BOOM BOOM

The recoil that resulted from the shots helped to clear my head. Where before it was all murky as I tried numerous solutions, vying for the one that may work, now my head was absolutely clear.

Again my arm tried to adjust my aim subtly, but I was not one to let it do that. If it was during combat then yes, but not now. Right now I wanted to feel the gun against my hands as I aimed it at imaginary targets.

BOOM

Another shot rang out as I pulled the trigger. The imaginary target that I had created in my mind was missed but that didn't matter. I adjusted my aim, ignoring all the protests of my arm. I had been taking everything into account while aiming.

The air, the spin of the dirt ball we had been living on, the curvature, the distance, everything was taken into account. All that was left was to pull the trigger.

BOOM

'Bullseye' I thought to myself, proud of my accomplishment. Without the help of the combat systems that I had installed I had made a shot that was virtually impossible to the past me. The time that I had put into learning this was only a fraction of the morning. Though I did waste several hundred casings just to indulge in this.

It was in that moment of celebration that a thought occurred to me.

'Recoil, that was how we would do it.' My eyes widened at the idea, my hand already running the idea through several simulators that Delta had given me access to.

'It could work'

..

"Delta!" A shout of excitement was what brought me out of my work. Looking to the source of the disruption I see the disheveled appearance of Rhea. Her hair matted with sweat, her breath heavy, there was no doubt that she had run all the way here from wherever she had set up to shoot my rifle.

A stream of data flew into my systems as simulation after simulation ran.

"That could work.." I thought out loud. With the impeccable control over my systems there was no way that I would unintentionally do that. No, it was more to the benefit of my apprentice.

The girl was practically beaming despite her sweat soaked form, the praise that I had given was subtle, to anyone else it would just be a confirmation but to Rhea it was important. To know that her idea had amounted to something, something completely original.

I could tell how much it was grating on her that she could not create something original without any blueprints.

Instead of letting those thoughts consume my thought processes, I instead did something more productive. With a wave of my hand, I motioned for Rhea to follow me.

..

Back in the command room, I brought out bunches of paper.

"Design" I told Rhea, handing her a pen and pencil and a range of other tools.

Immediately she got to work, the ideas flowing through her mind. I could see the intense concentration that was on her face.

Drawings were made, specs were written as numerous ideas flew into the paper only to get rejected by either me, who had run the numbers, or her who had rejected the idea outright.

"This, this will work!" Rhea said, holding up a piece of paper to me.

Looking at what was written down it seemed the main function of this was to just prove that we could fly, not to carry anything but to have sustained flight.

The design was simple, a capsule approximately the size of a room would be strapped to two large pillars that would ignite and constantly release a rain of fire that would propel it up.

"Let's get to work" I said, deeming the design worthy enough to test.

The capsule was the easiest part of the whole thing, taking only half an hour to build. The combined strength or more accurately my strength was enough to construct it. Rhea had tried to help but with only tier 7 strength she would have been more of a burden than anything.

After that was done though came the hard part. We had to devise how we were going to propel it upwards.historical

We knew how we were going to do it, the force that the fire would push onto the capsule would propel it up but the only problem was how we were going to do that.

Initially we had tried gunpowder as a control to see how many pounds of force it could move but it turns out that when extrapolated to the size of the capsule that the gunpowder would weigh too much to be able to do anything. That didn't mean that we didn't test anything, the way that we were going to propel it out of the atmosphere was still theoretical and we needed hard proof that it would work.

To do that we created a miniature model, filling the two capsules around the main one with gunpowder. With a remote detonation the gunpowder all ignited, a rush of flames popping out the end.

It had only lifted off the ground slightly but this had given us the data that we needed to refine the process.

The first thing that we did was have it sectioned out, it was not a permanent solution but we needed to be able to control how much was being ignited at one time. After we did that we tested it again, this time lighting one part of the gunpowder on both sides and in milliseconds when that started to wane ignited the next.

It seemed to work the capsule floating for a couple more seconds than the initial one had.

The next thing that we did was narrow the exit space so that it would exit with more force.

BOOM

A small explosion rang out as the capsule was not able to hold the pressure of the gunpowder and exploded. Although we had failed it was good to know that we needed stronger materials in order to generate more thrust.

The next thing that we did was make the materials stronger, to see how it would affect the vessel.

The materials that we used were heavier, so we predicted that it would just stay the same, hovering the same amount of feet in the air for the same amount of time.

We were correct, the only thing that it did was allow it to stay in the air for a millisecond longer.

yawn~ My mouth involuntarily opened the exhaustion that I had been suppressing while experimenting coming back to me.

Looking out the window I noticed that it was dark, and realizing that I laid down on the floor and slept.