☀️ Arselia and Akonia

After talking to Nadia and waving her off, Fyr-Fyr heads to Carneol's forge, where driven by primal instincts she immediately gets to work forging millions of tiny parts: all those chains, all the little bolts-screws-joints, gears, tubes, pistons... Back when she was only proposing the project to Quant, Erefir had no idea of the technical level actually required for it, but now that he was ready, things were different. Still, she expected (naively) to finish quickly.

Heat-hammer-temper-cut. Join-rivet. Probably some of the work had to be finished in Chronos on the master's special precision tools, with his permission. Especially, of course, when it came to the propulsion system.
When everything was done, assembled, and lubricated, (un)surprisingly, she found she'd spent simply a ton of time and effort on it (3 blacksmithing AP, 1 regular AP).

-- Damn it... The guys are going to kill me, -- she muttered. -- But still! -- the chainsword made a loud vroom-vroom. -- But they're still going to kill me...

"Fine, I'll think of something. After all, making standard crossbows — is that even interesting? I'll forge them later when my blacksmithing AP refreshes, or buy them. By the way, two-handed mechanical sword is too long a name, and even if the weapon is standard-issue, I want it called something short and punchy, without excessive pomp."

-- I name thee "Chainsaw".

Satisfied, having placed the weapon in main slot 1 (and the old regular sword into main slot 2), Fyr-Fyr goes to the Archive, where she hastily studies:

Interview with Her Highness Naria es Diesra Arual
-1 AP, -4 hours
+1 AP, +2 to SP, +30% to health, +50% to initiative, and +1 to all characteristics. 

"Hmm, interesting. If I want to give something to Her Highness, then it should preferably be footwear? Not an easy task."
"She wakes up earlier than me, wow, and here I thought I was the early bird with my morning training )"
"And summer really is a good season. The rest needs no comment."

How Miss Cosmos Works
-1 AP, -4 hours
+100 experience, +1 to a characteristic of choice.

"I see, so that's why I noticed my new body seemed not to match the old one in certain details and principles; it wasn't teleportation, nor exact reproduction, but an attempt to forge me like a sculpture modeled after the world of the past. I think I now better understand the capabilities and limitations of my body."
Gains +1 endurance.

Senate of the Empire, Part I — North
-1 AP, -4 hours
+100 experience, +1 to endurance.

"Here's what I took away from this book."
Erefir writes in her to-do list: "Go skiing."

Senate of the Empire, Part II — Skrim Tribes
-1 AP, -4 hours
+100 experience, +1 to strength.

"Surprisingly, this orc is a decent philosopher, well, at least on a surface level... When buying flags of such wild places, I expected to learn their strength and ferocity as opposed to the civilization I've been in myself these last months, and especially not to forget how people live in the most uncivilized corners of various worlds. But I should have remembered not to look down on anyone and to be ready to be surprised, as in this case."


With her last AP, Fyr-Fyr hesitated a bit, choosing between a trade textbook and a guidebook... Both promised to be useful, but learning trade only made sense if there would be no competitors in the party for the same quest, otherwise completing it would become much harder. What did charismatic Merel say? Was he planning to do that or not?

In principle, for the last AP I could craft Beata a crossbow, right? There's a nuance though — yes, it's a bit of a shame to spend non-blacksmithing ones, and the weapon will be, as I understand, at the level worth 200 repair.