They finished lunch in silence and Dominic went back to his work, assembling the basics for another ten rifles while the castings for the other parts cooled.
Once he started milling the parts and tapping the threads, Dominic noticed that the guards were watching over his shoulder.
"That’s such a simple mechanism. How does that even become a Magitech weapon?" One of them asked curiously.
"It really is insanely simple, especially compared to the steam rifles. It’s all in the Magitech circuits. If you can’t use the mana to charge the circuit, it’s just an air rifle. Nothing special, but the magitech circuits here connect to the expansion chamber, and imbue the bullets with the magical effects.
That’s why I chose this design. To arm an entire Regiment takes hundreds of weapons, and I can do these in bulk with only a half dozen holes to be drilled and the air lines to connect. Even the valves are premade for us.
As the other Gunsmiths said, there are two levels to this art. True art, and mass-produced reliable trash. The second is what I am making, but that doesn’t mean they won’t work. In fact, because they’re so simple, they’re nearly impossible to destroy without crushing them.
There are only two external mechanisms, and that’s just the levers. If you break the charging lever off, you can weld a new one on in seconds, or even just jam the cleaning rod in the broken arm’s mounting hole and use it as a lever."
That made the Guard laugh. "You know, someone is going to actually do that, right?"
Dominic nodded. "If it breaks off cleanly, or you can extract the stub, the bolthole is just large enough for the cleaning rod. I give it two weeks before someone realizes that in the field."
A few of the other smiths chuckled as they realized that the blueprint for this rifle was absolutely brilliant. Whoever had designed it was a true friend to the soldiers, so they suspected that it might be the work of a commoner born Master Gunsmith or Technomage.
It was also carefully designed so that the bedding of the action could be done only on the desired raised points, without accidentally hard mounting a critical stress relief area.
Dominic simply poured the spoon of epoxy into the two notches, and then added a dab to the boltholes when he mounted the action. It would cure fully overnight, and while it might not make the most accurate long-range rifle, it would be good enough at anything under three hundred metres.
One of the other Gunsmiths looked at Dominic’s work and tapped his chin.
"This is a Rare recipe, isn’t it? But it needs an entire higher level core per rifle to meet the Rare item standard, right?" He asked.
Dominic nodded. "With a level nineteen or twenty Mana Core from an Ogre, it will certainly be Rare Quality. But we don’t have any of those in the supplies today.
Level ten isn’t half bad, though, and I don’t use up the core with every creation this way. They’re reliably coming out as Uncommon, and that’s the standard that was requested."
The other Gunsmiths thought about that answer. The Sorcerer was right. He was doing exactly what they were requested to, and doing it faster than anyone else. He didn’t hold on to the pride of craftsmanship that a normal artisan would, he just slapped out something functional and called it ready for deployment.
The mere thought of that pained the others, but they understood his point.
Given the option, the soldiers would rather have a mediocre quality, plain-looking weapon right now than an outstanding one three battles from now.
"Alright, let him keep doing it that way. The army wants rifles, and he’s making rifles. Now, I won’t insult my own name as a crafter to do the same, but I will endeavour to turn out larger quantities of passable quality pieces." One of the smiths reluctantly agreed.
The others didn’t say anything, and a few gave him disgusted looks for compromising and making anything less than a masterpiece every time. But when they got back to their workstations, Dominic couldn’t help but notice that the pace had notably increased, even among those who already had one rifle produced for the day.
He also noticed that the next cart full of supplies were in sizes much closer to what he needed, limiting the wasted time altering them.
This supply must have come from the Royal Army’s spare parts and repair materials department, the same source that had stocked his forge when he went out with Princess Alexis and the reservists.
He never had a chance to meet any of the people who worked in that department, as they were at the far end of the forge complex, in another building. But they would be working overtime to restock what the smiths were using, as well as what was being shipped out with the army.
The assistants brought over a second sand table for Dominic to forge the rough parts in larger quantities.
So, he finished the second batch and then set up the tooling for another twenty to be finished the next day.
As he finished up the last of his second batch and screwed the layered leather butt pads on before test firing them without ammunition, Dominic mentally calculated how long he would need to finish the same number of rifles tomorrow.
If he drilled all twenty receivers one after another, they would go much more quickly. Do the same hole on each, so he didn’t need to change tooling, and he could prep a whole day’s work in the first few hours of the shift.
"You seem like you’re deeply lost in thought for someone who is sixteen rifles ahead of the next Gunsmith." The man on Dominic’s left joked.
Dominic smiled back at him. "I was planning how to approach tomorrow. When these have cooled enough to be worked, I can prep them all in the morning and then just go part by part and assemble at the end. It should go more smoothly than today, as I will only have to switch tools every twenty repetitions."
"Efficient. You know, that’s not a bad idea. Instead of making a third, I will prep the hardest parts for tomorrow, and guarantee that I have enough time to finish." He agreed.
The first day’s performance surely wasn’t going to negatively change the palace’s opinion of them if they could pick up their pace in the following days with a bit of prep work.