Chapter 4 - Part 2 of 2 (Patreon)

Erik and Rugrat appeared in Alva.The living floor, of the dungeon, was filled with nervous energy. People glanced at the pillar of light, in the middle of the floor, and looked away quickly, as if doing so would remove the pillar’s existence.

There were less people in the streets, many had headed off to other secure locations. Though it wasn’t a ghost town.

“I’m going to head to supply depot two, good luck with your cultivation,” Rugrat said.

“Alright, have fun with your factory lines.”

Rugrat gave a wave as he headed to the outer reaches of the dungeon. The floor had expanded so much that the teleportation pads that had been along the outer edge of the living floor were now only a third of the way out to the edge of the city.

George jumped off of Rugrat’s shoulders and dropped to the ground.

“You can go off and play. Don’t get into trouble.”

George let out a bark. He expanded in size and went back to the teleportation pad.

Heading for the fire floor again, give him and Davin something to do.

Rugrat glanced at the members of Special Team Three that had been assigned to protect him. They were scanning for threats even now.

Rugrat looked at the people. They might be scared of the changes that had happened in the dungeon, but they were focused. Alva had given them everything, most of them had little more than their clothes on their backs when they arrived. Now they were powerful crafters, rich merchants, strong soldiers.

Alva was much more than their origin, it was the place where they recreated themselves. Soldiers marched through the floor. Happy to assist as needed. Merchants reported to the supply depots, adding in ammunition, armor and medical supplies to their loads to pass on to the units preparing for battle against the Willful Institute.

Alva has only been partially mobilized but it's grown so large now. Two hundred and fifty thousand Adventurer guild members mobilized in hours. Seventeen thousand men and women in the Alva military. We’ll double that number in nine months at our current rate, faster if we increase the number of teaching staff.

They were numbers, but they symbolized so much more. Two thousand people applied to join the Vuzgal military a month. Four hundred a month in the Beast Mountain Range. More joined the Adventurer’s Guild.

Rugrat looked at the Alvans. These people are willing to follow us, willing to support sending our people into war. Maybe not all of them. Though the majority.

Rugrat didn’t know what to think of it all. He took out plans and started studying them as he walked, it was something that he understood.

He passed through the guards, with a check, entering the supply depot. Being inside, the warehouses were just iron beams with machinery functioning within. People walked up and down the lines, making sure that they were operating as required. Ammunition for rifles, grenade launchers, mortars, railguns, and repeaters was produced, thousands of rounds per hour, on assembly lines across Alva and Vuzgal.

Armor, pants, shirts, MRE’s, and medical supplies; such as, potions, IV setups and gauze.The infrastructure was massive and it had been operating without pause.

Rugrat headed for one of the newest assembly lines.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Rugrat said to Taran, he held his fist out to his old friend and fellow Expert Smith.

Taran bumped his fist back “I was making friggin nails when you showed up in Alva, now I’m working on railguns.”

“Change of pace, how is the secondary barrel assembly line?”

“Slow, it’s the first assembly line after all. Not armor or rounds, those things are much easier to produce. We’ve got all kinds of parts and formations. Not as complicated as the semi and full auto rifles thankfully. Our production is already higher than the rifle assembly lines.”

Rugrat looked around, there were several groupings of machines that fed into assembly areas.

“I heard that there was an issue with the magazines?”

“Yeah, had some feeding issues, we’ve been working on the magazines, the linked feeder units are doing better,” Taran pointed to an assembly area where people were working at benches where ammunition belts were laid out. “Adapted off of the belt fed guns from the ships Yui and his people used to capture the Water Floor. Uses small rotation formations to feed ammunition right into the weapon system. It means you have a larger capacity overall but if you run out of ammunition it takes longer to unhook the bottom of the belt, and hook in a new box.”

Rugrat grunted.

“Not perfect but it will work; gives our people a massive ammunition capacity. Might be best to operate them as sharpshooter or machine gun teams. One on the gun and another working on the ammunition.”

“That should work, hate not giving them the best product though.”

“Who knows it might be more effective that way,” Rugrat said looking at the different areas. There were people putting barrel blanks into machines that milled them down into barrels, others added threading, then boring. Each was scanned and tested by a smith for quality control, then fitted with heat dispersing formations that linked to the heat dissipation block rails that ran down the sides of the barrel.

Without the need for moving parts, the rear of the weapon, from the chamber to the stock, was lined with a series of inserts that were secured, to one another, with bolts.

Metal was milled down into shape, then formations were carved into the metal. Everything was bathed in the formation medium then cooled, milled down again so that there was no medium over the rest of the metal. Formation masters checked every rune. Everything was tumbled to remove metal burrs leaving the final parts which were slotted into position, assembling a rifle.

“With the new assembly line for machine gun barrels we  are able to match the   production rate of the machine gun body assembly line. It’s much faster to make the body of the weapon, with so few parts, compared to the barrel.” Taran said.

“The mounted barrel’s extra length will mean greater heat dissipation with more heat exchanging blocks and the weapon’s fire will be more accurate.Machine guns back on Earth were designed to create a ‘cone’ of fire.  This thing will be more like a buzzsaw in a straight line. Here in the Ten Realms where people can react nearly instantly putting a ton of rounds on target, not just in their general vicinity will be much more effective.”

“Sure would suck to be on the other end of one of these,” Taran shook his head.

“Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to just come in and check everything.”

“No worries, I know you’re going stir crazy being here and not out there doing something.”

“Yeah,” Rugrat shrugged.

“Look, the stronger you get, the stronger we all are. You’re close to a mana breakthrough; take that step, increase your body cultivation, get stronger. The stronger you are, the safer people are going to be. Work on any projects you have, train people. At the least, you can do something and you don’t drive everyone insane,” Taran grinned and scratched his beard.

“Alright I’ll stop bugging you. You got those notes on the magazines and the faults?”

“Yeah, let me know if you find anything.” He pulled out a magazine and a pile of notes.

“More homework,” Rugrat shook his head.

“Something to keep you out of trouble!”