Age of Gods - A VRMMO Story

After Thomas and Hekrin returned to town they walked down the main boulevard in the direction of Hekrin's shop. On the way, they came to a stop in front of The Swans Nest. Thomas turned to Hekrin, "I'll see you tomorrow. I should be able to finish the revolver and make a few different rounds to test fire."

Hekrin remained silent as he gave a curt nod and walked off in the direction of his shop. Thomas watched him and briefly wondered if Hekrin lived at his shop. The building was only a single floor and Thomas had seen all of it without seeing a sign of a bedroom. There were a few possibilities but it was really none of his business where Hekrin slept. Thomas turned around and entered the inn with a smile. The smell of good food cooking caused his stomach to roar in protest at not being fed in so long.

Thomas enjoyed a nice hot meal in the dining room before retiring to his room for the night. Inside his room, he stripped down for bed while using his 'All Seeing Eyes' to see in the dark. He wasn't too tired to practice tonight. Though it had been a long day he hadn't overtaxed his magic like he had the day before. He went through the practice with his 'All Seeing Eyes' and when he felt his mana was low he used his 'Serenity' to fall asleep for the night. Without 'Serenity' his excitement for the next day would have kept him up for hours.

After returning to the U.L.T.R.A. the next morning, Thomas immediately went to work making slugs for his bullets. He spent hours rotating between using 'Transmutation' and 'Serenity' to recover his mana. He found he could make seven copper jacketed slugs before he needed to use 'Serenity' to recover his mana. He'd never felt more grateful for the ability than he did now. If he didn't have 'Serenity' then all his work would end up taking a fair bit longer than it currently did.

The bullets Thomas produced were not full metal jacket bullets. His reasoning was rather simple, they didn't do enough damage. Instead, the copper jacket of the bullet left the lead tip exposed. The exposed tip would allow the bullet to 'mushroom' when it hit its target and cause more trauma to the target. In other words, more damage. Thomas had made five batches of slugs which gave him 35, enough for five full loads in the revolver. He didn't like that and made one more to give him an even six full loads.

Thomas selected three of the slugs and put them off to the side. They would be used for his test firing to see how much Firestone powder he should use for the rounds. This would, once again, leave him with less than a full load but he could deal with his OCD about that later. He pulled three of the formed cartridges from his inventory and went to work on them using his metal magic. He cleaned them up and drilled a small hole in the center of their bases. Once they were ready he pulled out one of the thin metal circles for each round and used a ramrod to set them in place inside of the cartridge.

Once the casings were set he went to the pestle and mortar to grind a small chunk of Firestone into a fine powder, adding a bit to the powder left over from yesterday. When he felt he had enough he began to add the powder to each of the casings. The first he filled to about 50%, the second to 75% and the third got around 90%. Thomas didn't know enough about the Firestone powder to know if he could just fully pack the cartridge or not. Gunpowder contained the oxygen it needed to burn inside of its chemical makeup but did Firestone?

Thomas picked out a fourth cartridge and loaded it, though for the fourth one he loaded it to the brim with Firestone. If this round couldn't fire then he would know that the Firestone at least needed some oxygen to work. With each cartridge loaded with various amounts of Firestone, he marked them so he would know which was which later. He also used a second thin iron circle to act as wadding in the rounds with spare space inside of them to keep the Firestone powder compact.

With the four rounds loaded with powder, it didn't take him long to load the slugs and crimp them in place to finish making the rounds. He looked over the four completed bullets and smiled as he stored them inside of his inventory. While his inventory was open he retrieved the revolver and looked at the frame of the handle. It was time to finish the revolver completely. He walked over to one of the shelves where Hekrin had some materials stored and started looking for something interesting to use as material for the handle.

He looked for a bit before he found something he found appealing. It was a small block of material that felt like wood but had a swirling black and white pattern to it. It reminded Thomas a lot of the swirling ball of Holy and Unholy magic within his body. After he decided to use the material, he carried it over to his workbench and got to work with it. It was easy enough to cut off a section of the black and white block to use for the handle of the revolver. With it cut in half he began the process of giving it a rough shape using files to grind off excess material.

Once the handle halves were roughly shaped he drilled a hole through them, this would be where he used a pin to bind the two halves together. Once he fitted the handle halves on the gun and pinned them tightly in place he went back to using the files to refine the shape and smooth it out. He worked quickly and efficiently as this process was not very different from making the handle for a sword at all.

When it was done the revolver had a smooth slightly rounded handle with swirls of black and white. If the pattern had been more uniform it might have looked like the stripes of a zebra. Because of the randomness of the swirls, it looked more like someone had spilled ink over it that had spread out randomly. As he examined the revolver he finally felt like it was completed.