The forging process took four minutes and nine seconds, and for all four minutes and nine seconds I barely breathed.
The furnace embers hissed softly as the last piece of metal cooled on the anvil, and a small arrow with a gleaming steel tip slowly solidified into its final shape. Its arrowhead was thicker than an ordinary Steel Bodkin, with an interior hollowed to the depth of a pinky joint and sealed at its tip with pale yellow beeswax. The Blood Oak shaft behind it was still warm when I lifted it, and the pigeon feather fletching trembled faintly in the air from the furnace.
Ting!
[Experimental Item Successfully Created.]
[Impact-Burst Arrow - Prototype A] Type: Ammunition (Experimental) Rarity: Rare Effect: Explodes on impact. Explosion Damage: ??? Volatile Status: No. Weight: 0.15 kg. Stack Limit: 99
I read the third line from the bottom once, twice, three times.
Volatile Status: No.
"Stack limit ninety-nine," I whispered, and a wide smile slowly bloomed across my face. "Weight zero point one five kilograms. Not fifteen. Zero point one five."
The system wasn’t lying. My homemade bombs had to be carried carefully like dragon eggs, while this little thing in my hand was as light as an ordinary arrow. If one quiver could hold fifty, that meant fifty walking explosions, without the slightest inventory penalty.
"Developers," I said to the empty air, lifting the arrow like a trophy, "your loophole is too beautiful to leave alone."
But before celebrating, I had to test whether this thing could really explode, or whether it was just an expensive stick with a heavy tip.
Behind the workshop, on the riverbank where the watermill wheel turned shadows across the surface, was a patch of open ground I used to test arrow sharpness. I’d planted several old logs as practice targets a few days ago, and on the right side stood a waist-high boulder, which I had rolled up from the riverbank with the help of [Wind Walk] and many curses, as a hardness test target.
I walked fifty meters away from the targets, took the Moon Bow from my back, and nocked Prototype A on the string as carefully as laying a sleeping baby into a cradle.
"If it goes off my calculations," I murmured, "I need to be far from the impact point."
My HP was one hundred twenty. An explosion within a two-meter radius might kill me even from five meters away. I had promised Mira last night in the real world that I would never be bait again. Standing fifty meters from the target, with two layers of large boulders as additional shields, was the most reasonable interpretation of that promise.
I drew the string, held my breath, and [Focus] ignited.
The world narrowed. The log in the distance became the only thing that existed.
I released the string.
Fwiiiiit... TOCK.
The arrow stuck dead center in the log with a dull sound. The whole world held its breath for three seconds.
Nothing happened.
[System: Prototype A did not explode. Status: Dud (Misfire).]
"...Ah."
I stood where I was, staring at the arrow still stuck in the wood like a pin in a pillow. Then I began to laugh softly, not from joy, but from the absurdity of the situation. I had calculated everything: powder weight, sulfur flake fineness, impact pressure. I had even accounted for the wind. But not one of my calculations explained how an arrow full of black powder could be peacefully lodged without so much as a twitch.
I walked closer carefully, stopped ten meters from the target, and inspected the arrow from afar with [Eagle Eye]. The steel tip was embedded deep, the wax at its end had cracked, but the trigger was completely untouched.
"The trigger is too stiff," I muttered. "The mixture of sulfur and ground wind stone isn’t sensitive enough. The arrow needs a harder impact, or a finer trigger."
I pulled the shaft out carefully, carried it back to the workshop, and copied the result into the alchemy notebook already full of my scribbles. Beneath the line Prototype A, I wrote one short sentence: Trigger too stable. Needs a more sensitive mixture.
The next hour passed in a fog of sulfur and charcoal smell.
I stirred a new mixture with an adjusted composition: reduced sulfur flakes, dried Azure Petals ground into fine powder, and a pinch of black powder blended with dried tree resin from Gale-Weed as a binder. I placed the mixture at the bottom of the arrowhead cavity with a tiny spoon and sealed it with two layers of wax, one thick and one thin, so the trigger would remain protected while inside the quiver.
Prototype B was born in four minutes and thirty seconds.
Before testing, I took an extra precaution. I dug a small hole in the ground near the workshop, lined it with river stones, and placed the arrow inside a thick ceramic box I’d taken from the shelf. The box had once held dye powder, and now it was cushioned with thick wool padding as a shock absorber.
"If it goes off on its own," I muttered to myself, "at least only the box will fly."
I returned to the fifty-meter position, took arrow B from its box with trembling fingers, and nocked it on the string. This time, [Focus], [Lethal Shot], and [Charged Shot] all went at once, not to test power, but to ensure the impact was hard enough to trigger the igniter.
[Focus.]
[Lethal Shot.]
[Charged Shot: 1... 2... 3.]
I released the string.
FWIIIIIT!
