The time has come.

With the Goddess out of town, I could finally concentrate on my work. I took a deep breath before the moment of truth and aimed at my wooden target, pulling the trigger. The bowstring made a loud twang, nicking the fins of the bolt, and flew right over it.

"Come on, Nati, that was embarrassing," I mumbled, but nobody saw that. I wanted to test my crossbow ages ago, but things got hectic. Solo experimenting was a good idea.

"Timber!" An orc yelled, and a tree came crashing down.

Last week flew by. The orcs cleared a huge chunk of the forest to build a wall hundreds of yards in diameter. They left space for future expansion, enclosing the bathing place with its treeline intact and leaving only small gaps for the gates and the stream.

"It will give out five logs with some leftover..." The woodworkers discussed their next step. They cut the trunks into fifteen-foot pieces, and a third of it was buried into the ground. The one they studied looked like Hickory, a perfect material for my crossbows.

The first wall was finished in three days, and they started to build a second ring. Slightly shorter and a yard inwards, they piled earth between them. They dug a trench with Lambert and Omerta racing each other, who moved more dirt with a single spell. I wanted to learn magic too.

"Not bad for a human." I heard the witch. "I guess you won this time. This is what I get for not specializing in earth magic."

"It’s not my strong suit either, I only know what was needed for agriculture." The wizard answered. "I'll have you teach me your tricks as a reward then, how does your barrier spell sound?"

If I was already at the point where I had to decide which spell I learned next... But I had my tasks. While they built lookout towers and the stream filled the ditches, I was to provide the weapons to defend ourselves.

The place became unrecognizable compared to how I found it. The beastmen built different projects. Fenna's volunteers visited the swamp two days ago, while I studied the map, and gathered clay with the orc kids.

They loved to play there and formed figurines from the mud. The craftsmen used wooden molds to make bricks instead and built multiple large kilns in the village to burn the clay for two days. The blacksmith lent his brand-new bellows out, and the operation ran smoothly. He helped with materials too, limiting the time spent on my crossbow.

"Can we take this log?" The harmony between the races seemed remarkable, considering how suspicious the fox girl was the first time.

Some beastmen worked to turn trunks into planks using handheld saws, which seemed tedious, but they made good progress. The stream wasn't strong enough to power a sawmill.

"...If you cool it too fast, the nail will shatter when you hammer it into the wood..." I caught a glimpse of the blacksmith leaving the shop. Other than Fenna's volunteers, more beastmen arrived, and one became his apprentice, getting a crash course.

The small tribe I found two weeks ago shaped into a proper settlement, but I wasn't thrilled about the name...

"The windows aren’t completely symmetrical, move that to the left." The one responsible for this terrible mistake shouted. Fenna's people constructed her embassy today, a solid building with the foundations only laid this morning, but some walls were already standing. They used bricks and wood, and the orc shacks next looked like children's hideouts.

Even the mess hall seemed shabby in comparison, and this was only the start. I wanted a bathhouse with a sauna, warehouses, a town hall, and more new houses. The beastmen's chieftain wasn't keen on the old shacks.

They brought tents rather than sharing the huts with the locals, and some looked more comfortable than the chieftain's hut for sure…

"This ball needs more air and maybe a waxing." I heard Mabel, who became a full-time football referee, tour guide, and hairdresser at once. Where did she get all that energy? "Hey Nati."

"Hey!" I yelled back smiling. The failed test firing depressed me a bit, but looking at all this activity made my tail swish around on its own.

The kids worked their hardest too, only stopping for a football match before dinner. The price was their favorite meal. I had nothing to show for all the time wasted, and I couldn't have them outdo me.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I found out the hard way that crossbows weren’t simple. I thought the pieces would be difficult to make, but Omerta's help with the steel prod or finding the right wood for the stock made things trivial. Being attacked by that giant bird and Lambert wasn't part of the plan, but still…

Like when drawing from memory, I realized the details were missing. I saw crossbows in pictures and even touched one in a museum, but I got many parts wrong. A single internet search and a glance at a proper template could make all the difference, but I had to work with what I had.

I put the prod on top of the stock, but it got in the way. I was scared to cut it in half, and moving it to the front required a different method.

I used leftover cast iron, but the prod was still too high. Adjusting it was one thing, but I wanted to keep it simple and didn't include a lever or pulley, not even a stirrup so I couldn't cock the weapon by myself.

