Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 850: Frontier Firearms Project I

CH0850 Frontier Firearms Project I

***

In Sugud’s hands was… a handgun.

A pistol, to be exact.

Alex’s face lit up with a wide smile. He almost rushed over to Sugud and hugged him, even throwing the elf-dwarf hybrid into the air to express his excitement.

Fortunately, his body’s noble upbringing reminded him of the dignity expected of a Count, and he quickly reined in his excitement—at least long enough to realise that although Sugud had successfully fired the handgun, he didn’t look happy.

Mordor, Tivela, Sergeant Lopota, and the other Silver Wolf Guards finally caught up to Alex, causing enough of a commotion to draw Sugud’s attention.

“Leader, you are here.”

Sugud bowed.

Alex waved the greeting aside. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on the L-shaped object in Sugud’s hand.

“It looks like you’ve created the weapon.” He smiled.

“Indeed, I have,” Sugud nodded.

“Then why do I get the feeling you’re not happy?” Alex asked.

“Because it will be difficult to manufacture,” Sugud replied.

“Huh? What do you mean by that?” Alex raised an eyebrow.

“I mean there are many more things we need to put in place if we are going to make your ‘firearm’ possible, Leader,” Sugud explained.

He then walked over to a nearby shed and returned carrying a box filled with various deformed metal contraptions.

After rummaging through the box, he selected several of them and laid them out across a workbench.

Alex immediately noticed what they all had in common.

‘These are… Sugud’s previous attempts at making a handgun. It looks like every one of them suffered a barrel rupture,’ Alex mused.

“When you first shared your firearm concept with me, you described a weapon consisting of a perpendicular frame made up of a handle and a barrel. Within these components, you described a gas-operated firing mechanism in which gunpowder is ignited, producing rapidly expanding gases.

“A projectile seated within the barrel is propelled out through the front open end of the barrel, while the remaining gas forces the cartridge case out of the barrel rearwise, allowing another loaded cartridge to be fed into the barrel in a manner similar to the pump-action crossbow’s bolt-feeding system.”

“Have I understood that correctly?” Sugud asked.

“Yes, that’s basically the gas-operated firearm system I envisioned,” Alex nodded. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

Sugud shook his head.

“The system you described has a lot of flaws,” he said. “Flaws that make it difficult to mass-produce on the scale you intend.”

He directed Alex’s attention to the deformed prototypes on the table.

“First of all, the mechanism you described isn’t dependent on the gases themselves as much as on the pressure they generate. From the way you explained it to me, I assumed the gunpowder should produce a very large volume of gas, so we formulated an extremely explosive gunpowder mixture,” Sugud revealed.

“You can see the result.”

He pointed at the deformed firearms on the table.

“The barrels burst apart.”

Alex frowned as he examined them.

“These prototypes only seem to have the handle and barrel. They don’t contain the reloading mechanism.” He pointed this out.

“Correct,” Sugud confirmed. “And it was fortunate that was all they contained.”

“Since I wanted to better understand the principles behind your firearm, I first crafted a simplified version containing only the handle and barrel. It lacked the reloading mechanism and therefore could only be loaded with and fire a single projectile before needing to be reloaded.

“As you can see, every model I built according to your concept suffered a catastrophic barrel failure.”

“I was fortunate that I wasn’t the one testing them. My unfortunate testing assistant almost lost his life when one of the barrels burst. Fortunately, Lady Eleanore was present, and we managed to save him,” he added.

Alex looked at the damaged weapons and could almost picture how disastrous the accident must have been.

Exploding barrels were known to kill their users if shrapnel struck a vital part of the body. Even in less severe cases, shattered fingers and mangled hands were not uncommon.

“What happened?” Alex asked.

“What your firing mechanism actually relies on is pressure, not gas,” Sugud replied.

“Is there a difference?” Alex asked, confused.

“Yes. I would have approached the design very differently if I had known I was dealing with a pressure vessel rather than simply gas,” Sugud answered.

Alex couldn’t understand. To the best of his knowledge, using expanding gas was essentially the same thing as using pressure.

Seeing Alex’s confusion, Sugud elaborated.

“Since we aren’t merely dealing with gas, but also with pressure containment, the barrel alone isn’t sufficient for the firearm you’ve proposed. It requires an additional chamber connected to the barrel,” Sugud explained.

