As for the other secret realms that were being controlled by corrupted humans, they had also been swiftly crushed and brought under control. Unlike the situation around Washington, most of these operations were being led by experienced adults who actually knew how to organize people and deal with dangerous situations. In a somewhat strange way, many of those adults were still treated almost like teenagers because of their position within their respective families. Most of them were already in their twenties, but their position in the family had barely changed since they were younger, meaning they were still accustomed to being treated as the younger generation.
Because of that, some of them had barely noticed how much time had passed while they were focused on their duties. Their responsibilities had increased, but their position within the family had not necessarily changed alongside them. It was almost as though they had remained stuck in the same stage of life despite becoming adults in every meaningful sense. Fortunately, that was not really a problem at the moment, because there was far too much happening for anyone to become genuinely bored.
In fact, boredom was likely to become one of their greatest enemies if everything continued peacefully for too long. The secret realms had become a strange mixture of danger, work, and opportunity, and almost everyone had found something they could contribute to. Some families were fighting, others were scouting, and still others were experimenting with the strange rules created by mana. There was simply too much to learn for anyone to sit around complaining about having nothing to do.
The Roth family was an excellent example of that. Instead of standing around waiting for something to happen, they were currently working inside their workshops and constructing ballistas. It was not particularly surprising that they had chosen siege weapons, considering the Roth family's long and relatively quiet history with them. They were blacksmiths first and foremost, but that did not mean they limited themselves to making swords and armor.
The Roth family had always believed that if they wanted to craft proper weapons, they needed to understand how those weapons were actually used. Their philosophy extended to nearly everything they made, which meant that Roth blacksmiths were expected to become familiar with a wide variety of weapons and armor. They were not necessarily the greatest specialists in every individual weapon, but they understood enough about most of them to make competent designs and recognize what made a weapon effective.
That knowledge had also proven useful whenever someone considered antagonizing them. Being capable blacksmiths was one thing, but being able to produce weapons of war gave the family another layer of protection. Throughout their history, they had therefore built quite a few siege weapons and maintained a surprising amount of documentation concerning them. Ballistas were among the weapons for which they had particularly extensive records, making the current project much easier than it otherwise would have been.
The Roth family members were therefore happily hammering away at the metal components required for the ballistas while their recruits worked on the wooden sections. The workshop was filled with the familiar sounds of metal being shaped, wood being cut, and people calling out measurements to one another. It was not exactly a peaceful environment, but for the Roth family it was almost comforting. They were doing something they understood, using skills their family had spent generations developing.
Across the various secret realms, the Roths had also pulled aside a Sonnenberg whenever they needed advice concerning the strings for their ballistas. That was one area where the Sonnenbergs were considerably more knowledgeable than the Roth family. It had been quite some time since the Roths had last constructed ballistas on this scale, and while their old documentation remained useful, string-making techniques had continued to improve.
The Sonnenbergs, on the other hand, worked with bowstrings every single day. Their entire profession revolved around bows and archery, meaning they had kept up with the best ways to create strong and reliable strings. The difference was particularly important now that mana had entered the equation, because ordinary knowledge about string construction was no longer enough. A string that could withstand the force of a powerful bow was one thing, but a string capable of handling the forces involved in a mana-enhanced ballista was something else entirely.
As for why the Roth family was building these particular monstrosities, the answer was relatively simple. They did not believe they had all that much to contribute to ordinary combat. They were certainly capable fighters, but they knew that they were not as naturally suited to fighting as the families that had spent generations specializing in weapons and combat. Rather than pretending otherwise, the Roths had decided to contribute in the way they knew best.
They were building weapons of war.
Ballistas would be useful against Stage One creatures, particularly when dealing with enemies that were difficult to approach safely. More importantly, the Roth family believed that such weapons would become extremely valuable if a Stage Two creature appeared. There was still some uncertainty about the terminology, however, because everyone was currently called a Mortal after reaching the first stage.
That raised an obvious question. If people reached the next stage, would they still be called Mortals? The Roth family had not yet found an answer to that question, and it was not exactly the sort of problem they could solve by hammering metal into shape. For now, they simply continued working while assuming that the System would eventually provide the appropriate terminology.
"Hey, Arin, have you seen what the Roth family is building?" Bill asked.
He had apparently already asked the Roth family about their project after they pulled Bertho inside their blacksmith workshop. Arin, however, had been far too distracted by the surroundings to notice what was happening around him. He looked toward Bill with mild confusion before answering.
"No, I have not. What are they making?" Arin asked.
His attention wandered almost immediately as he looked around the incredibly well-stocked workshop they had been given. The place was filled with materials that would have made any bowyer extremely happy, and Arin was no exception. He was not particularly impressed by the equipment itself because he already had most of the same tools back home. What really captured his attention was the material.
