- Eduard, I told you that I only know how to strengthen and create golems, that's all. These spearheads will just become very strong, they won't dull or bend. I don't think they'll be anything like your fireballs.
- Have you tried it?
- I can feel it.
- Try it first.
- Yes...
- Alex, you try it. We don't know a thing about magic. We got everything from books and the Internet. And it feels like we've become magicians, too. How do you know your limits? - He looked at me closely.
- Well, I'll try," I agreed, mentally scolding my colleague for untimely and fantastic ideas.
- I knew you were interested," he said happily, and began to roll up his shirt sleeve.
- No, not here. Go to the hospital, have a half a liter of blood drawn, and then come back.
- Isn't that a lot? - He frowned.
- It's okay," I grinned. - It's all right," I grinned. "Maybe the blood will clear your head.
The experience was not a success. Four hundred grams (the pyromancer had spared an extra hundred grams of his blood) of his blood and a hundred and fifty of mine were mixed together and used to lubricate the arrowheads for a bow used by a girl from the re-enactors. The blood soaked into the shiny metal like water into a sponge, its color changing from silver to deep red and oily, as if it were covered by a thin layer of some oily scarlet substance. But there was nothing left on my finger when I rubbed the tip with it.
Despite the change in appearance, the arrows were otherwise unchanged: the strength hadn't increased, and the wooden target didn't burst into flames with the upgraded arrows.
- So?" I looked skeptically at the generator of ideas.
- What about it? - He shrugged his shoulders. - A target isn't a shadow; it's a creature I'd like to try my arrows on. Besides, we have to go to town again.
* * *
The outskirts of our village were more or less cleared out. On the last trip we brought a number of trailer-cars in which we sold food, from sausages to shawarma, made right on the spot. I did not see any benefit from these trailers, but the stalkers (that's how they called the guys and girls who were always on the lookout for loot for the needs of the settlement) thought otherwise.
The most useful thing would have been to haul the iron junk from the metal collecting yard, where hundreds of tons of iron were lying around. I saw there a huge pile, twenty tons, of bent rebar from eight millimeters to thirty-five. This is what we need, because rebar is not only ready-made steel for edged weapons, which is slowly being introduced into use among the earthlings, but also the ability to close the approaches to the settlement with steel "hedgehogs", "garlic", ribbon, and so on. The tall grass will hide the sharpened thorns, and at least a leg wound to the enemy will be ensured, well, and to the clumsy enemy and death, if he falls on the thorn with his whole body. Unfortunately, for now we decided to make do with wooden slingshots and driven sharpened stakes, poles for which were dragged from the distant forest.