Chapter 28 – Sapped

The rhythmic sounds of Upgrade’s snoring were oddly soothing, and Sal couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at the irony of her previous statement. He was the bad conversationalist? She was the one who had fallen asleep a couple of hours later.

Sal glanced up to see Chatfield slumped over on the stool, using his crossed arms as a pillow. He wasn’t nearly as audible, but was definitely asleep. Both had insisted they were fine and just closing their eyes for a bit, but that was an hour ago. Sal had even gone to the trouble of draping a blanket over Upgrade and clearing away the sushi plates.

After a while, the smell of the raw fish was distracting him, so he took the plates out of the room and disposed of it properly. He genuinely thought it was late in the evening, and wasn’t prepared for the fact that it was the middle of the night. With a quick calculation, he realized he’d been Crafting for over fifteen hours, but didn’t feel any real fatigue. Maybe it was the fact that he’d been tethering constantly to the different cores and preserving his own internal essence, or maybe it was the results of his training exercises. Either way, Sal wasn’t about to question it.

When he re-entered the room, he inspected the disassembled parts of his new revolver. He used the hellfire titanium that had been provided for his tracker as the Mythcrafter ability strongly suggested it for the gun, and Sal was more than happy to oblige.

Surprisingly, the lord crystal was suggested for most of the firing mechanism; Sal had thought the material was specifically oriented toward Psionic-based abilities. Maybe it was because the materials were in front of him, but Sal went through the motions and used all the suggestions his ability gave him. The barrel had been an interesting one too, which was made almost entirely of rolled moonsilver. He had to engrave a series of grooves into the sheet of metal that would be on the inside of the barrel.

According to the blueprint, it was to create a spiral effect and increase the range of any fired shots. Instead of blending the edges of moonsilver together with essence, Sal was prompted to use a thin, straight strip of scarlet screen along the top of the revolver for both sides of the moonsilver to adhere to. The front and rear sights were made of scarlet screen also, and managed to line up perfectly. Sal didn’t want to think of how much of a nightmare it would have been to create it without the mechanical claws and his abundance of essence. It gave him a real appreciation for the Crafters who didn’t have his ability, who fashioned these items with trial, error, and skill.

Sal picked up the grip and sighed quietly. He had wanted to hold back a chunk of the lord crystal for Divinity’s crown, but it was being prompted as a main component for the grip of the gun. Thankfully, the hellfire titanium was required for the frame, trigger, cylinder, and trigger guard. Sal had no qualms using the more common material, as it didn’t feel like a huge loss. As he turned the grip in his hands, Sal wondered when he started classifying the hellfire titanium as a basic material. A couple of ingots were enough to bankrupt the vast majority of ranked first-years at the academy.

Sal placed the grip back down on the table and picked up the cylinder that had once been his Epic core. The self-replenishing rune had been masterfully reapplied between the grooves of the cylinder. The ejection rod was made with moonsilver and applied a gentle casing around the core. Each of the chambers in the cylinder had been bored out with a combination of a tiny drill attachment and Sal’s essence. He widened and polished them before he had to insert tiny needles to draw engravings the size of his smallest fingernail in each chamber. The firing mechanism had over twenty parts, including bolts, springs, sliding pins, screws, and studs. Sal went through each of them as though he were on autopilot and made a mental note to thank Martin for his help with the sniper rifle mechanism when he next saw him.

Because it wasn’t intended to be a combustion-type weapon, most of the mechanical parts shouldn’t be necessary, but the blueprint was making a gun that had the versatility to operate with either the essence cartridges or regular ammunition.

Sal winced ever so slightly as his index fingers emitted tiny essence-based lasers of light. The erratic flashes expertly sliced through the large chunk of lord crystal and were fascinating to watch, but they included a lot of sparks. It was the first time he had seen his mechanical arms use attachments like that, and it was a massive drain on his essence compared to the other attachments. Sal didn’t dwell on it as he fashioned the grip for the revolver. It was a milky white that almost looked like it was made of pearl. A few holes were drilled for the screws to be put in place, and Sal was almost ready to assemble it.

Where most of his other inventions had been straightforward, this one was by far the most difficult and nuanced. Normally he just threw essence into it and hoped for the best, but the revolver had so many moving parts that needed to work harmoniously. One of the funniest moments was the effort that it took to load the spring he had created out of moonsilver. It had never been compressed before, and despite his mechanical claws being incredibly proficient, the spring wiggled every way other than how it was intended.

After picking up the spring from the ground for the fifth time, Sal finally got it secured around the center pin. The puzzle continued for another hour, with Sal having to glance at the blueprint almost three times for every action he took.

When it was finally assembled, Sal pulled back the hammer and heard a satisfying click. He aimed at the ground and applied a little pressure to the trigger, but nothing happened. After more pressure, Sal sighed. Something was blocking it or he had screwed up somewhere. He tried to manually release the hammer, but it froze in place too. Sal fiddled with the revolver for a few minutes, but in his frustration, he ended up scoring one of the screws with the wrong attachment on his hand.

At that very moment, Upgrade snored particularly loudly and rather than finding it soothing or endearing, Sal was annoyed. His tiredness was finally catching up with him, and he found himself getting angry at the fact that they had ordered sushi earlier instead of something he enjoyed. All the little things that normally wouldn’t faze him started to bubble up to the surface, and he knew that there was very little he could do to get back into the zone. He was about to call it a night and give up when he spotted the monocle resting on the table.

Sal glanced up at the clock and saw that it was already morning. Thankfully, it was the weekend and he was only eating into his Sunday. There wouldn’t be classes for another day, so he had plenty of time left to get the gun finished. All the excuses Sal wanted to tell himself felt both justifiable and petty at the same time.

