“No, the barrel will overheat in an instant from the spin,” Freyven was saying to his team as Vivi walked up to their U-shaped table. “The grooves are most likely the best choice, though inside-carving will be required for the rifling to withstand the missile.”

  The demons barely spotted her coming, too engrossed in work. The table was even more cluttered than before, not only with blueprints and tools, but prototypes as well. Vivi spotted ether roots with runes on them, prototype barrels and what looked like a new pulley system for stretch ropes.

  As the project had grown, and as more engineering was applied to the slingshot launcher over the last few days, Vivi was slowly reminded that she wasn’t an engineer, nor an ether scientist. The blueprints were already convoluted enough that Vivi would have had to ask what each part did. Everyone credited her as the inventor of the rune-strings and the slingshot launcher, but now that the invention was made, Civar and Freyven were the ones pushing the invention further.

  It felt good to have allies. But at the same time, Vivi’s thoughts were complicated—as if she was already left out. She wasn’t like Grandpa, who could single-handedly both invent inside-carving and be the best at it.

  “Ah, Vivi,” Freyven called, snapping her eyes back to focus. “Come check this out.”

  “Have you made progress?” she asked. The demons made space and Vivi took a seat next to him.

  “We figured out how to make the rune-string conduct faster,” Freyven said. “It’s not a very intelligent solution, perhaps, but it works for now. We just made the ether roots and runes smaller.”

  He pushed papers aside on the table and picked up a handful of pellet-sized ether root stalks. A tape had been placed on each one with a number attached to it. Freyven placed them in order. One end of each pellet was sharp, and the other had a rune, of course, though the runes now were much smaller and more precise, clearly done by a professional.

  Freyven demonstrated the effect by pushing ether through the first root. Almost immediately, the first root became full, and ether looked for a way out. Some escaped into the air as leaks, but most wisps found the next rune. The same effect happened again.

  “We made the roots smaller to make them easier to carry and possibly incorporate into designs,” Freyven said, “expecting the conductivity to be slower. The opposite happened. The smaller roots are much quicker.”

  “That makes sense,” Vivi said. “The smaller roots get filled with ether quicker, and pressure will start pushing ether into the next destination.” She hesitated and added,” I should have probably suggested this earlier. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you try to apologize for a single thing, Vivi,” Freyven said. “It’s because of you that anything here is possible. Hell, if the city stands after storm season, it’s all thanks to you.”

  “What else have you figured out?” Vivi asked, ignoring the compliment. “Is the second iteration getting ready?”

  “It’s progressing surprisingly well,” Freyven said. “The second iteration has two main goals. One, to integrate the enhancement string into the weapon itself. The missiles can simply be slotted in, and the weapon will automatically add the enhancement string into the missile. This way, there we won’t need a separate team powering up missiles the whole time. And considering the slingshot launcher is supposed to be a mobile weapon, not having to carry a team around with you will be quite useful.”

  He looked through his stack of papers, finding a blueprint of the new barrel. “The second goal is, of course, accuracy. We’re testing rifling first. See these grooves in the barrel design? They’re going to spin the missile as it launches. That alone should greatly improve the firing range and accuracy. Additionally, Civar is looking at the enhancement string for possible improvements, and his team is looking to improve our understanding of theory. The current enhancement string was also created in a rush. It can definitely still be improved.”

  Vivi studied the sketch of the design. “You mentioned there could be a problem with the rifling, if I recall.”

  “There’s a good chance the missile will deform any grooves we attempt to create,” Freyven said. “Which is why we’ll need your help for this design. Inside-carving will be necessary. The grooves will need to be strengthened. We have a mold for the shape; but none of us can shape the veins.”

  He picked up another, more detailed design blueprint of the barrel’s insides with dimensions for the grooves. Vivi nodded, though she already knew this would be a difficult job. All of the intricacies of vein-shaping were difficult enough when shaping something as simple as a sword. Creating a complex vein-network inside a circular barrel would probably be a nightmare.

  “I’ll get it done,” Vivi said regardless. She took the blueprint and moved to her vein-shaping station in the corner of the foundry, switching from her dress to the uniform. She picked up her tools and got to work.

  From there, creating the finished product took her a total of fifteen hours and three failed attempts. One attempt failed due to a simple mistake holding her crochet hook in the wrong place. Vivi counted that one as a warm-up. Two more attempts failed to a bigger problem: Vivi struggled to get the shape of the veins right. Vivi had no practice creating anything the shape of a barrel. She almost felt like she needed a ruler just to get the shape right.

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  In the end, that was pretty much what she did. She placed a cylindrical tube—the exact thickness of the missile that would fit into the barrel—in the middle of her vein-shaping workstation. She then shaped the veins around that tube, making sure that the stalks always stayed the same distance away from the tube. The branches of her design were more like little thorns poking at the inside of the barrel, where the grooves would wear out from missile launches.

  She wasn’t sure if it would work. Incorrectly shaped veins were known to snap runeswords in half instead of strengthening them. It was possible the same would happen now. Vivi had followed her fundamentals, making sure that the direction at which ether flowed in would go to strengthening the metal instead of clashing with each other, and she made sure the barrel was symmetrical. But with vein-shaping, one could never tell for certain what would happen in the end.

