MMORPG: Rise of the Primordial Godsmith

"…"

"Yeah… there's no way I could keep this up."

"I'll stop here."

Although Valyr felt a great sense of satisfaction after he completed his first bullet, the hardships and difficulties he faced during the entire process made him realize that making a caplock firearm in its entirety wouldn't be possible any time soon.

Riding on the high he felt after successfully upgrading his arquebus into a true flintlock firearm, the young man decided to try his hand at creating a caplock firearm, confident that the process would be far simpler compared to making a flintlock firearm from scratch.

With Ryvrthe guiding him, he eventually confirmed that a caplock firearm would indeed be easier to create, considering that all of the propulsion that would previously occur on the firearm would instead be caused by the bullet itself.

Making a couple of caplock firearms after that confirmation to further familiarize himself with the upgraded mechanism, Valyr eventually asked the man how to make a bullet.

In response, the latter gave him an explanation on the two types he could choose to proceed with the mechanism, which were rimfire and centerfire ammunition.

Listening to the pros and cons that came with each type, the young man eventually decided to go with centerfire ammunition, considering that this kind of ammunition was the predecessor to the electromagnetic firearms he was familiar with on Earth.

Unsurprisingly, after hearing his answer, Ryvrthe warned him multiple times beforehand that making a centerfire bullet from scratch would be tens of times harder than making a rimfire bullet.

Even more so if one were to take the bullet's internal layout into consideration.

Nevertheless, the young man still thought choosing centerfire over rimfire was a good idea, confident that he'd be able to succeed as long as he relied on the skills and knowledge he accumulated.

After all, how hard could making a centerfire bullet actually be?

The answer… was very.

Although Ryvrthe had given him a tip to use a more malleable metal as the main bullet casing, Valyr still found it difficult to mold the metal into the shape he needed.

This was due to the fact that the level of precision needed for the shape was unachievable with the level of precision afforded by the forging hammer he used.

Then again, even with the forging hammer's limitations, he was still able to shape the metal into the casing in the end, utilizing both his ocular skills and his high stats in order to do so.

At that point, Valyr realized that he might have made a mistake in thinking that making a caplock firearm from scratch would be simple.

Sure, the firearm itself wouldn't be a problem with the experience he accumulated while forging other firearms. However, the bullets needed to make full use of the upgraded mechanism was a whole different story.

Noticing the conflicted expression on the young man's face, Ryvrthe decided to ask the former if he still wanted to continue trying his hand at making a centerfire bullet from scratch.

Pondering over the man's words for a bit, Valyr eventually thought that he'd see the process of making the bullet to the bitter end, even if the difficulty of making one with any prior infrastructure was at least hundreds of times greater than having access to them.

"I'll save caplock firearms for another time," said the young man with conviction, placing the one and only bullet he made into his spatial bracelet. "The gun itself may be easy to make, but the bullets are a different matter."

"That's because you lack the proper tools needed to make the bullets," responded Ryvrthe, looking at him with an expression that showed he already expected the current outcome. "If you want, I could teach you how to make those tools and we could try making another bullet from scratch."

"I'll pass for now," answered Valyr, slightly shuddering at the thought of making another bullet. "I feel like I'd only get back to it once we get some proper infrastructure for it going."

Ryvrthe raised his eyebrow at those words. "By proper infrastructure, you mean…?"

"Power tools." Valyr smiled, his words already giving the man a good idea of what they'd be doing next. "But of course, before trying our hand at making power tools, there's something more important we need to tackle first."

"Electric power infrastructure," said Ryvrthe in response, to which the young man nodded in agreement.

"Exactly."

"Now, there's two ways we could go about doing it," continued Valyr after that, looking at the sage with a calm expression. "The first one is small-scale generation."

"Seeing as we only need a bit of electricity to recharge the device you used to learn the current language, there isn't really a need for us to generate a lot of electricity," the young man said, bringing up the original reason behind the idea.

"If we proceed with this method, we'll make a small stator from scratch, then hook it up to a rectifier to convert it into usable DC power."

"Speaking of which, does the device only accept DC? Or can it handle AC as well?"

"It can accept AC," Ryvrthe replied, prompting Valyr to nod in understanding. "However, the input voltage would need to be significantly higher for it to start charging from it."

"I guess that brings me to the second method I had in mind," said the latter in response, a faint smile adorning his face. "Medium-scale generation."

"From the discussion we had on the topic before, the way we'd go about doing medium-scale generation is to make use of an electric dynamo, which we'd hook up to a steam engine."

"If we're talking within the confines of your knowledge, yes." Ryvrthe nodded in agreement. "However, if we apply the same methods we used while making the caplock firearm, it would be better if we made an alternator instead."

"And that produces… AC, if I remember correctly?" asked Valyr for clarification, prompting the man to nod once more.

"…Alright." Taking a deep breath as he sorted out his thoughts, the young man eventually looked at Ryvrthe with a calm expression. "Which of the two should we go with?" This chapter is part of the collection on MV2LEMP2YR.

"Are we only going to produce a small amount of electricity for now?"

"Or are we going to scale it up in preparation for the future?"

"…Why not do both?" Surprisingly, it did not take long for Ryvrthe to come up with an answer, even though the answer he gave caught Valyr off guard.

Fortunately, just as the young man was about to ask what he meant by that, the man followed his claim up with words that allowed the former to understand his reasoning.

"Think about where we are for a second."

"…"

"Now, don't you think we could salvage both of those parts in this place?"