Chapter 554 554 The Buggy
The basis for the whole buggy was the fact that it needed to move quickly over any terrain, so Wolfe didn't want to weigh it down any more than he had to with Mana Crystals, but it did need enough to sustain its defences if it was attacked by a Rank Two or Three Monster.
They hadn't seen many, if any, Rank Four monsters in the wilderness, which was good for him, since they hadn't distributed any weapons that would seriously threaten a Rank Four monster without sustained fire.
Just like with his own armour. One Rank three or four Witch was no real threat. But dozens of them at once, or like the machine gun, firing offensive spells ten times a second, was a very different matter.
So he used a higher density mana crystal in the floor pan to increase the capacity, and then started to layer the defensive Inscriptions under the driver's seat. It was a good spot that wasn't going to see a lot of wear and tear, so the spells should be fairly safe there.
He started with a five layered [Elemental Armour] spell that covered the buggy and its occupants, then added protective air magic around the tires that would prevent punctures, and then began on the propulsion system.
The motor was sourced from the airplanes, just directly swapped with a shaft drive and gear reduction, so there was no need to fully inscribe it, just to link the power systems to the storage and add the Mana Gathering Array.
With that done, and the ammunition loaded into the gun, the buggy was technically functional, they just needed to adjust all the controls so that it worked the way that the operators expected it to.
It had to be responsive, but not too jerky to be able to precisely control the speed when you were circling a target, or avoiding obstacles on the ground. The design looked like it had an incredible amount of suspension travel, and wide tires with ridiculously deep and widely spaced treads.
If this thing was ever operated on pavement, it would eat through those in no time at all, but out here in the soft dirt and mud they needed all the traction they could get.
Then he started on the enhancement spells. That was a bit more complex bit of elemental magic, and not his specialty. The basics he could do, as they were gravity-based, and worked to keep the structure from bending, but the ones to repair and prevent fractures in the metal components were Earth Magic, and he needed a Witch for that, as Wolfe had never developed the affinity.
"These last few spells are all yours. It needs the structural integrity and repair array, and then it needs something to make it float when necessary so that we don't drown the occupants accidentally."
"Only on demand?" One of the witches asked.
"That's right. Most of the time it will want to sink and get traction, or hide in shallow water or mud for an attack, so we don't want it to float all the time, it's not a boat." Wolfe agreed.
"Oh, that makes good sense. Alright, I know the Inscription that we need." The witch announced, and began to draw it up on the board so that the others could decide if her idea was a good one.
They all examined it closely, then a few of them wrote alternate versions on the board, slightly different from the first.
There wasn't any talking, just thinking as they examined the spell circles on the board and looked at the buggy, trying to decide what version of the spell would be right for it.
"Alright, this is the one. Just enough to keep it from sinking, but not enough to make it float on mud if it doesn't have to. It will be faster that way." Janet decided, and the witch who had drawn it began to inscribe it on a clean spot under the driver's seat with the other inscriptions.
"There we go. That should about do it. How do we test it, though? Should we load it in the boat and just hand it off to a scout? Or should we drive around like madwomen and go hunting monsters outside the forest?" Janet asked with a twinkle in her eyes that said she would greatly enjoy watching that.
It was no secret that only a few witches here in Forest Grove actually had any experience driving, but like with the airplanes, they could just learn as they went.
They had built the thing after all, so they had at least a pretty decent idea of how it was supposed to work, even if they'd never done it. Plus, they were the engineering team, they had worked on plenty of vehicles before this one as well.
"I think that we should bring it to the scouts. They're the ones that will be using most of them, so they should be the ones to test it and tell us if we overlooked something that they need.
We know what we want it to do, but when they test it, they'll know what they need it to do, and that might not be the same thing." Wolfe suggested.
"Oh, good point. We should let them do it, and then we can refine it for them so that it's what the scouts from all the villages need. This will make their job way safer, and they will be able to cover more ground, so they'll have better reports for us."
One of the witches raised her hand. "I just realized that we overlooked something important. We didn't build in a radio. We should likely build one into the dash with a good antenna so that they can contact the base from a distance, and not with the crappy handheld units they carry."
"See, different sets of eyes will find different issues. Good catch, it would have been embarrassing if the testers couldn't even radio back to us." Janet chuckled.
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