Hair scraggly and eyes worn, Fel dragged himself upstairs, along with Mysvain who wanted to give the intruder a piece of his mind. Fel ran his fingers through his hair and took a cloth to wipe the grease and dust off his hands.

Now at the door, Fel reached out to the handle, twisted then pulled, revealing the pretty, yet exceptionally punchable, face of Invicta, along with the irked face of Siyla; she looked like she was about to run the sod through.

“So you’re Fel Evenstar!” He swept his white hair aside with practised hands, “A pig such as you thinks himself worthy of the hand of Siyla?”

Behind him, Siyla looked infuriated, spreading her wings wide and congealing a large, dark war-hammer, her eyes burning with a profound hatred. Even though there was no wind, her hair and robes waved in the air.

Invicta pivoted back towards Siyla, ignoring the wrathful glares directed at him, “Look at him. Look at those oily hands, his unshaven face and scraggly hair. Look at the large bags under his red eyes. Do you not find him to be crude and barbaric?”

Siyla snapped, bringing down her hammer on Invicta’s delicate skull. The sound of broken glass rung out and a rainbow screen appeared out of nowhere, deflecting the blow.

“You coward! Can you only hide behind your pathetic wards?”

Invicta pushed his palm to his forehead and arched his spine back, looking distraught, “One's riches are a part of their strength, indicative even. It pains me that you find me to be a coward.”

Congealing another hammer, Siyla swept them across Invicta’s body, only to be deflected by another set of rainbow screens, “And so you earned that money yourself? Stop being pretentious! Fel’s only initial Level 1 and you’re middle Level 1, yet you still want to duel him and use it as an example, if you aren’t cowardly then what are you?”

Looking aggrieved, Invicta turned to Fel, “We’re about the same age, yet you’re only at the initial stage? How pathetic. I dare you to accept my challenge.” He took a sidelong glance at Siyla, “Or else, well, it’s up to you.”

A fist appeared out of thin air, smashing into Invicta’s abdomen, sending him flying, “Get out.”

Collapsed on the ground, Invicta sneered at Siyla, “If you get in the way, you know what’ll happen to him.”

Hissing, Siyla stood down. But although she stopped attacking him, her hatred of him only increased.

Fel looked at the scene in disbelief, he has never seen Siyla so agitated and enraged. He thought she only had a cool beauty mode. However, he pushed those thoughts to the side, while Ares-Siyla was a surprise, there were more concerning topics at hand. It seemed that Invicta was threatening Siyla somehow and that he would force Fel to duel him whether by hook or crook.

He wasn’t ready to fight yet. His modified power armour hadn’t been tested yet and he wasn’t proficient at swordsmanship and magic, at least, not to the point that he could fight a middle Level 1.

"Why should I fight you?"

"I guess you're fine with everyone knowing of your cowardice." He reached out to Siyla, only to be slapped away, "And I'm sure you care about her."

Fel grit his teeth, while he believed Siyla could protect herself, Invicta's confidence in the matter worried him.

"When is it?"

A cruel grin spread across Invicta’s face, “Next week.”

Fel sent a telepathic message to Mysvain, “Buy me some time, the more the better. If I can get at least half a month, I’ll be able to accrue enough power to fight him.”

“How? Are you close to a breakthrough? Even then, your knowledge in magic combat is so pathetic it’s almost embarrassing.”

“No, not that. I have another way, something you’ll be interested in.”

Curiosity perked, Mysvain thought it wouldn't hurt to give it a shot. Besides, Invicta annoyed him to no end.

He turned to Invicta, “You see, Fel’s assisting me with a project at the moment and we’re at a critical juncture. He’s proven to be invaluable and without him, I’ll be unable to proceed.”

Invicta washed the nasty grin from his face, replacing it with a dramatic facade, “Can’t that wait?”

“I wish, but if he were to take even a day off, I’ll lose my momentum, I doubt even you’re willing to disrupt the research of a fellow Mage?”

Invicta’s eyes narrowed, that was indeed an unwritten rule amongst Mages, “How long will it take?”

“A month or so.”

Fel sent another telepathic message to Mysvain, “I also need Siyla to stay, without her, I won’t be able to do much.”

Mysvain, hearing that, continued on, “Also, Siyla's critical to this part of the project. She was supposed to have come here tomorrow, but I guess you were nice enough to get her here earlier.”

Invicta raised an eyebrow, “How would you even know of Siyla? She only arrived a few days ago.”

“This fella over here told me. I’m sure you know few can rival the metal manipulation ability of a steelwing angel?”

“Can’t you invite another metal Mage then?”

