Steel Trim
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Engineering, Magic, and Kitsune Ch. 9
🕑 Added 2024-12-17 17:57:05 +0000 UTCJohn felt pretty good about himself. Despite the terrifying situation, he and Yuki managed to defuse it without any bloodshed! Granted, it was mostly on her; he just mean mugged a bit, but was glad it all worked out. It was lucky John had decided to keep something a bit more visible and intimidating loaded after yesterday, even if he still needed a better non-lethal option. Sure, he could try to under-power Lightning B04, but the physics just didn't work out.
The amount of power required to disable someone and the amount needed to kill someone were uncomfortably close together. Even with the wizardry pulled to target it, he didn't trust his aim to be perfect and to not rake someone across the chest. The same entropy shell trick he used for his heat ray happened to make materials within the area of effect more conductive, so, inspired by a trick from back home using lasers, he figured out a way to "target" it by making a new path of least resistance to ground.
Weirdly enough, the lightning flew straight if you actually got a good look at it, but he learned after the first time to close his eyes when firing that one.
Ooh, what about a light-based attack? He doubted his ability to make a flash bulb with modern technological methods, but he could probably approximate it. Creating a vacuum was trivial with the way emptiness aspected magic worked, and he had a standalone machine specifically designed for that in his workshop, but he'd still have to figure out what to use as a filament… if he even decided to use a physical filament.
Hmm. Could he get away with a purely magical construct? Using air-aspected magic to create lightning could temporarily blind, his earlier experiences showed him that much, but he wasn’t sure he could get it bright enough to disable someone beyond point blank. Besides, that would put him in the danger zone, too.
Got it! He could create single-use capacitors for order and air-aspected magic very cheaply. The crystals were legitimately just lying on the ground if you knew where to look, after all. An ultra-simplified focus could create a brief but very intense combination of flash and noise by creating lightning a short distance above it heading straight down, and it wasn't as if he needed to do much more than saturate the area in order aspected magic to increase electrical resistance and make a brighter flash! It'd absolutely destroy everything involved, but that was just fine with him. If what Yuki said was true, he didn't want people to recover anything he made intact, anyhow. It'd likely be very lethal if one got hit with it directly, but there wasn't really a way around that.
He could copy something like an impact grenade to trigger them, perhaps? It would be doable to put it all in a small canister, put a strong pin in it to keep things apart, and then put a smaller, weaker sheet of non-magically conductive material between the capacitors and focus that would break upon hitting something. Yeah, that sounds right! Still, he'd have to run the numbers and draft it up, but it seemed plausible, at the very least. If everything went well, he could even attach it to a crossbow bolt! Still, he'd have to run a good few trials at various power levels; arc flash on command is something that could quickly go wrong—
John heard Yuki clear her throat outside the door of his office. "Come in," he said in English, and the fox slid the door aside and entered, stooping through the door.
"John, we need to talk about your magic," read the message she had prewritten and ready to go in her hand.
John took a moment to check his language notes. "What about it?" he verbally replied, wincing and taking a swig from his mug of water afterwards. A faint smile graced Yuki's muzzle at the effort.
She took the stool opposite him, which, thankfully, didn't explode under the weight despite him not designing it with eight-foot-tall fox ladies in mind. He never could get used to sitting on the floor like the people of this land did, so furniture from his homeland was a no-brainer. She shifted, finding a comfortable spot before starting to write. "Earlier today could have ended very poorly, and we're lucky that their forces were so easily cowed. I'd like to know the extent of your offensive and defensive abilities so that I can more easily plan around it. The undead was weak, but we might someday encounter something of worth."
John fought the urge to shiver at the mention of the creature the tax collectors deployed. The stench of rot was overpowering. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen the undead before, either. Some parts of the woods were lousy with them, but those were… different. The ones he knew of were almost feral, even if they had some animal cunning, but this one was different. It marched. It wore and maintained its own armour, as he couldn't imagine anyone else dressing it. It showed fear. Yuki talked to it.
Still, asking one about how strong his equipment was felt forward. Risky. Did he really trust Yuki that much? Of course, he could see the merit in her words. Like it or not, he was getting caught up in more and more nonsense, and Yuki knowing what type of things he was capable of would make things easier should it ever come to a proper fight. Despite that, he couldn't help but wonder if she had ulterior motives. What they would be, he wasn't sure, but the possibility alone…
Oh, screw it. John had already taken a few leaps of faith with her in the past few days, and everything had gone strangely fine so far.
