Day 1:
If you ask anyone with more than five brain cells that do not interact with each other if an explosion is good, they will answer that no, explosions are not good. In any situation.
For that reason the Author of this story has long since come to the conclusion that any form of military on Earth is filled with dumbarse imbeciles who’d be better off eating a bite out of a grenade and make themselves explode with the politicians that finance them.
Liam was… partial to that concept. But he also liked fireworks, which were explosions, but they happened in the air, so at most they could only hurt birds, and if that happened, well, free bird meat!
Anyways: Liam woke up on his first day as an apprentice under Sigmund with his mind feeling dull, as if he had gone to bed after spending the whole night drinking and now he was in the state before the headaches kicked in.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered about the ring Sigmund had given him to stop the Blood Nightmares and he lifted a hand up, removing it from around his middle finger.
Immediately his mind started to clear up and he remembered all that had happened the day prior: the arrival to the city, Amarie presenting him to her father, a lizardman called Sigmund, becoming his apprentice and discovering that, apparently, he was a statistical improbability because he… was normal. Not unlucky.
Liam Roy got up from his bed, walking sleepily towards the door.
And promptly stubbed his toe on the bedpost.
Loud cursing filled the house and, in the kitchen, Sigmund laughed. Apparently not even abnormal normality could save you from baseline bad luck.
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Sigmund’s laboratory was underground and looked like a mad scientist’s wet dream. Not because it was filled with random gizmos that spewed electricity everywhere, no, but because it had every possible tool imaginable for any and all sorts of activities.
“She’s a beauty, am I right?” asked the lizardman as he walked towards a wardrobe sitting right in front of the stairway that led up towards the shop.
“That it is,” agreed Liam as he followed him absentmindedly, his eyes roaming around the room, taking it all in with a child’s curiosity.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked.
Sigmund laughed: “I may not be a woman, but I’d be glad if you didn’t ask me my age.”
“...So, all your life?”
“Since I was a child, yes. My father began teaching me when I was three years old. The first thing I ever learned was wood carving using a dull knife on birch wood. It was true Airm, but at least I didn’t cut off any of my fingers that way.”
He smiled his toothy smile and opened the wardrobe. Inside, multiple sets of what looked like leather armor of all sizes and forms filled it. A few even had what looked like tail guards, while others had open backs and cloths that looked suspiciously like wings. All in all, Liam didn’t understand what the hell all of that was.
So he asked.
“This is our protective equipment. Leather armor is the standard when working with me, but there will be cases in which I’ll ask you to wear chainmail or other even more protective things. You will get one set of protective equipment and you will be tasked with keeping it in pristine condition. I will show you exactly how to maintain it. The first thing you will ever do when walking into this room will be putting on your protective equipment. Fail to do so and you will be booted out of my shop for the day. Repeat the mistake two more times afterwards and you can say goodbye to this whole place. Is all of this understood perfectly?”
And suddenly ‘funny-Sigmund’ was gone and ‘professional-Sigmund’ was here.
Liam felt like standing straighter and saluting, but he knew that would be pointless, so instead he just nodded: “It’s crystal clear.”
“Good. You will also be given a set of goggles to protect your eyes, a set of gloves to make sure you don’t cut off your hands and a mask with an Air Stone embedded inside to make sure you won’t be breathing in any contaminants in case we ever need to work with those. So, to repeat, the first two are mandatory to wear at all times, even when you’re hiding behind the glass walls enchanted to resist [Siege Fireballs]. The third you will always keep on your person and use in case of emergency or whenever you work with any substances.
“And speaking of substances, you will only work with those at specific tables in the workshop and never move anything from them at any moment without my express permission and my supervision. Is all of this clear?”
“Yes Sir!” he nearly shouted, barely managing to not salute this time. Ok, this was getting weird.
“Very well: lastly: if you find that any of the equipment given to you is damaged in any sort of way, tell me immediately: I will provide you with a spare or will buy or craft a new one. Working with any part of your protective equipment or anything in the laboratory damaged is strictly forbidden and, if done, will result in me booting you out of this shop for the day. Again, do this three times and you’re out.
