Padraic held up the small projectile in between his fingers. He let the brass colored cylinder roll down his finger into his palm before grasping it.
"This right here? This is far more of a pain than the barrels," he grumbled.
"I imagine so. Producing them on a mass scale will not be a simple matter," I agreed.
Padraic shook his head in displeasure. "The perfection required to make every single one of these just the sa as the other and then repeat that process hundreds of tis… honestly, I can't see how it's possible without so special technique. No, perhaps ability lies within the setup?" he said to himself.
"By my era, machines made everything. Billions of them across hundreds of worlds, producing tens of billions a day. It was less of an art and more of a simple, efficient system. You've co a remarkable way in such a short ti," I said honestly.
Padraic scratched his beard and narrowed his eyes at the bullet. "So machines, huh? Can't say I can get millions of them going, but I'm sure there has to be so kind of technology that ca before your ti, right?" he guessed.
"There was. Sadly, my knowledge of them is minimal. I had no reason to make my own ammunition, and the rounds I primarily used are far too advanced for our current technology. I'll be able to guide you in a direction that will help, but that's about it," I said with a shrug.
Padraic mulled over my words for a brief mont before sighing deeply. He flipped the bullet over and pointed a finger at what should be a prir. "This is going to be another issue. This…prir. The talworking is fine, but it suffers from the sa problem of consistency and from making such a small damn thing. But these chemicals are beyond , Kal. I used so of that powder Sylas handed over, but if I had to guess, that's probably too much," he said.
"We'll make do with that for now. This world may have similar compounds to what I know, but there could be alternatives that I'm unaware of. I wasn't expecting to get to this point so quickly, so I didn't believe or worry about the prir being a top problem," I said with a smile.
Padraic rolled his eyes and mumbled sothing about not believing in him enough. He grumbled to himself as he took out a sack and poured a fine, greyish black powder into the barrel.
"Any idea how much of this we need? Didn't get around to all your fancy firing chanisms yet, so we are just going to light this thing and run," Padraic said.
"You…probably should have stopped a few seconds ago," I muttered.
Padraic shrugged to himself before dropping the bullet into the barrel and packing it down with a random tal rod he apparently had. All I could do was chuckle bitterly. It shouldn't have even been possible in the first place, and the irony of packing a cased bullet into a makeshift rifled barrel did not escape .
This is going to go very poorly. Perhaps I should have been more clear on the whole "bullet leaving a barrel" part.
"What? Did I do sothing wrong?" he asked innocently.
"No…it's nothing we can't tweak later. Feels like many steps forward in the future and sohow quite a few back, though. Also, just be warned. This is going to explode. Violently at that," I warned.
Padraic waved his hand at as he set the barrel into the makeshift stone pedestal. He strapped it down and walked back with . We secured a private magic-testing room for our little experint. It was a good thing as well, since the following boom was going to be quite a problem if others were around.
Once we were against the back wall, I erected multiple stone walls that wrapped around our sides and heads. A tiny fla sprouted from my finger tip and floated past a gap I made in the walls. At the sa ti, I took out so cloth and began gently stuffing my ears.
Padraic eyed suspiciously as he asked, "What are you doing that for? It can't be that bad, right?"
I smiled at him as I guided the fla to where I rembered the barrel was placed. There was no fuse to light, and the gunpowder wasn't exposed, so it was going to be a rather crude experience. Padraic shuffled around nervously and covered his ears with his hands just in ti.
Boom.
I winced slightly as the explosion's noise far exceeded my expectations. Then again, I had never heard gunpowder explode with my newfound hearing and vastly overestimated my ability to adapt to it. That would be a problem requiring imdiate redy, for in the future, I would go painfully deaf within monts of sustained fire.
Padraic also did not fare very well, but that was before the excitent lit up in his eyes. "Holy…now that was a boom…," he muttered.
Once my stone walls crumbled to the ground, the results of the test were as anyone would have expected. Rather than creating a working firearm, we had simply made a pipe bomb.
