Chapter 443: A True Inventor

Luca looked at the chests, the shelves, the neat little rows of things he couldn’t begin to name and then back at Mavis.

"You know, I can’t really judge any of these without understanding what they do." He gestured broadly at the collection. "Would you mind giving me a tour? Explain what each one is for?"

Mavis blinked, pulled from her quiet reverie. "Oh! Right. Right, of course. I completely forgot." She straightened, a familiar flicker of pride igniting in her chest. This was her stage, after all.

"Well, don’t just stand there, Dummy Hero. Come along!"

She trotted over to the nearest table and picked up the first device.

It appeared to be a wrist-mounted crossbow, cleverly concealed beneath a metal bracer, with multiple bolts arranged around a rotating mechanism.

"This." She announced with obvious pride. "Is called the Sparrow’s Bite!"

Luca leaned in, genuinely fascinated as the craftsmanship was remarkable.

The metal was polished to a mirror shine, and the mechanism was so compact it could easily be mistaken for simple armor.

Mavis strapped it onto her forearm and continued her explanation.

"It’s a miniature crossbow that can fire multiple bolts in rapid succession. The rotating magazine here—"

She tapped a small cylinder near the base.

"—holds different types of bolts. I’ve got armor-piercing, barbed, and even some with specialized tips for different situations."

She aimed at a wooden plank leaning against the far wall and pressed a small trigger.

Thwip!

The bolt embedded itself in the wood with a satisfying thunk. She fired again, then again, each shot finding its mark with impressive accuracy.

Luca watched the demonstration with growing admiration.

The bolts flew faster than he’d expected—not quite as fast as a modern firearm, but for a world without gunpowder, the speed was remarkable. The reloading mechanism was smooth, almost automatic.

"Impressive..."

Mavis’s ears perked up.

"It’s quite well-concealed." He continued, examining the device more closely. "Even if an enemy knew you had something on your arm, they’d never expect you to be able to fire multiple shots. And the element of surprise—that’s beautiful."

Mavis felt her heart swell.

She had expected him to look down on her primitive devices. To compare them unfavorably to the technology of his world and laugh at her efforts as someone trapped in a less advanced age.

But he wasn’t.

He was looking at her creation with genuine passion in his eyes, with respect and appreciation.

And that encouragement made her want to show him everything!

She set down the Sparrow’s Bite and picked up a small glass orb, wrapped in a metal casing with a pin mechanism at the top. It resembled a grenade.

"This is the Dissipating Act." She said, holding it up for him to see. "When you throw it at the ground, it releases a cloud of thick gas that covers the surrounding area."

She moved to the window, opened it, clicked the button on the orb, and tossed it into the backyard.

Crack!

The moment it hit the ground, a plume of dense smoke erupted, quickly spreading to engulf a significant portion of the outdoor space.

"I can control the output." Mavis explained. "Make it thinner or thicker depending on what’s needed. Useful for escapes, ambushes, or just creating confusion."

Luca nodded. "A smoke grenade. Just like the one you used back then to throw me off at the last minute."

Mavis wasn’t done. She set down the smoke grenade and picked up what appeared to be a small, circular shield. It was beautifully engraved with intricate patterns, but it was undeniably tiny—barely large enough to cover a forearm.

She strained visibly as she lifted it, her small frame struggling with the weight. Then she gestured toward Luca.

"Give me your arm."

Luca presented his forearm. She strapped the shield on, cinching the leather tight.

"It’s beautiful." He said, admiring the engraving. "Genuinely. But isn’t it a little small? This wouldn’t cover much—"

"Ah ah ah." Mavis held up one finger. "Hold on, Dummy Hero. Before you say anything—click the button on the back."

Luca turned the shield over. There was, indeed, a small button on the inner face.

He pressed it.

Click. Shhhnk!

The outer rim of the shield split and folded outward like a flower opening and then the inner layers followed, sliding out one after another in overlapping segments.

This went on until the little foot-wide disc had become a full round shield the size of a sack, strapped to his arm and hanging like a piece of portable wall.

Mavis folded her arms, radiant.

"Turtle Shell." She announced. "Folds down to a buckler. But one button, and it’s a tower shield. You can carry it in a bag, hang it off a saddle, tuck it under your arm—and the moment someone swings at you, it’s there."

Luca moved his arm experimentally, swung it, punched the air twice with the shield’s face.

"It’s well-balanced." He noted. "I could use this for defense, but also for punching—combining offense and protection."

Mavis’s tail swished happily. He understood. He actually understood!

She pulled down the Turtle Shell and picked up another device—a small, tube-like object that resembled a miniature rocket launcher.

"This is the Spider’s Web." She grinned mischievously. "It perfectly captures enemies in a net. Just like I captured you today."

"Don’t forget that you also ended in that same net, Mavis."

Mavis ignored him and pointed the device toward the backyard, where the smoke from her earlier demonstration had finally cleared. She aimed at a eleven statue and pulled the trigger.

Whoosh!

A large, intricately woven net shot out, wrapping around the bust with perfect precision. The net tightened automatically, binding the target completely.

Looking at the sight of the statue that looked like his wife wrapped in the net, Luca muttered under his breath.

"Maybe I should try some bondage with Leona when I get back..."

Mavis tilted her head. "Bondage? What exactly is that?"