“And before you ask, no, I’m not being too severe. This is your and my lives at stake. Be glad that my daughter interceded with me years ago and raised the chances to make mistakes from one to three.
“Now, [Take Measurements],” he pronounced the Skill and, for a moment, his eyes flashed bright yellow, before he nodded and turned back into the wardrobe, which Liam noticed only now looked way bigger than it should be on the inside, and took out a set of leather armor - coff coff - protective equipment, sorry, equipped with what looked like a facemask and a set of goggles.
“Why do the suits look so different? That one has a hole in the back, and it seems intentional,” he asked.
Sigmund smiled: “Species specific equipment. I’ve had many apprentices in my life, from all over the world. One of them, the best of them, was a birdkin from the jungles of Eva. The girl was a genius in her own right, the literal definition of ‘Necessity is the mother of inventions’, and she begged to learn my craft. So I made that set of protective equipment for her by hand. Took a damn long time, and I had to figure out a way to keep her wings safe. I keep it more as a memento than anything else. Not many birdkin on the continent of misfortune. They can’t fly around freely.”
He smiled bitterly at that, and sighed: “Last I heard she’s in the Tower Academy now, teaching everything she learned to the new generations.”
“And… you’re fine with that? Don’t you have an interest in keeping your techniques, like, yours?”
Sigmund raised a scaly eyebrow: “Why should I have a problem with her teaching the things she learned from me to others. That’s dumb alchemist-talk right there boy: ‘Oh, look at me, I know how to make this great potion! But I want to be the only one to know the recipe so I can be the only person who gets money from it! I’ll keep the secret to the grave and this way the world won’t advance further and become better’,” he said with a shrill voice that actually hurt Liam’s ears.
“There will be none of that here Liam, and if you value the relationship that will hopefully form from here on between the two of us you will take that concept and throw it out the window. People like you and me should strive to make the world better and that cannot be done if we act like cloistered monks who live their whole lives closed inside a monastery. Understood?”
Liam nodded: “Perfectly. I’m happy to hear it, actually.”
“Good. Then get in the armor and follow me, we’re losing daylight.”
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Day 2
Liam woke up and, luckily, his head was no longer hurting. Yesterday had been a long day of learning everything about all the equipment in the workshop (or The Lab, as Sigmund sometimes generously called it), how it worked, and how it should be used to make sure you didn’t explode.
Apparently, things on Rodar tended to explode a lot.
Liam groggily took the ring off his finger and put it on the bedside table. He then proceeded to clap his hands and watch as the windows in the room changed from pitch black to transparent, letting daylight in.
They were made from some enchanted glass that, apparently, had cost Sigmund the equivalent of three months' pay to buy. It was enchanted to be able to resist extreme blasts and hits.
“You want glass on Rodar? You either get it enchanted or you’re asking for it to break and end up in your eyes,” had said Sigmund when he’d shown Liam this particular feature. When Liam had asked him why he’d decided to do this for the whole second floor walls, the lizardman had smiled sadly.
“My wife liked the idea. And money is for spending.”
So now Liam was certain that Sigmund’s wife was dead. You always discover something new.
He walked into the kitchen and found the lizardman humming to himself as he cooked, wearing an apron that looked like it could stop a bullet and heavy gloves he was pretty sure had been taken from the laboratory.
“Do you always cook like that?” he asked.
“Unless I want to risk burning half my scales off, yeah.”
“...Wow, Rodar sucks.”
“You discovered warm water,” he chuckled.
Liam seriously couldn’t understand how people could live in such a condition: always fearing that something will go wrong, it would drive anyone mad.
“Have you ever considered leaving?” he asked as he sat down at the table and took a slice of warm bread from a plate in front of him, buttering it up.
“No, because he’s a melancholic retrograde who’d rather cut off his good leg than go anywhere other than his workshop,” answered a voice behind him. Liam jumped in place and turned, looking towards the entrance to the kitchen. Amarie was standing right there, wearing comfortable civilian clothes, a small smile on her face as she nodded her head at him.