But… was that too much force? Perhaps he added more than it appeared.
The stone pedestal was shattered, reduced to a broken shard with barely a sliver left. The barrel didn't fare any better as it had been utterly destroyed and turned into shrapnel that spread across the small room.
Padraic stood next to with wide eyes as I patted him on the shoulder and said, "Looks like we'll need to get those ratios down first, huh? Also, we don't load the bullet with the case down the barrel, just the bullet leaving the barrel."
"Oh... that makes more sense. Also, no kidding, I never thought so powder could do…all this. I'm starting to see where these bombs you want to make are going to be capable of," he muttered as he gestured to where the barrel used to be.
"Those will indeed be special. You won't want to miss that demonstration. Of course, I'll need you to make a few of the housings beforehand. Thankfully, those will be much simpler," I said.
Padraic slowly looked up at and smiled. "Hey, do you think the bullet part worked?" he asked.
"No…not at all, Padraic. I'll send so more schematics and ideas for an interdiary weapon system when I can. Along with so tools you may need to focus on," I said with a grin.
"Really? I think it might have worked. But—"
Bang.
Bang.
"These damn kids. Always knocking on doors because they can't read a simple sign. Do you know how many co knocking on the forge? There aren't even classes down there yet, at least one cos knocking every other day," Padraic grumbled as he waddled to the door, throwing it open.
However, it was not a student on the other side but a ssenger. He bowed apologetically as he looked right at .
"Lord Shadowheart, please forgive , but the Headmaster requested to see you right away. There has been a developnt.
—
"These creatures have already matured enough to speak?" I asked in disbelief.
Professor Spring shook his head as he answered, "No, not quite. So far, they seem unable to converse using words. However, Queen, as she has been nad, is able to communicate fully with us now via her magic."
"And you ntioned that there is sothing odd about this, yes?" Bowen asked.
Professor Spring wiped a hand across his face and, with a wry smile, said, "Odd is not an apt word to describe this situation. It's completely unimaginable. This Queen and her people call themselves the Naga. And the breadth of knowledge this Queen possesses is simply impossible to have for soone who was born rely a few weeks ago."
Bowen eyed Professor Spring and motioned for him to continue. The man cleared his throat and explained, "Queen…for a lack of better understanding, appears to have mories of her predecessors. She can recall a large swath of information, including battles, nas of people and places, even cities and locations, to an uncanny degree, and even she herself admits she has never t any of these people or been to any of these places and that she has lost a lot of her mories. But there is a key problem. We have no records of any of these people, places, battles, let alone an intelligent race that called themselves the Naga. Even the people these Naga fought against…we have no records of them either."
"What are the odds that she is lying?" I asked.
"Very low, I would say. Queen, for all her intelligence and her mories, seems very… naive. As if she really is a child playing at monarch. She divulged endless information for what would be worth almost nothing. She even regaled the abilities of her race for food…sothing we were already supplying in ample quantities. Shelter was also a 'negotiation' point, even though we had already clearly given it. She seed rather proud at these feats," Professor Spring said with a chuckle.
"Is she…so type of reincarnation of a past self?" Bowen asked curiously.
I tried not to show a reaction to that line of thought and wondered if Bowen had pieced together a similar explanation to . Thankfully, he didn't seem to point to , and Professor Spring was more than happy to answer.
"No, that doesn't appear to be the case at all, as I asked a similar question. She even said it herself: she is a different person entirely. But the knowledge of her people, including their language, culture, and other parts, was passed to her for her future as a ruler," he said.
"Then tell , what are these Naga? Where did they co from?" Bowen asked.
Professor Spring looked at a loss as he shrugged weakly. "Queen's mories tell us that the Naga are both an aquatic and land-faring species. They can live out of water without assistance, for as long as they wish. They controlled vast stretches of the coast and even an entire underwater empire that reached into the depths. She described various races like Humanoid creatures with wings, giant mountain ranges that reach high above the clouds that don't match any of ours, amongst other things. What is most frightening is that she has no mories of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, or even Dagin. Or anything that we would find familiar. And she has no idea what happened to her people. Her latest mories say there wasn't an active war going on, and her people were prosperous," he explained.
