The World Dragon's Heir-Chapter 81: Gunsmith’s Forge

The end of the Prince’s speech was the sign for them all to disperse and start making plans for what was going to come next.

Dominic returned to his room to finish the mana revolvers. He knew that it was going to take him the rest of the day to finish them, but it would be a good backup for his new magic once he learned to actually use the pistols.

Once all the inscription work was finished, Dominic faced a dilemma. If he used the usual method, of sprinkling the weapon with mana core dust, it would use up a whole core to do the two pistols.

That wasn’t really resource efficient.

So, he crushed an Ogre Core into a fresh bucket of the tempering oil potion and imbued it with as much mana as he could, then put the first heated pistol into the oil.

Flames rose from the oil as the weapon was dunked, and the structure turned bright silver.

{Mana Revolver} created at level 17, Rare Grade.

Dominic assembled the fine parts for the trigger mechanism, and then put the grips and the side covers back on the pistol before testing the mechanics.

It dry-fired smoothly, and cycled effortlessly. Perfect.

The process was repeated with the second pistol after reloading the oil with mana, which took him nearly ten minutes.

{Mana Revolver} created at level 17, Rare Grade.

Perfect, a matched pair of Rare Grade pistols. Being a Sorcerer really was a cheat code for crafting. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

Dominic put the pistols in the storage ring around his toe, and went to bed early, as Pops had warned him to.

The breakfast meal was delivered at first dawn, an hour earlier than usual, and before it was even finished, there was a solider waiting at the door for Dominic.

"Apprentice, I am your escort for the morning. Each gunsmith will not go anywhere unattended." He announced in a dry monotone.

Dominic gave Pops a confused look, but the old Dwarf only shrugged helplessly. He wasn’t in charge of increased security measures for the forge. If someone thought that the gunsmiths might be targeted, then they got a guard, and that was that.

Dominic finished his meal and made sure that he had put the special oil into his storage space, and put a bucket of regular oil out, in case someone went into his room.

The chances of that seemed extremely low, but it was still better to be safe. Once he got to the gunsmiths’ station, he would see if he could get materials to do the same, as they were expected to make higher grade weapons.

The guard wasn’t leading Dominic to the forge, and he was becoming suspicious as they moved down into a basement level of the Palace. Activating [Mage Armour] might cause issues, but Dominic was ready to cast the defensive spell at any moment.

The escort didn’t appear to care. He just led the way down through the Palace until they reached a freshly renovated basement level that clearly used to be a dungeon, as Dominic could still see the manacle mounts on the walls and the outlines of the cell bars.

But it had been equipped with forges for them, and there were Journeymen there already preparing to work.

"Apprentice Dominic, this is your station. Materials are on their way. The instructions were to hold them in the storage area until each smith had arrived." The guard explained in a bored tone.

A cart was rolled out with an assortment of rare metals, mana cores, gems and premade magitech circuitry, mounted in wax sheets, that could be melted to place the circuit on the weapon, presumably a rifle by the size.

"What are our instructions? I don’t see a set blueprint to work from, so are we just making whatever sorts of rifles we feel like?" Dominic asked.

"Do you have multiple rifle blueprints of your own?" One of the other smiths sneered.

"Technically, one is a Gunsword, and one is a rifle. But, yes." Dominic replied with a shrug.

One of the older Journeymen gave the arrogant Journeyman an annoyed look.

"They want Uncommon Quality or better, and at least two rifles per smith per day. How you get to that standard is up to you, but don’t expect anyone to pick up your slack.

That goes for the rest of you as well." He insisted.

If they weren’t going to share a blueprint to get uniform weapons for the regiment, then Dominic was free to make whatever he wanted, within his abilities. So, he could make the Ogre Hunting Rifles, but he could also make the Gunsword, which was nothing more than a long barrelled revolver mounted to the back of a sword blade.

Those were much faster to create, and less complex. Plus, there was a chance that he could make the magitech circuitry for a mana revolver work on them.

Dominic looked over the premade circuitry prepared on the cart, and saw that indeed there were loops for the creation of mana bullets, the same as he had so painstakingly carved into every cylinder of the revolver.

But when he looked around the room, everyone was making conventional firearms, mostly the steam rifles with pressurized backpacks that the Riflemen of the Officers corps traditionally used.

Dominic looked at the items around him and decided to ask one more question before he began.

"Are we making weapons for an all-rifleman unit, or do we also need pistols for gunslingers and sidearms? I also have a pistol recipe."

A familiar deep voice replied, and the old Armourer who traditionally sat in the corner of the forge engraving armour entered.

"The unit is all riflemen. You can make pistols after you finish your daily rifles if you want the extra military credits, but they’re not the primary weapon of the Natural Sons. They will be placed behind the main lines, so they can exercise their longer range."

Dominic bowed in recognition of the old Armourer’s knowledge and skill, and then began to arrange his tools to make Ogre Slaying Rifles. Or at least a mass-produced knock off based on the design.

There were plenty of Mana Cores here, so he wasn’t lacking in resources, but Dominic wasn’t naive enough to think that the bare minimum of two rifles a day was going to be anywhere near enough.

That was more of the standard to avoid punishment, not to measure success.