Mondays were peak, actually.

There was not one day you could be sure about before it began, besides Monday. It was almost always going to be the worst with waking up for work or school. No matter how your weekend was, Monday was always gonna be crappy, and you would want to wish it away. Monday was pretty static compared to other days of the week.

The point is, Mondays were predictable for the most part, and a sort of anchor for the week. If it went bad, it went as expected. If it went good, then you don't have anything to complain about. Other days didn't have this kind of guarantee attached with them — you could be looking forward to Friday, only to be hit by a truck on said Friday and have it ruined; on Monday, it'd be within the realm of expectation, and therefore, not as disappointing.

Anyway, my Monday had been going great so far! It was around three in the morning and I was in my basement, getting work done for once. It might be unwise to stay up on a work night but I think I'd be fine later in the morning, especially when I had important work right now. Besides, I was in a good mood and intended to make full use of it.

The thing that I was currently attending to was the new spider that I was making for my idea to get Voth's key back. The plan was simple: I make a bug that can carry stuff around, Voth possesses it, takes it to the fort where the key is, retrieves the key and brings it back to me so that I can then do the ritual or whatever I have to do to give it to him. It was a bit crappy since I was making Voth do the brunt of the work, but I think he'll appreciate having his thing sooner rather than later.

Additionally, I was figuring out automating the whole process of making creatures. That was an idea I had like a month ago but hadn't been able to for reasons, such as almost getting killed, but whatever; life throws rocks at you when you're climbing up a cliff, or when you're standing around doing nothing, or when you're sleeping— whatever, that's all rambling and beside the point.

So, new spider. I think I'll call him... Retriever? That's a bit on the nose. Ret? I don't know, but I guess that's good enough. So, Ret (I should really get a better name) was still in the crucible. He was a lot larger now, no longer just a little dark blob in the red water that you might miss. He looked like a normal spider, having only eight legs and looking a bit like a particularly oversized tarantula that was also a jumping spider. On his back, however, was a bright red 'X' spot, signalling that he was not to be trifled with.

Of course, the spot meant nothing; it was there just to scare anyone or anything from trying to attack him. I wouldn't actually make him poisonous since I wasn't a hundred percent sure of whether he'd come out as an eight-legged puppy or as an eight-legged pitbull named "Cupcake". However, I doubt that Ret will come out aggressive since I had been monitoring his development closely and comparing whatever data I had gathered with the data I had from the other bugs and Spider.

The one factor that differed between the failed bugs and Spider was how much the crucible had been fed before the creation of the bug. Less nutrition made the bug somewhat deformed and rather aggressive — maybe due to incomplete development, or some kind of starvation instinct. While I could use more than five subjects for my data to narrow down the reason, I wasn't too keen on making things suffer and then die for something that can be fixed by just me being responsible for once in my life and feeding the crucible more.

Anyway, the crucible had been well-fed before I made it make Ret and I was pretty confident he'd come out alright. I just had to wait for the crucible to finish making Ret, which should be any minute now. I had to be around to take Ret out of the red water, dry him, and then put him through dream training. The process would be a bunch easier if I could automate it, especially the dream part, but I hadn't yet implemented anything for that. That's some more work to keep me occupied later.

Right now, I occupied myself NOT by staring at the crucible like it stared at me (that'd be weird) but rather with the other important thing I had: assembling the coil-gun. I had finished coiling up the last coil and just had to assemble the gun, which I was already doing at the table.

The design was simple, compared to the stuff that you'd find in Eurasian or UFN forces, I think.

So, the four coils sat equidistant on the barrel, a half-metre long plastic pipe. Each of the coils was connected to the pointy end of a quartz gem, which would convert any magic it gets into electricity very quickly, like a capacitor. The flat ends of the quartz gems were then connected to a piece of glass by a copper wire, since copper was good at conducting magic as well.

That piece of glass had iron wire wrapped around it, and was in contact with a second piece of glass. The glass piece with the iron wire was attuned to the iron's magic, and had one-way runes on it. The other piece of glass had a copper wire that connected to an amethyst gem that was attached to the barrel a little bit before the coil. The amethyst would detect and amplify the magical signature of whatever was in the barrel right above it, which in this case would be an iron nail. It would then transfer that magic signature to the second piece of glass. Since both the pieces of glass would be attuned to iron's magic, they would let magic flow between them, acting like a switch. I was quite proud of that mechanism and how simple it was.

