Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

Thomas worked the bellows of the forge to bring the iron up to temperature. Once the ingot pieces were up to temperature, Thomas pulled out the largest piece and started to hammer it out into a rectangular shape about fifteen centimeters long. This piece would form the base of the crossbow along with the flight groove that the bolt would rest in. Thomas used the hot cut tool to hammer a groove in a straight line down the top of the iron bar to make the flight groove. Later he would add the latch and bolt retention spring to one end of it. The other end would host the risers and limbs for the bow.

With the body roughly shaped, Thomas selected another chunk of iron and began to hammer it out into a thin bar about the same length as the body of the crossbow, approximately fifteen centimeters. He also used the dishing tool from making the grenade to help him put a curve into the bar to help form one of the limbs that would make up the bow. He repeated the process a second time to make a matching limb so that the two limbs would form a whole bow at the front of the crossbow.

Thomas spent the next hour forging out various small pieces he would need, such as the hinges and the small pieces he would need for the trigger assembly. Because the crossbow would be mounted on his wrist the trigger assembly was positioned at the back of the crossbow, all he would have to do would be to push down on it and it would release the bowstring to propel the arrow forward. Lastly, he'd forged a few small pieces that he would have to carve teeth into to make sprockets that would work with the enchantments to pull the bowstring back after it had been fired.

Over the course of several hours, Thomas refined each piece until they approached completion. With most of the pieces of the crossbow nearly done he switched to working on the bracer that the crossbow would be mounted onto. He intended to rivet the crossbow to the thick leather he had selected. He cut out a rectangular piece similar to the one he'd cut out for his current set of leather bracers. Actually, he was basically recreating that but with thicker and tougher leather and a softer underlayer to go against his arm to make it more comfortable.

Thomas cut two copies of the leather rectangle and layered them on top of each other with leather for the straps sandwiched between. He decided to make the straps go completely across the top of the bracer to reinforce it even more. He used the same kind of glue that he'd used at Hyde's and earlier to make the grenade to bind the two layers together. Additionally, he stitched the leather to the straps just to completely reinforce everything so it could handle any pressure it might come under in combat. The last thing he needed was for the crossbow to fall off of his arm in the middle of a fight.

Once the leather portion of the bracer was done, Thomas began work on the soft cotton pad that would go between the leather and his arm. He used two sheets of cotton cloth with cotton stuffing in between to make the pad and sewed it to the interior of the bracer. He stitched a cross pattern to firmly adhere the pad to the bracer, as well as reinforce the bracer even further. It was not going to fall apart anytime soon. With the bracer completed, he began to assemble the device.

First, he attached the main body of the crossbow to the bracer by drilling holes through the base and the bracer with a hand drill and hammering rivets into it with a ball peen hammer against the anvil. Incidentally, he decided he would craft a power drill at some point. With the base attached to the bracer, he attached the locking hinges and limbs to the main body and locked them in place with several rivets to reinforce the binding glue. He wasn't that confident in the glue so he added a couple of extra rivets where he could to make sure it was as secure as possible.

Thomas had to stop his assembly at this point to work on enchanting the pieces that would make up the auto-draw system of the crossbow. It wasn't really all that complicated. A wire was attached to the bowstring and fed into a winch-like system that would wind up and pull the bowstring back until it locked into place. When the trigger was pulled the bowstring would launch the bolt while pulling the wire out. By feeding mana into the attachment the winch would wind up and redraw the bowstring. To make the enchantment, Thomas only had to imagine a powerful electric motor that had a lot of torque. Thomas used the oil and mana crystal mix left over from the grenade to engrave each piece of the auto-draw assembly with the symbol for the electric motor, which was yet another circuit board-like pattern.

Once the engraving was done he began assembling the trigger mechanism. It wasn't too complex and consisted mostly of a single metal piece that was circular with two sections that had sections carved out. One small section that the trigger would hold in place and a large section that would hold the bowstring in place. When the trigger was pulled it would release the section it was holding allowing the metal circle to rotate and release the bowstring. For the winch part of the crossbow, Thomas twisted together two sections of sinew from an unknown animal to make a strong wire for pulling the bowstring.

Thomas attached the arrow retention spring once the trigger assembly and winch were installed, covering those somewhat sensitive parts. With that done he only really had one thing left to do, string the bow. Thomas used two more sections of animal sinew to make the bowstring and attached it to the wire coming from the winch in the body of the crossbow. He finished that off with some glue to bind them together. It might not be the best idea and would make changing out the bowstring in the future a pain in the ass, but he didn't want to risk the wire potentially coming undone on accident. He'd just have to replace the bowstring and winch wire at the same time in the future, if he used this thing that long. With the bowstring installed the entire thing was finally completely assembled.