“Now now girl, control that attitude of yours or I’ll have to spank you,” he said pointing an accusatory finger at her, while also still smiling.
Amarie gave him the middle finger: “I’d like to see you try.”
“I have the [Phantom Hand] Skill girl, you could be wearing your armor and I’d still be able to do it. Now come here, give your pa a hug, and have some breakfast. Maybe flirt with your boyfriend-to-be, he’ll need all the moral support he can get in the days to come.”
Amarie sighed: “Dad, I already told you, he isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Keep dreaming little Amarie.”
A little bit of color appeared on the woman’s cheeks as she sat down heavily on the chair and sighed in pure father-induced-despair. Liam knew the feeling. His father had been rather like Sigmund: always with a dad joke at the ready and the will to embarrass his son.
Liam missed him. A lot. But he also knew that, if he allowed himself to feel bad for it, he’d start falling down the rabbit hole of despair.
… This sucked. In all the stories he’d read the protagonist was given a great mission like ‘Slay the Demon Lord’ or ‘Save this Country from the Enemy’ or shit like that. Instead he had been taken from the side of the road and thrown in the middle of a battlefield without a purpose. There was no great mission, no enemy to slay. Just… life.
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So he was going to do his best to live said life and, in the meantime, hope he could find a way back home.
“Well, breakfast’s ready!” said Sigmund.
It was a good breakfast.
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“What do you mean you don’t have a pen? I put enough quills in your room to feather an entire bird!”
“I didn’t think of bringing them here.”
“That’s extremely bad. Do you know why?”
“...N-”
“Well, it’s simple: no pen means no notes. No notes means you don’t remember something. You don’t remember something means you make a mistake. You make a mistake means you lose a hand or explode. You lose a hand means you can’t work. No work means no money. No money means no woman, because what woman wants to stay with a moneyless man? No woman means sad. Sad means you get depression. Depression means suicide. Suicide means death.
“In conclusion, don’t forget your quills, or you’ll die.”
“... I’ll go get my quills.”
“Atta boy!”
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[Mage Crafter Level 2!]
[Skill - Summon Quill Obtained!]
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Day 7
“Ok, so, what you’re holding with those tongs right there is a very unstable compound. You will have to pour it very slowly and very, very, very, delicately in that mold filled with liquid quartz. It will enhance its ability to absorb magic.”
Liam was sweating heavily under his protective equipment, and not because it was hot. Currently, he was holding a long tong at which end was hanging a simple glass tube filled with an iridescent liquid. He began slowly, very slowly, tipping it over, watching a small stream of the stuff go down into the crucible filled with molten quartz.
“Careful… careful… careful……. OH MY GODS WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?!?”
Liam jumped in surprise and fear, his eyes automatically looking all over the room for whatever had caused Sigmund to shout like that. He lost his grip on the tongs and his eyes widened as he watched in pure horror how the extremely explosive liquid inside came into contact all at once with the boiling gemstone soup underneath.
He kept on watching as the liquids met and smoke rose from the crucible.
He did not keep on watching as the whole thing fucking exploded filling the workshop with light and causing his ears to go deaf.
He came to a few seconds later on the floor, completely unscathed, his ears not bleeding, his eyes not too blinded, and every part of his body where it should be. He looked up and saw that the glass had visibly blackened with soot, crystals already beginning to form all over its surface. But it was intact.
Sigmund looked down at him with a crooked smile: “Well, here’s a very important lesson for you boy: never lose concentration. It can cost you dearly. In here, you’re safe from anything, but once you’ll learn the craft and go out there in the world, it’ll take time for you to get all these protections. You have to learn to always stay concentrated, either when casting a Spell or doing important work. The world won’t care if you’re not ready.”
Liam, after all of this, only managed to say: “There was nothing, right?”
“Nope.”
He let himself fall back onto the floor, resting.