The blacksmith had no issues, but that man had muscles for days. I thought I was in good shape, but orcs were built differently... At least once I got the crossbow working, they would have no problem handling it.

I returned to the smithy to make a stirrup. The blacksmith helped with other projects and made hundreds of nails in the last few days while also humoring my requests. He forged a prod similar to what Omerta made, but the composition, shape, width, and thickness weren’t as consistent. It was to be expected, one more sign that magic was practically cheating.

"I'm gonna learn all your tricks one day," I murmured, looking for materials. I had the parts for at least one crossbow anyway, and it was far from done. I didn't need the blacksmith to worry about consistency yet. Instead, I had him cast a rotating spool on which the bowstring could rest and a sear that held it in place from below.

When the trigger was pulled, the sear dropped, releasing the spool and the string, and thus the bolt was fired. I carved its place out of the stock and forged pins on which they could pivot, plus a little plate as spring. That was to keep the trigger wedged into the wood.

It couldn't get simpler than that. The bowstring was of animal sinew, strong enough to bend the prod, and now with a stirrup, using a long stick for leverage, I pulled it up too. It was ugly, but it worked. Except, the string rubbed the groove and I waxed it to protect it from friction and smeared some lard on top of the stock too. It gave the wood a nice shine.

"All right, let's go." I hyped myself, and my tail twirled.

The next time I pulled the trigger, the crossbow fired, but the bolt flew like a brick. I tested a few different shapes, but none of them worked.

"Oh, I can't believe it." I gave out my frustration in the smithy. I was glad nobody heard me. "All too heavy, tumbling, or veering off course. I wasted so much time on that stupid mold... Ugh, I need simpler shapes."

My arms were already tired from operating this thing.

"No, this is fine, I'm not about to give up..." I tried to convince myself.

First, I repurposed one of the bolts as the axle of a winch. I temporarily fixed it at the end of the stock in a simple frame and attached a string to it. For now, I strapped two long wooden levers to the axle.

"Don't know how well these will hold... I'll forge a proper one later," I claimed, but that was pretty much a lie. "Winch-winch-winch, and done."

I haven't forged anything but pins, so it was up to the blacksmith to do it for me later… For now, it was plenty to recock the crossbow without struggling too much. I no longer had to spend minutes between each shot.

"Right, let's move on." I decided, before wasting too much time. "It'll be my cheat item, just keep it in my pocket... Oh, or I'll get a Bag of Holding. Maybe I'll demand them as reparations from Lambert.”

The blacksmith had a grinder, a simple but smart design. A large wet stone disc spun on an axle, operated by a foot pedal. All the arrowhead and fin designs were grounded down almost completely.

"Hmm, now they look like the darts from that old pub," I noted after an hour. I kept a small portion of the fins but ground the back thinner, and the front remained relatively bulky. "Okay, let's see how they do now?"

I threw them at the wall to see my progress, and once the center of gravity shifted sufficiently forward, I moved on to the crossbow. The projectiles got thinner, so I had to add a small plate to keep them in place. They weighed about a quarter pound each, half inch thick at the widest point, and about seven inches long.

"All right, now to somewhere quiet..." Hearing the voice of the Goddess calmed me down. Not when she was here, but talking to myself did the trick. I took a small log for target practice. "If it doesn't work, I don't want them to see it, and better not to shoot someone by accident."

"Boom, headshot!" I burst into laughter. I hit it on my third try and considering I never fired an actual weapon, I was satisfied. I pulled out the three shots within a minute, and the bolts packed quite a punch. In five minutes, the log shattered into pieces, destroyed. "M-m-m-monsterkill!"

That was a good sign, but I wasn’t done. I brought more targets and adjusted the draw strength by moving the prod forward while increasing the distance from my targets. I still got solid hits from up to fifty yards.

Most logs were in tatters, but only one bolt broke. Even with pliers, it was difficult to pull them out. As the sun was about to dip below the horizon, I took a wooden tablet and a piece of charcoal to write down every important dimension of my invention. I didn't even think about it at first, but just like with the signs on the map, they looked strange, but I understood their meaning. And my hands wrote them on their own.

The Goddess said there was no spell to implant a memory, this body had some special features apart from the cat ears, fluffy tail, and being gorgeous. I just had to remain in shape. Inadvertently, the first exercise was to learn to use the crossbow. It was only logical if I wanted to make them a reality in this world. But thinking about Alexandra made me start daydreaming again, and I had to pull myself back into the present...