The World Dragon's Heir

After breakfast, Dominic went to the office and set out a fresh sheet of paper to make plans for new products while he worked on improving his Spellbook.

While preparing the spears for the reservists, he had the idea that it might be possible to improve the magitech rifles. Currently, they were charged with a lever on the side, then loaded with the lever action on the trigger guard.

The loading part was smooth and seamless, quick to operate, and made perfectly pressed rounds every time, until the mechanism wore out.

It was the compressed air charging that left much to be desired.

There was a magitech circuit to improve pressure, but Dominic was certain that he could improve it if more magic was involved. Instead of working the lever, he could add magitech circuitry to operate a charging gear.

It would take a much more magically adept user. But it would keep the rifle at perfect charge, no matter how many rounds you ran through it.

Packaging might be an issue, but Dominic was sure that he could do it with minimal added space. The existing mechanism took a lot of space that could be replaced.

Dominic's first thought was to keep the manual mechanism, so that less adept users could keep using the rifles.

That was where he started the first draft, with the existing blueprint, and then a small magitech gear turner that could be charged with mana to keep the tank full of compressed air.

The design for the gear turning mechanism was in the basic magitech engineering books, and it only needed a single quartz crystal inside a central hub.

He was a bit short on good quartz, but he had some in the scrap pile of old parts in his storage cube. It wasn't valuable enough to sell, but it was always useful to repair random items he had scrounged.

He would get the mages to make him some new crystals later. Cutting them to shape might be a jeweller's specialty, but Dominic was handy with a hammer and chisel after training with Pops, and the designs weren't difficult to cut for this level of work.

There was still some room around the compressor gears, so Dominic sketched out the design for the magical addition, and then adjusted the existing design to make it fit.

That would all still work inside the existing rifle butt design, it would just be much more crowded inside.

Durability shouldn't be an issue, as he was only adding a bit to the design, and not compromising the existing structure. But the complexity of manufacturing was certainly going up.

With so little actual Magitech in the original design, it was almost a mechanical rifle. But with this addition, it was definitely into the magitech side of the scale.

So, Dominic took it a step further, and added a whole secondary set of circuitry, the workings of the Mana Revolver, to the lower tube, where the ammunition was stored. In theory, he could give the rifle dual capability.

Mana rounds for general targets, and solid shot for targets like Ogres who were resistant to magical attacks.

When he was finished, he had added hours of extra time to the construction of the rifle, but the design was absolutely brilliant.

He wouldn't have time to create one today, he had spent too much time on the design. But Prince Russel had left first thing in the morning with his troops, and everyone else was busy with their own tasks.

There really wasn't anything else for him to do except to make new designs, and a batch of trade goods for the Merchant's Guild.

That was how Dominic ended his day.

Two Mana Revolvers made with the Clay to Steel spell and enchanted with the oil bath method to level five and uncommon. His standard for weapons sold to the Guild.

The next few days were more of the same, except that Dominic poured all his time into making one masterpiece rifle, decorated with golden filigree and finally enchanted to the rare grade with a level 20 Ogre Core.

Even the wooden stock was carefully inlaid with the Wavemates Family crest on both sides, a process that took him an entire day to sketch and carve.

But when he was finished, he had a weapon that he could proudly display at formal events, or hang in the study to flex on guests.

He had created this one in a smaller format than the long rifles given to the Natural Sons.

They had found them to be moderately cumbersome to operate from horseback, as the original rifles had been made to the existing steam rifles standard size, with a one hundred centimetre barrel, for ranged accuracy.

But what Dominic wanted this rifle for was more flashy, and less of a long ranged sniping rifle.

So, he went with a fifty centimetre barrel and a slightly shorter stock, which meant that everything had to be scaled down, including tank size.

Fortunately, with magic keeping the charging gears turning, capacity wasn't an issue, but this would not be his first choice for shooting at anything over a hundred metres away.

It would do it. There was no issue in that capacity. But with the sights closer together, the aim wasn't as precise, and the shorter barrel would lead to a wider grouping of shots, even with the rifle fixed to a test bench.

He was just putting the final coat of oil on the stock when Alexis came in to see what had kept him busy all day.

"Oh, that is adorable. Finally, someone made a rifle in ladies' sizes." She declared with a teasing smirk.

Dominic frowned, then held up his hand to keep her from grabbing it.

"The varnish oil is still wet. But you have a point. I made it to be hung at the hip or used from horseback, but for smaller arms, it really would be easier to shoot, wouldn't it?

Smaller men don't usually get inducted into the riflemen, or any other elite unit, so I guess it just never occurred to anyone to make such a thing.

But now I need to make another one." He agreed.

Alexis smiled. He was a smart man. That rifle wasn't going to remain his for very long. It was too pretty of a weapon for her not to want it.

Pretty, but deadly.