Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

Chapter 297

The contents were, at first glance, a little disappointing. Four simple black outlines, the pistol grip, trigger, and body, weren't much more compact than a typical hand-crossbow. The greatest reduction in size was the body itself, lacking the thicker, more ample mid-section of a typical self-reloading hand crossbow shaved down to almost nothing. The limbs of all four bows appeared to be folded back for storage, creating a look more reminiscent of some sort of high-tech slingshot, than a crossbow.

I dislodged one from the foam and attempted to extend the wings, finding them firm and unyielding. On second look there were no hinges and the string was taut, but surely it couldn't be permanently locked in this form.

Puzzled, I pulled up the description.

Description: Though these four diminutive—

"Hold on," Erik shook his head sternly, snatching the loosely held weapon out of my hands before I could read the description in full. "Respectfully, I busted my ass. Already knew they were gonna be special halfway through, but these little beauties ended up being my second vocational capstone. Let me give them a better breakdown than the pre-filled system tripe."

I inclined my head, trailing behind him as he approached one of the padded targets, finger resting on the trigger-guard. "Someone a lot smarter than me once said that limitation breeds creativity. Never put much stock in that ‘til now." He smirked. "Could be wrong, but the day you walked in, I got the sense you were frugal. Loaded, but frugal. Also gleaned you didn't give two-fucks about ornamentation. So a big part of the design phase was sussin' out how, exactly, to make these things worth the cheddar to ya." He extended his arm towards the target, less than two feet away from the crossbow's barrel, and fired.

There was no sound. No telltale twang. Nothing but a blur and ample thud as the padded target suddenly jerked upward against the back leg of its tripod base, clattering hard against the ground.

Interest piqued, I tried to lift the target with the toe of my boot, and discovering it was too heavy for that, crouched down and lifted it with both hands. It was more weighted than it appeared—somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred pounds.

"First piece of the puzzle was stopping power. Probably don't gotta tell you this, but outside of some very specific use cases, hand-crossbows are generally outclassed by their bigger, more accurate siblings. The bigger form factor allows for greater power, but it's a new age. Material options with appropriate tensile strength aren't nearly as limited as it once was. Ever run into a Dopki?"

"Not the nastiest bastards the system has thrown at us, probably not even in the top ten, Nasty nonetheless. Lizards, around the size of a small dog. Chameleon style camouflage. Ambush hunters. If they feel threatened, they'll jump out at you, generally from a wall, try to get their jaws on your head. If they do?" Erik snapped his fingers. "Lights out. Crush strength that would make an alligator blush. Thankfully for the Users paling around the low-level eco-dungeons they're most common in, their preferred diet isn't meat."

"They eat rocks for minerals, their stomachs are insane, which makes for stupidly good gut-string. Get to the cool part already!" Kai called over, covering a laugh as Erik glared at him.

"How much pressure?" I asked, ignoring the enchanter's grumbling.

"Three times the usual amount." Erik grinned.

"Bullshit." I worked my jaw, absorbing the idea that it was even possible. Something occurred to me. "Even if it wasn't, wouldn't that much force just shatter the ammunition?"

"It would. And it did." Erik chuckled nostalgically. "Pulled my hair out trying to get conventional bolts to work. Tried everything. Denser wood, material composites. Everything either broke or bent the second the trigger was pulled."

"What finally hacked it?"

"Something a little closer to home. See for yourself." He pointed to the target.

The back of the bolt—still protruding from the target—was atypical, absent the stereotypical fins. I gripped it tightly, immediately feeling a distinct drop in temperature seep through my glove.

"It's metal." I realized at least a third of the small crossbow's heft must have come solely from the bolt. After considerable effort, it finally dislodged. "Solid all the way through?"

"Yup." Erik nodded, taking the bolt from me and replacing it in another crossbow. "Tried hollow, same issue as the conventional stuff. Iron was too heavy, steel was closer to what I wanted, but still not quite there. Landed on Tridium. System analogue for a tungsten alloy, far as I can tell. Dense. Doesn't handle sustained abuse well, which makes it a terrible choice for armor, but a brief moment of intense pressure?" He adjusted something near the sight, then fired the second crossbow at a more distant target. Again, the bolt rocketed forward. Unlike the first, closer target, the bolt shot forward about five feet before it plunged downward, metal screeching as it slid across the floor. "Imagine you'll get anywhere between fifteen to twenty uses per bolt before accuracy becomes a concern. Course, that leaves the biggest problem of using solid metal bolts."

