A new weapon concept

If Thops was envisioning a shield, then Zhao Si was envisioning a spear.

While Thops racked his brains over how to defend against sorceries and incantations, Zhao Si was drawing blueprints too.

Thanks to his previous experience with drawing, he could put the model he imagined onto paper. After stripping away plenty of unnecessary components, the new weapon that emerged was a firearm.

Zhao Si's theory was to remove every unnecessary part of a staff, refine the glintstone, simplify the sorcery, and then cast it through a firearm. It had to bypass intelligence requirements, and it would be even better if it cost no FP.

Convenient, quick, and instant, with different ammunition providing different types of sorcery. That was Zhao Si's ideal weapon. If he succeeded, he could name it the "Glintstone Firearm."

When Zhao Si showed Thops his breech-loading Glintstone Firearm design, Thops exclaimed in amazement. But after studying it carefully, he shook his head repeatedly. "No, no. This simply can't be made."

"Why?" Zhao Si frowned. "How do you know it won't work if we haven't even tried?"

"Look, according to you, the barrel of this thing you call a firearm needs to be made of glintstone to ensure it performs properly." Thops sighed. "A glintstone barrel, glintstone bullets-even putting aside how much those materials would cost, that kind of precision work isn't something just anyone could do."

Fair point. Compared with mounting a stone on a staff, turning glintstone into a barrel and bullets did seem somewhat harder.

"And the hardest part is this: how do you let someone who's never studied sorcery cast it freely? I can't think of a way." Thops was deeply troubled. He felt this was beyond his knowledge.

"But didn't I just cast sorcery using the shield you made?" Zhao Si couldn't quite understand where this supposedly insurmountable obstacle lay.

Sorcery was far too abstract, after all. Those who understood it needed no explanation, while those who didn't simply didn't. It was incredibly frustrating.

Wait, casting sorcery through faith-scaled intelligence-wasn't there already a ready-made path for that?

Zhao Si told Thops what he was thinking, frightening him so badly that his face went pale.

Thops shook his head. "No, no, no! How could we resort to such heresy?"

"You need to think more about practicality. As long as it casts sorcery, isn't that enough? Why care how it does it?" Zhao Si tapped the blueprints. "As long as we get the result, the process doesn't matter."

Interestingly, Golden Order fundamentalism included the Law of Regression, which required 37 intelligence to cast but no faith at all. Perhaps different paths really did lead to the same destination, and there was no insurmountable gulf between incantations and sorceries. Hadn't that bastard Radagon studied sorcery first and incantations afterward, then shamelessly declared that a hero ought to master everything?

There was another little secret, too: Albinaurics cast sorcery through arcane.

"The process doesn't matter?" Thops looked bewildered.

"Not that it doesn't matter at all. What I mean is, we're not hurting anyone, and you're helping make a weapon for me. You won't be using it yourself, so naturally, all that matters is whether it works. Don't worry about whether it's heresy. Besides, there's no such thing as heresy in scholarship," Zhao Si said with a smile.

Scholarship had no heresy. Only by treating everything impartially could one go further.

"Hmm..." Thops pondered for a moment. "You have a point. But have you thought about finding someone more capable to help develop it?"

"Who?" Zhao Si asked, despite knowing the answer.

"Witch Sellen, of course. She's a genius." Thops grew a little excited at the mention of Sellen.

Perhaps Sellen had been something of a celebrity at the Academy-before her imprisonment, anyway.

"Is she at the Academy now?" Zhao Si asked.

Thops nodded. "Of course. She's studying under the two masters. It's just that the way those two look... well, I always find it a little strange."

"Strange how?" A phrase popped into Zhao Si's mind: Glintstone ascension.

"Well, they wanted to delve deeper into primeval sorcery, so they replaced their heads with glintstone." Thops wore an odd expression. "It's hard to imagine how someone can live on glintstone without a skull or brain. The other students and teachers at the Academy have quite a few complaints about it."

