The work on flintlock was progressing at snail's pace. Robert’s design was lacking in many ways and the chance of successful firing of the gun was still pretty low. He had redesigned the gun many times, but the sparks that were created by the flintlock mechanism was still lacking.

After many unsuccessful attempts, Robert decided to ask for help. Waking up Darell who was sleeping with tiredness due to an all-nighter, Robert asked him if there were any fire runes. The answer was a good news for him, there existed fire runes. But the problem was that they were costly. It might be profitable to put them in the large cannons, but spending that much money for a gun was not an option. There was also the problem that the paper carved with runes cannot be folded. This meant that if they are implemented as such in guns, the size of guns will be too large in order to accommodate the firing mechanism.

He will either have to create a new miniaturized rune that was affordable or search for another mechanism. Time was important and Sophy wanted to retake Goldfair city as soon as possible. She had set a time limit of two weeks, as she expected the arrival of the army from the capital by then. If she could finish this job without any help from the royal army, it will increase the prestige of Black dragon clan in the kingdom as well as her own status within the Black Dragon clan.

Robert had his own plans. He had set the request for control over the Greyston town after they capture the Goldfair city. Having control over a city with hundred times more population and proportional income was a fair deal. But Sophy hesitated and set a bunch of conditions before accepting it.

There was no way she could retake the city without the help of Robert, and Robert was adamant on the condition he placed. Finally, she had to agree. Robert was happy that he was soon going to have control over a town.

Robert designed a new mechanism for the gun, he didn’t know if this design has ever been used before and he was not sure if it will work. he named it hot-rod firing pin. It consisted of a metal rod that was constantly heated up by an oil lamp in the back of the gun, the top of the back of barrel was slidable and rounds can be loaded from the top, the cartridge was then attached to the trigger mechanism which moved the cartridge back into the firing pin. The cartridge was designed to have a hole in which the hot rod was inserted into to fire the round.

The final design was much complex than he expected but was still something that can be produced by the skilled blacksmiths of the store.

The design was soon forged by the blacksmiths into a gun. The firing pin was made with a rare metal that was hard to reshape in even By high-level fire magi.

Now he had made a gun that can be compared to the ones on earth. Robert looked at the final design and his mouth curved into a smile, he could already envision an automatic weapon.

The final gun and a few cartridges were prepared, as always Robert was expecting an explosion instead of the successful working. Gladly that did not happen. There was the problem of the blowback from the explosion putting out the fire on the oil lamp. Robert fixed this by positioning the lamp lower and using a longer wick and air vents.

Adding a lever to eject the spent cartridge, Robert finalized the design. After making one more similar gun, he spread out the blacksmiths that worked in it to different workshops in the town to produce the maximum number of guns as quickly as possible. The design doesn’t need to be secret as anyone who saw one of these guns will be able to remake it. So he strictly guarded the gunpowder as a secret and other designs not so confidential.

An open area near the store was remodeled in a hurry into a firing range and the guns were being tested there. The guns were fixed in a stand to fire at a target in the distance, once it was made sure that there was no problem with the gun, they were then stored in a warehouse. Sophy was overseeing the selection of people to train with the guns in the city center.

Robert took the free time to increase his power level. There were so many spirit stones lying around in the store that he didn’t have any scarcity of cultivation resources. Meditating with a spirit stone in his hand, he absorbed the magical energy into his mysticle.

His cultivation speed could only be described as average, but persisting through it and having a good supply of resources, his cultivation soon reached 7th level apprentice.

He opened the spellbooks that he had bought from the city, they talked about using magic spells. Although Robert didn’t understand how it worked, the glyphs were logical enough to understand. The spell for fireball was drawing a triangle, a circle surrounding it, and then a line that pointed towards the target. The fireball was cast and it took only a fraction of the energy that took when he cast fireballs earlier.

He understood the reason, there was a variable while casting a spell using these glyphs. The size of the circle was proportional to the size of the fireball that was summoned. The size of triangle controlled the heat of the spell, and the line controlled the trajectory. He was amazed by the simpleness of this spells. Even a kid could do it!

But the fire grimoire only had a few spells in it, the fireball, flaming hand, fire chain was some among them.

The flaming hand was the one that required the least effort, all you had to draw was a triangle in your hand with the energy and your hands will be in flames for ten seconds. The fire chain was a chain of fireballs and although it had limited uses, the spell was long and tedious.

Robert had bought other elemental grimoires too and opened up each to find that everything was built on the same basis. A water-ball had a wave, a circle, and a line. A stone summoning spell had a rectangle a circle and a line. The only difference was the 1st glyph which represented the elements.

Triangle- fire

Square-Earth

Spiral-Air

Y shape- Wood

Wave-water

Does this mean that he can create a flaming stone? He wanted to test it out but had already used up all his energy.

He studied all the different glyphs to understand their meanings. He also wanted to know if these spells were compatible with the magic runes that Darell was researching. He also wanted to get a magic wand, thus making him effective in combat.