Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 873: Section 575: Discovery (Part 2)

Chapter 873: Section 575: Discovery (Part 2)

Weapons produced by Malin’s workshop typically have a unique firearm number, a series of letters and numbers engraved on the butt of the gun representing the identity of the manufacturer, consisting of six letters and eight numbers. The letters represent the abbreviation of the manufacturer’s name and race, and the numbers denote the sequential number of the gun they have made.

The absence of a firearm number indicates that the gun did not undergo the final storage procedure and was directly sold to this unnamed organization.

Malin took out a gun, disassembled it, and confirmed the barrel—on the tail end of the barrel, there should be a symbol: the hammer representing Dwarves, the sun for Elves, the clover for Half-humans, the large boots for Gnomes, and the fist for Humans, which denotes which race’s artisans crafted the barrel.

There was no symbol on it, but Malin noticed an irregular cut at the end of the barrel—this signifies that the end of the barrel had been manually cut.

This means the barrel is a defective product—because normally, before coming off the lathe, patterns must be stamped on the barrels. The only ones that wouldn’t have patterns are defective products, as they are destined to be reprocessed. Hence, the end of the barrel is also manually sawed off, and at an angle.

Malin checked the length of the barrel and found that the end had likely been recut, comparing it to the rifle Tuojin was carrying on his back, the barrel of the two guns differed by about ten centimeters.

"It seems that they extended the stock and reduced the length of the fore-end to create the illusion of being the same as the rifles we have," Tuojin also noticed the issue and looked towards Malin, "The fore-end doesn’t seem to be made of wood grown in the South."

"Right, the stock and fore-end did not come from our workshop, nor are these parts that were disassembled standard parts produced by our workshop."

As Malin disassembled a few more rifles, he discovered a significant problem—three bolts, with length discrepancies of +2 centimeters, +1 centimeter, and -1 centimeter, respectively.

These were just the issues with the bolts; all the parts on these guns were handmade. Although they fit tightly, replacing some parts caused problems.

In Malin’s workshop, such craftsmanship would get an artisan kicked out by his peers—there were plenty of high-level artisans outside who wanted to get in. To think such skill would show up to embarrass themselves?

At this point, Malin began to understand: these guns probably have only the barrels originating from Malin’s workshop—indeed, as Malin’s workshop massively ships out goods, breech-loading rifles are not a challenge for some skilled artisans, and parts like the gun mechanisms can be copied, but high-precision barrels cannot be manually lathed.

Even defective barrels from Malin’s workshop are extraordinarily useful when released into the outside world.

So, someone must have found the person in charge of recycling defective barrels at the workshop and deceived them with offers of money and sufficient metal. The staff count of the recycling and melting groups is balanced, and they typically rotate their work schedules monthly; therefore, it’s not that every group has issues, but it’s definitely not just a single group’s problem.

With this in mind, Malin took these rifles back to his Semi-Plane, told Tuojin to guard the town and wait for support, and then contacted Ails—if the situation were urgent, Malin would need Ails’s help.

Naturally, the Lich readily agreed—he had been making a fortune recently, as Malin had taught him knowledge from before the Great Destruction Era, and he was even able to cast his own muzzle-loading cannons now, making the Lich all the more compliant with Malin’s wishes.

Then Malin opened a teleportation portal with Lulu and headed straight back to the workshop’s office area.

Today, only an Elf ambassador was on duty. After listening to what Malin said, and upon seeing the weapons he brought out, the ambassador’s temper flared—these barrels were 10 millimeters, and the last batch of 10-millimeter barrels were made last year, requested by Dwarves, and at that time, the Elves were in charge of recycling and melting.

The ambassador asked Malin to wait there; he would find someone and hastily ran out of the office area.

"How could it be the Elves?" Lulu was puzzled, as she subconsciously felt that Elves would never stoop to such lowly tasks.

"Um, if I remember correctly, that was because they lost a bet to the Dwarves," Malin thought that if he didn’t remember incorrectly, this batch of goods was supposed to compete with the Dwarves in terms of production speed. The Elf ambassador and the Dwarf Great Craftsman were at loggerheads, and in the end, it was Faye who came to inspect and suggested a rotten idea—if you two won’t back down, it’s not good to fight, so you might as well settle your dispute with a card game.

In Malin’s view, had anyone else suggested this, they would probably have been spit out of Carterburg by the two Great Craftsmen, but the idea came from Faye, Malin’s lover.

So the two Great Craftsmen sat down for a card game, the Elf ambassador grim-faced as he got no jokers and the sixteen-figure cards included only the smallest four, and was thoroughly trounced by the Dwarf Great Craftsman, conceding without resentment.

