - these weren’t unwelcome improvements or ceremonial display pieces. They were weapons designed by someone who expected them to be capable of killing and who had thought through details of what that actually required to be fully effective. Mass and hardness that would carry the spikes through armor and through flesh. Potentially through whatever scaled body that a monstrous, Reforged cultivator might put between herself and safety.

The scout secured the two needles from the demonstration back into the leather so easily that it felt like they glided in with a small suction force - because they did. Buried at the base of each sleeve were little gray gems that were etched tight with sigilscript to provide a link to the set of weapons, serving the function just shown as well as allowing a traceable tether... just in case one became hard to find after burying inside the ground or a moving target.

’Which also makes them good for lodging one in a routed enemy and letting them lead you back to their friends, riches, or employer~’

"...Thank you. They seem very... deadly."

"You sound so displeased. Don’t worry - I thought of that, too. There’s one more."

Reaching out overhead, the final piece emerged the way the little Illusionist rarely got tired of. People realizing that something had been right beside them all along, while making it also seem like she pulled it out of nowhere, was a grand pastime in her last life. Granted, it was usually played for deadly effects to overcome the confidence of any enemy and not just to be mischievous, but fun was had where fun was had.

Longer than its dozen siblings, a single shaped and polished piece of beryllium copper gleamed its red-gold. After ’pulling’ it down, the craftswoman held it in her bubble of heavy gas and presented it with both hands unfolded as if it were a treasure floating on a bed of fog. Sevra had to admit that the effect of hazy but excited air-pillow as a delivery method was very... Elua.

"Those were for ending things quickly and quietly if you are forced to make such a decision. This one is for everything else. On top of being fashionable, I think."

"So it is a hair stick. It’s very... fancy."

The scout replied carefully after accepting it just as careful. It’s weight was still substantial compared to her old ones and the metal was unexpectedly warm in her grip. The squared set of helixes were similar to the others, but were also interrupted by small apertures along the length. And at each end were faceted points of smoky gray quartz.

"Spin it. Like this."

Sevra raised an eyebrow at the flicking motion, but complied - flipping it shortly into the air at high speed. A sound emerged like a treble-filled shriek of terror itself. Disorienting, distracting, and unmistakable. The shorter woman caught it quickly while shaking her head and doing it again. With a lazier flip, a low, pleasant hum resonated into their chest with a bassy tone.

"You went right for the extreme one, I was trying to lead you through it. The holes help add a pitch to its motion. If you practice spinning it with your Element in midair, or locking it in Adhesion while flowing Air around it, it can even be a musical instrument of sorts."

Combined from an actual musical tool with a few other effects, the heiress smirked in pleasure at the waver of spirit within the assassin. Clearly being uncertain about this one because of how it revealed her position. Even though she was unhappy about the other ones being too quiet.

’What a hard to please woman. Someone is going to be very unlucky when they seek her attention some day.’