Something clicked in Alex’s mind.

“A combustion chamber?” he muttered.

“Yes, exactly. A combustion chamber. A firearm chamber. Or simply a chamber.” Sugud nodded to himself upon hearing the term. “Yes… chamber.”

He immediately made a mental note to adopt the name.

He continued, “The chamber is important because it is where the actual combustion of the gunpowder takes place.

“This part has to be strong enough to contain the pressure generated during combustion, as it is the key to the firearm’s operating system. Meanwhile, the barrel must be able to direct that pressure, along with the projectile, in the intended direction.”

Sugud had almost completely lost Tivela and the rest of the Silver Wolf Guard, but the most important member of his audience, Alex, seemed to understand exactly what he was saying.

Alex smiled wryly to himself.

‘I didn’t know much about firearms in my previous life. I only explained what I could remember from a documentary I once watched about the operating principles of modern firearms. To think he’d work out the chamber—one of the key parts I completely overlooked,’ Alex thought.

“Let me guess. We have a materials problem. We need a stronger—or rather, a more pressure-resistant—material for the barrels and chambers than we currently have?” Alex asked.

But to his surprise, Sugud shook his head.

“That’s only one part of the problem. There are others.”

Alex blinked.

“There’s more? What else?”

“I was just getting to that,” Sugud replied.

“In order to test my pressure-chamber hypothesis, I forged the chamber and barrel from a steel alloy reinforced with adamantine. As you can see, the weapon fired as expected.

“Since we can’t expect to use a relatively expensive and strategically important metal like adamantine in mass-produced weapons, as you’ve already surmised, we’ll need to research a cheaper alternative.”

“But aside from that,” Sugud continued, “actually firing the weapon revealed another problem. The firearm itself—its firing mechanism, chamber, barrel, and everything else—isn’t the biggest obstacle we need to overcome.

“It’s the ammunition.”

“After successfully firing the weapon, I came to realise that a great deal more research still needs to go into the ammunition itself.

“Unlike a crossbow, where the entire ammunition is simply the bolt, a firearm’s ammunition is divided into four main components: the projectile, the cartridge casing, the gunpowder, and the primer.

“Following the method you described, the firing pin strikes the cartridge case, causing the primer to ignite. The primer then ignites the gunpowder, which combusts and generates the pressure that propels the projectile.

“Every step in that chain requires strict precision,” Sugud explained.

“Let’s start with the cartridge casing. Since the ammunition is fed into the firearm from a magazine, much like a crossbow bolt, the dimensions of the cartridge casing must precisely match those of the chamber. Meanwhile, because only the projectile travels through the barrel, the projectile itself must be designed to match the barrel’s dimensions.

“Then we have the primer and the gunpowder. Both are, in essence, explosives—the latter far more so than the former—but explosives nonetheless. Beyond their individual roles in the firearm’s operating cycle, they must also remain extremely stable, ensuring they do not ignite outside the process.

“A primer must be stable enough to be transported safely, whether during manufacture or as part of a completed cartridge, while still being sensitive enough to ignite when the firing pin strikes the cartridge case, which in turn ignites the gunpowder.

“As for the gunpowder, it must combust in precisely the right way, producing enough pressure to operate the firearm’s mechanism without rupturing the chamber.”

“In other words, everything—from the cartridge casing and chamber to the projectile and barrel, as well as the primer and the gunpowder—requires exceptional precision, something our domain unfortunately cannot yet achieve,” Sugud concluded.

“The production methods we used for the crossbows simply won’t be sufficient for these firearms. The acceptable margin of error for a crossbow is relatively forgiving, whereas that of a firearm is extremely narrow and unforgiving.

“For a crossbow, a manufacturing mistake will usually result in the weapon failing to fire. But with these firearms of yours, the same kind of mistake could cost someone anything from a finger to their life.”

Alex felt a little overwhelmed by Sugud’s words.

‘Was making a gun in another world supposed to be this complicated? Didn’t transmigrators simply pull out a design and have it immediately become implementable? Why does creating a gun sound so difficult for me?’

“But you’ve managed to create a working prototype. Wouldn’t you be able to make more?” he asked.

***