"Range." I frowned. Diversifying my kit, using different tools for different problems, was nothing I wasn't used to. But the distance was practically non-existent. It'd make me an even better fighter than I already was in close quarters, but from a realistic standpoint, did nothing to solve my mid-range issue and risked redundancy.

"Went back to the ammunition drawing board for a bit, eventually decided I'd need outside help a bit earlier than I thought."

"Nuh uh." Kai replaced the lid of the item he'd been adjusting, smirking all the while. "Tell him. Tell our favorite customer how many days you spent banging your head against the wall before you remembered you had a talented enchanter on staff."

"...Several." Erik growled.

"I'm not just a pretty face. And I've been very curious how, exactly, the order creates their portals." Kai provided, approaching the table and looking over the crossbows, glowing with pride. "The only teleportation enchantments I have access to can only be applied to inanimate objects. Organic material is a no-go, but I've been playing with it, trying to find a way around the limitations. Not there yet, but I've learned the practical applications inside and out. Coupled with an enchantment that works like a range-finder—which was coincidentally, another enchantment Erik demeaned as useless—and we found our solution."

I gave up trying to piece it together myself as Kai, barely able to contain his excitement, unseated the third crossbow and passed it to me butt first, gesturing towards the more distant target.

Curious how it would function in my typical use case, I inventoried the bow. Then activated It snapped into my hand. The pistol grip—while seemingly identical at first glance, landed perfectly in my palm, the few barely perceptible indentations ensuring the weapon nestled perfectly in alignment. Bearing in mind the faster drop off, I focused slightly above the target and fired, not bothering to aim.

The bolt launched beneath the raised sight, blurring, seeming to shrink for fractions of a second before it disappeared entirely. Moments later there was an impact as the metal bolt slammed into the cushioned back wall behind the target, exactly at the height I'd aimed.

My jaw dropped. Barring enhanced perception, there's no way I would have caught it.

Even with amplified senses it was difficult to parse precisely what, exactly, happened. But I knew two things for certain. The first was that, for a millisecond, the bolt disappeared completely. The second was that it had reappeared, closer to the target, retaining velocity and effectively tripling the range.

"Sorry." I slowly turned to look at Kai. "What the fuck?"

"Uhuh." Kai preened, clearly delighted as he took the crossbow from me. "It's naturally intuitive. If you pull the trigger and the rangefinder enchantment detects a target within three meters, it fires like a normal crossbow. If the target is outside of three meters, the bolt teleports, reappearing approximately a meter away from the target." His brows pulled down in consternation. "Real bitch of a time making the teleport destination pinpoint accurate, main reason beyond enchanting real-estate and the sheer power it would cost I couldn't just give it a more impressive range, but the end results speak for themselves. What's more, there are identical, less precise variations of the same spell here," He pointed to the butt of the crossbow, then the two limbs, "here, and here."

"To what end?" I asked.

Suddenly, Erik reached over and slapped the bow out of Kai's hand in a gesture that could have been playful, openly grinning as the small enchanter yelped. Kai shrieked something obscene I couldn't be bothered to catch as I watched the small, delicate work of art plummet towards the floor.

And slip through it like a rock into water.

I went to one knee, examining the concrete below. There was no indication that something solid had passed through the surface. Not even a scuff.

"To that end." Erik provided cheerfully.

"What the fuck." I repeated.

"There's a simple on-off enchantment in the grip that detects if the weapon is being held or not." Kai babied his wrist, still glaring daggers at Erik. "If it's dropped, the rangefinders will activate at the last possible moment to trigger the second return-state teleport a split-second before the object hits the ground, or is close to exceeding the maximum distance of approximately twenty meters. Once those parameters are met, it returns to the control stone." Kai gestured toward the box with a half-hearted magician's flourish.

All four crossbows sat as if they'd simply been there the whole time. I picked out the one I'd fired, noting that it was once more locked back into the firing position.

"I was wondering how I'd manage to reload these with the weight involved." I felt a slow creeping smile. "So I keep the control stone in my inventory, fire, drop, the bow returns to the inventory ready for another bolt. Don't tell me they fully reload themselves, given the ammo?"

Erik cleared his throat awkwardly. "We uh, couldn't quite crack how to get these beauties to slap in another bolt on their own inside a User's inventory. In theory, it's possible, but there's a lot of restrictions on the inventory that don't apply anywhere else, probably for good reason. You'll need to do that part yourself."

