"You can make anything that is designed here?" the leprechaun man asked.

"Anything with a high enough detail level, yes," I said. "There are likely some limitations, just because you make a detailed model of a material that you design to have certain characteristics, if you don't base it on reality then it probably won't work as intended."

The leprechaun man thought about that for a few moments. "Do you have a model for bowstrings?" he asked.

I checked the Fortress Storage, quickly filtering through the list of thousands of items.

"I don't," I said. "I'm sure someone would have tried to submit them, but they wouldn't be classified as a raw material. What are the characteristics that are needed for a bowstring? Also, what is your name?"

"Conor, my lord," Conor said. "And my wife is Jenny. The ideal bowstring... It needs some give, if you're going to be magicking it up then the least possible weight without weakening the string. Water resistance and resistance to fraying would be nice, too, but waxing the bowstring can help with that."

I studied the detailed scans that I had of a dozen different threads and found one that was elastic. Then I fused it with a thin strand of Arachne silk steel thread for strength.

I created a length of the string in front of me and then applied an increasing pull on both sides. It stretched about three percent before snapping at five hundred kilograms of force, though that was only under the rules of the landing room simulation, I would want to test it in reality before relying on it too much. It should easily be enough for a bowstring, though, with a large safety margin.

I handed Conor a copy of the model for the string and he created a bow out of wood. He looped the bowstring and tied it to one end of the bow, then bent it and attached the other end of the string to the other side. Conor relaxed the bent bow and the string promptly sliced through both sides of the wood.

"Could you make the string thicker but not any heavier?" Conor asked. "Even if you could make the wood stronger the string would cut my fingers, and likely the arrow too."

I nodded and revised the model. Making it thicker without increasing the weight just required adding empty space into the pattern. And I already knew the best geometric pattern to use, as that is what my reinforced stone used, I just had to scale the pattern up.

I tested the new string the same way that I tested the first one, it stretched to five percent at five hundred kilograms of force but then held on until finally snapping at just over eleven hundred kilograms of force and stretching eight percent. I looped a length of it around my hand and pulled with no ill effect to my hand, much better than the razor wire that the last attempt had turned into.

I gave Conor the new model and he waved a new bow into existence. This bow was much bigger than the first one that he had summoned, unstrung it was taller than I was. Conor tied the string to the bow, making it curve with magic, and then holding it horizontally. He added an arrow to the string and drew it back in a very awkward motion, the arrow going under the grip.

"That bow is ridiculously too big for you," I said. "It's easily twice your height."

"And it has a draw weight of fifty kilograms," Conor said.

"The draw weight is how much force that is needed to use to pull it back?" I asked. "That has to be more than you weigh."

"It is," Conor said. "The draw is assisted by magic. Such a heavy draw weight gives a range of over two hundred meters, with a shot speed of sixty meters per second. That's simply the power that is needed to take down some of the monsters that attack."

"Still, that has to be awkward?" I asked.

"It is, and it isn't helped by the archer perches usually being up in trees," Conor said. "Though if only a single shot is needed then it is possible to use your feet at the bow's grip."

I could do better than that. I made a copy of the wooden bow that Conor had made and extracted out the what the simulation rules were requiring of it to make it a bow. I threw out the wood and replaced it with a metal alloy, strong and light weight, and matching the flexibility of the wood.

I then took Conor's height of less than a meter and increased the stiffness of the material as I scaled it down to a meter in height. I matched the leather grip from the original model, and then fused the bowstring permanently into the model. I checked that it matched the characteristics of the original bow and then summoned a copy of it.

It was missing something... I held the grip in my left hand, created an arrow on the string, and tried to pull it back with my right hand. It barely budged, so I put more and more strength into it. It took ten percent of the energy in both of my arms to draw it fully, and it was draining a few percent every second I was holding it at full draw.

I released and removed the arrow from the simulation before it could hit anything. That's what it was missing, a quiver. I created a portal above the grip, making it a specialised bag of holding that would tie into the user's inventory space. With the bow in a resting position you could reach forward through the portal and remove an arrow from your inventory, pulling it back to the string and drawing in a fluid motion. I tested it out, drawing and loosing several arrows one after another.

"Your form is terrible," Conor said. "I'm surprised you can even draw the bow without using your back muscles. That aside, that's a very interesting design. How does the arrow summoning work out in reality? From what I can see of the code it taps into an interface that I don't have access to?"

"That's the Inventory from the System," I said. "Bags of Holding grant access to the Inventory, which is a storage space. You can reach into the portal and by intent pull out an item from the inventory. So if you had different types of arrows you could draw any of them with a thought. As the bow is a complete unit I would recommend storing it in your inventory itself. The small Bag of Holding would have enough room, but the opening is a bit small, so we'll likely give you a medium one."

Conor was nodding through my explanation, and Jenny had stopped walking along the infinite hallway to listen in.

"We will both be getting bows and inventories?" Jenny asked.

"Of course, all of the members of the army will get at least a small bag of holding," I said. "And I will be equipping everyone to fight."

I passed the bow to Conor, whose face lit up. He drew it back a few times, then pulled an arrow out and drew it. I watched as he made a few tweaks to small parts of the bow, shifting things around slightly. He nodded and then disappeared from the hallway.

A moment later I got an invitation to join him and as soon as Jenny disappeared I accepted.

"-to test a new weapon our lord has made, Jeff," Conor said. "Could you switch it to ranged practice?"

Conor was talking to the human man, Jeff, and we were standing on a stone paved area in front of a field of short green grass. Jeff was nodding and the field suddenly filled with archery targets, boards with coloured circles shrinking down to a bullseye.

There were stationary targets as well as moving ones, some moving constantly and others moving without any pattern. The ranges to the targets extended from close, twenty five meters away, to far, two hundred and fifty meters away.

Conor stepped up to the edge of the grass, drawing and firing at a target fifty meters away. And just clipping the edge. The target turned black and Conor shot at a different one, getting within the outer edge of the circles and turning it bronze.

"Why are you missing the shots?" I asked. "You're a Demi-AI, you should be calculating everything before you loose."

I walked to the edge of the grass myself and flicked out four throwing blades one after another.

Four of the erratically moving targets, at fifty, one hundred, one hundred and fifty, and two hundred meters out began glowing a golden colour. Which must indicate a perfect hit.

"Did you cheat at the simulation?" Conor asked.

"Only a little bit," I said. "I refreshed my muscles instantly from their fifty percent drain from each throw. I'll do it again without doing that, using the same limitations as I have in the real world. You can check my access to the code as I do."

I pulled out four throwing blades, holding two in each hand. I raised my hands and then dropped one of the blades from each hand, throwing the two remaining ones, then grabbing and throwing the two dropped ones. Four more erratically moving targets at the same distances were glowing gold less than half a second after my first throw. And my arms fell to my sides, exhausted.

"I've done exactly this against real opponents," I said. "If you know the forces involved you can calculate trajectories trivially."

Conor nodded thoughtfully and squared off to the targets again. He breathed deeply and then drew and fired. His right hand followed the release of the string and drew another arrow, pulling back and firing again. At the end of a minute thirty targets were glowing gold, of all types and at all ranges. Conor lowered the bow and turned to face us, grinning from ear to ear.

"I want a turn," Jenny said, holding her hand out for the bow.