Moving on, the second piece of glass was connected to a diamond by a wire that had a basic electrical switch as a safety mechanism to stop magic flow. The diamond, which served as a magic battery, was connected to an amber cone. The amber would take in magic from the surroundings and deposit it in the diamond till it was full. Three of the four coils had this set-up, which should make them activate in sequence when an iron nail goes through the barrel.

The first coil, the one that fires initially, didn't have any amethyst in it. Instead, the mechanism was connected to a trigger that would simultaneously let the second glass touch a bunch of iron wire, while cutting the connection between the amber and the diamond to ensure an instantaneous-ish flow.

I was finishing the initial coil mechanism, making sure that it worked properly since it was the only thing with moving parts. It seemed to be working fine, if I were to go by the quartz lighting up ever so slightly for a moment whenever I pulled the trigger. What I had to do now was actually test the gun to see if it works or not in its current design.

I picked up a little one inch nail that I had set aside on the table and inserted it into the barrel from the trigger end. I’ll finish the chamber in a bit so that the nail doesn't drop out, but after the first test. I carefully picked up the gun in my hooves and just inspected it for a moment. It looked like a piece of junk right now but that didn't bother me much. It was definitely lighter than any gun I've ever held, which was a plus. I walked away from the table and to the centre of the basement, and took aim at the wall furthest away from me, steadying my breath as I did. Without waiting another moment, I pulled the trigger.

It took a moment for me to see the nail be shot out. The projectile sailed through the air for a second before hitting the floor in front of the wall and coming to a noisy stop. I lowered the gun and stared at the nail for a second. The most important observation was that the gun definitely worked. However, the fact that the nail didn't even hit the wall, that was about six metres away, made it clear that the gun was nowhere as powerful as what I expected or wanted. But why though? I think a second test will answer that.

I levitated the nail back to me and inserted it into the barrel. I took aim and fired again. This time around, the nail only went half the distance and seeing that did make my mood a bit worse. Instead of keeping steady, the gun had lost power, which definitely wasn't good. However, it was obvious now what the problem was: not enough magic in the system. Every time I fire the gun, the magic in the diamonds will be depleted, and if I don't give the diamonds enough time to recharge, they'll give me a smaller energy output.

To confirm that, I charged up the diamonds with my magic by holding them and the ambers in my telekinetic grip for a while. The gems syphoned off of my grip, making me exert some more energy to hold them in place. It was easy to know when they were full since they stopped syphoning magic, and glowed a bit. I hate to admit it but I was a tiny bit winded after that. However, I was more concerned that it took a whole thirty seconds for me to charge up the gems. I'll have to rectify that, somehow. Probably by adding more amber gems to increase input.

But with the gems fully charged, I could see the true power of my gun. I put in the nail and took aim at the wall again. I pulled the trigger and immediately observed some noticeable recoil. That was good; there was power behind the nail for sure, and the gun was working as intended.

The next thing that I observed was the sound of the nail hitting the wall. Twice. The first time from the wall I aimed at, and the second from the wall to my right. This observation was immediately followed by a sharp pain in my right flank. My ignorance of safety standards had come back to bite me in the ass, literally.

I cursed, dropping the gun as I turned my head to see where the nail had hit me. It was a bit hard too see at first where the nail was, with the dim light and some tears in my eyes, but once the wound started bleeding, it became a whole lot easier to spot.

The nail had hit me just below my talent mark and was about halfway in. I cursed myself again for being stupid as I touched the nail, making my flank hurt more. I made a note to myself: don't do stupid shit without any safeguards. I could have shot myself in the head just as easily as I shot my ass, and I wasn't keen on losing an eye, or worse. Whatever, I could curse myself later; first, I had to fix this problem.

I began by sucking in a breath and quickly pulling the nail out and tossing it to the side. The pain in my flank flared as I did, and more tears came to my eyes, but at least the hard part was over. It was just like ripping off a bandaid, I told myself. I was left with a tiny, bleeding wound that had to be dealt with. I didn't have any bandages or OBs at hand, but that didn't mean I was helpless.

