Chapter 194: The Law of Air and Steel
By the following day, Kellar was guarding the rear mounted atop Ignis’s back, watching the long marching column. When the inhabitants of the border town learned of the retreat, emotions were split: the soldiers and police force wanted to stay behind to fight and avenge the insult against the beasts, but the civilians quietly celebrated the Shaman’s decision, terrified that remaining at the fortress would be nothing short of suicide.
The crowd rushed to pack and load every available wagon, with even the youth and elders volunteering to carry supplies on their backs just to move faster.
At the fortress, only Brak remained behind in command of thirty soldiers and a crew of ten miners to continue working the vein and the valley’s ash deposits. Every day, a gathering team would arrive from the main village to haul away the raw ore—since no active forges or furnaces would remain at the border—and bring daily rations. To keep up production, even the guards would have to work side-by-side extracting ore and gathering ash.
Lennis walked alongside Kellar’s great bear, his eyes glued to a roll of papyrus.
"Great Shaman, I have thought about this every day, yet I have no answer... can you enlighten me?" asked Lennis.
Kellar, who was distracted staring out at the gray expanse of Ash Valley, blinked and snapped back to reality.
"Sorry, what?" said the Shaman.
"Forgive me for interrupting you, Shaman. Look..." said Lennis, holding up a blueprint depicting a sphere and an arrow. "I see that the bullet is more powerful because it is launched by a greater force, but the bullet itself is not stronger; it is weaker than a spearhead."
"That is because bullets have a circular shape, whereas spearheads have a pointed shape," Kellar explained. "You can imagine that there is nothing in front of us, or perhaps it looks that way, but in truth, there is air right in front of us."
Kellar had Ignis step toward the side of the trail, snapped a thin branch off a tree, and showed it to the craftsman.
"For example..." Kellar demonstrated, moving the branch slowly. "Not a single sound. See? The branch passed through the air and it barely slowed it down. However..."
Kellar whipped the stick at high speed with a sharp snap that sliced through the wind with a distinct whoosh.
"See? It’s the exact same stick, but upon accelerating, the force of the air actually tried to stop it, causing that sound," Kellar noted. "This is called wind resistance. The greater the frontal contact area an object has, the greater the force acting against it."
Lennis’s eyes lit up as he grasped the concept.
"Then, if we can craft pointed bullets, we can deal far more damage and pierce those carapaces!" Lennis said with excitement.
"That is correct," Kellar agreed. "However, that introduces another problem called balance."
Kellar grabbed a piece of charcoal and, directly on Lennis’s blueprint, sketched an elongated bullet with a pointed tip, drawing a straight line down the exact center of the projectile and then another uneven mass offset to one side.
"If the metal’s mass is not perfectly distributed and the center of gravity falls out of place," Kellar pointed out, "the moment the bullet exits the barrel, air pressure will push against it unevenly. The bullet will become unstable, start tumbling through the air, and fly off in unpredictable directions without ever hitting the target."
Lennis remained silent for several minutes, staring at the drawing on the papyrus as he walked alongside Ignis’s heavy stride. As an experienced master craftsman, he understood the nature of imperfection all too well. Right away, he connected the concept to a challenge the tribe’s hunters and woodworkers had overcome long ago with their hunting projectiles.
"Balance..." muttered Lennis, rubbing his chin. "It is the exact same thing that happens with long-range arrows. If the shaft has even the slightest curve or if the stone point isn’t polished identically on both sides, the arrow veers off in mid-air and loses all its penetrating power."
Kellar nodded slowly from atop his mount.
"Exactly," Kellar confirmed. "On an arrow, the length of the shaft and the fletching at the tail help stabilize its path through the air. But a pointed bullet is short and has no feathers. How do we correct that instability?"
Lennis narrowed his eyes, visualizing the crafting process before speaking up.
"With arrows, we solved the instability by forcing them to spin," Lennis recalled, looking up with growing enthusiasm. "We set the fletching feathers at a subtle angle along the shaft. When shot, the air strikes the angled feathers and forces the arrow to spin rapidly on its own axis during flight. That rotation counteracts any minor flaw on the tip and keeps it flying straight."
"That is the exact principle," Kellar said, breaking into a smile. "But since bullets cannot carry feathers, we must impart that spin before the projectile ever leaves the weapon."
Lennis furrowed his brow, processing the idea.
"Inside the barrel?" asked the craftsman.
"Inside the barrel," Kellar confirmed. "If we carve spiral grooves along the inside of the iron tube and cast the pointed bullets with a slightly softer metal base to catch those grooves, the powder’s blast will force the projectile along the spiral path. As it exits the barrel, the bullet will be spinning on its axis like a top at thousands of revolutions per second."
Lennis’s eyes gleamed with revelation. He stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the trail, staring at the blueprint with a mix of awe and devotion.
"Gyroscopic spin..." whispered Lennis, tightening his tool bag against his waist. "If the bullet spins along its axis, centrifugal force will keep the center of gravity aligned even if the tip has a tiny imperfection. It will drill right through the air and drive its point directly into those beasts’ armor."
"Precisely," Kellar concluded, holding Ignis back to maintain pace. "Once we reach the main tribe, we will begin crafting the molds for the new rifled barrels and pointed projectiles."
Kellar pulled out a piece of charcoal and, on the back of Lennis’s papyrus, began drafting a detailed diagram. He drew a pointed projectile fitted into the top of a hollow metal cylinder, featuring a sealed base with a small compartment at the bottom.
Lennis leaned in, narrowing his eyes with curiosity at the complex design.
"What is that, Great Shaman?" asked the master craftsman, pointing to the cylinder.
"This is how a complete bullet must look from now on."