“What are you doing down there. Get up and help me clean that glass. If the quartz crystallizes on it it will be Airm to clean up.”
Apparently, he hadn’t been lying: this was going to be hell on earth.
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[Mage Crafter Level 5!]
[Skill - Increased Concentration: Minor Obtained!]
[Skill - Unflinching Minute Obtained!]
[Skill - Steady Hand Obtained!]
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Day 10
Liam woke up and, in the haze of his thoughts, the dumbest, most incredible idea, sprouted from the mist.
What if he made gunpowder?
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“So, you’re basically asking me to let you use my workshop to make a highly unstable compound which has only one purpose, and it is to explode.”
“Yes.”
“...Boy, did that explosion from a few days ago damage your brain somehow?”
“No. And before you say anything else, I’m sure the [King] would pay its weight in gold once we manage to make it work and show him the potential.”
“...Why didn’t you say so immediately?”
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Day 11
“Are you sure we really need the trough full of shit?”
“It’s the easiest, if not the fastest, way to obtain saltpeter.”
“I understand, but it fucking stinks!”
“And we’ve yet to add the piss! Bear with it! Do it for the money!”
“That’s the only fucking reason I walked out of my home! But from now on you’re working on this shit!”
“Alright!”
Liam didn’t notice, but Sigmund was sweating cold bullets when he entered back inside his shop. He seemed to relax only when he was back in the comfortable, dim light inside.
He sat down on a chair and sighed. That had been unpleasant.
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[Mage Crafter Level 6!]
[Skill - Faster Ripening Obtained!]
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Day 21
Amarie would be leaving tomorrow. She didn’t understand why Liam spent so much time just… mixing shit with piss in a shed in the back of their home. He kept talking about getting some mysterious ‘Salty Peter’, which she thought was some kind of plant or monster?
Nonetheless, if it made him happy, who was she to judge?
…
Actually, she was a Knight Commander]. She had every right to judge whoever she wanted to judge when it came to basically mixing shit.
She sighed.
He was a real dumbass.
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Day 60
“IT’S READY!” shouted Liam.
Sigmund looked up from the letter he was reading.
“That’s good news boy. Apparently the [King] is coming back to his capital after another successful campaign. He’ll be visiting us to see your progress.”
“Well, that’s perfect. This will work for sure and we’ll become rich.”
“Not that rich if it takes so much just to get some of that Saltpeter boy.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, I’ve been producing it en-masse since we started. And thanks to my Skill it’s going faster than it should.”
“Well then, let’s get mixing. What did you say we needed? Charcoal and sulfur?”
“Indeed.”
“Well then, hop on down. We’ve got work to do.”
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Day 61
KABOOM!
Ok, that was an exaggeration. The explosion wasn’t so loud, nor as big. They had used only a small amount of their gunpowder in the workshop after Sigmund had refused to go test it out, saying that it would take too much time to get out of town to test this if it worked the way he said it worked.
So here they were, behind that blast proof glass that had saved Liam once upon a time… nearly two months ago. Damn, time sure did fly.
He had even reached Level 10 in his [Mage Crafter] Class, gaining a quite useful Skill: [Craft: A Bit More]. The name of the Skill didn’t tell him anything, but he discovered, after some testing, that it allowed him to get something more out of anything he crafted. He made some reinforced quartz? He would find a spoonful more than should be physically possible at the bottom of the crucible when he was finished.
The same, apparently, applied to his Saltpeter production.
“I’ll be sincere with you boy, that’s a Level 30 Skill you have there. I don’t really understand how it’s possible that you got it at your current Level.”
Truth be told, that was the System fault. The poor being, overworked as it was, had spent a lot of time wondering what it could give to Liam. Its code was… contrasting, to say the least. There were limitations on what Skills one could get at their Level. Normally, at most, a person could get a Skill that was ten Levels higher than their current Level, and then, only if they did something exceptional.
But Liam had received an evolved Class, one people could normally get only at Level 30, the moment he’d arrived in this world, all thanks to the
Its protocols were dictating contrasting orders, and if it had been a minor being, it would’ve probably incurred in what modern humans would call a ‘System Crash’. Alas, it couldn’t allow itself such a thing.