The weapons presented so many new possibilities it made my head spin. I stood there, silently working through them all until I realized both Erik and Kai were fidgeting uncomfortably, and spoke my current ponderance aloud. "So there's effectively two firing modes. Close and extended. Any way to lock it to one or the other?"

"Hm?" Erik cocked his head, not grasping my meaning.

"In case I need to shoot through something or someone."

They traded a look, before Kai answered. "Does that... uh... come up a lot?"

I shrugged. "More than you'd think."

"It'd be difficult to add at this stage." Erik nodded slowly, considering it. "A manual toggle is possible. Technically, the function is already there, but Kai did the enchanting work with the self-activation in mind. How long would it take?" He crossed his arms, wincing as he waited for his partner to answer.

"Weeks. I'd have to scrap most of what I already have and redo it." Kai recited emotionlessly, soul seeming to leave his body with every passing word. "It would cost a lot of resources, and I don't even want to think about the alignment process after doing this four separate times, but sure, totally doable."

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"Would you like to tell our favorite customer who broached that very question, and was squawked at to get out of the Etherworks and go hit something with a hammer?" Erik asked blandly, a sheen of spiteful mischief in his eye.

"No." Kai said.

"I'll take them as is," I clarified, deciding that specific use case didn't really merit the additional time and aggravation.

Their sense of relief was immediate and palpable.

"Could probably spend all day testing these, but we should probably move on. What else you got?"

/////

The answer was quite a bit. Starting with the knife. sporting a bowie-style form with Persian trappings, its shining blade covered with runes, finally solved my absence-of-variety problem. It was larger than I preferred, but this was necessary for all the moving parts. The crystalline knob at the base served as a magical battery and rotating mode switch. According to Kai, electricity and fire in small-class weapons caused too many potential problems for the wielder to be viable—if I stabbed a monster with a live knife coursing with thousands of volts of electricity, and taking obvious issue with this, the monster grabbed me, the problem was obvious. Same with fire. Instead, he'd started by deconstructing one of Mile's draining garrotes, and reverse engineering a similar enchantment that fed into the knife's internal mana battery, making up the first of the blade's three modes.

The second was imbued with the last of the Matriarch spider's venom I'd harvested a lifetime ago. The effect was less potent than the venom in its original form, but the upside was that it would last as long as the blade had charge, which could be restored by switching back to the first mode.

We'd discussed dark, or potentially even eldritch as a third option. Unfortunately, they were so difficult to work with that in the end Kai hadn't been able to manage it. The alternative he'd come up with—parameters being a ruinous, devastating option that countered quick regeneration—was mildly horrifying.

Kai demonstrated, turning the crystalline core on the hilt to the third setting. Unlike the first two, there was no dull green or violet glow, coursing through the runes. The metal remained static, though there was a certain reflective sheen to it I was uncertain had been there before.

Gripping the knife tightly, Kai took aim, and plunged it into one of the waiting targets. There was an audible SHINK. Bracing himself and planting a foot on the target base for support, Kai gripped the hilt of the knife with both hands, and yanked. The target tore, two inches of padding and material pouring out of the gap, leaving a gaping hole around a fist wide. In his hands, the weapon no longer looked like a knife. Rather, a rod of the same length with countless metallic barbs emitting at countless, asymmetrical angles.

"Jesus."

"Transmutation. Kind of brutal," Kai nodded, watching as the spines on the blade folded back in, expending the rest of its power to reforge. "Spines are thin enough that at least some of them should break off, yet they never do."

"What was the base material?" I asked, fighting a growing queasiness.

A few feet behind, Erik cleared his throat and answered. "What was the damaged weapon you brought in made of?"

That was a surprise. Erik was referring to a shattered faux-artifact we'd found in the tower. The sword was meant to be a facsimile of Excalibur. When Nick picked it up, it fell to pieces in his hands. It was supposed to be fake. A prop. I'd brought it in for Kai to study the enchantment traces Kinsley's team lacked the specific expertise to identify. Kinsley was still hurting on the weapons crafter front, and as the blade material was correctly identified as some sort of low-grade mix of iron and something else, we figured it would make a good show of goodwill.

Apparently we were wrong.