With a resigned groan, he plucked the monocle off the table and placed it onto his right eye. It took a little bit of raising his eyebrow and letting it settle for it to become comfortable, but it was absolutely worth it. The calming effect that came with it almost made Sal want to laugh at how silly he was being.

He smiled as he slowly pried out the scored screw and restored it back to its proper shape. All the components inside the gun were operating as they should, but they were quite stiff.

Sal turned away from the table and rummaged through the different storage areas around the room, looking for the solution that made him want to laugh out loud. He had no doubt that Martin had known to lubricate the components in the firing mechanism before they assembled it. It didn’t take long for him to find a small canister of oil that had a nozzle for spraying and an attachment for more delicate administration. Sal applied a thin layer to all the parts that would be moving or potentially coming into contact with ammunition.

As he went through it, the hammer clicked back into place and the trigger became less stiff. Sal used a scrap of cloth to wipe the metal down until he was finally satisfied. His eyes told him that it was ready for Appraisal, but he didn’t want to spoil the surprise before he poured his essence into it completely. Although it might have been operational or functional at the moment, he hadn’t refined it with his essence to check all the runes were working as intended.

With the monocle in place, Sal checked the levels of the three cores he had tethered to and calculated that there would be plenty left over from the refining process. Well, as long as it wasn’t more demanding than the sniper rifle. With a casual glance up to see whether Upgrade or Chatfield were awake, Sal noted that they were still fast asleep.

Smiling softly, Sal let the effects of the Calm ability wash over him once more and the smile faded from his lips. His mechanical arms readied themselves as he turned the revolver over in his fingers. Essence pooled in his chest, mingling with the essence from the tethered cores. He waited until his Mythcrafter essence had successfully diluted the foreign essence before he proceeded with funneling it into his target. Sal narrowed his eyes as he looked for any defects on the surface of the gun. His essence flowed through the weapon like water, filling any cracks that it came across.

Each of the runes that he had carved into the metal shone vibrantly as they temporarily activated under his influence. Sal was most interested in the intricate weave he had wrapped around the outside of the barrel and across the frame and grip. It was the evolutionary rune and it looked completely fine. The blueprint had advised making the version with a long barrel to ensure that there was enough surface area for the evolution rune to activate.

When he was satisfied with it, Sal moved on to the cylinder and the individual chambers. That’s where he ran into his first problem; the chambers hadn’t taken the etchings as well as he had hoped, which was inevitable considering he couldn’t exactly see what he was carving when he did it. Thankfully, his essence was able to course correct the damage and apply a fresh rune on the remnants of the previous attempt. It took a large chunk of external essence to smooth over the failed attempt and even more to manually dig through the fashioned core, but he managed it eventually.

Sweat dripped down Sal’s face as he concentrated on the task. With the sniper rifle, it had been much easier because he removed the modularity by fusing it all together. This weapon wasn’t going to have the Cleanse ability any time soon, so Sal had to ensure that each piece worked as it should. He felt sorry for the other Crafters who had attempted to fix the sniper rifle. It must have been an absolute nightmare trying to make everything work in sync.

Sal spent close to an hour going through each and every component, strengthening the pins and reinforcing bolts. It seemed like every individual piece of the revolver was hungry for his essence, and he had no idea why it was so demanding. Sal had been under the impression that the high-quality materials would lessen the demand on his essence, but it seemed that theory was wrong. He fell into a rhythm of checking and refining each piece he came across.

Every subsequent check revealed another component that needed attention, until he finally reached a point where there were no obvious improvements to make. Sal had done a full sweep eight times already, and the ninth had been the one to come back with the all clear.

With a glance at the blueprint, Sal saw that he was finally done. Not to be complacent, Sal took a steadying breath and forced himself to run the tenth check. Where the water-like essence had previously deviated to fill the cracks in his designs, this time it flowed seamlessly over the weapon without a single drop moving toward the revolver. Sal was about to use his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, but stopped at the last moment when he saw the mechanical claw up close.

Sal tried to push his essence into the weapon, but there was nowhere left for it to go. He didn’t let the revolver rest though, as he still had one final step to complete. His mechanical hand picked up the tracker and placed it beside the still-glowing revolver. Sal pulled a strand of essence from the completed Synergy rune on the revolver and traced it across to the same rune on the tracker. He was relieved to see the essence stick to it and activate the engraving on the tracker.

The problem was that the tracker was completely devoid of essence, and Sal had to grasp at the remaining external cores in the chest. If he didn’t have the monocle equipped, he probably wouldn’t have noticed until it knocked him unconscious, but the siphoning had ramped up by a huge amount. The tracker was using the connection to the revolver to pull essence into itself, but because the revolver was still connected to Sal’s internal core, it pulled the excess requirements from its host.

Sal barely managed to tether to the remaining cores before he bottomed out his own reserves. The strands connecting the revolver and tracker that had been as thin as hairs were now thicker than a shoelace. Sal watched as the essence shot across the construct in bursts, pumping essence into the tracker until both pieces of equipment glowed contentedly.

Sal cut off his essence connection with the tethered cores and deactivated his mechanical arms. He pulled the monocle from his eye and almost collapsed as a wave of fatigue overwhelmed him. His knees were the first to go as he scrambled to hold onto the edge of the table.

With wide eyes, he tried to figure out what had happened but the darkness he was all too familiar with threatened to knock him out. Sal gripped the edge of the table and forced his body to comply with sheer willpower. There would be no appraisals until he got some rest, but he at least wanted to see what they looked like.