So, in the end, it made the choice of giving Liam a… diminished version of a common Level 30 capstone Skill.
The whole thought process had lasted for exactly two seconds and one hundred and seventy milliseconds.
It sent a request for an Update to its creators but, like all the other times before that, it calculated that the time for the arrival of such a service was ∞ seconds.
Then it went back to work.
“Bah, who cares about the how. It works, and that’s what matters.”
Sigmund agreed.
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[Mage Crafter Level 12!]
[Skill - Blackpowder: Increased Effectiveness Obtained!]
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Day 62
King Tibur Vanders marched into Sigmund’s shop with all the imperiousness of, well, a King. He looked around, observing the dark corners and the general air of mystery of the place.
And smiled.
“I always did like this shop. Sigmund, you damn lizard, come on out! Been a lifetime since we last met.”
The lizardman walked out from behind a corner and smiled.
“Tibur, you old imbecile. How’ve your campaigns been going?”
“What? You didn’t hear? We won!”
“You know I don’t get out of the house often, Tibur. Stars, I didn’t know you became King until after you were crowned and walked into my shop to tell me.”
They laughed, and not for the first time Liam thought Sigmund was one of the coolest people he’d ever met. He was just speaking so casually with a fucking [King]! And they knew each other from before he was on the throne?!
“So, tell me, where’s the boy I sent you?”
“Liam? He’s hiding behind that shelf,” he pointed to where Liam was hiding.
“He’s been a good boy. Learns fast. Better than most of my latest apprentices. He didn’t give up.”
“That’s a true compliment heard from you. So, I’ve been hearing strange rumors about… smelly activities in your back, Sigmund. What’s that about? Trying to make another stink bomb?”
“After the last time? Nope! I shall never try that again.”
“Wait, stink bomb?” asked Liam, trying to latch onto something, anything, in the conversation. He had come out of hiding.
“We don’t talk about the Stink Bomb Accident,” whispered Tibur, his face losing a bit of color as his eyes looked haunted.
Sigmund nodded, wrinkling his nose as if he could still smell some phantom stink.
“So, show me.”
They did.
They went down into the workshop, where King Tibur refused wearing any safety equipment, saying that his armor and together with Sigmund’s advanced protective equipment would be more than enough to protect him.
That said he put on his helmet and activated a magic shield around his person just in case.
He was shocked when he saw the gunpowder explode.
“Well, Sigmund, I remember your creations exploding a lot once upon a time, but this is the first time you made something that explodes on purpose.”
Sigmund shook his head: “I didn’t make this. This whole project was the boy’s idea. He made this from start to finish. If you have to congratulate someone, congratulate him.”
King Tiburn raised an eyebrow in surprise before he turned towards Liam with the biggest smile on his face.
“It seems I was right in taking you in, young man. Now tell me… how much more of this stuff do you have? What was its name again?”
Liam smiled: “It’s called gunpowder, Your Majesty. And I have an entire barrel of it at the moment, with more being produced.”
“Perfect, I’ll be buying it all.”
And that’s how Liam found himself in the possession of fifty gold coins and the favor of a [King].
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Night 62
As he lay down in bed, ring on his finger, a single thought crossed Liam’s mind before sleep took him:
What if I built a gun that can shoot forever and without gunpowder?
Before he could stop it, the thought put strong roots in his brain and did not let go.
Meanwhile, the System took note of this decision. It was the natural next step, it knew. It knew how guns worked, naturally: the Traveler had shown it, with the help of its new, very old, friend. It knew that, with gunpowder, long distance and very powerful weapons could be made.
But, seeing how Liam came from a world where such a concept was already well developed, he took it a step further.
A weapon that could shoot indefinitely. Certainly a very interesting idea. If it could have, the System would’ve felt curiosity and excitement. As it was, it just decided to keep a closer eye on the boy.
Who knew what he’d manage to create if he ever succeeded.