"So we have a new intelligent race that is either so old they've been entirely lost to the world or…" Bowen trailed off.
"There is a third continent sowhere out there that we have yet to find," I finished.
The three of us contiuned the walk to the observation chamber in silence. The weight of the discovery was imnse. It was one thing if these Naga were a race born of a dungeon, but they were a people with a history, a language, and a kingdom. They most likely lived in this world, yet, like the ancient Dwavres, nothing remained of them.
Did they perish in so cataclysmic world event? Could the Dragons have wiped them out? That seed unlikely. But there was a chance it was both. These Naga could have been from another continent and been wiped out sohow. And there was one solid piece of evidence.
"Where the Dragons live. No one seems to know. It could be that continent, an unknown one sowhere," I said.
Bowen pinched his mustache and nodded. "I am inclined to believe that to be the case. Did Queen recognize any depictions of Dragons?" he asked the professor.
However, Professor Spring shook his head. "No, she didn't. And if she has these kinds of mories, I doubt Dragons would have been omitted from them," he said.
I looked to Bowen, and his eyes t mine as we shared a nod. The way we found the Naga's eggs was too suspicious. They were in so otherworldly zone of the dungeon. But we wouldn't get an answer if we didn't ask the right questions.
As we walked into the room, I looked through the glass and couldn't help but be surprised. The small, slug-like creatures had indeed grown dramatically. They were about the height of a small child, but each of them had a very distinct appearance from one another.
They all moved on snake-like tails, slithering across the stone and swimming in the water. However, outside the universal tails, things began to change. The first one that caught my eye was a blue-scaled reptilian Humanoid. He was far larger than his peers; his snake tail curled into a torso with two thick arms, each with fleshy protrusions like fins.
The scales rose to his broad chest like armor, and his neck was splayed out like a cobra, and his face had a long jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth. He had two long fingers and a digit that looked to serve as a thumb.
His orange reptilian eyes scanned the room as he stood guard behind what was undoubtedly Queen. She, too, had the reptilian tail, but her scales were a vivid pink. She had a torso that seed far more Human than her guard's, yet she had four arms, a thin webbing appeared to connect the two pairs at her sides. Her face was also vastly different, being very Humanoid in appearance.
She lacked a nose and where her ears should have been; instead, her ears were long, fleshy, pointed, and looked vaguely Elven, but they were connected to her skull by a thin webbing. The li-green gem was embedded in her forehead, and the surrounding mark looked like a birthmark, but the deep ridges around it seed too purposeful to be an accident. Her lips curved into a smile as she held so kind of ntal conversation with Tsarra and Varnir, who sat across from her.
As for the other two, one of the others was a male with green scales that had a similar appearance to Queen, minus the gem and second arm, while the other, a yellow-scaled one, was a smaller, more feminine version of the guard.
"I assu these varied appearances have a reason?" Bowen asked.
"Yes, that is the case. Naga are born into their roles, and their appearances greatly differ. The large blue one is said to be of the warrior race. He will apparently grow to be very large, towering over most people. Queen's appearance is unique to royalty, with her four arms, and her gem is a clear sign of her royal lineage. At the sa ti, the green-scaled one is considered to be of noble status. The yellow-scaled one is female and would be of lower status than all of them, most likely a common citizen," Professor Spring explained.
"Do the others possess mories as well?" Bowen questioned as he looked out the window, fascinated.
"No, only Queen does, Sir. The others seem to be confused but are learning rapidly under Queen. It's only the blue one that appears to have a base instinct of protection. He even went as far as to 'protect' Tsarra and Varnir by standing in front of them when we first ca in," he said.
"Fascinating," Bowen muttered.
"Well, shall we have a eting with royalty then?"
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