"Which is a nice, gentle lead-in to another topic we'd like to speak to you about." Kai crossed his arms. "The wood you brought in? We'd like more of it. A lot more. Metal too, but we're guessing that was all you had. "

"I'm listening." I ventured, figuring it was better to withhold information until I had a better idea of where this was going.

Erik circled around the table, standing next to Kai, forming a cohesive unit. "The Wraithwood is staggeringly strong."

"And immensely enchantable." Kai added.

"In typical system-fuckery fashion, it doesn't burn. It melts." Erik shook his head slowly. "The molten—shit I don't even know what to call it."

"Pulp?" Kai tried.

"Close enough." Erik agreed. "The pulp interacts with other materials strangely, when melted down and combined. Still toying with the potential alloys, but I inlaid it on the bows for additional support. Otherwise, they'd be breaking as often as they fired, and Kai wouldn't have been able to use a fraction of the enchantments he managed."

"And the metal?" I asked.

"You're one-hundred percent committed to not telling us what it was or where it came from?" Erik asked again.

I inclined my head.

Kai sighed, surveying the dagger with the barest hint of wonder. "This stupid thing. Your people were correct. Broken and decrepit as it was, there were hints of an enchantment. And not just any enchantment. Whatever the original purpose, it's more complex than anything I've worked with, and it's not even close."

"You couldn't crack it." I filled in.

"No." Kai snapped. "Well, yes. It was impossible to fully identify, let alone recreate, but I was able to parse enough of the internal schema to piece together the type of enchantment. Transmutation."

"Pretend like I have no enchanting background and fill me in on the significance."

Again, they shared a look. This time it was Kai who spoke. "Transmutation enchantments are generally a poor choice for bladed weapons. Maces and war hammers see some benefit, but the downside is arguably still not worth it. It's not as simple as transforming one thing into another. Technically, you can have a claymore that transforms itself into a scythe—not sure why anyone would want that, but you could—but every time you swapped from one form to the other, there would be a small degree of base material lost in the process, accounting for energy spent for the transformation itself. The immediate loss isn't noticeable, but cumulatively, it adds up. The structural integrity degrades, and one day, "oops" my novelty weapon fell to pieces."

"Tracks with how I found it." I admitted.

"We—or I, rather, was convinced it was just well-enchanted iron." Erik took the dagger from Kai and looked it over. "Felt, smelt, and melted identically." He grinned, glancing towards the door that led to the forges. "If I hadn't been testing the Wraithwood pulp that week we might have never thought to melt it down and test it."

I shifted uncomfortably. "Doesn't deconstructing a weapon... destroy the supposedly priceless enchantment?"

"It would." Kai sniffed. "If I was a novice and stupid." He reached in his robes and nonchalantly tossed me a crystal disc. Both the top and the bottom were convex, giving it the shape of a basic UFO, emitting a light green glow that felt appropriate.

"Wasn't accomplishing anything in its broken form," Kai shook his head. "But by copying everything I could—even the parts that were utterly incomprehensible—someone can potentially fill in the enchantment's blanks and make use of it later." Even as he spoke, Kai looked mildly envious at the prospect. "Erik alloyed the 'iron' with wraithwood pulp, because Erik now wants to alloy everything with wraithwood. The results were more drastic than every other material he worked with. We still don't know what to call it, but it sure as hell isn't iron."

"Still in favor of Omnium." Erik scowled.

"And if we were naming a knock-off super hero instead of a god-tier alloy, I'd agree with you." Kai rolled his eyes. "More importantly, I tested a small sample with a basic transmutation enchantment for days. Pretty much anything falls apart after fifty alterations, but whatever this is, it's still rock solid." He lowered the in its box, uncharacteristically reverent. "One of a kind. The mode-switch enchantments barely took space. I layered on strengthening, ergonomic, and muffling enchants—which would normally be a pick one or two situation—not to mention vorpal and the weak-point identification enchantment you wanted cloned, and this mean bastard still has room."

"So you could still potentially improve it in the future." I filled in, hiding a smile.

This was a reminder. It wasn't just that, of course. Their enthusiasm, for the most part, was too unbridled to be anything other than authentic. But the entire reason they'd gone so above and beyond was because I'd broached the possibility of getting them out from under the Order if the results spoke for themselves. And the results were screaming that I'd be an absolute dumbass leaving them under Aaron's thumb.

"You have my support." I wiggled the disc that Kai couldn't seem to keep his eyes off of in front of his face. "And on that note, I'm getting the feeling you'd like to keep studying this?"

"God yes." Kai breathed.

