Rise of the Horde

Chapter 49

With all the materials gathered together, the building of the city wall finally started. Xiao Chen assigned Rakh’ash’tha to supervise its construction since he was the only who understood his blueprints and his idea of the wall.

He had other things to take care of, like the current weapon blueprints in his hand. Orcs don’t use bows because they guaranteed that every time that they draw the string, the bow snaps in half because they applied too much force.

Xiao Chen designed a repeating crossbow for them, no need to pull manually the string back. He designed it after a shotgun which has an underhand cocking mechanism instead of the regular overhand or side lever on almost all crossbows.

The repeating crossbow combined the actions of spanning the bow, placing the bolt, and shooting into a one-handed movement, thus allowing for a much higher rate of fire than a normal crossbow which he was accustomed to, the beauty of continuous fire albeit only for just six shots before loading additional bolts onto the magazine.

A top-mounted magazine containing a reservoir of bolts was included in the design, fed the crossbow through gravity, a rectangular lever attached to both the tiller and the magazine, and a tiller mounting the prods with a stock. The design was basically a shotgun without the use of gunpowder.

The magazine on top of the main body of the crossbow can only accommodate and additional five more bolts on it without including the bolt that was already cocked in and ready to be fired with just the squeezed of the trigger.

There were two variants of Xiao Chen’s shotgun based repeating crossbow, one that fires solid iron bolts which could penetrate through enemies and armors and the other one fires metal spherical pellets which could take down unarmored foes.

The trolls and the orc forgers worked together in bringing Xiao Chen’s idea to life. The trolls did the woodwork on it, while the forgers dealt with its metal frame for it to be durable. Xiao Chen took part in the weapon’s creation by ensuring that the mechanism behind it was correct or else they risk hurting the wielder.

.....

The next day, a prototype of the new weapon was ready to be tested, one for each variant of the weapon. Picking up the bolt shooting variant, Xiao Chen felt its similarity to a shotgun of modern times, albeit heavier and bulkier.

Carefully loading a few iron bolts onto its magazine, which were made of two wood pieces that were aligned parallel with each other. The bolts were placed in between the wood pieces and held in place by a metal lock, which prevents the bolts from being loaded into the firing chamber unless the weapon was cocked.

Xiao Chen gripped the cocking mechanism of the weapon and pulled it backwards, then forward. The first bolt was then ready to be fired with just the squeezed of a trigger. Loading the extra bolt, Xiao then turned around and sighted the targets that were placed at different distances.

The first one was ten meters away, which was easily punctured by the bolt, the next one thirty meters and it still was a success. Fourth one was fifty meters, which was still punctured by the bolt but didn’t go through it unlike the first two targets. The last one, which was a hundred meters away, Xiao Chen squeezed the trigger after cocking it, then fired the bolt with great accuracy, hitting the target.

The one-foot-long bolt penetrated the target with almost half of its length through the target. The weapons’ capability impressed Xiao Chen, but he wanted it to pack more power and gain more range. Aiming at the target a hundred and twenty meters away, it was still a hit, but only a few inches of the bolt went through.

With the last bolt, Xiao Che fired towards the foot of the tall watchtower, which was more than a hundred and fifty meters away from where Trot’thar lived in for the past days and keeping an eye out for any sign of the enemies.

The bolt hit the target but just bounced off of it after creating a small chip on the wooden target.

“It needs more power, add more strength to the string and increase the size of the limbs but not too much or it will be impossible to be used.”

Xiao Chen commented as he put the weapon down and picked up the pellet firing variant of it. Unlike the one that fires iron bolts, this one was more complicated and harder to be made with it, firing a pellet forward straight.

The weapon’s magazine worked in the same way as its twin but held more ammos in it, containing twelve lead pellets including the one loaded into the chamber.

Taking aim and firing, the pellet went through the first target thoroughly and made a bigger hole than the one that ejects bolts. Xiao Chen judged the damage to be extremely lethal. He carried on with the test and found out that the pellet firing variation only had a maximum of fifty meters range of effectivity.

“Is there any way to increase its power output?”

Xiao Chen asked the trolls and orc forgers to which they shook their heads.

“It’s impossible chief, if we increase the power behind it then it will be the chamber that will be ejected and not the pellet. This one is more complex and inflexible in its design unless we could find something to push the pellet forward”

Zul’jinn reported his findings on the weapon. They tried adding more power to the pellet firing one but to no avail; it was all a failure. The bolt firing kind was easier since it works much just like a bow which the trolls had knowledge of but the one that fires pellets. Only the chief knows the exact details about it.

“We could make bigger ones of both kinds, but they can’t be wielded by our warriors in combat easily as these and with some modifications. We could use them for defending or during sieges on enemy settlement”

Zul’jinn suggested he witnessed the massive damages by such humongous weapons.

“Hmm... This will do. We use the bolts for foes who are armored and further away while this one for something up close and personal and the bigger ones that you spoke of, they will suffice as siege weapons.”

Xiao Chen grinned and loaded it again with the lead pellets, cocking it back and firing the weapon while moving forward. It shredded the wooden target that he was hitting to pieces as he got closer and closer to it while shooting.

“I wouldn’t want to be at the receiving end of such weapon!”

One troll exclaimed as they stared at the weapon in Xiao Chen’s hands and the target that was torn to pieces that littered the ground.