“You can wrap a weapon with it?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m aware you can make a short Ray out of it. Wasn’t aware of that. I thought you’d just burn a lash of it in the cut.”

“Stacking multiple energies is far more effective than a massive burst of one energy, as the energy resistance only applies once, we’ve found, and there’s some synergies in the magic as they work together. For instance, combining fire damage with electricity damage with acid damage results in some armor-penetration effect, and more residual damage, as well as semi-paralytic and poison effects, or something,” Sama informed me.

I blinked. “Huh.” It was their turn to be curious. “I... routinely stack five or six Elements on my Shards. Standard Force, with Cold, Fire or Radiance, Lightning, Thunder, Acid, and Vivic/Healing, as appropriate.”

“You didn’t test for damage results with Topped Shards by varying the Metas?” Sama chided me. Topped because max damage meant predictable and easily calculated damage, thus able to see variables in resistances.

“To be fair, I think the Primal/Divine/Heartsong additions to the Arcane magic were having more of an effect, but I could very well be wrong,” I sighed. “I would have had to be running an Assay V, Behold the Heart of the Matter, to measure a target’s Health that closely, and I was far more focused on killing thousands of them than measuring spell effects at the time.”

“Alignment Effects do a whole lot of nothing to most Beasts, although they work fine on a lot of Dark Realm stuff. It’s just the damage is pretty moderate compared to their overall Health...” Sama went on thoughtfully. “No way to test fundamental damage types...”

“No Zealotry?” I asked them, lifting an eyebrow.

“I... don’t recall that?” Sama replied after a moment of hesitation.

“Fury of the Zealot Mastery allows you to use Alignment effects on Neutrals, not just opposed Alignments. Spells, Smites, Items, Feats, Class Features. There’s a complementary Fervor of the Zealot Mastery that allows you to use Holy damage dice for things other than damage: Spell Penetration, Save DC, to-hit, Armor Class, Saving Throws,” I ticked off for them as they listened with great interest. “Sanctified Spell maxed out with Holiness is 5d6 to play with...” I steepled my fingers again as they considered the implications with pondering expressions. “So, Elemental side effects stack and synergize? So, a good thing to adorn an Implement with is an Element they don’t normally have...” I gave them a proper shit-eating grin. “My boys all have sudden inexplicable desires for some proper Implements of the head-crushing, Spear-ejecting, or Glaive-chopping variety, imagine that. I can’t understand what could have made them so enthusiastic about the idea.”

Both of them laughed, glancing at my hands. “Not a smith, I see?” Briggs asked knowingly.

“Whitesmithing, gems, and jewelry. I can make that stuff pretty well. The black metals, not so much, and the boys are going to be hitting Mage soon, with that big Might buff they get at that level. If they can get Implements which are useful Tools, that’s a huge bonus.”

“Easy enough to do,” Briggs waved it off. “How are you are getting more goldweight?”

“Commune with Nature, eighty-mile radius?” I replied, tossed a thumb over my shoulder. “Three Earth mages. Dimensional Pocket for storage and transport.”

Sama leaned sideways into Briggs. “I think she’s pretty confident about that, Fuzzy,” she said out of the side of her mouth.

“Yeah. The problem has always been locating the stuff, not digging it up,” Briggs agreed happily. “Ah, so nice to have a proficient Caster around with true Divination magic instead of their bloody Arcane Sense or whatever it is.” He rolled his pale violet eyes meaningfully.

“Another thing they are probably bloody surprised doesn’t pick you up... or someone with Non-Detection or an Astral Ward, either,” I sniffed, unimpressed by said Awareness, despite having it myself. It was nice for immediate area awareness, but also easily blocked, after all, and worked on the Insight mechanic with partial timesight and sensitivity to threats. One of the great ways Human Mages and up avoided sudden attacks and damage.

“This intermittent ability to not be photographed of yours?” Sama asked, interested in that. Probably read about it online, when people were shocked they’d not gotten my picture, when they knew they had.

“Vampire’s Veil. Photos are a form of reflection. Can be put in a Ring, but I normally just Cast it when needed. Speaking of which?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at them.

“They are called the Blood Tribe here, and are basically users of a form of Flesh/Blood Element Mage. It’s Dark Magic, like Poison, but much more internally focused, and grants those who gain it strength and toughness to rival Magical Beasts, if not so much usable magic as a normal Human. Naturally they prize the blood of powerful beings, and tend to see normal Humans as weak cattle...” Briggs sniffed disparagingly.

“Tell me you beat one of them up!” I promptly exclaimed.

He held up three fingers, Sama two. I clapped for both of them as they smiled, and they flicked their hands.

The golden soulclaws coalescing out of their Vajras looked plenty mean and vicious. I chortled to see them extending three inches past their fingers. “That’s not a claw. THIS is a claw!” I paraphrased for them, clapping again. “I understand they also have Hags here...”

“Considered the best masters of Curse Magic in the world. They may have been the ones to teach it to Humanity,” Sama nodded, her clawed fingers moving as they played over something symbolic with surprisingly eloquent gestures, cupping a non-existent heart in the end. “My Aunties are always such fun to deal with...”

“I’m sure they are a delight to polite society and the senses,” I noted, and she just grinned. “Alrighty, the big thing. Firearms?” I asked them.

“Wasn’t that a goddamn chore to get going,” Briggs murmured, clasping his hands strongly. “We’ve got it working, but enchanted missile Weapons don’t do jack to the Beasts. It’s the ammo which is important.”