Malin remembered this because he had never seen anyone lose in cards quite like that before. After hearing Malin’s explanation, Lulu was also full of confusion, showing that she had never seen such a downturn.

So the two of them sat there waiting for a while and saw the Elf Ambassador return to the office area with his people. Malin cast a spell to detect lies, and the first question he asked was whether anyone knew about substandard gun barrels being sold illegally. All the elves passed the test.

The Elf Ambassador was equally puzzled; he looked at Malin: "Would you like to ask another question?"

Malin nodded and posed the second question – Have you ever sold substandard gun barrels?

All the elves passed the test once again.

Malin wiped his face as Lulu scratched her head, and the Elf Ambassador stared blankly at the firearms.

"Your Excellency, may I ask why you are questioning us about this issue?" an elf inquired.

Malin used his Spiritual Energy to pick up a firearm and explained the situation to the elves, who then showed an expression that hinted ’Now I understand.’

"Uh... Is there something I do not know?" Malin asked.

"Yes, last year, Lady Anna and Lady Faye paid us a visit. They wanted to purchase around two hundred rifles to supply to the National Church of the Northern Kingdom. At that time, the workshop was fully booked, and as the Great Craftsman of the Dwarves is acquainted with Lady Anna, he picked two hundred of the best substandard barrels and let the Dwarven Apprentices go through the training process to make parts for these Firearms and assemble them." The young elf, who seemed to be the leader among them, explained this and gave an embarrassed smile: "You see, we have never sold any gun barrels illegally."

Malin nearly choked on his breath. He dismissed the elves and told the Ambassador to give them two months’ extra pay as encouragement and compensation. Malin, accompanied by Lulu, went to Rongma – it seemed better to get a clear picture of the situation, as Lady Anna had been elusive recently, leaving Malin no choice but to seek her daughter.

Faye, upon learning of Malin’s intentions, immediately assisted him to unravel his confusion – this batch of goods was indeed solicited by the National Church of the Northern Kingdom through the Church of Justice, which contacted Anna’s mother, Lady Anna. They required a small batch of rifles without explaining why, and it wasn’t customary for churches to ask why. Thus, Lady Anna, along with her daughter, went to the workshop, only to find that the output was scheduled up to the year after next. Left with no alternative, she allowed the Great Craftsman of the Dwarves to transform unsuitable barrels into completely new rifles.

According to the Great Craftsman of the Dwarves, the accuracy of these rifles was mediocre, but the National Church’s inspectors who came to test the firearms reportedly praised them highly.

So one was willing to give, the other willing to receive, and they handed over the rifles in October last year. As for what happened afterwards, no one knew.

This matter was definitely supposed to be reported to Malin, but with Lady Anna running around outside all the time, she simply had no time, and Faye also had no chance to meet Malin. As time passed, they nearly forgot, so had Malin not come and asked today, Faye would have almost forgotten about the whole affair.

Malin glanced at Lulu – how had this circled back to the National Church?

Lulu also expressed her puzzlement.

However, as things stood, Malin’s next stop was now determined. Considering that consecutive teleports could affect Lulu, Malin decided to have dinner in Rongma before returning – after all, with no issues at the workshop and the National Church in trouble, Malin was just going to watch the excitement.

Since it was a break, Malin decided to cook and prepared many dishes with the help of two cooks from Thainan. Besides his own meal, Malin also prepared a lot of delicious food for the female guards sent from various churches.

After all, Malin’s wives needed their care while he was away recently.

After dinner, Malin returned to Koser Town with Lulu. By then, Koser Town had become much more bustling. The arrival of several more groups had put some strain on the town, but luckily Malin’s reinforcements from the North could even use ice and snow to build igloos for warmth, and the town had established new defensive lines and camps.

After hearing the information Malin had gathered, Tuojin was much relieved, knowing the weapons hadn’t been leaked by a rat in the workshop. He then updated Malin about the afternoon’s events, revealing that scout teams from the Northern Kingdom troops had visited the area, but after confirming it was Malin’s forces, they didn’t even enter the town and hurried off.

This left Malin somewhat uncertain, but considering some matters still required clarification, he wrote a letter to His Majesty of Manheim and sent it to old Hagelberry. After dealing with such matters frequently, the old gentleman should have his ways by now.

"I feel like you’re giving my grandfather a hard time," Lulu complained.

"Where do you get that? Your grandfather has gotten used to it for over a month now," Malin responded with a laugh, though he still felt a bit uneasy inside.

Malin wondered if the old head of the Hagelberry family would accuse him of mistreating an elderly person.