Chapter 252 — The Molten-Cut Sword and the Patrol
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Gao Yang had chosen to seek out Byron's advice on weapons improvements in the first place precisely because he valued the middle-aged knight's early experience as a mercenary.
Unlike noble knights or mages who had risen through the orthodox channels, mercenaries generally had no such refined training conditions or fine traditions to draw on—but they had their own ways of shoring up their weaknesses. Rich combat experience and quick wits were what they relied on to survive with blood on their blades. A mercenary had to understand all sorts of combat environments, know the strengths and weaknesses of every kind of weapon, and be clear on how to resolve crises in each environment; only then could he survive long-term, and Byron fit that description to a tee.
Sir Philip was indeed a powerful and gifted knight, but his knowledge was too doctrinaire and hidebound. Faced with Cecil's rapidly iterating armaments and brand-new combat doctrines, it was impressive enough that he could keep pace and not fall behind—but asking him to come up with any breakthrough concept on the basis of traditional weapons and equipment would likely be harder than forcing Amber to walk through a door...
Sir Byron had summarized the characteristics of Cecil's current combat troops and identified the path for improving the melee equipment the soldiers needed, and both of his proposals struck Gao Yang as quite attractive.
"The mechanical sword idea draws its inspiration from the magic-energy engines now seeing ever-wider use in the domain," Sir Byron began explaining. "Those engines have immense power—even a professional knight in full plate would be left dead or crippled if a machine's wheel struck him. So some runesmiths considered applying the machine's power to blades. They proposed fitting a small repulsion mechanism into the hilt, using it to vibrate the blade or drive a serrated structure, which would make it easy to tear through an enemy's armor.
"The molten-cut sword proposal, on the other hand, abandons the mechanical structure and seeks a solution along the lines of 'enchantment' effects instead. One runesmith suggested adding a fire rune array to the blade, powered by a mana capacitor. These runes can bring the blade to an extremely high temperature—we can forge the edge from high-temperature-resistant purple steel. Steel heated by fire runes is no longer a magical effect, so an enemy's magic resistance is useless against it, and a red-hot purple-steel edge can easily destroy most conventional metal armor in the world today, or deal heavy damage to more delicate mage robes and mage shields. Against unarmored or lightly armored enemies, its lethality is even more devastating.
"Of course, compared to a mechanically driven serrated edge, a red-hot blade may be somewhat less efficient at destruction, and against those wealthy enemies whose armor is plated with mithril and gold—well, then there's nothing to be done. But then again, if you really ran into armor forged of mithril and gold, the mechanical sword would be helpless too..."
By this point, chainswords and plasma blades were already flying every which way through Gao Yang's mind...
It took him a great deal of effort to press those flashy things bouncing around in his head back down, and while keeping the coffin-rising patriarch's dignity on his face, he earnestly considered the two proposals, then rejected one: "The mechanical sword won't work."
"Uh... we haven't even finished discussing..." Byron was briefly stunned. He hadn't expected Gao Yang to so quickly dismiss what looked like the most promising of two highly valuable proposals. "Why do you think the mechanical sword won't work?"