I blinked. “Oh, fun. That... would get expensive fast,” I agreed. In the long run, you wanted the Bow +V instead of making +V arrows. “So, on to One More Shot Clips and Magazines of Endless Ammunition?” I hazarded.

“Which is VERY expensive,” Sama muttered. “It isn’t like you can use Naming Karma to make them. It’s all goldweight or go home.”

“Viability?”

“Surprisingly good,” Briggs rumbled. “If you use nihilor rounds. Treats all their magical defenses just like meat and bone. Anything else, you have to plow through their Natural Armor before you can do anything to them. If you try touch attacks, then you have to go through all their Damage Reduction, it’s treated just like an energy attack.”

I screwed up my face. “Just how do you make a firearm attack NOT a touch attack?”

“That took us five years to figure out,” Sama sighed, and Briggs just grunted sourly in remembrance. “Couldn’t use bullets on anything bigger than Servants or other Humans the whole time, unless they were nihilor, and how much Earth Lead is just floating around, hmm?”

“The correct answer is always ‘not enough’,” I supplied helpfully.

“There are firearms back where you, where Aelryinth and our Primes came from?” Briggs asked, somewhat surprised by my reply.

“Probably shouldn’t surprise you that the Power of Ten tech rules are in place there, so normal firearms, no. However, if you put the ammunition into nurbronze casings so they are fire-resistant, and store them in a White Mana Zone, the ambient Elemental Fire can’t ignite them, and won’t spread to stored casings when you start shooting them off.

“Outside the White Zone, you’re sitting on a time bomb. But the one time we had a dragon stupid enough to fly into the White Zone, it was brrrrrrrrrrrrt’d to death before it knew what was going on.”

Both of them grinned in appreciation at the fact. “Encouraging! Alchemical ammo help at all?” Sama asked, clearly interested in the subject.

“With the self-igniting problem? Not a bit. Made the ammo a bit peppier. The only way you could shoot it off or store it was inside a Greysphere, and talking about costs per weapon...”

“Ewwww!” they said together, making faces. Twenty-five goldweight added to the cost of a firearm was like the complete opposite of saving money if it took a Permanent Greysphere to be useful.

“Anyway, the solution?”

“You must not have gotten a good look at the bullets you shot off.” I shook my head in agreement with Briggs. “Make larger caliber bullets that are designed for both armor penetration and cutting.”

I blinked. “Sharp bullets?” I paraphrased.

“That was it. Their Natural Armor instantly started treating them like kinetic cutting devices instead of energy delivery items.” Briggs reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a bullet that had to be made for a true monster of a rifle. He thumb-flicked it over to me and I caught it with interest.

Okay, there was the coating of nihilor, over a core of harder metal inside... adamantine, for punching through rigid armor and bone. The casing was still basic bronze, not even magical because it didn’t need to be. Maybe if they used alchemy to supercharge the load, but even then, they could use nurbronze and be fine.

“Pop it out of the casing and push up along it with TK,” he told me.

I did so, forcing the bullet out of its casing, hissing as a pressure-release forced the blades in the bullet out in a spiral format, barely increasing the radius, but doubtless setting it spinning like a razor-edged drill bit.

I poked the tip just to be sure, and yes, it was indeed quite sharp, as were the edges of the bullet-leaves.

A nihilor and adamantium drill, made for punching through the toughest of magical hides and carapaces, and getting to the meat inside.

“Funny thing,” Sama said, her unnatural Arakne Arms flickering into existence at her hips and reaching out with overlong reach and glossy black hooked fingers to take the bullet and casing from my hand and hold them up before herself. “Going through a magical hide and meat tends to strip away the nihilor coating, which means their DR/Magic pops back up on their Natural Armor... but not on the meat inside them.

“We’ve peeled open dead varmints of all kinds dying to a shot or two, and found the bullet bounced around inside them, bouncing off their own unnaturally tough hides as it did damage, just ripping them apart from within.” She held up the wicked-looking bullet, shaking her head slightly. “Be so much damn easier if we could just use a spherical bullet, but no, no, magical world, have to get fancy and actually shoot a fancy target-point arrowhead out of a damn gun.”

“Automatic weapons?” I had to ask.

“No. Rapid-fire kinetic impacts trigger their Damage Reduction instantly and spread out the impacts, you lose more than you gain with rapid-fire. There actually has to be an incidence of magical significance between shots, generally about half a second. Basically, if it would be considered one attack by a magical spell trying to fend it all off, then it’s considered a magical attack by their Natural Armor, gets reclassified, and you may as well not have shot them at all.”

“Do they have to be made by hand to be enchanted?” I asked pointedly.

Briggs slapped the table lightly. “That is the one great thing about this. No! It’s a form of technomagic, and so is friendly to Artifice and Gearsmithing here, especially with Typeless Mana! We can automate almost the entire process from beginning to end, as long as we’ve got the inputs.

“Making the adamantine core of these things is the most annoying. We have to use a boosted Floating Forge, which can only melt so much at a time, and the molding process is annoying through and through. When I’m not helping slap together a ride that can actually stand up to being swatted by a Warrior creature, I’m working on trying to automate the polishing process.”

I imagined that polishing something made of adamantine and nihilor like those bullets would be quite annoying.

“So, what you really want is a fire hot enough to melt adamantine, and some control fine enough to shape the parts quicker. So, like something a Wizard with a Typeless Matrix Core could do with Cantrip-level magic, bullet by bullet.”