Chapter 11: On the Road Again

Eli POV

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When I woke up the next morning. I groaned under the headache. Bathing and changing into my new clothes was about all I could bear to do. Luckily the innkeeper had no small amount of experience with these matters and gave me an unearthly elixir of one raw egg and some steak sauce which helped clear the pounding my headache was currently dishing out to my skull.

'Whelp, time to get the fuck out of here. If I start making some of the more interesting stuff I want to build, they'll cook me' I thought bitterly to myself.

Remembering my appointment, I rushed out to the blacksmith. I was thinking about making a pump but since I was traveling, my use of the forge was now going to be for protection on the road. I had seen a few weapons in the various shops but I felt that I had better options that I could make by hand. It was barely sun out when I got there, the blacksmith grunted "all right lad, a deals a deal. The ingots are behind the anvil". Having collected his 100 silvers, the large man then took off his leather apron and headed inside his shop which also contained his house on the second floor.

I got to work, the furnace was already stoked with coal and roaring to go. However behind the furnace, I found what looked like a receipt that missed the furnace, it read for a few cases of something called skavy in exchange for more crossbow bolt heads scratched out on some piece of leather. The obvious implications of illegality actually set my mind at ease. People who worked with criminals, but were not necessarily criminals themselves, tended to be the most reliable people around, at least for my current needs. If the blacksmith tried to go back on the deal it would have been a real pain in the ass.

Especially as I did not want to show off my new weapon to more people than was absolutely necessary and wasn't sure how much money I would need in the future. Coming up with mana strands out of the blue would create problems if any of the magic item dealers ever talked to each other, so I was reluctant to pull that rabbit out of the hat again. If the blacksmith tried to cheat me, the law would get involved and drawing their attention was probably the last thing the smithy wanted.

The first thing I made was a spring. Using a pair of tongs I took a metal rod of iron a finger thick and kept it in the furnace to get red hot. While I waited for the rod to get ready I put on the leather apron. The hardest part of this contraption was getting the dimensions of the back plate right so that the spring pressing against it wouldn't pop it out when it was locked into its position. This was a weapon that I had a lot of experience making.

In one of my stints as a mercenary the group of troops I was signed up with got stuck on some godforsaken world against a militia of some unknown but no doubt very evil ideology. The weapons had been stored in a section of the ship that had blown up on impact. They wouldn't have been any good anyway as the whole planet got hit with a nuke virus, the most profane of all software codes, that basically takes out everything connected to the web in a large network which effectively puts everything back into the stone age. Luckily, a freighter had gotten shot down with us and had a hose spewing out flames from a tank of industrial chemicals the size of several football stadiums. Using that heat and mechanical tools, I constructed several dozen mechanical crossbows. They were only good for ambushes back then but it would make a mighty fine weapon here.

I held a red hot iron rod about the length of my arm with the tongs. Using the rounded front end of the anvil I then gradually twisted it into a spiral shape, occasionally having to hammer the spring to a near-uniform size. 'And it only gets harder from here' I half moaned to myself.

The base to hold the spring had to be thick enough to deal with whatever pressure the spring could deal out, but make it too thick and the front of the crossbow would be too heavy to use effectively for any real-world scenario. An iron ingot was then melted down and shaped into a circle about a half inch thick. But when I tested it with the spring it punched through it on the hardest compression.

'God fucking shit'

A long arduous process was started with the melting down of the ruined disk. Another few pieces of iron was added to the metal soup in a mold, then pressed and hammered out into a disk a full inch thick. This disk stood up to the spring at full compression. The back and forth of heating and pounding of the spring into the disk fused them into one piece. Another disk was attached to the other side. Across this new disk were two flat pieces of metal sticking slightly out.

I then told the blacksmith that I would need to head to a carpenter, which the blacksmith was fine with. The several iron ingots used already were nearly a whole week's profit for him. He even allowed for me to use the forge tomorrow if need be which I thanked him for but I secretly had no intention of staying in this town.

Once I found the carpenter I had him make the large body of a cross bow. This one had to be reinforced with metal beams though as I asked that it be hollowed out for the mechanism and two trenches leading up past the metal trigger that holds the crossbows rope in place.

