Chapter 157 — The Arms of a New Era and the Unorthodox Missionary
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
After several days of continuous designing, refining, and trial production, Rebecca excitedly presented Gao Yang with the first combat-ready thermal ray gun and battle backpack.
"And here's the result!" The viscountess's face was full of pride, and she looked thoroughly pleased with her own work. "What do you think?"
The first thing that caught Gao Yang's eye among the things Rebecca had brought was the silver-white arm bracer. Compared with that crude, primitive "prototype," the finalized thermal ray gun looked much closer to the image Gao Yang had conjured in his head. Its appearance was more in line with human aesthetics, shaped like a bulked-up, thickened plate-arm guard. On the upper part of the guard one could see an ellipsoidal bulge—that was where the mana capacitor and the scorching ray substrate were housed—while the lower part consisted of clasps used to adjust the tightness and secure the body of the device.
In addition, its mana capacitor and runic substrate had been designed to be detachable, ensuring that the energy crystals or core magical units could be swapped out at any time.
Compared with the prototype, a sighting mechanism had been added to the front end, and the metal wire and finger sleeve formerly used to trigger the runic trigger had been replaced with a more reliable and sturdier grip bar. The safety catch was linked to the grip bar: when the safety was locked, the grip bar would retract into the lower part of the bracer, so that a soldier's normal combat movements would not be affected.
And according to Rebecca, after adjustments to the internal runes and fine polishing of the quartz column, its effective range had finally been raised to between three hundred forty and three hundred seventy meters (there was still room for optimization), and its accuracy and power had also risen to a certain degree. As the world's first "ranged firearm," its range and power both surpassed the early firearms of Earth—but Gao Yang knew very well that this was because it had been born in a world where magic existed. The blessing of magic made many weapons in this world absurdly powerful; if the thermal ray gun could not demonstrate an advantage in this respect, then there would have been no need for it to exist at all.
After all, the early firearms of Earth only had to deal with Earthlings wearing ordinary metal armor, whereas the thermal ray gun here had to deal not only with ordinary soldiers but also with superhumans clad in enchanted gear or even shielded by energy barriers...
Then his gaze fell upon the "combat backpack" Rebecca had brought.
In appearance, it looked very much like a hard "schoolbag" or knapsack of peculiar shape. Its outer skin was cowhide, and inside it should be lined with a metal frame and metal plates, which was why it looked so solid and crisp. The straps of the combat backpack could evidently be fastened over a soldier's armor, and the rectangular backpack was divided into upper and lower sections—which raised a little doubt in Gao Yang's mind.
"The top part is a normal backpack," Rebecca explained. "It can be used as a marching knapsack—put dried rations, a water skin, flint, ointment, and the like inside. The lower part of the backpack is for holding crystals. Look—when you wear it, the lower half sits right at the small of your back, so you can reach it by putting your hand behind you. You can take out spare crystals through this opening on the side. The crystals are held between two metal plates and arranged inside in order; after you take one out, you push the spent crystal in from the other end of the backpack, and they get pushed out one after another. I've stuffed twelve mana-net units into the whole backpack. In theory it can charge twelve crystals at once. If you force in any more... the charging efficiency would just be too low, and besides, a soldier probably couldn't use up that much energy in a single battle anyway."