“What right do you have to prevent a Mage from doing her job? She’s being paid good money to do this.”

Siyla, getting the message, walked over to the pagoda. Though Invicta wanted to protest, he couldn’t do anything. While he pushed his weight around, he could only go so far. Noticing a few recording devices hidden around the place, he stepped down. He had a poor reputation and he couldn’t afford to damage it any further.

Mysvain smiled at Invicta and waved goodbye, “We’ll be seeing you in a month.”

Flicking his cuffs, Invicta adjusted his white, renaissance-esque clothing before striding off through the forest. Not forgetting to leave one, final remark, “Yes, I’m sure it’ll be a time to remember.”

After Invicta strode off out of sight, Fel invited Siyla in while walking to the living room, “What’s his problem?”

An ugly expression simmered on Siyla’s face, “He wants me to be his concubine or something. Thinks he can get anything he wants just because he’s the first son of a high-ranked Mage family, he threatened to use his influence to screw you over if I disobeyed. The most I could do was to play for time.”

“Disgusting.” Fel sat down at the table, “Anyway, let’s put that behind us for now, we have things to do.”

He pulled out a large sheet of paper from his ring and spread it across the table before taking out a pen, “Mysvain, you have a ruler or something?”

Mysvain jogged downstairs, appearing back at the table in half a minute with an array of rulers, straight, curved, even circular, “Here you go.”

“Also Mysvain, can you help? We can’t do this alone. I know you're busy, but I'll make your time worth it.”

“I’ll do it for free if your idea is interesting enough, I’ve no love for Invicta.”

Fel took the rulers and began drawing out blueprints with a deft hand. He planned to build firearms, but he couldn’t use the ones he was familiar with, those were specialised for monster slaying and, though powerful, had a low fire-rate and weren’t suitable for hitting small targets. He also didn’t have enough time to design a complicated firearm, so he had to settle for something simpler. What he lacked in quality, he could make up in quantity and variety.

Two days later, with the help of Mysvain and Siyla, Fel pieced together a few different blueprints. They've never seen a gun, but with their smart brains, they got the general concept. An assault rifle, sub-machine gun, shotgun, sniper-rifle an explosive grenade and, courtesy of Mysvain, an energy disrupting grenade.

Though the sniper rifle looked out of place in the lineup, Fel had a few plans with it. Even better, he could place the equipment in his spacial ring so it wouldn’t get in the way.

The foreign designs inspired Mysvain, who couldn’t wait to get back to his project to apply his new ideas, but restrained himself and continued to assist Fel. Fel on the other hand, found Mysvain’s help invaluable. Only he had the experience in handling these foreign materials and techniques.

In the next week, they used the materials in the basement to construct the prototypes. Siyla was particularly busy at this stage. Mysvain said you couldn’t engrave runes on conjured Metal as it would be contaminated with will traces, whatever those were, so Siyla had to mould every plate into the delicate gun parts.

Even then, Mysvain sprayed the plates with a clear liquid to rid it of the 'will traces.' She also had to make the power armour presentable, as it had the aesthetic wonder of cow excrement, by the end of it she collapsed in the corner, her work finished, for now at least.

Taking the prototypes to a range under Mysvain’s pagoda that he created to test his chaos sphere. Fel took an assault rifle and aimed it at an artificial barrier in the distance that Mysvain calibrated to mimic a middle Level 1 Mage’s barrier.

With his familiar weapon in hand, he fired out a stream of hot metal at the barrier causing it to slightly distort, though it didn’t collapse. Even several magazines couldn’t penetrate the barrier.

The story was similar with the sub-machine gun and shotgun. Only the sniper-rifle got closer to destroying the barrier. The grenades almost popped the barrier, though it would be a feat to blow up a grenade in a Mage's face.

Fel pondered for a while before remembering what was missing. He cycled lightning energy around the barrel of the assault rifle and poured pure energy into the bullet. After sustaining this state for around a second, he pulled the trigger and released the bullet that soared forth at almost 2500 m/s, significantly distorting the barrier.

“How on earth did you do that?”

“Technology from my homeland, it uses magnetic fields and current to project a force. The principles are simple, I’ll teach you once we’re done, but, as you can see, the shock wave disperses the lightning field and I can’t charge the bullet fast enough.”

Mysvain didn't know of electricity, but he was eager to learn. Though that was something to do later, now, he had to come up with a solution, “The materials we used were rather ordinary, by Mage standards anyway. Though it’s enough to throw an initial Level 1 Mage to the deep end, it’s not good enough for a middle level 1 Mage.

"There are several materials that can enhance certain aspects, we can clad the barrel with a lightning-attracting metal and lace the bullets with depleted energy crystals. Engraving runes on everything will help too.”