"You've already seen the first three offensive tools I have: heat, cold, and lightning," he wrote. He reached under the table, grabbed a pouch, and placed it on the surface. Grabbing the three named focuses, he put them side by side. "The utility is obvious even beyond combat situations, and the first two are both nearly invisible and silent, so they are rather good at obscuring one's location. Next up is the excavation beam."
Curiosity filled Yuki's gaze as John pulled out a fourth, slotting it into his gauntlet and aiming it at thin air. His fingers precisely twitched, and a six-foot-long glowing green spiral that looked much like an oversized drill bit materialized in thin air, hovering in front of his finger and slowly spinning. Grabbing some scrap paper with a failed design, he crumpled it and tossed it into the beam.
The oversized bit immediately spun faster for a moment, and the paper fell to the floor as shreds. Yuki's eyes widened, and she looked at the beam with new fascination. "It was originally designed for excavating basements, chopping down trees, etc. It is similarly effective against flesh and bone, at least once you break through the magic protecting anything strong."
Be it monsters or elites, the drill would break through eventually. Yuki had kept referring to the latter with a term he had never found an ideal translation for when he saw it mentioned in texts, but he got the gist of it. Essentially, they were supernatural juggernauts, blessed with power far beyond regular folk through some esoteric rite, but the texts he had that mentioned them assumed you already knew what they were.
What he did know is that there was a cap on how potent your magic could be as an ordinary person, and once you were enhanced, that cap was pushed back significantly, granting you improved physical abilities and the same immense resistance to harm that the monsters had… until their supply of magic was low. After that, they bled like everyone else, even if their flesh was still as durable as iron, and they were still resistant to being directly affected by magic, like being levitated. Same as the monsters.
It was quite a shock when he blasted a fifteen-foot-long weasel-like monster bearing blades on its arms with a heat ray directly to the face, and it didn't even flinch when its flesh and all the air in its lungs should have been boiling. It was even more shocking when the same maneuver suddenly worked later in the fight when he was on the ground bleeding and unable to run due to a strained ankle.
"It is a tool of last resort, as I do not favour being next to what I fight, but effective nonetheless. The focus works through an arrangement of earth and order magic, with the former providing a dense physical form and the latter serving to," he wrote, searching for the word in this tongue before coming up blank, "To make it temporarily more brittle in a process vaguely similar to vitrification, which is how glass forms. From there, the tip and the sharp edges are durable enough to dismantle most things."
Yuki's gaze was almost predatory in how she looked at the beam drill up and down with a vicious grin. Leaning in close, too close for his liking, her eyes unfocused for a moment, presumably drawing upon some unexplained magical sense, before she snapped back to reality and leaned back, satisfied. "This is simply wonderful. Do you have it attached to a spear?"
That's a pretty clever idea, actually. It wasn't as if one needed to control it much past initial calling; the controls were limited to length, spin speed, and bit width, all of which were things you wouldn't have to change much while using it as a weapon in all but a few edge cases. Put it on a pole, slap a slightly simplified version of the focus in a protective case at the head, and add a well-protected switch to turn it on and off, and you have a potentially devastating polearm.
"No, but maybe I should," he wrote. The only real roadblock he saw was that you'd have, effectively, a battery-operated melee weapon, even if it was self-recharging. The vast majority of fights wouldn’t last that long, and it’d provide an overwhelming advantage in the opening minutes, although he'd have to integrate a gauge into whatever capacitor he put into it. If nothing else, it'd be a good tool to have. John had to hunt a few things with a spear when he first got here, and he couldn't deny the simple effectiveness of one at both that and keeping something away, even if he preferred not to be in melee range, to begin with.
Seeing Yuki wasn't writing anything to respond, he swapped the focus for a small black and white one, pointing at a scroll he had resting across the room. Once he saw Yuki look over, he activated it, an invisible beam shooting to lasso the object. Raising his hand, it rose into the air. He made a come hither motion, and it levitated over to him. He stopped; it stopped. He twitched his pinkie, and it rotated vertically. Ring finger, horizontally. One more flick, and he placed it back where it came from.
"Telekinesis," he wrote, "Based on emptiness and gravity. It can move head-sized stones at a pace good enough to break some ribs or embed in loose dirt. It can't lift anyone with any sort of magic protecting them or the ground under them, obviously, and throwing rocks at anything of size would likely not damage them significantly. Creativeness makes it more useful." He would never forget when he was being attacked by yet another denizen of the forest only to smash a wasp nest over its head from fifty paces away and keep it there. Good times.