"Those students and teachers who think the masters are strange are beyond saving." Zhao Si sneered at the Academy's scholars. "A bunch of complacent fools who've even forgotten their own roots."

The ultimate form of sorcery research involved abandoning the human body to begin with, regardless of whether one became a seed of the stars. Azur and Lusat's transformation into glintstone was clearly a step in the right direction. Flesh was weak; glintstone offered ascension. The human body was so useless that it couldn't even properly receive signals from the stars.

And then there were the other magical races. From the White King and Black King, who had fallen into the Lands Between with meteorites, to the Nightfolk of the underground Eternal City-those little dark-skinned Numen-none were purely organic.

The White King and Black King had stony skin and controlled gravity.

The Nightfolk had silver blood. The Albinaurics they fashioned had Albinauric Bloodclots, while the Tears, which resembled black slimes, possessed liquid metal that straddled the boundary between living and nonliving matter. Even their weapons were made of liquid metal.

Even the Crystalians carved by the White King and Black King were honored guests at the Academy.

The sorcery of carbon-based life had its limits!

The Academy's sorcerers had long since been blinded by comfortable lives and ambition. They no longer dared abandon their flesh, and even regarded the two masters as aberrations.

-As I thought, I need to find a way to get them researching the Glintstone Computer, Glintstone Network, Glintstone Telescope, and Glintstone Satellite. A different approach to exploring the primeval.

Once again pleased with his own imaginings, Zhao Si asked, "Is there a way to find Sellen and the others?"

Thops thought for a moment. "They usually discuss their research in a classroom and hardly ever go anywhere else. But they're so immersed in their own world that they don't seem likely to help anyone."

"What if helping me meant helping themselves?" Zhao Si was itching to try.

But he suppressed his excitement. He had to prepare before approaching Sellen and the two masters.

"Would you like to receive guidance from the two masters?" Both of Zhao Si's questions were directed at Thops.

Thops answered them in order. "If you could help them, that would be wonderful. If they could give me some pointers, I'd wake up laughing from my dreams. It's just..."

"No 'it's just.' Let's hurry and start experimenting! If we bring them concrete results, we're bound to get somewhere." Zhao Si encouraged Thops while also bolstering his own confidence.

With that said, he buried himself in drawing blueprints again, drafting proposals and analyzing the feasibility of a series of glintstone creations. Thops filled in the theory where appropriate. His foundational knowledge was quite solid; his schooling and reading hadn't been for nothing.

Three days later, Zhao Si and Thops tested the feasibility of their defensive sorcery in the same clearing in the Wetland.

This time, Zhao Si didn't foolishly raise his shield to block. Instead, he prepared to swing it and deflect the spell.

"Ready?" Thops asked, staff in hand.

Zhao Si nodded. "Come on!"

Thops repeated the same procedure and cast Glintstone Pebble again. Acting as a medium, the glintstone atop his staff manifested the Academy's emblem in the air, and the pebble flew out at the same time.

Zhao Si watched the Glintstone Pebble's trajectory, activated the glintstone on the Buckler to spread a thin, membrane-like barrier, and swung the Buckler into the incoming spell.

Smack!

It was the same magical impact, but this time Zhao Si deflected it to one side, where it blasted a small crater in the ground and kicked up dust.

Zhao Si swung his arm a few times. "That felt much better. This time, I could clearly feel myself knocking the spell aside."

He pointed at the scratches on the Buckler. "The damage to the shield proves it too."

"Have I really made progress?" Thops still found it hard to believe.

Zhao Si patted the ordinary shield. "Then try firing a shot at an ordinary shield."

Thops swung his staff and sent a Glintstone Pebble flying. This time, Zhao Si didn't deploy the protective membrane, but blocked directly with the Buckler.

Crack!

The Buckler shattered on impact, sending wooden splinters everywhere. Zhao Si spun around to bleed off the force before regaining his footing. His entire left arm went limp. He pointed at it. "See? Huge difference."