"It's to launch whatever's inside the barrel outwards," I hastily corrected myself to avoid her confusion. "I figured that wind can work just fine there."
"Huh..."
With a silent gesture for permission, the girl motioned to grab the disaster away from me, to which I gave a nod of approval. As I did prior, her hands ran through the metal, feeling out the Seigels in the way that I taught her how to. After a few moments, her eyes widened before she placed the scrap back down on the anvil. Did she notice something?
"Umm... Brother? How many arrows did you add?"
"Just the five, why?" It was the standard to help wind Zahlers amplify their Wesen. Didn't I teach you this, Lise?
"Don't you think that's a bit too much?" Huh? "You told me that the number of Elementar Seigels that we can apply to any given weapon should match the capabilities of the Zahler that'll be using it."
I blinked as her words sank into my head, to which I then promptly facepalmed hard at my forgetfulness. How could I not remember something so basic?!
"Brother? Are you-"
"I'm fine," I preemptively responded as I tried to shrug off the haunting lapse in my memory. "So we should try... maybe just one arrow. Simply because we aren't Zahlers to begin with."
Damn, I was an idiot... Father taught me as much, and I had the audacity to forget about it. A chilling thought suddenly came to my mind. What would've happened if Lise hadn't broken the spell? Would I still be in Aria's care? Totally oblivious to the world as my memories and personality slowly slipped away from me?
I should probably thank her again for saving me.
"Brother," Lise called out from behind her anvil, the barrel that she had previously made laid out in front of her. "Can I try making it? It's just the arrow and a few hardening Seigels, right?"
"Sure, Lise," I waved as I practically swayed in my spot. "Just be careful. We don't want a repeat of my failure, no?"
"Yeah~"
As my little sister went about on her work, I stewed on the fact that I was now technically the leader of a rebellion in the making. Oh god... With the failure of the prototype, that was one week's worth of effort gone to waste without any decent result to show for it. I knew Baccus said that he'd support whatever ideas I may have, but could I even make them work? I wasn't a master fabricator to just suddenly make all the mechanical parts work as intended. I could follow instructions well, and that's it.
I was a product of modernity. I was a self-taught blacksmith, for better or for worse.
A frightful shiver ran through the length of my spine as the implications truly sank into my painfully-dense skull. I was no leader for actual people. For all that I thought that I knew what I was doing, it was all still within the confines of a few pixels in a monitor. I had no experience leading people, and yet I thought I could do this without a second thought?
Damn... I was woefully underprepared for what was about to come, and so would anyone that might choose to follow my lead.
Then again, did any rebellion start with its members knowing exactly what to do? I could do this... I just had a lot of learning to do.
"Brother?"
I shook my thoughts out of my head as I turned to my sister. "What is it?"
Lise raised the barrel that she was working on in front of me, showing an array of ninety-degree angles stacked on top of one another forming a grid of squares. "I kinda took some liberties with the placements."
I squinted as I eyed the Seigels that she etched onto the metal rod. The clockwise coils were in the middle of the squares, probably because the massive singular arrow running from the base of the gun towards the end of the muzzle took up a whole lot of space for more Seigels.
"Is it okay?" my sister asked me with a hint of satisfaction coloring her eyes.
I almost gave her the stink-eye as I barely took a glance at Lise's impeccable Seigelwork. I was pretty sure she already knew that her job was well done. She just wanted my approval at this point.
"It's okay, Lise," I smiled before turning my head back to my empty anvil. "It looks fine."
I didn't even need a small glimpse to know that my sister's radiant energy all but flowed from where she stood. Her humming was music to my ears, melting away the stress and anxiety that threatened to eat away if I let it get too far. Truly, with a much clearer mind, I could review our current situation at hand without freaking out that I didn't know what I was doing.
Okay... What did we have... A prototype rifle that didn't even fire correctly... Ouch, that was a self-burn for me. What else... Possibly the support of what amounted to hundreds of our fellow Nenners should the entirety of the Furnace follow my lead somehow... My vague recollections of modern tech and philosophies...
And that was it, I think.
I put my right hand to my chin as I stood up from my previous position and sat on my anvil. The residual heat did nothing for my train of thought as I absently crossed my legs in an attempt to concentrate on the task at hand.
On the resource side of things, we've got whatever scraps the old man could spare from our fellow Nenners, as well as some leftover bread from those that wanted to support the cause. I'd have to thank Baccus for that too. If it weren't for him, we would've starved to death out here days ago. Water wasn't a problem if you had something that was essentially an unlimited water supply-
Wait... wait... I'm losing myself in a tangent again... Focus...
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