"Thank you." After waiting around the workshop for a while, the attendant Valyr had requested earlier finally arrived with the materials he asked for, prompting the latter to give the former his sincerest thanks. Watching the attendant disappear from his field of vision, the young man eventually returned to the workshop, laying out all of the items he had requested on a nearby table.
"So, firearms…" Allowing the gears in his mind to turn, Valyr brought up all of the knowledge he had just gained from the Technology Tree about firearms, as well as the knowledge he had obtained from his past life.
Essentially speaking, a firearm was just another name for a gun. However, if one were to be very specific with its definition, then a firearm referred to any portable weapon capable of shooting out a projectile thanks to a burning catalyst. Because of that definition, bows and crossbows were only classified as ranged weapons, even though their destructiveness could match firearms under the right hands.
Feeling like his train of thought was going on a tangent, the young man took some time to compose himself as he took in a few deep breaths. After that, he focused all of his thoughts on creating a gun, shifting his attention towards the items he had laid out earlier.
"I'll definitely be skipping a lot of steps here and there," murmured the young man to himself as his mind began to formulate all sorts of plans on what he was going to do. Of course, even though he told himself that he was going to create a gun, what he was specifically going to make was the ancestor of all guns.
The fire lance.
From the knowledge given to him by the Technology Tree, as well as the research he had done in his past life after unlocking it, the fire lance was initially invented as a way to surprise one's foes with a small explosion in combat. With the element of surprise on their side, the wielder of the fire lance would be able to plunge their spear deep into their enemies, allowing the chances of their side winning to increase.
At this thought, Valyr could not stop himself from letting out a faint chuckle. After all, from another perspective, that meant that the ancestor of all guns was a spear.
"Then again, it's more like an attachment to the spear rather than the entire spear itself," clarified the young man to himself soon after, realizing sometime later that the fire lance was just basically a pistol with a cumbersome handle that was a pain in the ass to reload.
"In any case, it's not like I can't tinker around with how I go about making the fire lance." Briefly shrugging his shoulders at the thought, Valyr moved all of the items he wouldn't need for the meantime to the side, leaving only three cloth sacks on the center of the table. "Now that I think about it, emulating the matchlock mechanism wouldn't be that hard…"
"…in concept anyway." After that, he opened the sacks, revealing its contents to him. "For now…"
"I need to make gunpowder."
Bringing up the information he had gotten from unlocking the relevant advancement in his Technology Tree, Valyr looked at the three sacks for a bit before looking around the workshop for a bowl he could use to dump the contents in. Eventually finding a box that could serve as a makeshift bowl for the meantime, the young man faintly scratched the back of his head as he went over the process in his mind.
"Saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur," Valyr muttered. "The first step is to crush these three things into a fine powder first. After that, I would have to mix them in a specific ratio and make sure that the whole mixture looks homogenous."
"Once the color is consistent all throughout, I would've successfully made myself the most basic version of gunpowder." Nodding after going through the steps in his mind a couple of times, the young man went ahead and grabbed a bit of charcoal from one of the sacks, plopping it into the box before swinging the Hammer of Beginnings down on it.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"I might need a few more boxes." Feeling the table wobble after the first couple hits from his hammer, Valyr made the smart decision to move the box with the charcoal onto the anvil before continuing. However, before he could even pulverize the charcoal into a fine powder, the box he had been using as a bowl could not withstand the force, shattering into pieces.
"…" Looking at the broken pieces of wood and fragments of charcoal spread all over the floor, the young man took in a long and deep breath as he pinched the space between his eyebrows. "On second thought, I need to get me a mortar and pestle."
ραndαsΝοvεl ƈοm Cleaning up the mess he had made, Valyr asked an attendant to bring him a mortar and pestle sometime after he was done. Then, while waiting for the mortar and pestle to come, he decided to forge a few decently sized bowls out of metal, feeling like he would be making a ton of gunpowder for the foreseeable future.
"Here you go, sir. A mortar and pestle." Surprisingly, the attendant had not arrived with the item Valyr requested until after two hours had passed, looking at the young man with an apologetic expression. "I checked the guild's equipment room first if we had any spare mortar and pestles made by other blacksmiths. However, there were none, so I had to make a trip to the Alchemist Guild and get one from there."
"I apologize for making you wait so long." At these words, Valyr patted the attendant on the shoulder and gave them a young smile. After that, he gave the attendant a few platinum coins, which left the latter at a complete loss for words.
"Good work." Grabbing the mortar and pestle from the attendant, the young man went ahead and returned to where the items were, leaving the dumbfounded attendant alone before they eventually decided to leave on their own accord.
"Alright. Let's start over." With a few bowls made out of iron laid out on the table, Valyr plopped the mortar and pestle onto the table before going through the gunpowder making process all over again.
"First off… the charcoal." Taking a handful of charcoal from the sack, the young man began to carefully grind it into a fine powder, adding more of the pieces he had grabbed after seeing there was more space in the mortar. By the time a half hour had passed, he had filled the mortar halfway with charcoal, prompting him to dump it into one of the bowls before proceeding onto the next step.
"Saltpeter." Similar to the charcoal, Valyr dropped a few pieces of saltpeter into the mortar before proceeding to grind it. Then, once he noticed that the saltpeter he had put in at first had already turned to fine powder, only then did he add more saltpeter, repeating the process all over again.
"Last but not the least, sulfur." Dumping the ground saltpeter into another bowl, the young man noticed how the saltpeter had taken on a slight gray color, prompting him to think about the charcoal from earlier. Wondering if this would affect the gunpowder mixture later, the young man eventually shrugged his shoulders in response, thinking that its effects would probably not be much.
With that, he went through the same process with the sulfur, turning into a fine powder that had been partly contaminated with the saltpeter and charcoal he had ground before. Briefly scratching the back of his head as he looked at the fine powders he had created, the young man let out a sigh before proceeding to mix the items into another bowl in a specific ratio.
Stirring it thoroughly with a metal rod, Valyr removed the metal rod from the bowl after he noticed that the color of the mixture had become homogenous. Dumping a bit of the mixture into yet another bowl, the young man grabbed a piece of wood before lighting it with the furnace, only to then drop it onto the bowl with the mixture.
'Here we go…' Hastily distancing himself from the bowl as he covered his ears, Valyr was expecting to hear a loud bang to echo throughout the room. However…
Fizz…
Rather than hear a loud bang, the sound he heard instead was similar to what one would hear from a campfire. In fact, the sight within his bowl was quite similar, with the mixture having turned into smoldering embers.
"Well then…" Seeing that his first attempt at making gunpowder was a failure, a bitter smile appeared on Valyr's face. Nevertheless, he was not discouraged at all, instead expecting it after thinking about the questions he had asked himself during the process.
"Guess it's time to do it all over again." Dumping out the contents of the bowl into the furnace, the young man took in a deep breath as he began to go through the process all over again, making sure to not make the mistakes he had done in his first attempt.
In any case, no matter how many attempts it would end up taking him, Valyr was going to make sure that before the inheritance began…
He would get his hands on some goddamn gunpowder.
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