Don't Look at Me, I'm Forging - An Unorthodox Edge

By two in the afternoon, the air inside Simulation Chamber 09 smelled like hot transformer oil and old iron.Kae wiped a smear of black grease across her forehead with the sleeve of her oversized smock, leaving a smudged tail above her right eyebrow. Her fake glasses kept slipping down her sweaty nose, but she didn’t dare take them off—not with four floating optical sensors hovering near the ceiling like bloated metal mosquitoes.In front of her, the workbench held two standard-issue weapon templates: a bare-bones kinetic rifle receiver and the hilt housing for an infantry-grade plasma saber.Standard academy curriculum dictated a predictable assembly. You took the magnetic accelerator coils, lined them up end-to-end inside the rifle barrel, secured the thermal heatsink, and locked in the standard 15-millimeter firing pin. For the saber, you seated the focusing crystal flat against the power cell, ensuring a straight, uniform arc of superheated plasma.Safe. Standard. Boring.Kae tapped her chin with the handle of a cold-solder gun, staring at the raw materials left in her allotment bin. She had three small shards of low-grade amber crystal, a spool of conductive copper wire, and a handful of dark, slag-heavy iron powder left over from her armor coating test.”If I assemble this rifle the way the manual says,” she muttered, adjusting her collar, “the magnetic kickback is going to pull two percent of the frame’s core output every time the trigger pulls. That’s just wasteful.”She reached for the rifle receiver. Instead of mounting the magnetic coils in a straight line, she tilted the secondary ring six degrees off-axis. Then she dusted the inside of the acceleration tube with the leftover iron powder, using a thin thread of her psionic energy to bake the particles directly into the barrel’s rifling grooves.It wasn’t a standard magnetic rail anymore. It was a magnetic funnel.Instead of pushing one bullet out at a time, the angled ring would drag three kinetic rounds into the chamber simultaneously, crushing them together under localized magnetic pressure before spitting them out in a single, hyper-condensed burst.Next came the saber hilt.Kae picked up the amber crystal. It was cheap, cloudy material—the kind of industrial junk salvage yards threw out by the crate. The standard procedure was to grind the crystal flat so the plasma arc shot out in a neat, razor-thin ribbon.Kae didn’t grind it flat. She took a diamond-tipped scraper and carved a spiral, crescent-shaped groove right across the lens face, stitching a faint, curved catalyst rune into the matrix with her own psionic spark.If it blows up in my face, she thought, wincing slightly as the crystal hummed under her touch, at least the safety glass in this chamber is rated for high explosives.Up on the observation deck, Garret leaned his elbows against the brass railing, squinting through the glass at Chamber 09’s workbench.”What is she doing to that focusing lens?” Garret’s voice was a mix of irritation and genuine confusion. “She just ruined a two-hundred-credit amber crystal. You don’t etch a curved resonance groove onto an emitter face! The plasma arc will bleed sideways. It’ll destabilize the containment field!””It’s not bleeding,” Selene said quietly. She was staring at her secondary diagnostic terminal, her fingers tracing the real-time energy flow Kae was channeling into the hilt assembly. “Look at the magnetic containment metrics. She’s not trying to project a straight beam.”Marcus took a slow sip of his cold coffee, his dark eyes reflecting the purple glow flickering inside Chamber 09. “She’s bending the vector.””That’s absurd,” Garret scoffed. “A plasma saber is a thrusting weapon. A dueling blade. You bend the magnetic bottle, and you lose the point. It becomes useless for precision stabbing.””Unless,” Marcus grunted, leaning forward, “you aren’t trying to stab a duelist. Unless you’re standing in a knee-deep swamp in Sector 7, surrounded by forty low-tier Vexid skitterers trying to climb up your leg joint.” Garret shut his mouth.On the main telemetry screen, the green indicator light above Chamber 09 flickered from ASSEMBLY IN PROGRESS to TESTING READY.Down in the testing pit, a heavy steel target rig descended from the ceiling with a loud, hydraulic groan. Three hundred meters away, three reinforced tungsten target plates slithered out from the side walls, simulating armored infantry targets.MODULE 2: WEAPON EFFICIENCY TEST. PLEASE ENGAGE TARGETS.Kae took a deep breath. She mounted the modified saber hilt to the A1 frame’s right mechanical wrist, locking the power coupling into place with