He could feel the mana inside it.
The difference was enormous compared with the materials he normally worked with. These were not simply ordinary plants that had absorbed a little mana from their surroundings. Some of them were actual spiritual plants, meaning their very characteristics had been changed by mana. Arin could immediately sense the difference, and his mind began racing through all the possibilities for bowmaking.
One plant, for example, possessed incredibly strong fibers that had themselves been reinforced by mana. Cutting the material was difficult enough that it immediately made Arin wonder what kind of bowstring could be created from it. His attention became completely absorbed by the materials in front of him, and for a moment he forgot that Bill was even standing beside him.
"Earth to Arin. Earth to Arin!" Bill yelled directly beside his ear.
Arin suddenly snapped back to reality.
"Oh, sorry, Bill. What were you saying?" Arin asked.
Bill looked like he wanted to get angry, but he quickly decided that it would be useless. He knew his friend well enough to understand exactly what had happened. Arin had seen interesting materials, his mind had immediately jumped into bowmaking, and everything else around him had ceased to exist.
"The Roths are making a ballista," Bill said.
His tone suddenly became almost childish, as though he had completely forgotten that he had been annoyed only moments earlier. The idea of seeing an actual ballista being built had apparently been enough to replace his irritation with excitement.
"Wait, seriously? They can be made?" Arin asked.
His voice immediately became more excited. "I thought they would disintegrate like cannons did."
There was something almost ridiculous about the excitement in his voice. Arin had grown up around medieval weapons and had spent much of his life surrounded by bows, swords, and other historical weapons. Yet the moment he learned that a real ballista could actually function in the modern world, his enthusiasm was almost impossible to hide.
"Yes, they tested them back in Europe, and apparently they work," Bill said. "Why cannons don't work, I have no idea, but ballistas do work, which is awesome."
"Yes. I hope they hurry up. I want to shoot one," Arin replied.
He sounded like someone who had just been given permission to play with the coolest weapon imaginable. The fact that he was already a skilled archer probably made the idea even more appealing. A ballista was, in some ways, simply an enormous weapon that used the same basic principle of launching a projectile, only taken to a completely different scale.
"But still, it is weird that cannons don't work," Arin said.
That thought quickly sent him into another bout of nerding out about the various siege weapons that might now be possible. If ballistas could function despite mana, then there were suddenly all kinds of questions about what other ancient weapons might still work. The difference between what mana allowed and what it rejected was becoming increasingly strange, and Arin found himself fascinated by the possibilities.
The reason they even knew that cannons did not work was because the information had never become widely known. The people who had spent a considerable amount of money on the project had absolutely no interest in announcing their failure to the world. Government employees in particular had no desire to admit that enormous amounts of public money had been wasted on a project that could not produce a functioning weapon.
There was also another reason to keep the failure quiet. If other factions and organizations did not know that cannons failed, they might waste their own money attempting the same thing. From the perspective of the people who had already failed, that was almost preferable to admitting that they had made an expensive mistake. Unfortunately for them, the information had eventually spread through the Trade Families.
The Trade Families had been involved because the Great Houses had approached them for assistance in designing and building the cannons. More specifically, the Roth family had been asked to help because the Great Houses wanted to reduce costs while still producing something functional. Casting large iron cannons was already expensive, but producing them entirely from metal filled with mana made the process ridiculously costly.
The Roth family's expertise was therefore considered necessary. If anyone could figure out how to make the project work, it was assumed that experienced Roth blacksmiths would be among the people capable of doing it. They had the knowledge, the workshops, and the experience with mana-infused metal needed to determine whether the idea was actually viable.
Unfortunately, none of that mattered.
No matter what they tried, the cannons turned to dust when someone attempted to fire them. It did not matter how carefully they constructed them, how much mana they put into the metal, or how many adjustments they made to the design. The moment the cannon was actually subjected to the forces required to fire it, the entire weapon simply failed.
That failure left the Great Houses and the governments involved in the project with very few options. The Roth family had essentially been the last resort, the group brought in to determine whether the enormous amount of money already invested into the project could somehow be salvaged. When even their expertise could not make the cannons function, there was little else that could be done.
The failure eventually became another piece of information passed throughout the Trade Families. They might not know exactly why cannons failed, but they knew that they did, and that was enough to prevent many of them from repeating the same expensive mistake. The Roth family could therefore move on to the weapons that actually worked.
And right now, that meant ballistas.
The metal components continued to take shape beneath their hammers while their recruits worked on the wooden frame. Nearby, Bertho was helping them with the string, bringing knowledge from generations of bowmaking into a weapon that was far larger than any bow the family normally produced. For the Roths, it was simply another project to solve. For Arin and Bill, however, the prospect of actually firing one was considerably more exciting.