The night wind swirled in eddies over the cobblestones. From the ground, still holding the day's heat, rose the smell of damp dust. Smithing Street was deserted. Every workshop along it was shut tight, doors firmly closed. Through that emptiness, Leon ran. (*Please, be there.*) The magic-steel arrowhead clenched in his hand was slick with sweat. He couldn't get the image of Lumia, collapsed in the clinic, out of his head. The old physician had said the siege had exhausted their medicines, and her life would burn out in three nights. Then, a flash of inspiration had struck. Instead of gunpowder, use magical power. Use the conductivity of magic steel to propel a bullet. The theory was complete in his mind. All he needed now was the skill to give it form. Leon stopped before a large stone building. On its sign, characters burned into the wood stood out. ——Hammertal. It was the only workshop in besieged Valmund capable of precision magic-steel processing. The master was Besen Dolk. A craftsman of peerless skill on the continent, but famous for his difficult, cantankerous nature. Leon pounded on the thick wooden door, reinforced with iron. *Bang, bang, bang.* The sound, jarringly loud, echoed through the silent street. No answer. He knocked again, harder this time. "[shouts] Please, open up! It's Ferden Leon!" After a moment, he heard the heavy bar being lifted from the inside. The door creaked open, and a rugged face peered through the gap. Short hair, streaked with silver. Deep brown eyes glinted sharply in the torchlight. On his left arm was the scar of an old, severe burn. Still in his work clothes, smelling of oil and iron, stood Master Besen Dolk. "[cold] ...What business does a brat have at this hour?" His voice was as hard as tempered steel. "I have a request. Please, look at this." Leon pulled a folded piece of parchment from inside his jacket. It was a blueprint he had rewritten countless times since the night of the third episode. Without even glancing at it, Dolk spoke, his face expressionless. "[serious] Go home. This is no place for a margrave's second son to be playing around at night." The door began to close, mercilessly. "Wait! I'm serious!" Leon spread the blueprint open in front of the closing door. He took a breath and shouted from the depths of his gut. "I want to make a gun barrel out of magic steel! By compressing magical power in one direction, the bullet will—" *Clatter.* The door opened again, wider this time. Dolk's face was still sullen, but his eyes were riveted to the blueprint in Leon's hands. "...Let me see just one sheet." Dolk's fingers pinched the edge of the blueprint. He held it up to the torchlight and stared intently. One second. Two seconds. Dolk's eyebrow twitched. In the next instant, his expression changed. From the face of a grumpy old man to that of a craftsman who has found his prey. "[serious] ...Get in." The workshop was dim, thick with the smell of iron, oil, and furnace soot. Various tools hung on the walls, and the large anvil in the center of the room gleamed dully from years of use. "[excited] I have a magic-steel arrowhead." Leon spread the blueprint on a table and took the arrowhead from his pocket. The blue-grey metal reflected the embers of the furnace. "We'll use its magical conductivity. We carve grooves inside the barrel to channel the magic. We shave the arrowhead down into a bullet, and from the opposite end, we slam it with a burst of magical pressure—" Dolk listened in silence. His arms were crossed, his gaze piercing a single point on the blueprint. "...What are these numbers?" His low voice cut through Leon's words. "Calculated values for the barrel length and inner diameter. I worked out the ratio for the most efficient pressure." "Where did you get an idea like this?" "I thought of it myself. Magic is useless to me, so I've been thinking of other methods for a long time." He wasn't lying. He couldn't speak of his memories from a past life, but he had constructed this theory in this world himself. Dolk looked into Leon's eyes for a long time. He didn't fully trust him yet. But his instincts as a craftsman told him there was no lie in the young man's words. "[serious] ...It's ridiculous. Compressing magic in one direction to accelerate an object? I've never heard of such a thing." Yet, his hand was reaching for the tool shelf. Without a word, he stoked the furnace fire higher. He took out a bar of magic steel and held it in the flames until it glowed white-hot. "Read off the numbers from the blueprint. Precisely." "...Yeah!" Their strange collaboration began. Leon read out the detailed numbers from the blueprint one after another, and Dolk executed them in silence. He hammered, shaved, and drilled the white-hot metal he pulled from the furnace. With every shower of sparks, the burn scar on Dolk's left arm seemed to writhe as if alive. One hour. Two hours. Their sense of time vanished. Sweat dripped into Leon's eyes, blurring his vision. "[calm] ...Why go this far? Is it for the medicine?" Dolk muttered, his hands still moving. "That's part of it. But there's another reason." "Let's hear it." After a moment's hesitation, Leon spoke honestly. "...I'm not a real craftsman like you. I'm trash at magic and swordsmanship. But this alone—this gun is something only I can make. I want to prove that there's something only I can do." Dolk didn't stop his hands. But the corners of his mouth relaxed, just a little. "[soft] ...If you'd taken a request like this to any other smith, you'd have been turned away at the door." Leon couldn't help but give a wry smile. "Heh heh, no doubt." "Obviously. For an ordinary craftsman, your ideas are a hundred years too early." It was unmistakably a compliment. By the time the night drew its deepest curtain... A roughly finished barrel and a single bullet carved from the arrowhead lay on the table. Dolk wiped off his sweat and, without a word, pointed to a thick wooden board leaning in the corner of the workshop. It was the signal for a test fire. With trembling hands, Leon held the barrel ready. Instead of a trigger, he placed his finger on a small protrusion meant for channeling magic. There was no stock yet, no sights. It was just a metal tube. (*Please—*) He closed his eyes and concentrated. He channeled the magical power welling up from his core into his hand, his fingers, and then into the barrel. It was a sensation of magic racing through the interior of the magic steel, like water through a narrow channel. He released it all at once. *Paan!