Forged Legacy

Chapter 157 - Shattersmite Core

“I mean… It’s cool, but I don’t see how it’s going to help us get past that wall of pigs,” Tyler commented.

“Not us. A bomb.”

Tyler did a double-take, looking back and forth from the screen and Harvey’s insidious grin.

“Are we reading the same skill?” Steve asked. “Where the hell is the bomb coming from?”

“No, no, no. The skill isn’t the bomb, but it’s the key to shooting one over the wall. We don’t have time to build and zero in any long-range artillery, and even if we did, I have no idea what kind of range we could get with the materials I have ready to go. With this, we can build a simple frame and then adjust the arrays until it works,” Harvey explained.

It all made so much sense inside his head, but the contemplative looks on their faces suggested they might not share his vision.

Juilus, I’m not crazy, right?

[Crazy is probably the wrong word, but you’re close. Mad scientist, maybe.]

Oh, come on. Everything I’ve built is pretty tame. Most of them already existed back on Earth.

[A few months ago, you wrote software. Now you’re building bombs?]

“Just let me think for a sec,” he said out loud, forestalling any debate while he ironed out his plan.

We need a way to poke at them without putting ourselves in danger. Technically, I could just fly over the wall and start dropping explosives, but I don’t like the sound of dodging a thousand fireballs at once.

[What kind of bombs can we even make? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good arc charge, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough.]

You’re the one with an engineering AI in your head… chip… whatever you are. You tell me.

Harvey stared into space while the voices in his head hashed out a plan. He folded his arms and began mumbling to himself as he paced around the room. Occasional head nods and hand gestures made it look like he was on the phone with someone. A sight that was incredibly strange now that nobody had cell phones.

“Harvey?” Cash asked.

“Shh!” Harvey snapped back, closing his mouth and putting a finger up, indicating for them to wait.

“Is this normal?” Cash whispered to Steve.

“Nope. He’s special,” Steve replied.

“Alright, here’s what we need. I’ll be making most of it, but is there any way you could get me a bunch of rope?” Harvey asked Cash.

“Rope?” Cash repeated, confused.

“Yeah. The heavier, the better. We’re going to need a lot of it.”

“Again, I don’t see how rope ends up with us bombing demons,” Steve pressed.

“We’re going to build a torsion catapult. Super simple, basically just a metal frame with a giant spoon attached to it. We use the rope to put tension on the spoon until there’s enough force to fling the bomb over the wall.”

They all still looked confused, and he was starting to get frustrated.

“I…” Steve began.

“Look, we can either sit around all day waiting for Superman to come save us, or we can put on the mask and be Batman.”

“Dude. Batman was a billionaire. His tech was way better than a shitty catapult made of rope and metal bars. You’re more likely to be Superman now that we all have magic powers,” Tyler laughed.

“Language!” Steve exclaimed.

“Fine, broke Batman. Whatever,” Harvey huffed. “The point is, we can wait to be saved or at least try to save ourselves.”

“Works for me,” Cash said. “I’ll go find some rope and bring it to the garage.”

“Thank you! At least someone understands me,” Harvey groaned.

“I think I only got about half of it, but I figure there’s no point in arguing,” Cash chuckled.

Rushing back home, Harvey let his father explain to Cassandra why they were back so early. He had things to do. Stepping into the garage, he filled and lit the forge before piling chunks of F-Grade essence-infused iron into every crucible he owned.

He didn’t have time for a long, refined crafting session. Hell’s reinforcements would arrive by morning, and he needed to thin their numbers as much as he could before the next attack came. Silver was expensive, and steel would take too long to make, so he’d have to hope his inscriptions could make up the difference.

As the first batches melted, he pulled out an old piece of armor to test something. He could forge all the nuts, bolts, and brackets to connect the pieces if he had to, but what if he could just weld everything? Pointing his finger at the metal, he released a quick burst of flames with Booster. The iron shot off the anvil, clattering against the concrete before punching a hole in the drywall.

“Oops,” he muttered as he walked over, picked up the piece, and slid his workbench to cover the hole.

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Pressing it down against the anvil, he tried again. A steady stream of blue shot out of his fingertip like it was a blowtorch. Holding it steady wasn’t easy since the skill's main purpose was launching him into the sky, but limiting the amount of essence being fed into the sigil helped him bring it down to manageable levels.

Artificer’s Eyes showed just how hot the metal was getting, but Julius told him it wasn’t enough. Beneath the stream, the iron began to warp. Tiny beads began to form at the edges, but it was too slow. Instead of fusing together, the pieces would only cool on top of each other, and that was barely any better than just gluing it all.

Adding his Architect of the Veils End Imprint gave the final push he needed, even allowing his Willpower to slightly adjust the temperature in real time. He had to hold his wrist with his other hand to keep the beam steady, but that was okay. He’d have extra hands ready to help hold it all in place when the time came.

“Perfect. That will save me a couple of hours.”

His welds wouldn’t be clean, but they should be good enough with a few reinforcement arrays. With his new Adaptive Inscription skill, he’d be able to make subtle adjustments to everything but the rope, and even if that component wasn’t strong enough, he could always add a few flame burst arrays to make the world's first rocket-powered catapult.

With his iron melting and his molds ready to go, he got to work on the fun part. There were a lot of options when it came to his payload. Like Julius said, his current arc charges might not be enough, but he could always make a bigger one. Or, he could make a hollow cannonball and fill it with essence crystals, recreating the traps he’d used to blow up Veil’s End. The problem was finding something he could make in a matter of hours that would be lethal in a wide area.

[What about a massive frag grenade?]

