"Speach"

'Thought'

«Other species»

[Writing]

Gamma was currently welding two metal pieces together, looking every once in a while at the open page of his diary, which was currently showing instructions advanced law of leverage and kinetic energy distribution on tools.

He fixed the final bolt into the pipes, before lifting the tool he had been assembling, looking over it for any flaws.

The tool was shaped like an axe, one of those you swung with only one hand, but with one big difference. While the handle of a normal axe was from wood and a good 60-70cm in length, this one was 85cm long, and around 4cm thick. The handle was hollow to allow it to take more punishment in combat primarily from steel.

An 'axe blade' was attached to it, which was however composed of a grid. A sharp edge was not present, and instead, there was a small slit at the place where the cutting edge should have been.

"Alright, that is that." he said with a smile, before turning his attention to the most important component that was the last to be added. It was a thin blade from armored steel, that was merely 15cm long and 3cm wide. Despite the size, however, it was probably one of the sharpest blades he ever forged, having studied one of his razor blades, as well as one of Arturia's medical scalpels before constructing it.

She was probably still wondering until this day why exactly he did that.

He carefully picked up the thin blade, and added it to the weapon, carefully attaching it with a few screws and bolts. He made sure everything was probably fixed a final time, before picking up his new axe design and taking a few experimental swings. The weapon felt more like a hammer than an axe, but that was intentional, as it was designed in a way to have a lot of striking power to make it possible to penetrate heavy armor… or dragon scales.

"Alright, testing time…" he mumbled hopefully, walking over to a nearby table where he had strapped one of the last scales he had left from the Mountain Dragon. He had run quite quickly through them over the last couple of days he realized with a sigh, looking at all of the experimental weaponry that had pilled themselves up in the corner during his quest of creating a weapon for Robin.

A lot of trial and error had been necessary for his quest to find something that was both strong enough to fend off a dragon as well as being light enough to not cause complications. Nevertheless, it would hopefully be worth it.

He finally reached the table with the 'testing scale' on it, where he proceeded to stand unsurely, looking at the fair amount of scratch marks on it. While a fair share of weaponry he had invented had been able to cause a scratch instead of simply bouncing off like most swords it had mostly stayed at that. The only exception had been a pickaxe-like weapon that operated on piercing instead of cutting, but it had been both somewhat unhandy to operate as well as being unable to cause injury on a bigger scale than a small hole in the dragons' scaly armor.

Nevertheless, he had placed that design to the side for now, hoping to modify it in a way that it would be viable in some way, and it was now laying in the „maybe useful pile" right next to an oversized hammer with a head from hardened tungsten that could pack enough force to break dragon bones once he found someone strong enough to reliably use it.

Tungsten might be harder than diamond, but it wasn't exactly light…

He looked at the weapon again, his mind being doubtful that it would work after so many failed attempts. On the other hand, this time was the first time he had created something using technology that was not present in his diary, the razor and scalpel being some of the sharpest tools present in the village. On the third hand, the technology here was far less advanced than almost everything and anything his diary had to offer.

He quickly broke off his train of thought, realizing he was getting nowhere. "Alright, here goes nothing." He mumbled before lifting the weapon and bringing it down on the scale.

Ker-chunk!

Carefully he opened his eyes, fearing that the axe had broken, despite the hollow, bamboo-like design of the handle.

Instead, he found the weapon steadily tucked into the scale, like… well, an axe into wood, having penetrated deeper than every other weapon he designed so far.

He grabbed the grip again and with a huff, he managed to dislodge it from the scale, before assessing the damage.

The weapon itself was still fully intact, not even bearing a scratch. The scale however had a deep cut in it, the weapon having successfully penetrated almost all the way through.

He ran a hand across the cut, smiling with a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. While he hadn't been able to split the scale in two, he wasn't very worried as he admittedly wasn't as physically strong as Robin. Gamma was sure that if the guard were to use it, it would prove to be a lot more effective. In fact, Robin was two, if not three times as strong as him now that he thought about it.

He hung the weapon to his toolbelt, before leaving the workshop, in search of Robin, which eventually led him to Anturia's doorstep.

Knocking a happy rhythm, the nurse opened the door for him.

"Sub! I'm here because of the scalpel."

Anturia pulled up a teasing eyebrow. "You didn't accidentally break it while wrestling a dragon again did you?"

Gamma chuckled, shaking his head. "No, I got it here and in one piece. By the way, do you happen to know where I can find Robin?"

After having received directions, he finally found him patrolling the east wall.

"Hey, Robin! I have been looking for you! If you got a minute, I got your order done." he called towards him, once he was close enough to be heard.

"Already? Alright, come up!" he said with a smile.

He nodded, and climbed up to the ladder, taking the ordered weapon from his belt, before offering it to him.

Accepting the tool with a polite nod he gave it a look over. "So, can this actually allow you to fight back against a dragon?" he asked, still studying the tool. "It's surprisingly light for a weapon made from metal."

"Yea, it was a lot of trial and error, but I finally managed!" he said, before chuckling. "I probably have around 20 designs laying in my trashcan, waiting to be recycled. It swings more like a hammer, by the way, so keep that in mind. The handle is hollow, but it should not come at the cost of strength. You're more likely to break your backbone rather than the weapon should you use it to blow a dragon's blow."

"Yea, won't be doing that either way." he replied with a laugh."Blocking a dragons attack is outside my league."

Suddenly the sound of a bell ringing interrupted the two.

"Already? I expected her to arrive this evening…" Robin said confused.

"Who do you mean with her?"

"The empress of safe harbor." Robin replied, pointing at a large sailship that had shown up on the horizon. "She's the vassal of Blue Wave Harbor. I'm surprised you didn't notice with all the preparations going on, hell, they even got fireworks set up. You really should spend less time coped up in your workshop."

"This town has a vassal? I thought this town was the most important around…"

"It is indeed, but Safe Harbor isn't around the corner. It's a solid six-day journey from here."

"What!? But why would she take such a risk by coming here? It's not safe with the dragons flying around…"

Robin was quiet for a while before replying. "You don't know? It's because of you."

"Me? But I'm nothing special."

Robin let out a chuckle. "Before you showed up, this place was just a decently defended harbor, but you changed that over the last couple of months. Now this place is a fort with 30 baristas, every street is lit up at night, and the walls have been fixed and reinforced. Hell, you even provided this place with fire-prevention and fighting methods and even survived a dragon encounter."

Robin was silent for a moment, before turning towards Gamma.

"You're made a name for yourself Gamma, and it reaches far beyond our town. You're not a simple mechanic you know?"

"You're known as The Mechanic."

"I'm not that important, I'm simply doing my job…" Gamma mumbled, mostly to himself, before going quiet.

In the end, he spoke up once more after all. "Sorry, but what are fireworks?"

This concludes the rewrite of the first 10 chapters. Tell me what you think so far…