Chapter 83: Simple But Precise
They finished lunch in silence and Dominic went back to his work, assembling the basics for another ten rifles while the castings for the other parts cooled.
Once he started milling the parts and tapping the threads, Dominic noticed that the guards were watching over his shoulder.
"That’s such a simple mechanism. How does that even become a Magitech weapon?" One of them asked curiously.
"It really is insanely simple, especially compared to the steam rifles. It’s all in the Magitech circuits. If you can’t use the mana to charge the circuit, it’s just an air rifle. Nothing special, but the magitech circuits here connect to the expansion chamber, and imbue the bullets with the magical effects.
That’s why I chose this design. To arm an entire Regiment takes hundreds of weapons, and I can do these in bulk with only a half dozen holes to be drilled and the air lines to connect. Even the valves are premade for us.
As the other Gunsmiths said, there are two levels to this art. True art, and mass-produced reliable trash. The second is what I am making, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work. In fact, because they’re so simple, they’re nearly impossible to destroy without crushing them.
There are only two external mechanisms, and that’s just the levers. If you break the charging lever off, you can weld a new one on in seconds, or even just jam the cleaning rod in the broken arm’s mounting hole and use it as a lever."
That made the Guard laugh. "You know, someone is going to actually do that, right?"
Dominic nodded. "If it breaks off cleanly, or you can extract the stub, the bolthole is just large enough for the cleaning rod. I give it two weeks before someone realizes that in the field."