Coming back to the blacksmith, I came across a vendor selling grilled chicken parts and broke for a late breakfast. When I arrived at the anvil I got started on the most grueling part of this whole exercise. It was at this point I was most tempted to make a gun, surely there was a source of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur around here some where?

'Nah I came this far, besides I can't afford the kind of attention it would bring right now. Someday, but not today'. I sighed mournfully and got on with it.

The next item was a series of pulleys, and lines of metal ridges that would allow a metal gear to pass over them. The lever was also attached to this gear as well as a metal line that helped use the pressure of the spring to press on the gear component. This entire portion was attached to one of the metal strips on the spring disk. The other was attached to a small ring like a saddle foot strap. What this all did was allow me to pull down the spring with a foot then use that compressed power to assist me in using the lever to pull back the cross bow string, allowing me to reload it with almost trivial effort, giving one near free shot.

I considered making it have an ammo feeder as well but decided against it. The most strenuous part would be pulling the string back into place after firing the crossbow and making that feeder would divert from the hardest task of using this weapon. Also an ammo feeder like that needed standard ammo sizes to work properly, and that wasn't something I had much faith in the current society being able to do on any large scale.

I tested out this creation and sure enough the snap back, spring and catch all worked, with the pulley for the string coming down with the gear for the reload action. I just had to get some string to complete the weapon, coming up with a total of 7 ingots of iron the blacksmith handed back the collateral minus the due payment and I left for the market.

After a look around I found the local weapon/armor shop. They had a good leather strap, crossbow string, and 30 cross bow bolts, with quiver. The store merchant was more than happy to help me tie the string to this odd looking crossbow. All the armor on display was divided between leather and metal. I got a plain metal helmet with strong backside covering part of the neck and a chain mail mouth cover that hooked on both sides of it, which helped me with the face-to-face problem. The rest of my armor totaled a leather chest piece and guards for the shoulders and legs. A simple dagger was my second line of defense. I had no patience to learn swordsmanship nor did I feel the need to. I looked the thin black haired shop keep right in his brown eyes and thanked him for his help and went on my way.

This body did not have the marks of malnutrition that marked so many people of this world. It's 6'2 foot tall size and now growing strength would hopefully be enough. Besides I had weapon designs in the semi-near future that would render such skills obsolete, at least until much later on. If I survived up to that point.

One of the oddities of advanced technology is that warfare sort of loops back around in a lot of ways. Personal shields and point defense systems designed to knock bullets and artillery shells off course mean most troop actions dissolve into a melee when ships, avatars, or the heaviest machine gun fire aren't in play. Even when ships are in play, the skills of the pilot are paramount. AI assisted flying is almost entirely a cargo drone affair, as all electronic resources have to be dedicated to fighting off hacking attempts.

After filling the knapsack with what I assumed was 2 weeks worth of food I headed out of the town. I figured an academy would be the best place to advance science so I decided to hoof it to the academy the friar had mentioned earlier. The directions I got from the shopkeeper to this Diamond academy said they were 9 days away and there was the village of Brier Patch along the way but I didn't want to take any chances.

I headed out, walking on the road for most of the day until night came. I lodged in the hollowed out tree lying on the side off to the side of the road. Waking up, I munched on some more dried fruits and went along the road.

Along the way I noticed some tracks of what I assumed was a carriage leading off into the forest down a steep hill, too steep to be going down intentionally. Following it I came across a dead horse laying on the side of a tree. The cause of death wasn't its fall but the arrow sticking out of its eye. Getting a bad feeling, I prepped the crossbow, using my foot to pull down the handle on the front to prep the spring and pulled the lever to get the string into position. Walking down, the broken remains of a carriage came into sight and a visage of human depravity with it.

Down by the front of the carriage were four corpses. One was a little girl with her plain grey dress pulled up uncovering her body and her brown hair mixed with mud. Beside her was what looked like her little brother. He had has pants down around his ankles with a dirty rag shirt providing the only modesty around his form. Their mother was facing opposite of them fully nude with her long brown hair strewn about. All three had their hair mixed with blood from their slit throats, with white stains about their various parts telling of their gruesome end in this world.

