Leaving the matter of which skills to link to the Voyager till later, when they would discuss which rooms to choose, Dan sat down as he contacted the Voyager again.
It was to get some answers about a couple of points which were raised when they were discussing the Linked skill. It mainly had to do with whether the Voyager could remove a linked skill, and how long it would take to link it again.
The answer to the first question was easy to get, Dan just got what felt like a resounding yes from her. The second part took a bit to get through to her. She eventually understood what he meant and they had to play a game of guessing before he got the right answer.
Another matter was whether she could link with everyone or if there were some requirements for the skill. Again the answer for the first question was quite easy to get, yet the second needed him to hit his head against a wall for quite a long time and he still didn't know the requirements exactly. The Voyager just had an instinctive feeling for which of the crew she could link with and which of their skills too.
In the end, all he got from it was that she could disconnect a person from her skill. That slot would be inactive for a whole day before she could link with another person. And yes, she could just link with the same person after 24 hours had passed, the skill didn't care who it was as long as they met the requirements.
Just as he was done with that brain twister, Dan watched William enter the bridge and head straight towards him. Standing up, he asked the old engineer,
"Your demonstration is ready?"
"That it is," William said, "Though it won't be much of a demonstration, more of a tour and an early look at what we have completed for now."
"Whatever it is," Dan said with a smile, "I'm looking forward to it anyway. Let's go."
It took them a bit to reach the workshop where they were working on their prototypes and projects. Other than when William came to him to show him what they might be working on, Dan hadn't interfered with them at all. He knew that William and the others had been pushing themselves hard to get something operational as soon as they got the materials, and he even knew that they had been calling some of the people who were more familiar with guns and ammunition, to have a professional opinion at least.
"And here we are," William said once they got to the workshop, "We called a few of the others here to give a bit of a demonstration for what we have so far."
Dan looked where William had pointed and noticed Marcus, Old Raily and George standing near a bulky piece of machinery. With them were Linda, Francis and Luke.
The machine, or he really should just call it the Processing Line, because that's what it was, looked like a conveyor belt interrupted by a platform here and there. Under or above those platforms, sometimes both, there were some bulky pieces of machinery. The roller conveyor belt was around a meter or 1.25 meters tall, and went on for 3 or 4 meters.
At the start of the conveyor belt, there was a metallic box sitting. It was square at the bottom and around 50 cm high.
"Did you start without me?" Dan smiled as he approached the group.
"Don't worry," Francis said excitedly, "We have been waiting for you, we can start now."
"I've been looking forward to this," Dan said. That bulky machine was going to be their first project in this new world, it was the first step for many of their incoming projects, plans and dreams.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Okay." William clapped his hands to get their attention. "I will be the one introducing what we have done since the last time some of you were here, and what has changed since then."
With everyone's attention on him, he led them to a big steel pot, not unlike the ones used for cooking for big crowds of people. Next to the pot, there was a closed-up bag.
"What I will start with, before going through what we've made," William spoke as he stood next to the pot, "Is that we realised how ambitious our plans were, so we scaled them down a lot. For the Ammunition Reloading Line, we changed it to one station and instead focused more on making it as automated as possible. This change and the one I'm about to mention both happened because of the same reason, as I'm going to explain later. With this new focus, we are aiming for it to be operable by one person only. We can then run it in half-day shifts with everyone on the Voyager having a turn.
"I'm getting ahead of myself here though." William smiled as he brought things back on track. "The other thing that changed is how we moved our power source from electricity to mana. These changes happened after I got my skill, Schema, and we realised how many elementary, simple yet useful runes could take this project to another level. With them, making an almost fully automated station wouldn't be just a dream, and a truly automated one isn't that far away either.
"Let me start first by explaining how ammunition reloading usually works; we obviously didn't know anything about this at first, but fortunately Marcus, George and Raily had some interest in the matter and they were of great help to us. The first step is always inspecting the casings, any casing that is faulty in any way must be discarded. The second step is cleaning them of any particles or remains from firing. Third is removing the primer, the tiny piece at the bottom of the casing that ignites the powder. Fourth is trimming the casing to the required length, and straight after that comes chamfering and deburring which prepares the casing for the projectiles to be inserted. After that comes adding the new primer, then the powder and finally the projectile. Coating the finished ammo for protection against the weather is the last step.
"With that explanation out of the way, let's start with our first example," he said as he nodded toward Luke, "The inspection step is easily completed with the help of Luke. That is the one step that needs him specifically, either that or we would have to sit down and go through them one by one, inspecting them in search of faults. We could get a schema to do that, but it would take too much and unfortunately, it's not something I can make at my current level and tier. Luke if you could."
With that Luke walked to the bag next to the pot, opening it for them to see that it was filled to the brim with casings. Luke stood up after opening the bag and closed his eyes. Everyone in the group waited for what was going to happen next, and they didn't have to wait for long.
PAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPA
Soon, the casings began floating from the bag and moving to the big pot, one after the other. They were so fast that Dan found it hard to follow a singular casing as it flew from the bag to the pot. Not all casings made it though, from time to time, one of them would drop at Luke's feet. In no time at all, the bag was empty with 10 or so casings on the ground and the others all in the huge pot.
"Thanks a lot, Luke." William patted the Metal Sorcerer who had sweat on his forehead and was a bit out of breath. "As you can see, it's a bit tiring for him, but we can do this in batches to make it easier."
William then turned to the pot as he patted it.
"For the cleaning step, I started my preparations by borrowing this from one of the many kitchens on the Voyager. I then spent many, many hours practising rune inscribing in preparation for when I finally have the tools and dyes for it, which as you might have noticed, happens to be now. I've spent this whole morning trying to get those runes that I've been practising on working, and let me tell you, it wasn't easy. Fortunately, my Class seems to make it easier.
"The first rune I managed to inscribe was on this pot. It is a simple Cleanse rune. As the name implies, it cleans the casing and makes it as if new, it removes all and every last speck of dust."
At that point, William stopped and Dan took the chance to ask a question that had been on his mind for a while,
"Can anyone power a rune? You don't need to be a mage or whatever?"
"Don't worry." William waved his worries off. "Anyone can activate a rune. I was going to do the next demonstration, but why don't you come here and try it for yourself? Just put your hand on the pot and will the rune to activate."
With a bit of hesitation, Dan approached the pot and, after making sure that the place where he put his hand didn't matter, touched it as he willed the rune to activate. He didn't feel anything though, but just as he wondered if he was doing something wrong he felt a warm current pass through his hand. He jumped back in surprise and looked as the pot shone with a golden light for a split second.
"And that's how it works," William said as he went and grabbed a handful of casings, which were bright and shining, as if brand-new, "This is how a rune turns a task that would have taken hours into a second of work!"