  They filled the veins with molten adamantite and dipped the veins in, four stalks poking out, two with strength runes and two more with mass runes to maximize the durability of the barrel. She added ether through the runes, letting the veins and the molten metal combine, and hoped for the best.

  Her fears turned out to be useless. The adamantite and the veins inside glowed as was designed, strengthening the metal. The end result was heavy thanks to the mass runes, but the ballista makers deemed it more than suitable enough to use.

  It’s still not perfect, Vivi thought. Mostly because the barrel wasn’t forged. It came straight out of the mold. There was a reason why swords weren’t made straight out of the mold. Cooled down metal would be brittle. Forging metal with a hammer was what gave metal its strong structure.

  With ether roots inside, the barrel should have been strong enough regardless. Forging something of the barrel’s shape would be even more tedious than shaping the veins, notwithstanding the grooves inside, which the mold shaped on its own.

  “This is perfect,” Freyven said. Ether oozed out of him as he lifted the barrel, and it still looked heavy. “Though it looks like only maxed out wielders can shoot this thing.”

  “It should probably be used for a stationary artillery device,” Vivi said. “Kind of like a ballista with a base that can handle a heavy launch. This won’t be as mobile as the slingshot launchers.”

  “Yes, that’s an option,” Freyven said. “I think I agree. Most of the parts are already completed. I’d say the first prototype will be done within forty eight hours.”

  Vivi nodded. “I probably won’t be needed, right?”

  “Your ideas are miraculous,” Freyven said, though he looked like he agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you showed up with yet another revelation to fully crack levelstone. But in the end, you’re a runesmith. You’re needed to shape veins, not to design. Your inside-carved missiles are much more powerful than our mass-produced ones.”

  “I’ll create more,” Vivi said. “I can probably make one every six hours now that I have practice.”

  “We’re also looking to create explosive missiles with strife and erupt runes,” Freyven said. “Those are another problem entirely. If you’d like to create a design for an inside-carved version, that could be useful.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Vivi said. “I still have a lot to do.”

  She waved goodbye to the ballista makers and moved her focus to her head. I’d like to reach eight and a half thousand today. Five hundred a day will be good progress. Ten thousand is the threshold that exalted ascension skills will bring, right?

  “Yes, a typical exalted ascension skill will raise your limits by five thousand ether.”

  And we could use two exalted ascension skills at once, right?

  “Ascension skills can be stacked, yes,” Lucius said.

  Vivi nodded. And will your ascension also stack on top of exalted ascension skills?

  “Of course,” Lucius said. His voice was calm and pragmatic, as it usually was when he explained topics he knew a lot about. “Ascension skills will simply be cheaper, since they don’t require wisps to be burned. Exalted ascension skills simply dim wisps out at a rapid pace. It’s said that one exalted skill will dim out a hundred thousand wisps a minute. Two will dim out a million a minute. And of course, I can burn those wisps as they dim out for an even stronger ascension.”

  We won’t have any problems, then, Vivi thought. We’re aiming to wield ten thousand safely, and we need to practice ascending while also fighting. Currently, I still need to focus on the protective layer to keep it active. Distractions might break it.

  Lucius agreed, and they headed home to sleep.

  ***

  Waking up to the smell of rain and petrichor in Paradise, Vivi was surprised to find herself clad in her raincoat. She stood and blinked. Lucius, did you pick my outfit?

  Lucius grinned in her core. “It has been a while since you’ve worn your raincoat. You said it helps you focus, right? And I also saw the weather…”

  That’s considerate of you, Vivi thought. Heavy rainfall thumped on her head. She pulled up the hood of her raincoat. Someone important had died again. She asked, Is it normal for Paradise to have this much rain?

  “Well, storm season is ongoing,” Lucius said. “If the storms are anywhere near as rampant up on the third level as they are down here, hunters are bound to die.”

  Vivi didn’t feel sad knowing that hunters were dying, but it was a concerning reminder that despite their awful culture, the hunters were humanity’s defenders. If they failed to contain storms, innocent humans would die alongside. Cities would collapse.

  Not my problem, I guess, Vivi thought.

  For today’s practice session, Vivi decided not to close her eyes. She watched rain droplets reign over the forest and surrounding fields, moving her head, keeping track of her surroundings, while also keeping the protective layer up.

  Dividing her focus made the task much harder, it turned out. Vivi was back to struggling with just seven thousand ether in her body. Her eyes constantly lost focus, and despite them being open, she wasn’t actually registering her surroundings. And when she blinked to focus on eyesight again, her hold on the protective layer loosened.

  But since practice was harder, it was also much more effective. Slowly, the protective layer began requiring less and less focus. An hour in, she could wield seven thousand ether in her body safely, while walking around the forest.

  Practice continued smoothly for another half hour after that, until a new presence arrived near her.

  Vivi perked up, losing the hold on her protective layer. She immediately realized what was happening. It had been a while since a hunting party had spawned near her. And today she was wearing her raincoat. It would probably be another fight.

  She considered asking Lucius to teleport her somewhere else, until she spotted the person that had arrived. It wasn’t a large hunting group in swordmaidens’ dresses with hateful scowls on everyone’s faces.

  Only a single girl had spawned. And the girl was wearing a raincoat. She glanced up toward Vivi and cautiously asked, “Are you… Vivian?”

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