Even though I have automated the process of extracting carbon, I am still unable to enchant something to consistently make large detailed objects. In other words I can automate the production of 1cm diamond shot but not 20mm bullets as they have a shape that is too large and complex even if made without the fins. I am just happy that I was able to automate the production of carbon nanotubes of infinite length which in turn gave me automated CNTW production. So here I am making countless amounts of 20mm bullets day by day and slowly going insane from the repetitiveness of it all. I still spend little time with Aelynthi, as my work requires concentration, she seems to understand but obviously is not happy about it. After spending the previous 6 weeks on work I decide to dedicate a whole day to Aelynthi.
"What do you want to do today?"
Aelynthi looks at me surprised and asks: "What do you mean? Have you finished the construction?"
"No, but I need a break and I have not been fair to you."
"Lets go train!"
Damn it. What part about the word break do you not understand? She just wants to beat me up again, even though I somewhat deserve it but what I built is essential for our safety. I need to divert her attention.
"How about I teach you how to use guns."
"Guns?"
"My artifacts that go boom."
Aelynthi happily nods: "Alright." She is more enthusiastic than I expected.
I go through general rules of gun safety I remember and can extrapolate. Keep your gun pointed at a safe direction at all times. Finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Safety on all times outside of combat. As my pistols do not have a magazine nor do they have an unload option. There is little else I can teach her, but I have her repeat gun handling movements until she is accustomed to them. She has understood that a gun is dangerous and has said it is similar to a crossbow. I did not deny it as I have already experienced an enchanted bolt to the shoulder. I setup targets 10, 20, 50 meters away for her and we start our practice. We continue practicing for hours. She seems to be enjoying herself, I know it is not because she is destroying targets at 100 meters but I can not resist joking.
"For a kind and peace loving elf you sure do enjoy killing things."
"It has nothing to do with you spending more than a hour of time with me?"
"Hey, I am sorry, I built all of this for our safety."
Aelynthi weakly nods.
"Not even the mages of the elven association will take you away from me." Maybe in a few months not even a dragon will dare to fly over my territory.
Aelynthi smiles and hugs me.
"When is your brother going to be crowned? How old is he now?"
"4 years, 96 years" Alright, so not anytime soon, at least in my perspective.
"To lessen your boredom while we wait we can try to contact your relatives and friends. Maybe visit them or something along those lines."
Aelynthi seems to be in deep thought.
"I have a friend I wish to visit in 11 weeks, it is an important day for her."
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"Alright sounds like a plan, hopefully I finish my next project in time so that our journey will be safer. How far is the place you want to go to?"
"4 weeks travel."
"That is far."
Aelynthi understands my implication.
"Hey, we will decide in 7 weeks okay?" I guess I have about 9 weeks to design, test and build a car. The main problem is that all of the motor designs I came up with so far directly use mana and are all too low power for a vehicle. Replicating the modern piston engine and transmission system is way beyond my abilities. The only option left is to make an electric motor, but to do so I would need iron, an insulating material and most importantly electricity. Right now I do not have that much time to spend on experimenting on mana, electricity and batteries. I leave the matter of the motor and decide to use my time working on the wheels and suspension system. In the worst case we can find some horses to bull the car... wagon. The wheel diameter will be 1 meter, as this vehicle will never see any roads and the best it will see will be well traveled ground from wagons. I start working on an air based suspension system using the same combination of materials I used for the pumps on my pistols, within the day I have a working prototype.
I leave the matter of the car as even if we leave I would very much prefer the turrets to be hidden, the same goes for the cameras. So, I dedicate a week to solving this issue. Now all 12 turrets can hide and pop up in the matter of seconds thanks to a good number of air pistons.
With 8 weeks left to finish building the car, I dedicate time to creating the wheels and suspension system, as a result I have 6 giant wheels waiting to be mounted onto a chassis. I finish off this week designing and assembling an air piston based steering system. I can not build the chassis as I have yet to decide on a motor to power my future creation.
Presently, with 7 weeks left, I am trying to maximise the potential of my car by using the strongest per volume motor I have come up with so far, even though it is extremely weak given its size and weight. I guess I will have to stock up on mana as I can not even predict the milage I will be getting, though I am pretty sure it will have enough horsepower to push itself. The idea behind the motor is to maximize surface contact between two parts and use mana to rotate them in opposite directions. The motor design is a tube with a slightly smaller tube inside but inside that tube is another tube that is connected to the outer shell, so we have layers and layers of tubes that will push each other in different directions, thus creating torque.
Two weeks flash by as I work on making these damn motors. I had to clear more of the forest for raw carbon so now we have a nice 100m radius clearing. I start working on the chassis and draw up the specifications, the car will be 2 meters wide and 3.4 meters long. The wheels will stick out in front and behind of the chassis by about 20 cm which will also be the same distance between the wheels. The design of the chassis will be essentially a giant rectangle with rounded edges. There will be no side doors as the only way into the car will be through the back. The armor will be all around 3 cm CNTW and the windows will be made of 5cm of layered graphene enchanted with one way transparency. Another week is used up to finish the chassis and armor.
4 weeks to the deadline I set for myself, but Aelynthi thinks we have 2 weeks left as she has yet to understand what method of travel we shall take.
I spend another week setting up everything inside the vehicle. The vehicle control core will be responsible for everything, drive modes, brakes which will be just an inversion of the mana torque inside the engines, the steering system air pistons and an experimental feature which is directional course plotting for lazy driving or remote control. Everything checks out, so I start installing secondary systems such as headlights, climate control, inner walls and the seats with seatbelts.
The mana storage of the car involves using the whole car, with most of the mana concentrated in the motors as they represent over 50% of the mass of the car. I spend another week installing an additional tonne of diamond mana containers as one of my old experiments showed a positive correlation between material hardness and mana storage.
The final result is a light armored vehicle with 6 wheel drive and steering, with low acceleration but is excellent on maintaining its speed and is horrible at braking. Time to show off my creation to Aelynthi as she is probably starting to get worried about leaving too late. I get into what I suspect is a 5 tonne vehicle and drive it out of the hanger and honk the horn.
After a few minutes Aelynthi comes outside from most likely preparing dinner and is surprised to see a giant rectangle with wheels. She can comprehend that it is for travel and guess that I have an unknown method of propulsion. "What is this? Did you build this so we can visit my friend?"
"This is a car. Yes but not only, we needed a safe method of travel."
Aelynthi happily hugs me and says "Thank you! Come inside, dinner is ready."