When Salem and Alina left the village, they had no clue where they would go.
Salem took the lead and brought Alina to the village where he woke up in this world.
Indicating the burnt remains of the Esper mansion, he began describing his first experiences after waking up.
"When I woke up I was burnt beyond recognition. I had no memory of ever getting there or memories from before. The fire brigade that had stopped the fire spreading were going to leave, and I couldn't cry out, so I crawled."
Alina was surprised that Salem made crawling with third-degree burns all over his body seem easy.
"How is it that you're able to crawl with third-degree burns, make miraculous pieces of technology, and have knowledge that far surpasses anything I've even heard of?" Alina asked, curious to see how he'd respond.
"I don't know. But what I do know, is that I need to make us weapons to defend ourselves." Salem responded.
"Oh? What kind of weapons do you mean?" Alina was genuinely interested in whatever Salem came up with. "Bows? Swords? What?"
Salem grinned at her. "Guns."
"What's a gun?" Alina asked, puzzled.
"Let me show you." Salem understood on a basic level how a gun worked. The hardest part for him would be the making of the firing pin, which ignited the bullets, and ejecting the cartridge.
Salem started with an SKS, which seemed easy enough. Until he realized he needed to align the firing pin and the striker, add rifling, and add a way to eject the bullet casings. Screwing those up meant the gun would only fire once.
Correcting his mistakes, he tried to recall from a life that felt so far away, how to make a silencer.
Silencers work by diffusing the gasses released in the chamber. They make the change in pressure more gradual and less noisy.
Remembering every single part of a silencer isn't easy, considering how such a small item has so many parts.
Constructing the silencer with expansion chambers to reduce the pressure, and baffles to direct the gases, he successfully created a silenced SKS.
Seeing the gun, Alina looked at it curiously.
"That looks nothing like any weapon I have ever seen. Are you sure it can do any damage at all?" She felt doubtful that something that didn't even seem to have projectiles would fire.
Screwing on the silencer, he fired a single test shot at a nearby tree.
The only sound that came from the gun was a muffled 'tshew' that was released from the depressurizing of the gases. Walking up to the tree, he glanced at Alina, pointed to the six inch deep bullet hole and asked, "Still think it's not going to deal damage?"
"SAINTS ABOVE! How does it work?" Alina really wanted to make one of her own.
"Wait, would this affect your class?" Salem wondered.
"I'm a hunter, so maybe?" Alina was uncertain.
"What's your unit for energy?"
"Oh you mean psyche? Mental energy?"
"Alright this should work." Salem now had a third blueprint to create in under five minutes. He designed a magazine that would refill when you put psyche into it. To do so, he designed small nodes of nanobots that had a bullet blueprint in them, tiled them, and put a wire where Alina could put her hand to charge the magazine.
Making another SKS, he handed it to her and showed her how the mag worked.
Alina was thrilled.
Salem proceeded to dump cold water onto her mood. "You shouldn't fire it for now. Too much noise will attract unwanted attention. Also, firing it needlessly would waste psyche."
"Oh, alright" Alina was sad she couldn't play with her new toy.
Neither of them knew that their preparation could not ready them for the journey they were going to embark upon.