* A dry, explosive crack. A sharp recoil slammed into his shoulder, and his hand jumped. A high-pitched ringing sounded deep in his ears. It wasn't the smoke of gunpowder, but the unique smell of magic scorching the air that stung his nose. He looked at the wooden board. A small hole was opened slightly off-center. On the back side, the wood fibers were split open like a flower. It had penetrated. A heavy silence fell over the workshop. Dolk inserted his finger into the hole the bullet had passed through. He stared at it, then pulled it out. Then, he let out a sigh, deeper than before. "[whispers] ...Tch." A small click of his tongue. For him, it was the greatest expression of astonishment. "[excited] Heh heh... I did it, I really did it!" Clutching the heavy barrel, Leon slumped to the floor on the spot. All the strength drained from his body. The thread of tension that had driven him this far had suddenly snapped. The world had changed before his eyes. With this, he could fight. "[serious] It's too early to celebrate. This is a prototype. We don't even know how long the barrel will hold up after each shot." Dolk's tone was as stern as ever, but his eyes were fixed on the newly born weapon. "I know. But it's the first step. I got this far because you were here." Dolk didn't answer. He just began to put out the furnace fire. The gesture was strangely gentle. —— That same night, under the same sky. Outside the city walls, about two kilometers away at the Andavari army's main camp, the very air was frozen. Inside a vast tent, a detailed map of Valmund was spread over a large wooden desk in the center. The height of the walls, troop placements, the location of food stores—it was all written down, a city of bloodless ink on paper. Over ten commanders stood rigidly around it. All were clad in armor, marking them as battle-hardened veterans. Yet every one of them kept their mouths shut in a tight line, waiting for the words of a single man. The man standing before the map. His short black hair was streaked with white. An old, small scar ran from the right corner of his cold, grey eyes. His tall frame was wrapped not in armor, but in a crimson military uniform, his hands clasped behind his back. With an expression stripped of all emotion, he—Klaus Werner—looked down at the map. An icy stillness, as if he didn't consider people to be people at all, surrounded the man. "[cold] We launch a full-scale assault at dawn tomorrow." His voice carried well, but was terribly flat. Tension ran through the commanders. "We will attack simultaneously from three directions: east, south, and west. Leave the north open. If we give them an escape route, the enemy's morale will crumble easily." His finger traced the east wall on the map. "This point, breached during the diversion on the fourth night, has not been fully repaired. We will commit our maximum force here. The magic corps, centered on fire systems, will burn through the wall's magical defenses along with it." "Your Excellency, what of the remaining enemy forces within the city?" One commander asked, timidly. Without a moment's hesitation, Werner listed the numbers. "Four thousand two hundred soldiers. Of those, sixty percent are fit for combat. Thirty officers possess magical aptitude. It will be a comfortable battle. Our forces number twelve thousand. We outnumber them three to one." There wasn't a shred of emotion. There was a coldness that treated four thousand lives as a mere calculation. "[serious] Valmund ends today." It was a settled matter. Not a threat, nor encouragement. It was a statement of fact, as if discussing tomorrow's weather. The commanders bowed and dispersed to their respective posts. Their tense footsteps gradually faded away. Werner left the tent alone. The sky over the battlefield was terrifyingly clear, the stars twinkling. On the distant walls of Valmund, numerous watch fires flickered. He gazed at those lights for a while. "[whispers] ...A war is lost the moment you let emotion in." He muttered the words to no one in particular. On his profile as he looked up at the stars, behind the cruelty, there clung a strange sense of resignation. —— Dawn was approaching. The sky began to shift from deep ultramarine to a pale indigo. Clutching the prototype gun wrapped in cloth, Leon left Smithing Street. The weight of the steel digging into his shoulder pulled him back to reality. Nothing was over yet. As he turned a corner, he saw a faint light from a candlestick leaking through the window of the clinic. Leon stopped in his tracks. For just three seconds. Beyond the window, Lumia was sleeping. (*The medicine still hasn't arrived.*) If the siege couldn't be broken, the supplies to save her would never come. And the information about the full-scale assault at dawn had already reached the city. In just a few hours, this city would become hell. "[whispers] ...Wait for me." Leon readjusted his grip on the gun wrapped in cloth. He still didn't know if this prototype would work in actual combat. It was a one-shot gamble. But—he had no choice but to do it. He began to climb the cobblestone slope leading to the city walls, alone. The shadow of the bell tower loomed eerily in the pre-dawn gloom. Somewhere in the city, a warning be