a sharp click.She extended her right hand, her fingers curling around the frame’s neural control glove.Pulse, she thought.She sent a quick, disciplined jolt of psionic energy down the arm wire.The amber crystal in the saber hilt flared. There was no clean, humming beam of light. Instead, with a sound like a tearing bedsheet, a massive, crescent-shaped fan of blinding golden plasma erupted from the hilt. It was nearly two meters wide, shaped like a glowing, curved broadaxe blade, shimmering with unstable kinetic heat.Kae blinked behind her giant glasses. “Oh. That’s… a little wider than I calculated.”Before she could adjust the output, the target rig lurched forward, simulating an incoming charge.Kae instinctively swept the mecha’s right arm in a horizontal arc.The fan-blade swept through the air. The golden light didn’t just touch the first tungsten target—it sliced cleanly through all three target posts in a single, fluid sweep. The heavy metal slabs hit the concrete deck with three dull, heavy THUDS, their severed edges glowing cherry-red and dripping molten steel.Inside the observation room, the diagnostic console chimed loudly.SWORD OUTPUT TEST: CLEAVAGE AREA INCREASED BY 210%. ENERGY CONSUMPTION: 88% OF STANDARD BASELINE.Kae didn’t hear the console. She was already raising the kinetic rifle mounted on the left arm.She lined up the sights with the secondary target plate four hundred meters downrange. She squeezed the neural trigger once.THUMP-CRACK!It didn’t sound like a kinetic rifle. It sounded like a naval cannon firing underwater.The rifle didn’t spit a stream of single slugs. Three compressed alloy pellets, fused together by the magnetic funnel inside the barrel, hit the center of the tungsten target at the exact same millisecond.The impact didn’t just punch a hole in the plate. The kinetic energy transfer was so hyper-condensed that the six-inch-thick metal target shattered like a frozen pane of glass, showering the back wall of the chamber with jagged steel shrapnel.The rifle barrel hissed, venting a tiny plume of white ozone steam.Kae stood alone in the quiet chamber, staring at the destroyed targets, her mouth slightly open.”Oops,” she whispered to the empty room. “I think I packed the magnetic pinch a little too tight. They’re going to bill me for the target rig.”She hurriedly disengaged the neural glove, stripped the custom weapons off the A1 frame, and dropped them back into the allotment bin like they were hot potatoes. She pulled her baggy smock down, shoved her heavy glasses back up her nose, and hurried toward the exit hatch before anyone could come down and yell at her about government property damage.On the observation deck, absolute silence hung over the three evaluators.The telemetry screen in front of them was blinking rapidly, processing the final score calculations for Candidate 613-1031.WRITTEN EXAM: 100 / 100 PRACTICAL MODULE 1 (ARMOR): 92 / 100 PRACTICAL MODULE 2 (WEAPONRY): 93 / 100 COMPOSITE EVALUATION: 95 MERIT POINTS.OVERALL RANKING: CLASS 1, POSITION 02.Garret stared at the yellow numbers, his jaw slack. “Ninety-five merits? She… she broke the target rig, modified the structural blueprint without authorization, and used unapproved scrap minerals, and the system gave her a ninety-five?””The system evaluates lethality and resource efficiency, Garret,” Selene said, her eyes shining with quiet fascination as she replayed the video of the plasma fan-blade severing three tungsten posts at once. “She spent less than forty percent of her material budget and created weapons that out-perform standard military issue by double-digit margins.” “Who’s position one?” Garret asked suddenly, tapping his slate.”Gideon Drake,” Marcus answered, staring out the window at the empty testing chamber where Kae had just scuttled away like a frightened mouse. “Ninety-seven merits. He built an immaculate, military-spec SS-rank twin blade system using House Drake’s proprietary forging techniques. Clean. Perfect. Textbook.”Marcus picked up his coffee mug, drained the last cold drops, and tossed it into the recycling chute.”Gideon Drake built a masterpiece because he’s got a billion credits of family legacy standing behind him,” Marcus muttered, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. “This Lind girl built a lethal monster out of scrap slate and a broken crystal because she didn’t want to get yelled at for wasting time.”Selene turned to Marcus. “Are you assigning her to Class 1?””Class 1, Squad 7,” Marcus said, walking toward the lift. “And tell the quartermaster to make sure her dormitory has a heavy-duty power outlet. I have a feeling she’s going to be blowing fuses all semester.”