Chapter 459: Thunder Spirit Silver
Needless to say, Celestina wasn’t happy when she learned about this, as it was her money her First Disciple was spending; however, knowing that Lucas was more than capable of making that money back for her, she decided to let it slide and simply added it to his tab.
Once Lucas got his hands on this new material, he immediately roped Braxton and the rest of the classified project blacksmithing team into building a prototype.
Surprisingly, their very first iteration actually worked perfectly!
Well, aside from one, teeny, tiny flaw, of course...
.....
Just as Lucas was about to demonstrate his masterpiece to Pauline when a number of voices called out from behind them, "Brat, is that you?"
"Boss!"
"Oh, Lucas, so it was you in here!"
Turning around, Lucas was surprised to see Braxton, Marco, and most of the rest of the research team had arrived, apparently drawn over by the lights in Project Thor’s workshop being on.
After a few casual pleasantries were exchanged, and the rest of the blacksmiths and researchers properly greeted the Great Elder, Marco spoke up for the rest of the crowd and asked, "Boss, are you going to fire it?"
Immediately, the eyes of all the eccentric craftsmen lit up, including Old Braxton’s, a fact that Pauline didn’t fail to miss.
This made her wonder what exactly was different about Lucas Roaring Tiger Launcher, or cannon as he called it.
She had seen the cannons at the Highland Palace all fire at once in a demonstration of the Zilon Kingdom’s power and was quite impressed, but she doubted that a single similar device being fired would be nearly as interesting, especially to all these craftsmen who had obviously seen it fired before.
Still, she had learned over the course of the day to not underestimate Lucas’ genius, or perhaps his madness, so she decided to just wait and see.
As for the boy in question, he saw the excited looks on his companions faces and couldn’t help feeling more enthusiastic as well, a wild grin appearing on his young face as he nodded, "Help me prepare it!"
"""Hurray!"""
Immediately, as if they had done this a hundred times already, which wasn’t far from the truth, everyone got to work.
"Safety check!"
"Cable 1 disconnected!"
"Cable 2 disconnected!"
"Trigger is in the off position!"
"Weapon is safe!"
"Loading now!"
In a flurry of activity, several of the craftsmen approached the silvery cannon, which appeared to be made entirely of Mortal Grade Tier 3 Meteor Steel, and actually began disassembling it, removing the bolts which were holding it down so they could open some kind of compartment at its rear.
One of them then brought over a small, rod-like object with a sharp tip on one end and a what looked like stubby fins at its rear.
This rod was obviously just a specially shaped hunk of metal, probably weighing no more than a kilogram, but the young female blacksmith who was holding it was doing so almost reverently.
As she saw the crew loading this rod into the back of the now disassembled cannon, it didn’t take long for Pauline to figure out that this was the equivalent of the Zilon Kingdom cannon’s ’iron ball’. Why it was shaped like this, she didn’t know, but she figured she would find out soon enough.
.....
While 6 members of the research team were busy with the cannon itself, Lucas, Braxton, Marco, and a couple others were also busy fiddling with a set of metal plates, hooking them together with a set of wires.
Lucas and his group were about 10 meters away from the actual cannon, behind 4 layers of thick, solid walls, some of which Pauline had noticed were damaged, probably from an explosion of some kind.
Curious, she walked over to them and was about to ask what they were doing when suddenly, all of them turned to look at her and grinned.
Pauline wasn’t one to get nervous in front of a crowd, but the near manic looks on these craftsmen’s’ faces caused her to pause for a moment.
"What do you think, Brat?"
"Why not?"
"The bigger the better they say!"
"En! We missed the test of the Mark-10, but this should more than make up for it! Great Elder!" Lucas called out, "Would you like to help us with firing the cannon?"
"Uh... sure?" Pauline wasn’t sure what she could help with, but since she was already here, and for most of the day she had just observed from the sidelines, participating a bit didn’t seem like a bad idea.
Maybe.
Possibly.
Hopefully...
Before she could change her mind, Lucas and Braxton, the only two bold enough to actually grab the esteemed Great Elder, had captured her and dragged her over to a pair of handles that were attached to the long series of metal plates they had been fiddling with earlier.
"Please grab these tightly and then channel as much of your Spirit Qi as possible into them, just like you would a Spirit Weapon," Lucas explained in an unusually cheerful tone of voice, "Keep going until you feel like you can’t force any more into the plates."
"Alright..." Pauline nodded, figuring it was too late to back out now.
Gripping the handles, Pauline began drawing Spirit Qi from her Core and channeling it into the strange device before her.
Initially, nothing happened, but after about 5 seconds, sparks started appearing on the surface of the plates.
Seeing this, Pauline immediately recognized what this metal was, it was Thunder Spirit Silver!
This strange metal, when it absorbed enough Spirit or World Qi, actually started producing sparks of lightning.
Pauline had seen a few Spirit Weapons that included small amounts of this metal, and even wielded one of them, finding the whole concept quite interesting.
When a blade made with Thunder Spirit Silver hit a person, or their armour, or even their weapon, it would send a jolt through them, causing them to stiffen momentarily or recoil in pain.
It was quite the devious invention, but she didn’t see how it could be related to the cannon 4 walls over.
Still, deciding to trust Lucas and the rest of the eager research team, Pauline kept channeling her Spirit Qi, finding it more and more difficult as time went on.
53 seconds after she started, Pauline couldn’t force any more of her Spirit Qi into the series of plates; in fact, she had to keep pushing her Spirit Qi fairly hard just to make sure these plates didn’t start ’leaking’ now.
The amount of Qi she had pushed into these plates was about as much as she would put into 3 Firestorm Arrows, which was quite a lot, but given her vast reserves, and the fact that she wasn’t actually forcing out more Spirit Qi, just holding what she had already channeled in place, Pauline figured she could keep this up for half-an-hour without any difficulty.
It would be uncomfortable, but she could manage.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait that long.