"Nothing." Luca shook his head quickly. "Nothing at all."

He pointed at another device on the table. "What’s that one?"

"Night Tacks" She said, picking up a small cloth pouch. "Throw it, and it bursts into a spread of caltrops—a dozen of them, all four-pointed, so no matter how they land there’s always a spike up."

She shook the pouch with joy like they were filled with candy.

"Best thing about them is they don’t just hurt. They stop people. Nothing kills a charge faster than a hundred angry little spikes in the grass. You drop a couple of these behind you and the whole pursuit has to slow down and pick its way through."

She then picked up a breastplate, its metal gleaming dully.

"Flash-Pan Armor. Looks normal, feels normal, protects you from a sword through the ribs. But pull this cord here—" She pointed to a hidden toggle near the armpit. "—and a flash of concentrated Blinderoot and light-rock dust ignites, blinding everyone in a ten-foot radius for a good three seconds!

"I haven’t demonstrated it because it’s a nightmare to reset, and I almost blinded myself the last time."

And then she was off.

She opened the chests. She pulled down the boxes. She went through the cabinets one drawer at a time, laying things out on the table and the floor and the step beside the furnace, talking the entire way.

"Grapple line—coil of wire with a hook, fires it up to forty feet, you can climb or you can pull something down. Grappling Hook."

"Spring-loaded blade, sits flat against the sole of a boot, extends when you kick."

"Signal flare. Burns blue, visible over a ridge. Blue Whistle."

"Standing Serpent. Rope that hardens into a rigid pole when you twist it, so you can brace it against a wall and it’ll hold your weight."

"Lockpick set. Not that I need it, obviously, but—Hand of Courtesy."

"Spike launcher to turn someone into a porcupine."

And on it went. Name after name, each one spoken with the same crisp tone as if she were reading off a catalog she’d written herself and memorized.

And Luca, for his part, did not hold back for a single one of them.

"That’s incredible..."

"Wait—you solved the recoil on that one? How? How did you solve the recoil?"

"You thought of that at fourteen?"

"You understand this is better than anything I’ve seen in a military procurement catalog, right? Nothing in my world’s infantry kit is this well thought out."

"You put the weight there? That’s the correct place! That’s actually the only place. How did you know that?!"

And every word of it went straight into Mavis like honey.

Because she had spent her entire life building things that nobody could see. She would hand a finished piece to a centaur, and they would turn it over twice and ask whether it was sharp.

She would show her sister a prototype, and her sister’s face would close up like a door, and she would hear you’re not going out with that before she’d even finished her sentence.

She had explained the counterweight system on her power hammer exactly once to a visiting dwarf, and he had nodded politely and then changed the subject to the weather.

And now here was a man who asked why, and how, and what if you moved it here, and understood the answers.

But the best part for Mavis was when Luca started talking back and giving suggestions.

"Hold on." He picked up the Sparrow’s Bite again and turned it over. "You’ve got the release catch on the outside, which means you have to rotate your wrist to fire. But you could move it to the inner face here, put the trigger under your thumb. Same motion as drawing a bowstring. You’d gain half a second on the draw."

Mavis froze. "The inner face—"

"Look." He took a scrap of paper off the table and sketched quickly. "You put the catch here, on a pivot, so the thumb depresses it when you flex. The magazine stays where it is. You don’t even have to redesign the housing."

Mavis stared at the sketch. Her eyes went wide.

"...Half a second." She whispered.

"Half a second."

She snatched the paper and turned it over, scribbling in the margins in a hand so fast it was barely legible.

Luca moved on, picking up another device.

"And this—this is good, but the flow rate is going to be terrible. If you put a second chamber here and stagger the layers, the water has to pass through more material but it moves faster, because you’re not creating a bottleneck. Three times the throughput, same volume."

"Second chamber—"

"And this one." He picked up the grapple. "The hook’s fine, but the line is going to kink when it spools out. If you run it through a guide ring here, at the mouth—a little brass loop, that’s all—it’ll feed smoothly no matter what angle you fire it from."

Mavis was writing so fast her quill was spraying ink.

These were ideas she had vaguely grasped at, concepts she had sensed were possible, but she had never been able to properly implement them because she lacked the foundational knowledge.

But with Luca’s explanations, everything clicked into place!

"I could make this much smaller." She murmured, looking at one of her bulkier inventions. "If I created a miniature system here..."

"Exactly." Luca confirmed. "And the weight reduction would improve portability by at least forty percent."

Mavis was learning more in this single conversation than she had in years of solitary study.

The knowledge Luca was casually sharing would have taken her decades to discover on her own—if she ever discovered it at all.

She wanted more!

She pulled out boxes, opened chests, emptied cabinets. She showed him every invention she had ever made, even the half-broken ones she had been too embarrassed to display earlier.

Because now she wanted to impress him, wanted him to keep sharing his wisdom.

"This is called the Whistling Wind—it creates a high-pitched sound to disorient enemies!"

"The Iron Beetle—it’s a portable battering ram that folds into a small package!"

"The Serpent’s Kiss—a whip with retractable blades hidden in the handle!"

"The Ghost Step—these attachments go on your hooves and leave no tracks!"

The list went on and on.

Some devices were simple, others incredibly complex. Some were finished, others were works in progress.

But all of them demonstrated the same brilliant, inventive mind.