I reached out to the blood around and in the wound with my magic and directed it to start the healing process. Moving the blood around was a bit hard since it was a fluid, but it was definitely better and easier than trying to move the flesh around the wound, and it burned just the same. The tiny wound that the nail had left me with was slowly healed, until it stopped bleeding and looked like a patch of fur-less skin. It wasn't a complete heal like the OBs since it still stung a bit and there was a bit of fur that had to grow back but it was good enough otherwise.

I stood up, a bit shakily, and walked a bit just to make sure that everything had gone alright. The stinging in my flank died down as I did and soon, it was like nothing had ever happened, almost. I still had a mental note to not do any experiments without safety, and a patch of drying blood on my flank as a physical note that I had to clean. But first, I had to record my tests.

I walked back to the table and levitated my notebook and a pen from the other table. I flipped through the notebook till I reached the page where I had written down information related to my gun. There was a list of components, and a crude drawing of the gun's design below that. Below those both, I began writing down how the three tests went and what I learned from them.

"Test 1: Shot at wall, nail barely reached.

Test 2: Shot again right after above, nail only went halfway. Cause: not enough time to recharge magic.

Test 3: Recharged all diamonds fully, took shot. Nail went fast as expected, bounced off walls and hit me. NOTE: FOLLOW SAFETY DUMBASS."

I mainly wrote this stuff down so that I have something to look back to in the future if I had to, like with the crucible's feeding data, but I doubt that I'll have use for most of what I write down, besides maybe trying to convince myself that I've done a lot.

Once I was finished writing, I turned to go pick up the gun. It was lying where I had dropped it, and nothing looked to be broken, which was good.

I walked to it and picked it up, looking over it closely to make sure that there wasn't any easy to miss damage anywhere. Fortunately, there wasn't anything like that. However, I did notice something strange. One of the diamonds had a faint glow.

How did it recharge so fast? I hadn't held that diamond in my magic or anything like that. If I could find out why, that'd be great for sure. The diamond looked normal from the side I was looking at. I turned the gun around and saw that the diamond looked normal from the other side as well. My eyes were drawn downwards, however, to the amber below the diamond, and that's where I found the thing that had changed.

There was a bit of blood on the amber.

I looked down to the ground and saw that the bloody nail was lying there. I picked it up and walked back to the table where I set it down with the gun so that I could think.

Putting blood on the amber had very clearly made it better at absorbing magic. It made sense; amber had once been alive, and living things like have a lot of magic in them, which was why it absorbed magic so much better than other gems. Blood was the... well, the life-blood of living things and therefore, it had a lot of magic in it, and probably even more magic-absorption capabilities than amber. I had accidentally put some blood on the amber, and together, the two had charged up a diamond faster than just amber alone.

I looked up to the wall, thinking some more. I could definitely use this finding to my advantage, getting my gun to reload faster, without any input of magic on my part. However, it required blood as a sort of fuel, and that was admittedly a bit messed up and probably not exactly legal. But then, I wasn't harming anyone or breaking any laws, maybe, if I only used my own blood for it. Besides, the point of the gun is to harm, so I guess that justifies it in a weird way. Does this count as blood magic? I don't think so, but I’m not sure.

I looked down at the notebook on the table, and then wrote down a few things under the observations for the third test.

"Blood from nail got onto amber accidentally. Blood on amber = quick recharge. Need more tests to determine how much. Look more into magic related to/using blood as well."

Once I was done with Ret, I would have plenty of time for this research. However it goes, it will definitely be interesting.

Author's Note

21m Au

Thanks to ArcaneDust for editing this chapter, and giving some opinions.

NO, ANYA, DON'T DO IT! DON'T LOOK INTO MAGIC RELATED TO/USING BLOOD, YOU'LL GO INSANE WITH THE KNOWLEDGE!

I actually tried making up some equations to calculate magical force and also a unit of measurement (a thaum) but that is rather complex and doesn't add enough to the story to justify it.

(If you're curious, I tried setting 1 thaum as the maximum amount of magic 1 mol of gold atoms can hold. 1 thaum of magic exerts a force of 1 Newton on an object with a mass of 1kg, which is all rather convenient. However, considering that it is magic, I think that it'll be alright.

Of course, these numbers mean nothing as of now and are subject to change.)

Anywho, how do you think Anya's foray into new, darker magic will go?