The arrow shot out fast and lodged in the same log. This time the sound was different: a sharp metallic clink, then a faint hiss like a small flame igniting in darkness.
BLAAAAAAM!
The explosion was so loud I assumed the whole village heard it. Orange light erupted from the impact point, splinters flew in every direction, and the shockwave hit my chest even though I stood fifty meters away. Black smoke rolled upward into a small mushroom-shaped cloud.
The log target vanished entirely.
[Impact-Burst Arrow: Explosion Successful!]
[Explosion Damage: 2,380 (Fire/Physical, 2-Meter Radius).]
[Critical Hit + Charged Shot: 9,760 Damage (Impact).]
[Total Damage: 12,140.]
I stared at the slowly thinning smoke, and my smile was so wide it almost hurt.
"Two thousand three hundred eighty," I whispered. "From a charge the size of a pinky."
Of course, the number was nowhere near comparable to Titan’s Roar, my old go-to bomb. But I wasn’t looking for a replacement bomb. I was looking for something different: an explosion I could carry in large numbers, aim with precision, and release from a safe distance with an accuracy no hand throw could ever have.
A small explosion I could direct at an enemy’s weak point.
A sly thought crept into my head. [Focus] finds the weak point. [Lethal Shot] adds critical effect. [Charged Shot] delivers full impact. And now, an explosion inside that weak point. No monster has a defense against an explosion that happens beneath its skin.
"Hehehe," I chuckled softly, then stopped when I noticed a crow on a nearby tree branch staring at me as if assessing my sanity.
"Don’t look at me like that," I muttered. "This is science."
The crow flew away in annoyance.
Next was the boulder test.
I walked toward the waist-high boulder on the right side of the field, examining its rough surface, already finely cracked in a few places. I nocked a second Prototype B, a new forging, on the Moon Bow’s string, stood twenty meters from the rock, and drew the string fully without any skill.
Release.
BLAAAM!
Smoke covered the boulder for a few seconds. When it thinned, I saw a circular hole as wide as a palm in the side of the rock, with cracks spreading across its entire surface like a spiderweb. The rock still stood, but one more shot, maybe two, would split it.
[Explosive Structural Damage: 640.]
"Six hundred forty," I murmured. "Enough to break a wooden gate, weak against a stone wall."
I copied the number with my finger in the air. Low structural damage. Good for monsters, bad for fortresses. That wasn’t a problem. I had no plans to besiege a castle.
After that, I spent nearly a full hour making five more, recording each result: two succeeded with explosion damage between two thousand three hundred and two thousand four hundred, one failed to detonate because the wax was too thick, one detonated prematurely during the sealing process and cracked my glass mortar, and another produced an explosion the size of a firecracker because I mismeasured the black powder.
[System: Crafting Success Rate: 67%.]
[System: Crafting Time per Arrow: 4 minutes 30 seconds.]
I stared at the number while wiping a black smudge from my cheek. Sixty-seven percent. Enough for small-scale production, not enough for mass production. Each arrow consumed one Steel Bodkin Arrowhead, two grams of Crude Black Powder, a little wax, and a little trigger material. For fifty arrows, I’d use nearly my entire stock of raw black powder.
But that was for later. For now, what mattered was one thing: I had proven that the idea worked.
Ting!
[New Recipe Registered: Impact-Burst Arrow (Personal Recipe).]
[Alchemy Lv. 21 -> Lv. 22!]
[Blacksmith Lv. 21 -> Lv. 22!]
Two skill levels at once. I clenched a fist in the air with a smile that was hard to hide. For months, those two skills had been stuck at twenty-one because I had no reason to test anything new. Now one simple experiment had pushed both upward.
The sound of footsteps behind me made me turn.
"Syl."
Mira stood in the back doorway of the workshop in neat leather armor, with a face clearly holding back many things at once: relief, worry, amusement, and annoyance. Her wavy black hair was tied loosely behind her head, and the silver crescent pin I’d bought her at noon in the real world glimmered faintly on the left side of her head, somehow appearing on her avatar too.
"Mira." I waved a hand at once, trying to sound casual. "You’ve logged in."
"Ten minutes ago." She stepped closer, her gaze sweeping the open ground behind the workshop, then stopping at the small black crater where the target log had been. "And I heard something explode all the way near the temple. The villagers thought the old watermill had collapsed."
"It wasn’t the mill." I raised an arrow proudly. "It was this."
Mira looked at the thing in my hand with a raised eyebrow. "An arrow?"
"An explosive arrow. Personal recipe. Category Ammunition, not Volatile. No fifteen-kilogram stack limit." I explained with the enthusiasm of a child who had just won a science fair. "I can carry dozens, Mira. Dozens. And every one can be aimed at a weak point."
"You tested explosives," Mira said quietly, "alone."