Yuki nodded but seemed less interested in this one than the excavator. "Fairly standard, but limited only by your environmental and resourcefulness. Consider carrying explosives around, perhaps," she responded. That was… strangely blasé of her. It must be a common trick around here, and that had worrying implications, to say the least.
Last but not least, he sketched out a few quick pictures. The first was of a crossbow, the second an axe, and the third a knife. Sure, he might still use the first one in a fight if it came to it, and now that he was thinking of disposable foci like the flashbang concept earlier, it might act as a potent delivery method, but the latter two would only be functional weapons in a truly desperate situation. "The crossbow is nothing special. It just has a high draw weight and uses some air magic to work a mechanism to crank itself." By that, he meant that it had an electric engine in it as a matter of convenience. He mostly used it for hunting when he didn't want to flash-cook or freeze his prey on the spot.
"The axe was made to draw moisture from trees so I don't have to wait for firewood or building material to dry, but it could do pretty nasty things to something full of blood," he wrote, shrugging.
"Could?" is Yuki's simple answer.
"I've never had a chance to test it. I don't like being up close to things trying to kill me," he replied. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact he saw some small gremlin-looking thing pull a tree from the ground and use it like a baseball bat against one of its fellows in the first year he was here. Can't trust appearances in these woods. "The knife is just a good knife. I use order to make it incredibly sharp, and so that the material has less give to cut things quickly and cleanly." Again, he shrugged. It was the same core concept behind the drill, just attached to a smaller, physical tool.
"I'm noticing a pattern," the kitsune noted, glancing over the drawings one last time, "With the exception of the lightning and crossbow, it seems like everything is a tool first and a weapon second, correct?"
John nodded. "Yes, although the lightning focus is a slightly altered version of something I use in my workshop, releasing power all at once rather than building up. The overlap between powerful tools and things that can kill someone is almost one-to-one; it's just a matter of how mobile they are.”
"That sounds like experience. Did you use such massive machines back home?" Yuki wrote.
Shit, how much could he even say without giving away the game entirely? She had probably been all over, and something like an industrial revolution happening anywhere had global implications. Sure, she might have been sealed away, but he had no way of knowing how much she had caught up.
"Simple physics," he lied, "Even a simple water mill could mangle someone with all the force of a raging river if you could direct it at your enemies."
She looked at him briefly before scribbling out a few quick words. "It makes sense when you put it like that. So, that's your list of weapons. What do you have for defence?
He tried not to sigh with relief and instead wrote another quick reply. "Oh, for that, I have this." Reaching down the front of his shirt, he pulled out his amulet. An iron amulet hung from a thick cord, and at the core was a focus of various motley colours, primarily green. "The exact way it works is complex given the number of threats it needs to be able to deal with, from an entropic touch to physical force, but the basic idea is that it projects a few different layers of magic that do nothing until disturbed. Then, it counters with an appropriate type of barrier. I'm afraid the specifics rely greatly on knowledge you don't possess."
The exact mechanisms behind his defences were a whole other level of trust he was not quite ready to give. Nobody got to know his weak spots but him. Sure, they'd block physical force until they were entirely discharged and could take a good hit without even having a bunch of force bleeding through at that, but there were still… worrying weak points. He didn't have the constitution of a magically enhanced local to pave over his issues. Poison gas could slip by. Something like a laser would scorch him before it kicked in. If someone could use emptiness to create a vacuum, it'd kill him fast once whatever air was still inside was used up, and the same for if he was held inside a fire or underwater. Whatever Yuki did with the shadows would probably be able to eat its way through it quickly, assuming it didn't bypass it entirely.
"Interesting," she wrote, "What else do you have?"
The silence was deafening as he shifted awkwardly in his seat.
"That's it?" she spoke, sounding more confused than anything. John nodded. "No traps, no use of magic to dodge?" Yuki wrote.
He winced, shaking his head again, and replied, "I've seen others do that. The force would knock me unconscious at best." He was unprepared for the first time he saw a monster flash step a crossbow bolt, and even thinking about subjecting his body to that amount of Gs gave him a headache.
The kitsune looked him up and down, her eyes widening as she reached a startling realization. "Your body is unenhanced as your magic is not internalized in any way. You're slow and physically weak." Her reply was not a question but a statement, and her gaze drifted to his gauntlet next. "And on top of that, it takes you time to change from one form of attack to another, something that’s impossible close up."