“We should also get another type of… ammunition that specialises in taking down barriers. Using brute force isn’t good enough. I’ll guess we’ll have to bite the bullet and order in better materials.”

An expert was an expert. He knew what to get with only a glance.

“What materials should we get?”

“Thunder-fire powder should be able to propel a projectile to a suitable speed. We'll have to make the... bullet, out of something both tough and can penetrate barriers. An alloy of lesser metal essence with traces of mithril and orichalcum will work. For energy disruption, we can use a middling grade of Mage’s bane and lace a few rounds with it.”

"But it’ll cost a crystal coin for every half-dozen, can you afford it? I’m not paying for it. Also, the sniper rifle ammo will cost even more. We’re just talking about assault rifle ammunition here"

Looking at his hefty balance of near 10,000 crystal coins, Fel wasn’t bothered about the cost, “No problem, what about the rest?”

“If we use an alloy of standard metal essence with 2% orichalcum, we should be ok. Same story with the bullets though. Using the assault rifle as a reference point, it should cost about 500 crystal coins if we use this alloy. We can clad the barrel with enhanced thunder-steel, but that’ll cost around 50 crystal coins on its own.”

“That isn’t a problem. How much would a sword cost to make? Just curious.”

"A Rank 1 sword with no unique traits costs around 600 crystal coins, but if you want something special, it could cost anything upwards from 1200 crystal coins, the truly impressive ones can be in the tens of thousands. While our prices seem cheap in comparison, they're only for the prototypes, or at least, the most basic combat-ready version."

“Got it. How about the grenades?”

“They’ll cost about 20 crystal coins a pop, but the energy disrupting ones will cost 80. Also, get these orders through fast enough, we’ll have to pay a little extra, 50 coins should do.”

The trio knocked their heads together to think how much to get. In the end, they ordered enough materials for each of the guns and a healthy amount of ammunition. Altogether, it cost 2,250 crystal coins, more or less a quarter of Fel’s wealth.

It took half a week for the materials. They took the time to rest and improve the designs, working as crazily as ever. It wasn’t easy to bridge the gap between an initial and middle Level 1 Mage with weapons alone.

When the materials arrived, the trio tore into them. Although they were familiar with the procedures by this point, Siyla found it difficult to manipulate the new materials. It took the rest of the week for Siyla to construct the new prototypes.

Once she finished, she collapsed on the spot. Fel picked her up and moved her to a bedroom. The days were too draining on her, out of everyone, she was the one working the most. While she worked, he and Mysvain could only work on Mysvain's project.

Moving to the range, Fel picked up the assault rifle and aimed at the barrier. He cycled lightning energy around the barrel and injected pure energy into the bullet. This time, the process was far smoother than before, being completed in a fraction of a second.

He fired the bullet that rammed into the barrier, significantly distorting it. In quick succession, he fired another round of bullets. It didn’t even take the entire magazine to destroy the barrier.

He had only used basic ammunition in that magazine, yet the results were worlds apart from the last prototype. Taking up the rest of the guns, he found similar results, with the sniper rifle and grenades being able to take it down in a single shot.

"Hold the celebrations, the barrier is the bare-bones defence of a Mage."

Mysvain walked up to the barrier-projector and fiddled with it for a bit, "This simulates a basic defence spell of a middle Level 1 Mage."

He walked away, the projector conjuring a bright screen behind him.

Nodding his head, Fel raised his assault rifle yet again, firing a few rounds into the screen. Fine fissures spread across the screen, but the red-hot bullets couldn’t bring it down.

“Try using the disrupting bullets.”

Fel exchanged his magazine with a marked one and fired at the screen again. Small puffs of blue dust burst out as the bullets struck the shield, but the results were similar to before.

“Don’t stop, keep going.”

Hearing Mysvain, Fel continued on, firing bullet after bullet on the screen, each shot smashing new cracks into its surface. The last bullet flew from the muzzle and hurtled into the bright barrier and blasted it apart.

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he put down the gun. Though he was overcome with joy, he thought about his examiner back in the capital, it didn’t take nearly as much effort to take down his barrier. He had been going easy on Fel.

“You ok?”

“Mm? Ah, yes, I’m great. I was just thinking that middle Level 1 Mages sure are something.”

Mysvain rubbed his nose, “Why thank you.”

A silvery figure walked up to the duo, “So, how’s it going?”

Before Fel could give her the thumbs up, Mysvain interrupted him, “There are several optimizations to be made, and we can get a more suitable material to use, but, other than that, we’re good to go.”

He then turned to Fel, “Now, let’s test out the grenades.”