Solomon spent a good D$1500 of his D$1950 on a better set of pants and jacket. Each was a higher end version of the gear that he'd purchased before, tear and puncture resistant and equipped with armor plating at key locations. It was expensive, but his safety was worth it. Besides, it still left plenty of money left over to buy the materials for his gun making project.

Solomon had taken some time to think about firearms while he'd been working on his pipe bomb. After all, until he'd capped off the open end, the bomb had looked quite a bit like a gun barrel. What he'd realized was that he had been far too ambitious.

He'd realized back when he first finished out the Firearms grid that he wouldn't be able to build a weapon as sophisticated as his now-useless pistol, of course. Even so, he had still envisioned a weapon with a trigger and a safety at least. A weapon with a barrel carefully calibrated to handle the pressures generated by a carefully measured portion of magical gunpowder. The result of some kind of reasonable design process.

He hadn't been accounting for the effect of the system. Solomon was over fifty percent stronger than he'd been a day ago. He didn't need to worry about shaving ounces off the weapon. He had access to a magical healing system. As long as he didn't blow his hand entirely off, he could eventually shrug off the damage from any kind of barrel failure. He also could set off the powder with magic. There was no need for any kind of spark-producing contraption.

All he had to do was make a simple hand cannon. He had six hours before the second grace period ended. He intended to give arms manufacturing an honest shot.

Solomon left Mort's store and settled down in the lobby area as he'd done before. He would have liked a proper workshop, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

He started with a metal pipe that he had purchased from Mort. It was a foot long, with walls about an eighth of an inch thick. Solomon used his molding ability and crumpled the back end closed. He could have affixed a cover to the back, but he wasn't sure just how much force the magical bonding could withstand. By molding a single piece of metal into the shape that he wanted, it should be strong enough for his purposes.

Unless the magical reshaping weakened the metal, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

He did the best he could to smooth out the back into a rounded shape. It looked a little like a cannon, at least.

Next up was the touch hole. Fortunately, the molding spell let Solomon's tools reshape metal, not just his bare hands. He used a toothpick that he had purchased from Mort to poke a little hole on top of the barrel, near the back. He then worked it around, digging out a cone of metal. Finally, he used his molding ability to thin out his hook a little bit, then used the hook to mold the shape of the hole. He wanted a nice tight fit.

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Now all that he had to do was take the wood he had purchased and shape it into a handle. He wanted some insulation between his remaining hand and the bare metal of the gun barrel. The wood was simple enough to reshape under the power of his molding ability, allowing him to use the gun barrel itself to mold its resting place to match.

He affixed the barrel to the handle and then cast his toughness boosting enchantment over the barrel. He might be able to weather the damage of an exploding barrel, but he'd rather not have to.

He would have liked to have some standardized measuring tools for the next bit, but he could make do. First he rolled some of his extra magisteel into a ball. Mort had offered a dizzying array of different metals in his catalog, but Solomon already had some experience working with the magisteel. He was also far away from making a rifle, so the material of the bullet wasn't too important yet.

After some back and forth, he had a bullet that was roughly spherical and close in size to the half inch diameter of his gun barrel. He could drop it into the barrel and tilt the barrel to let it fall out without any resistance. Having a bullet that was smaller than the barrel would mean wasting some of the energy from the explosion, while making the bullet too big risked having the explosion blow out the back of the gun instead.

Solomon wanted to make something functional first. He could worry about efficiency later.

Once he was satisfied with the bullet, he took two pieces of magisteel, used his molding ability to make them malleable, and then pressed them both down tight around the bullet. In the future, he could make his bullets malleable and use the pieces of steel as a mold. Magic let him skip a lot of steps, even if the end result wasn't quite as precise as he'd like.

He then molded another piece of metal into a little half shot glass sized measuring cup. He'd still ultimately be eyeballing his powder charge, but at least he'd be working off a consistent unit. He started with one cup full of powder.

Solomon had never fired a muzzle loading weapon before. He'd known enough to buy a wooden dowel sized to be almost the diameter of the barrel. He poured in the powder, tamped it down with the dowel. Next he dropped in the bullet and tamped it down as well.

Now for the moment of truth. Solomon held the pistol in the crook of his arm and enchanted the tip of his hook to ignite the magical powder. He then headed over to stand a few feet in front of Mort's store, facing the wall across the way.

The room was a good thirty or forty paces wide. He should be fine. Before he could think about it too much, Solomon brought his hook over and slammed it down into the touch hole.

The thunderclap of the powder igniting hurt his ears. The recoil from the blast hurt his wrist. A cloud of smoke surrounded him, stinging his nose and preventing him from seeing more than halfway across the room.

Solomon couldn't stop smiling.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Solomon glanced over. Mort had left his cigar and one of his slippers behind in his rush out of the store.

The smoke had begun to clear. Solomon saw a gouge dug out of the opposite wall. It wasn't anywhere close to where he'd been aiming, but he didn't mind. He turned to face the shopkeeper.

"What am I doing?" Solomon asked. "Just getting back into my comfort zone."