ARCANE RAILGUN

55 (+40% Arcana Point) magical damage. 2 second reload. 65 meter range.

Special ability: Electromagnetic Pulse – You detect all metallic objects within 80 meters in front of you. 1 minute cooldown.

The railgun's attack remained the same. The metal-detection range had increased from 50m to 80m. The coverage was cut by half, from omnidirectional to only forward.

Not good. I'd need to do way better.

Perhaps I could try charging up the EM-pulse with my raw arcane energy. I held the gun up, aiming forward into the garage door. I closed my eyes and visualized my magic as waves of coldness that flowed down my extended arm and into the antenna. But the frigid waves only pooled around it, unable to be absorbed. After a while, they dissipated into the air.

Worth a try, I suppose, but the antenna had no way of taking in my own power.

What else could I try? Perhaps the parabolic dish's alignment was off? I tried several different placements, but none led to any improvements. And being able to test-fire the EM-pulse only once a minute slowed down my work. Which, considering my ten-hour time limit, certainly didn't help.

What about capacitors?

A capacitor is a device that stores electric energy, somewhat like a battery. But unlike a battery, it can release all its stored energy in an instant. For a stronger EM-pulse, I could power the gun with a surge from a large capacitor.

My gun ought to already have its own capacitor. It was called a "railgun" after all, and you couldn't build a railgun without a capacitor, as far as I knew. I set it down on a plastic bench. Its exterior was platings of copper and steel, with sparse exposed lengths of tubings and wires. If I were to find a capacitor on the gun, I'd need a look inside.

I managed to find a screwdriver nearby, and removed the screws on the chassis of the gun. I carefully lifted the top half of the chassis off.

Underneath, I found an indiscernible mess of wiring and devices. Parts I had no names for.

I sighed. This could take a while to figure out.

I rummaged around the garage, looking for tools that could help. Voltmeters, soldering irons, wire cutters. After finding nothing except electrical tape, I had an idea. I used the metal-scanner feature on my gun. It revealed a plier inside a box under the desk, which I could use to cut the wires if needed. But that was all it found.

I retrieved the plier, then stared at the exposed circuitry of my gun, then back at my plier. I didn't really have any idea better than reconnecting the wires until I figured some pattern out.

Did I really want to risk breaking my primary weapon, permanently? Just for an unlikely shot at improving my metal detector?

Coughs seized me. I bent over, covering my mouth as blood spattered out.

[HP: 165/1040]

I couldn't afford to worry about the future. It was going to be all or nothing, for a chance to survive right now.

I cut the first wire inside my gun. And then I tried to use it to see what happened.

The gun could still fire its railgun, but the EM-pulse stopped working. That didn't help much, but at least that was information. I recorded it down in a notebook. A new, red, college-ruled school notebook I found in the garage.

And so I tested, cutting wires and taping them back together in different combinations. I isolated components to see what each did. I tried to figure out the input and output ports, the ground-voltage points, the power sources and everything in between. I recorded down all the results in my notebook. It was like solving a puzzle that was never designed to be solved.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I went through countless cuts and re-connections, until my head grew numb, until my hands shook with fatigue. I found what I thought was the power supply, and what I thought was the capacitor. Minutes passed, then hours, as I ran test after test, as I lost myself to the endless experimentations. I grew unaware to the passage of time; the drip-feed of discoveries strung me along.

The door opened with a creak. I jerked around to find Jack there.

"Everything alright?" I asked. "How's Saber?"

He clenched his jaw. "We need to move. Just spotted a stranger on the street, about five houses away."

My blood chilled. "Crap. Did they carry anything on them? A Seekflower?"

Jack shook his head. "They were holding something; might have been a Seekflower. Hard to tell through the fog. They walked around a bit, then went away. Almost like they were scouting."

"That's…really not good," I said.

Jack looked at me, at the bloodstains on my sleeves, at my disassembled gun.

"Sophia, we'll need to head out," he insisted. "It's not safe here."

"How's Saber?" I asked.

"HP in the high 200s. Still can't see."

I looked down at my notes. I had made progress. I already had a couple ideas of how to hook the capacitor up with the antenna. And the parabolic dish…now that I thought about it, I could use my computer to calculate the optimal alignment, couldn't I? I just had to take a picture of the dish, then use geometry to find its focal point, which is what I need to align the antenna with.

"Can you take Saber with you and escape?" I asked. "I'll wrap things up and catch up."

Jack's eyes widened. His brows furrowed – I was scared that he'd shout at me. But he never did.

"You're asking a lot from me," he replied in a low voice, pained and defeated. "I don't even know if I can even make it out by myself."

My head drummed achingly. I hated that he was right. I wanted to curl up. To scream in frustration.

"I'm…I'm sorry…" I said.

"It's not your fault," he sighed. "Just how the game goes. I'm heading out. You should too."

Easy for him to say. He was at full HP. Saber and I were one or two hits away from death.

"Let me run one more experiment," I asked. "It won't take that long. Please. Trust me. I'm really close to making a radar."

He examined me, then looked around at my workbench.

"Really?" he asked, his voice laced with skepticism.

"Trust me," I repeated, practically begging. He dropped his shoulders and sighed.

"Good luck," he said, and left the room. I muttered a soft "thanks" back as he eased the door close.

I immediately got back to work, connecting the wires from the capacitor to the antenna circuit. The capacitor connected to the power supply of the railgun circuit, which in turn was the avenue through which the gun could intake my own magic energy – how it manages to get a +40% AP damage scaling. After hurriedly joining things together with electrical tape, a pulse of light emanated from my gun. Another upgrade?

ARCANE RAILGUN

Upgraded special ability: Electromagnetic Pulse – By spending 100 mana, you detect all metallic objects within 400 meters in front of you. 1 minute cooldown.

Yes! Finally! Now that was a number I could work with. It wasn't a massive range, but it'd have to do for now. We didn't have time to push the range farther with any parabolic dish adjustment.

I fired an EM-pulse as a test. Immediately, streaks of cobalt lit up in my vision, designating metallic objects found. The lights extended far away, across neighborhoods and past multiple street intersections. And best of all, I didn't even see anyone there. We had no bounty hunters near us for now, at least not in that direction.

I bolted upstairs. I needed to let Jack and Saber know. We were safe. And we finally had a way to avoid the Bounty Hall.

Drip drip drip drip

As I neared the third floor, I thought I heard tap water.

"Hey!" I shouted as I swung open the door to the bedroom where Jack and Saber were. "Jack, I told you I won't take long –"

Drip drip drip drip

A pool of blood covered the floor around Saber's bed. She was sprawled out on top, motionless. Blood poured out from her severed neck and trickled down.

Jack stood upon the frame of the open window, halfway outside the house. He balanced himself with one hand clutching the frame. In his other hand, he held Saber's decapitated head.