area51novel Chapter 167 : Chapter 167
Chapter 167 : Chapter 167
Chapter 167. Thunder Mark I
The festive air of the New Year had not yet completely faded from Winter City. There were even still a few drunkards out on the streets, hugging lampposts and refusing to let go.
But inside the “Heart of Winter” Industrial Park in the north of the city, sealed behind high walls, there was none of the holiday leisure to be found. There were only roaring boilers, pounding pistons, and the sort of mechanical thunder that made old-school mages’ heads ache just from hearing it.
Early in the morning, Logaris stood on the suspended stairway above Workshop One, watching an automated production line running at full speed. There were no workers at all—only more than a dozen thick mechanical arms sliding rapidly along intricate inscription tracks.
Clack.
A plate of refined steel was seized by a mechanical arm and fed into a stamping press.
Hiss—
High-temperature steam burst out as inscriptions were automatically etched into place.
In less than three minutes, a still-warm breastplate component for a second-generation magitech armor suit was spat out. Compared with the earlier semi-finished versions that still had to be hammered out by blacksmiths, this thing was terrifyingly superior in both joint flexibility and the precision of its defensive spell matrices.
“It can go faster.”
Logaris stared at the stopwatch, clearly dissatisfied.
“Raise the mana transmission output at Station Three by fifteen percent. Don’t worry about burning out the pipes. This thing is sturdier than you think.”
After tossing out that order, Logaris ignored the pained expressions on the recorders’ faces behind him and turned straight into the heavily guarded Workshop Two next door.
This was the real highlight of the day.
“Professor!”
Akash, captain of the personal guard, had already been waiting for him. Behind him stood several unfamiliar faces. They all looked young. Their posture was decent enough, but their eyes were wandering a little, clearly overwhelmed by the steel monsters filling the room.
“These are the best recruits from this batch?” Logaris swept a glance over the youths.
“Yes. Quick reactions, sharp minds, and most importantly, obedient.” Akash kicked the dazed recruit who was still staring at the ceiling right in the backside. “What are you looking at? The professor asked you a question!”
“Reporting! Private Second Class, Third Battalion, First Winter Legion—I salute you, sir!”
The recruit jolted so badly that he nearly bit his own tongue.
Logaris waved a hand. He had no interest in that sort of empty ceremony. He walked over to a rack of firearms and casually lifted a long black weapon.
It looked a little like a traditional musket, but it was longer, heavier, and its barrel was not round. Instead, it had a flattened oval shape, its surface densely covered in lightning-conduction runes that made one’s eyes swim just from looking at them.
The Thunder Mark I magitech rifle.
“Take it.” Logaris tossed the rifle to the recruit who had just been kicked.
The young soldier caught it in a flurry and nearly stumbled over from the weight. He ran a hand over the cold body of the weapon, utterly bewildered. There was no powder chamber, no fuse, and even the trigger guard was absurdly oversized. At a glance, it did not look like something meant for ordinary people at all.
“To the range.”
Logaris did not waste words. He took the lead and walked outside.
The firing range in the industrial park had been specially built, with thick blastproof walls on every side.
Standing at the firing position, Logaris pointed at a giant boulder three hundred meters away.
“Watch carefully. I’ll only teach this once.”
He took the rifle back from the recruit.
He did not load black powder like a traditional musketeer. Instead, he pulled a blue crystal about the thickness of a finger from his pocket and, with a click, inserted it into the slot at the rear of the stock.
That was the weapon’s core—a miniature mana capacitor.
Then he loaded a small cone-shaped metal projectile, about the size of a little finger, into the chamber.
“This is the safety.” Logaris flicked a small switch on the side of the rifle. “This is single-shot mode. It can do burst fire as well, but the recoil on this thing is heavy. Before you’re wearing magitech armor, using burst fire will send the muzzle jumping straight into the sky.”
After that, he raised the weapon and took aim.
His stance was not especially textbook. If anything, it looked almost casual.
The instant he pulled the trigger, everyone present felt as though their eardrums had been pricked by a needle.
There was no flame, and no smoke.
There was only an extremely shrill crack, like cloth being violently torn apart.
ZZZT—CRACK!
Three hundred meters away—
A clean hole appeared straight through the half-man-tall granite boulder. Spiderweb-like cracks spread out from the edges.
Stone fragments sprayed outward like shrapnel.
After punching through the rock, the specially made conical projectile still had momentum to spare. It drilled deep into the dirt slope behind it, kicking up a small burst of dust.
A deathly silence settled over the range.
The recruit’s mouth hung slightly open, and his hands were shaking.
He had used shotguns before. He knew what gunpowder weapons were like. Those things needed luck itself to hit at one hundred meters. At three hundred? That was a matter of faith. And this power… forget rock—even an iron-armored lion would have been punched straight through.
“How does it feel?”
Logaris ejected the spent piece—though it could hardly be called a shell casing. It was really just a discarded energy-conduction base.
He blew lightly across the barrel, which had barely any heat at all, then adjusted his glasses.
“No black powder. No complex mechanical structure. The principle is simple. I call it electromagnetic acceleration. A momentary burst of ultra-high-voltage current creates a magnetic field that accelerates the projectile and launches it at a speed beyond your understanding.”
“If the speed is high enough, even a soybean can smash a person’s head apart like a watermelon.”
Although this was not Akash’s first time seeing it, he still could not help but marvel each time the thing showed its power.
“Professor, this thing… can it really be mass-issued?”
“Why not?”
Logaris tossed the rifle back to Akash.
“It’s a modular design. See the guide rail on top? You can mount a Hawk-Eye targeting scope, so even green recruits like you lot can hit an enemy in the head from eight hundred meters away. You can fix a bayonet to the muzzle too—though I do not recommend that kind of barbaric method. You can even attach a high-explosive crystal launcher. One shot, and the enemy squad on the other side goes flying.”
He then pointed to a crate of ammunition nearby.
“Those are standard rounds. The red box over there contains explosive rounds. They produce a minor explosion on impact. The green box contains armor-piercing rounds, specifically for heavily armored targets. And the black box…”
His tone paused for a beat.
“Those are incendiary rounds. Use them sparingly unless you want to set an entire forest on fire.”
The recruits stared at the stack of brightly colored ammunition boxes, and their eyes gradually began to burn with fervor.
“My lord! This rifle… can we really use it?”
The recruit who had spoken earlier finally gathered the courage to ask. In his eyes, this kind of weapon was surely meant only for officers.
“As long as you can pull the trigger, then even if you are just a farmer who has never killed so much as a chicken, you can use it to blow away a knight who has trained in battle aura for twenty years.”
Logaris said it all in an utterly calm tone.
Yet those words struck every soldier present like a bolt of thunder.
In this world, where supernatural power determined everything, there was a vast chasm between ordinary people and professionals. Even if a knight simply stood still and let a farmer hack at him, the farmer would never break through that layer of battle aura armor.
But now, the age had changed.