This was part of why he was worried about revealing anything about his methods; Yuki had already dissected much of it in moments and started to find weaknesses.
"Your barriers aren't linked to your soul and are thus unlikely to be adaptive, so unforeseen means of attack can likely bypass it. In addition, you can touch other things without a barrier springing up, so if someone grabbed you gently enough, they could slowly but firmly twist every one of your limbs past the point of dislocation or breaking. Is this all correct?"
"Yes," he hoarsely croaked after a moment of thought, slowly processing her breakdown. At this point, he had nothing to gain by lying here, and she would see right through it anyhow. Her sheer thoroughness pointed to this as a manner in which she was well experienced. Still, he supposed he should have seen this coming. You don't nearly seize a throne by force in Magic Japan without being able to crack a few skulls.
"We will have to remedy this. Why haven't you made any sort of thing to enhance your body?" Yuki asked, tilting her head and frowning, "Many of the things you displayed would already be far beyond the capabilities of normal mortals, so surely something so innate to the act of going beyond them wouldn't be too hard?"
He reread the message several times to ensure he wasn't misreading it before shaking his head. "No, it isn't that easy. Whatever causes people's bodies to be enhanced by magic is beyond my understanding, and I'm not experimenting on myself like that." The thought of freely tinkering with his own biology filled him with sudden dread. Even if he discovered something that would give him superhuman strength, he had no guarantees that it wouldn't make his heart pump too hard and destroy him from the inside out or something similarly unfortunate.
She frowned. "I will think of ways to work around this. Sadly, your Presence is different enough that I don't think conventional means would work. Normally, it only works when someone has prepared themselves in certain ways, and your Presence would not be compatible. Any methods to force it to be workable would be extremely unpleasant, and I would recommend against them, as they'd have a good chance of wrecking your body for months or years even if they worked. If there's a fight, stay behind me."
He wanted to protest and write that she shouldn't even think about diving in front of danger for him and that she should just focus on recovering, yet not only was she likely healed up by now, but he had a bad feeling about those tax collectors. Sure, he knew it made no sense for them to retaliate, but pride made people do strange things, and there was no guarantee that they didn't have more potent forces they could pull from elsewhere. Fuck, things would have been so much more simple if Aiki and Haru didn't show up, but what was done was done.
"I understand things aren't ideal, and this conflict came sooner than I'd like, but it was inevitable from the moment you decided to walk the streets. Worry not; from the perspective of their leader, we aren't worth it unless they're very bold or very foolish."
John jolted. Could she read his mind or something? No, he was probably just that obvious. It wasn't as if he had to practice hiding his emotions for the last half-decade. He consulted his notebook to remind himself of the words before replying, "How so?"
"If you started walking around town, odds are that someone would have noticed and taken you for someone of means but lacking experience due to being unattached to any major group. At least one show of force on your part would be inevitable once they tried to extort money from you that you don't have," Yuki finished before frowning and adding, "At least, money I assume you don't have."
He shrugged. "I have some small coins here or there from scavenging carts in the woods. When I took over this place, I found no money amongst the supplies, even if it was fairly full."
"The warehouses were full when you got here?" Yuki's frown only deepened as she replied.
Right, this place did belong to her people before. "Maybe half to a third full of wood, metals, spoiled food, and whatnot, but no money anywhere."
"Strange," the kitsune wrote, looking thoughtful. "Anyhow, that wasn't all I came here for. What would you have Aiki and Haru do?"
"Are you sure they've emotionally recovered?" John wrote, and his partner in crime nodded.
"They're already getting antsy; some light work would help keep their minds occupied. Perhaps one could harvest some of the ready crops, and the other could make dinner?" Yuki replied, and John tensed.
"Not until I show them how to work the kitchen," he quickly wrote before freezing as realization washed over him. "Actually, would you mind if I showed you so you could relay it?"
Yuki smiled and dipped her head. "I would be honoured. How different could it be?"
Comments
Cardinalsnowflame
John's Canadian, worse he's a Canadian engineer. Crimes against humanity and God are bound to happen sooner or later
Maxxx524
Famous last words Yuki. Now you get to see magically powered modern amenities.
The Walrus Transcendent
>"[...] How different could it be?" This man has magic-driven induction stovetops and a microwave, doesn't he?