I tossed it back to him, noting the barely suppressed shriek as he all but dove to catch it. "Couple of conditions. I'd like you both to keep what you've discovered about wraithwood to yourselves. Is that going to be a problem with all the new hires?"

"Not at all." Erik smiled, seeming to finally shed his anxiety. "Don't have to tell me we can't trust this lot. I'm the only one who's worked with it. Uh. Few of 'em might have seen me throwing wood shavings into a fire and asked questions—to which they were told to mind their business—but other than Kai, no one knows the value at stake."

"Perfect." I pulled up my UI and sent the contact cards from the woman handling Merchant's Guild talent acquisition. "Message the last contact first, only reach out to the others if there's no answer. The second condition is that from this moment, we only talk about this subject through text. There's a lot of eyes and ears around here. I didn't linger the first time, so they're probably not listening now—"

"Definitely not." Azure confirmed, the slightest ripple of shadow visible as he slipped back into mine.

"—But I drew some attention on my way in, and at least a few people outside are going to realize I've been in here longer than the average customer. Assuming the transition goes smoothly, you'll have access to more wraithwood than you can shake a stick at."

Erik pounded a table in excitement and paced back and forth. "When?"

"During the event." It was the safest answer. If the joint initiative managed to stop the event, or delay it, we'd need another plan. But if we failed—and there was enough uncertainty with the AG's newly uncovered reticence that I wasn't willing to bet on it—there was no better time to poach crafters than during the chaos of the transposition.

Judging from Erik's wince, he didn't agree. "Place'll be empty, so we might be able to get the forges out. But if it's anything like the first, the roads will be terrible. Plus, we'll need a cargo truck. Getting from point A to point B through that hellscape in a slow-moving vehicle could be tricky."

"Can you make more forges?" I asked.

His eyes widened. "They're exorbitantly expensive."

"Yes," I said patiently, "And the faction you're about to defect to has materials and selve to spare. So what are our real problems?"

"Competition," Kai noted glumly.

"If we just... abandon ship." Erik's lips thinned, betraying discomfort with the theoretical. "Even an unspecialized blacksmith can get a lot of use out of the existing facilities. Might even make it easier for him to choose a specialization, considering there'd be no overhead."

"Could you disassemble them?"

"Not without losing the materials."

I studied the fingertips of my gloves, idly. "Interesting. Assuming you talk to the contact I sent, like what you hear, and have the foresight to get a formal agreement in writing, that would solve the competition issue at no real cost, wouldn't it?"

Erik turned slightly green at the prospect of destroying his forges, but eventually nodded. "I suppose it wouldn't."

"Good." I clapped my hands together. "Reach out to that contact. When we move, we need to move quickly."

/////

We settled for two-hundred thousand selve, which still felt like highway robbery. They—Kai more than Erik—wanted to go over the details of the armor before I left, but I had to see a necromancer about a girl, and I'd lingered too long as it was.

On the second floor, beyond the row of onlookers pressed up against a long railing, I caught a light flash of the back of Buzzcut's head, flanked on either side with various hulking escorts, mostly melee Users, that made up Aaron's personal guard. The glimpse filled me with trepidation. We had a solid plan, but Aaron could be unpredictable. He wasn't the sort of guy to take luck at face value. Never had been. He'd be intrigued by the possibility of an inside look at the so-called rabid dog he'd unleashed, tempted by the opportunity presented. After that, though? It really all came down to how well Cameron could sell it.

When it comes to developing an asset, menace and friendliness both play a part. Too intimidating and abusive, and they'll jump ship. Too friendly, and they'll assume there's no stick. Trust is key. Balance. They need to hold the belief that you—or the people backing you—are scarier than the people you're turning them against, and simultaneously believe that you'll come running if they stick their necks out and the axe comes down, even if you won't. To be clear, I'm not encouraging the practice of burning assets. There are a lot of people on government payroll I don't associate with because they're too quick to do exactly that. Sometimes you can't help them and that's a tough pill to swallow. And no matter how pragmatic you try to be, you will swallow it. Because if you did it right, you're the only hope they have.

With Mile's voice echoing in my head, I composed a quick message.

The bell above the blacksmith's door rang before I could send the message. He stepped through awkwardly, half twisted around, speaking to someone in a low-tone before the familiar face was revealed.

"Heard there was some dark and broody celebrity hanging out around here. Seen anyone like that?" Julian smiled.