"From fifty meters away," I added quickly. "With two layers of protective boulders. And a wool-padded ceramic box to store the samples."
"With one hundred twenty HP."
"That’s... true."
Mira drew a long breath and massaged the bridge of her nose with two fingers. I instantly felt like a student caught bringing firecrackers into class.
"Syl," she said, "do you remember our agreement last night?"
"Don’t be bait, retreat if the body indicator passes seventy, and you may pull the safety." I raised three fingers. "I obeyed all three. I wasn’t bait, I wasn’t even within the blast range, and the indicator is still below forty."
Mira opened a small window in the air and checked something, perhaps the data I’d been ignoring all this time. Her eyes moved from left to right, then her shoulders loosened slightly.
"Forty-one," she admitted. "Indeed, below seventy."
"See?"
"But." Mira raised a finger. "You just said you’d test explosives, and I only logged in ten minutes ago. If something happened and I wasn’t here, I’d have no way to pull the safety."
I fell silent. Her argument was valid, and there was no gap to refute it.
"So," she continued gently, "from now on, I want to be present for every test involving explosions. Or at least, to be told beforehand."
"That makes sense," I admitted. "I’ll send a message before testing anything bigger."
"And I decide the distance."
"That’s excessive."
"That’s a condition."
I raised my hands in surrender, and Mira finally smiled, sincere and a little relieved. She took the arrow from my hand, turned it slowly, and examined the wax at its tip with a sharp eye.
"This is a great idea," she said softly. "If combined with your Combo Chain..."
"I haven’t tried that yet." I tapped my chin. "Piercing Gale Arrow is a wind spell chanted into the arrow. I don’t know whether the powder charge can merge with that spell or repel it. It could produce a doubled explosion, or it could make the arrow detonate before leaving the bow."
"That sounds dangerous."
"Very." I smiled. "That’s why I need someone holding the safety."
Mira looked at me for two seconds, then laughed softly and handed the arrow back. "Fine. I’ll be your safety."
"That’s an official title."
"An unofficial title. But I accept."
We walked back together to the workshop. Inside, I showed her the experiment results one by one: the notes in the alchemy notebook, the intact arrow, the black crater in the ground, and the shards of the cracked glass mortar. Mira listened seriously, occasionally asking sharp questions about powder measures, wax stability, and potential production errors. She, who had spent years managing my kitchen and medicine, turned out to have a natural intuition for applied chemistry.
"Aunt Lara once said," Mira remarked as she calculated measurements in the notebook, "that dough that’s too dense will have a hard time rising. Maybe the same concept applies to the trigger mixture?"
I fell silent. "That... makes a lot of sense."
"Really?"
"Maybe. If the mixture is too dense, the impact vibration doesn’t propagate well." I immediately wrote a new note. "Thank you. I’ll test it."
Mira smiled with satisfaction and sat on the workbench, swinging her feet gently while examining my notebook. Outside the window, afternoon light cast long shadows across the workshop’s wooden floor, and the watermill wheel turned with a soothing rhythm.
A small notification appeared at the corner of my vision.
[Friend Online: Yuuki.]
And almost simultaneously, a private chat window opened with a soft chime.
[Yuuki: SIS SYL!!! I JUST WOKE UP! I DREAMED WE BEAT A GIANT SPIDER, BUT I FELL INTO THE LAKE AGAIN!]
[Yuuki: Wait, that wasn’t a dream. That really happened.]
[Yuuki: Are we hunting again today? I have a tail that’s begging to be set on fire!]
Mira and I looked at each other, then laughed at the same time.
"She just woke up," Mira murmured, amused.
"And is already ready to burn the world," I added. My fingers typed a short reply. [Syl: Good afternoon, Captain. Gather at the temple in ten minutes. I have something to test.]
[Yuuki: TEST?! What is it? A new weapon?!]
[Syl: Arrows.]
[Yuuki: ...Arrows? That’s it?]
[Syl: Arrows that explode.]
A three-second pause. Then the answer arrived in all capitals with nine exclamation marks.
[Yuuki: I’M COMING RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!]
I closed the chat window with a crooked smile, then turned to Mira, who had already packed the notebook and was checking her knife belt.
"You know," Mira said, raising one eyebrow, "if the others come, that means more people who could get caught in an explosion."
"That’s why," I answered as I carefully slid five Impact-Burst Arrows into a special quiver lined with thick wool, "I’ll test in a more open place, and you hold the safety."
Mira sighed long, but her smile couldn’t be hidden. "You always find a way to keep me busy, Syl."
"It’s my specialty."
"That’s a dangerous talent."
We walked out of the workshop toward the temple, with the new quiver on my back holding five arrows with bellies full of explosions. The afternoon light falling from the west gilded the watermill in a golden color, and from afar, the wheel creaked as if giving a little laugh.