Like a daydream, plans generated by the AI inside the Cognition Matrix appeared in his mind. It showed a cannonball made from steel scales fitted together in a lattice pattern. Thick in the center and thin at the edges. Tiny essence crystals in the center would power devastating burts of Heaven’s Wrath in all directions after the exploding hellpowder in the center broke the cannonball apart along predetermined fault lines.

I like it, but won’t the shrapnel be too thick if it has to fit an essence crystal? We could use absorption arrays instead.

[You’re not inscribing the inside of the ball. Keep it simple. You can always make a second version when we have more time.]

Nodding, Harvey dug through his spatial ring to find the 12 smallest essence crystals he could find. Suspending them inside his essence molds and pouring the steel around them had worked wonders for his arc charges, so he didn’t try to reinvent the wheel here. Using Artificer’s Toolbox, he slowly molded the shell, placing his essence crystals in the center of each scale. Once the mold was done, he got to work adding carbon to his only batch of steel for the day.

Things got a little frantic as he juggled multiple melts and molds all at once. He could feel his blood pressure rising, but Julius acting as a second set of eyes helped keep him on schedule. Cash had come through, strolling up the driveway with a huge coil of rope just as the first molds containing the iron bars were being cracked open.

“Will this work?” he asked.

“I sure hope so,” Harvey replied. “Dad, can you start cutting it into 8-foot segments?”

“How many?” Steve asked. “And I don’t have a measuring tape.”

“Here,” Harvey said, pulling out a knife and using Artificer’s Eyes to cut the first one for them. “Do as many as you can. We’ll see how much we can fit later.”

Cash and Tyler helped hold the bars steady as Harvey finger-welded a base that was 8 feet wide by 10 feet long. They’d never pass inspection by a real welder, but Harvey was relieved to find it relatively stable when he tried tossing it around a bit. Next, he added two bars on each side to form a triangular frame that holds the crossbar. One bar was longer than the other, pushing the eventual crossbar towards the front. The Aurelia half of his Cognition Matrix spat out all the calculations regarding the proper placement to maximize distance and stability based on the weight of his projectile, and he chose to just go with it rather than double-check the math himself.

Repeating on the other side, he slowly welded the rest of the frame. Then, he attached the throwing arm to a second crossbar down below that was covered in an ugly mess of rope that would provide the bulk of the throwing force. It was already starting to fray, some of the fibers snapping as Cash and Steve had wound it as tightly as they could.

“You guys ready to test it?” Harvey asked, wiping his hands on his apron after securing the final piece. It wasn’t pretty, but the barely constrained tension threatening to snap the iron exuded power.

“With what? The cannonball’s still cooling,” Tyler asked.

“I don’t know, do we have a basketball or something?” Harvey replied.

Tyler ran inside to grab one of their brother’s foam toy balls while Harvey heaved the apparatus into his spatial ring. They needed a long, open space to test the distance, so they moved to the main road leading out towards the wall. Without any cars to worry about, Harvey plopped the massive frame right in the middle of the road, grabbed the ball, and put it in the scoop. The final length of rope had been used on a winch to pull the throwing arm down, and Harvey strained to click it halfway before grabbing the quick-release handle.

Here goes. He thought as he yanked it.

Whoosh! The arm shot upwards, slamming into the heavy crossbar with a resounding thud. The foam ball soared high into the air, arcing down the street before a gust of wind blew it off course. It wasn’t as far as he’d hoped, but it worked much better than he expected.

“Dang it! It landed in a tree,” Tyler swore.

“You'd better go get it. That’s one of Max’s favorite toys,” Steve said.

Tyler jogged after it while Harvey inspected the frame for any cracks. The rope didn’t appear any worse than before, and the catapult itself seemed to be holding up. That didn’t mean much since he’d only shot it at half power, but he’d add some inscriptions before he did any real tests.

“I’m starting to think this might actually work,” Cash said.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Harvey smiled, walking back towards the house.

His cannonball shell was cool enough by the time they got back. The steel was much softer than usual, without his usual rounds of hammering and tempering, but it was meant to break apart anyway. The essence crystals had held up nicely, and it took less than an hour for him to connect all 12 to burst arrays drawn with his Heaven’s Wrath ink. They were set to trigger on impact, and he made sure to turn those runes off with Modular Array before adding any hellpowder.

“Don’t want to drop one of these,” He muttered.

“What? I couldn’t hear you,” Cash asked.

“Nothing!”

He’d left a small hole at the top where he could funnel in the hellpowder. He’d inscribed another impact-triggered flame burst array using his inferno ink on the plug that would detonate inside the ball once it hit the ground. It fit perfectly thanks to magic molds and measurements, but he quickly realized a problem.

“Umm, guys? I can’t figure out how to seal the plug,” Harvey announced.

“You can’t weld it shut?” Tyler asked.

“Great idea! Why don’t you give it a try?” Harvey mocked.

Tyler shrugged. “I don’t have a torch.”

“That’s your only concern?” Steve scoffed. “You can’t weld a ball of gunpowder, son. Why don’t we just duct tape it?”

“You want to duct tape our holy grenade shut?” Tyler asked.

“It’s better than your idea,” Harvey chuckled.

[We cobbled together a catapult in an afternoon. Adding duct tape just makes sense.]

Surprisingly, the System agreed, giving him two notifications the second he wrapped it shut.

A new creation has been made | Shattersmite Core | F Grade | Uncommon | Major Essence Gained

A new creation has been made | Ramshackle Catapult | F Grade | Inferior | Essence Gained

“I can’t wait to test this one out,” Harvey smiled, lifting the basketball-sized explosive up to his eyes.