Perhaps the saddest figure was off to the left. A man tied to a tree with his throat also slit, the blood running down his white shirt and brown jeans. The look in his eyes told of a man long dead before the final blow came. Off to the side was a small campfire with three men. I made my way to a tree several yards beyond the fire.

"Come on, Dan. We got to get going, these vittles will keep for a while." Said a large man with short cropped brown hair. He was a muscular specimen with a jutting jaw and was rather handsome with an age of mid 20's. He was rubbing the hair of a smaller lad who couldn't have been a day past 14. This smaller version of him had a less muscular build with a lighter brown hair and the affliction of a scraggly beard.

"Sure, What do we do with the rest of it?" Dan said, his tone dripping with respect and deference.

"That depends, Brett where to now?"

An older man with long white hair and the facial features of a crow, marked with a large scar across his right cheek, put up his head from the pile of foodstuffs he was rummaging through.

"Fucking hell man, I said not to rip up her dress. God knows these shits had too little to begin with. We will see what we can come up with in Brier Patch trading these goods." He scowled at the larger man, 5'6 to the others almost 6 feet.

" Hey you didn't seem too worried when you ripped up the boys pants to--" Whatever neurons in his brain were about to formulate the clever jab were ripped apart as a bolt was sent clear through the temple of his skull. He fell backward breaking his bow on his back.

The old man was apparently something of a veteran in combat, because before the dead man had finished dropping he turned around and pulled out his sword among the pile of goods. Maybe he was good enough to realize that the bolt was from a crossbow and wanted to charge the assailant or

he just wanted to get his weapon and flee. Whatever course of action he had in mind was rendered moot as another crossbow bolt came zipping through the air and shattered his hip bone.

The smaller lad, Dan, was crying over his brothers corpse when he heard an odd metal clanking sound followed by the footsteps of some one behind him. Furious he turned around and drew a short sword from his hip.

I could almost read his mind as he saw a youth about his age with grey hair and purple eyes, the face obstructed with a chain-mail veil covering the rest of his features. The most prominent aspect probably being the big cross bow in my arms. I must have looked like a very odd grim reaper.

This menace was also several feet away, too far to close the gap.

"You Murderer! Fight me man-to-man, blade-to-blade you son of a bitch." is what I assumed he said, the screams of the older man made it kind of hard to tell. My reply had no such problems relaying intent as I shot a bolt right through the kids right shoulder. I heard the wonderful cry in agony as the bolt stuck clear out of his shoulder and caused him to drop the weapon. Before he could pick up the sword with his left hand, I ran over and knocked him to the ground.

A swift punch to the jaw left Dan disorientated enough that he could barely resist when he was put face-first into the dirt and dragged over to the fire. I then hefted him up to his knees and his hands were pulled behind him beyond his sight. As he faced the fire I savored putting my boot into his back as I gradually pushed him forward.

"No, please. Just cut my throat, anything but this." These pleas gave way to screams as his face was pushed into what now must have felt like the fires of hell itself. The blisters on his skin and blackening char around his molting face were all the wounded man could look at while the boy was cooked like a burned steak. Gradually there were only soundless shakes left, at which point I pushed him into the fire fully. The faintly shaking body sticking out of the fire was then ignored as I left his brain to cook. The final victim of my rampage was now looking at his executioner with horror.

I was, as always, approaching things with a degree of practicality. I fetched a few unbroken arrows from the first kill and what do you know, he had arrows that were basically sharp sticks that could be used with this crossbow once the feathers were removed. I loaded up on four of them and made them fit for purpose.

"So what now? Huh? You gonna just put me down? Like some dog?" Brett said pitifully. He seemed to have no plan at this point. Any hope he may have had was lying on the other side of the pile, laying in the dirt where he dropped it when his hip bone shattered.

I took aim at pathetic man leaning against a sack of wheat. I used the arrows to shoot him in both shoulders as well as twice in the gut. "There, your death will be sufficiently painful now." I said as I turned to leave.

"You fucking bastard, Son of a goddamn whore". Barret cried at the back of his killer before the pain became too much. A soft whimpering was all that he could manage now. I briefly looked to his side at the poor family.

'I'm sorry but this is all I can do. They may have associates and I don't have the time to hunt them all down right now... I hope your next time around is a better one.' I thought sadly as I trekked back up the hill and onto the road.