"A knot in her heart?"
I couldn't help feeling surprised at Adrian's words. Wasn't Cyrae doing everything she could to keep her husband's soul from dissipating into nothingness, by transferring it into this world's Cycle of Rebirth? Now that her wish had finally been fulfilled, what "knot" could possibly remain?
But just as I was about to press Adrian for an explanation, an eight-winged angel suddenly rounded the corner ahead of us, hurrying straight toward us. When I looked closer, it was none other than Mia.
"Feliciana? Adrian? Why are you two here as well?"
Mia, who looked anxious to begin with, froze in surprise when she ran into us. But she clearly had no spare time or energy to ask why we were here. She tossed out a single sentence and immediately rushed past us toward the offices behind us without even turning her head.
"Go to the training grounds and help search for Reed! She accidentally blew the place up again just now… only this time the blast was way too big. I have to report to Lady Elara immediately!"
"…What in the world is Reed doing?"
Watching Mia's back disappear, a bad feeling instantly surfaced in my mind. Adrian clearly thought of the same thing. He grabbed me and we hurried out of the royal castle at once.
The "training grounds" were an open area specially planned outside the royal complex, usually used by the Gryphon Knight Order—the force responsible for protecting the king—for drills and sparring. It wasn't too far from the castle where we were, but there was a stretch of water between us. On the far side of the lake, the area was largely a military-industrial zone.
The moment I finally reached open air and rose into the sky to look toward the training grounds, I froze.
In the distance, a thin column of black smoke was curling up from a crater dozens of meters across. Around it, factory buildings had collapsed across the area—by the looks of it, the damage was enormous.
"Good grief… this kind of power would take the highest-tier blast magic to pull off, wouldn't it?" Adrian muttered.
By "highest-tier blast magic," he meant the standard human classification system—something no ordinary single mage could ever achieve.
But when we arrived at the site, we realized the true force of the explosion was likely even greater. A protective barrier had been cast around the training grounds in advance to prevent the blast from spreading outward. The ruin we were seeing was, in fact, the result after the power had already been deliberately contained.
"From what I know, there haven't been any large-scale wars recently, so the equipment factories wouldn't have been operating," Adrian said after sprinting around and quickly checking the wreckage. He looked relieved. "The collapsed workshops nearby should've been empty."
Because the entire training ground had been reduced to a single massive crater, rescue teams had already entered the pit before we even arrived, searching for the person caught up in it—Reed.
The area had just endured an extremely violent explosion; elemental turbulence was everywhere, making it hard to precisely locate an angel buried beneath heaps of rubble. Still, I wasn't too worried. Angels' bodies were naturally resistant to most forms of energy impact—her life shouldn't be in danger.
"Found her—over here!"
Sure enough, cheers rose from the crowd. A figure actually climbed up out of the crater on her own.
The "injured" angel was covered in blood, her clothes shredded to scraps, her face blackened so badly she was barely recognizable. I moved closer and stared for several seconds before I was finally sure—yes, it really was Reed.
"What did you do?" I couldn't help asking, stunned. "What just happened? What are you messing around with?"
An angel—even a low-rank, two-winged angel—being blasted into this state… it was hard to imagine.
Reed, however, was clearly fine. Though she was covered in wounds, healing magic from the people around quickly restored her. And from the calm, almost indifferent look on her face, I could practically tell this kind of "accident" wasn't happening for the first time.
Still, when she heard my question, she lifted her eyes toward me and let out a light sigh.
"I'm testing explosives," she said. "Looks like I added too high a proportion of dark-element material. The blast scale exceeded my estimates."
"Ex… explosives?!"
The moment the word hit my ears, my scalp went numb.
Because magic was so dominant on the Eldoria Continent, the development of explosives and firearms was naturally extremely slow—almost primitive. To this day, there were only a few scattered records related to black powder across the entire continent. And that most primitive gunpowder obviously couldn't produce anything even remotely close to an explosion like this.
If anything, the critical part was likely the "dark element" Reed had mentioned.
"You suddenly decided to research explosives… is it because—" Adrian started, but he stopped midway.
He'd been to Earth with me. He didn't need Reed to answer; the reason clicked into place on its own.
"A lot of the military equipment we brought over from Earth needs massive logistical support to be used at full potential in this world," Reed said plainly. "I just don't want those precious weapons to go to waste."
Her goal was very clear. Once she said it, I understood too: she wanted to produce ammunition ourselves.
After all, the angels—and several nations on the continent—had acquired guns and artillery from Earth through trade. But imported ammunition would eventually run out. Building a complete ammunition supply chain from scratch in a world with relatively primitive technology was obviously not easy.
Yet with magic and elemental power, many hurdles and steps could be bypassed.
For example, according to Reed, the explosive power of propellant could be directly enhanced by using the catalytic energy characteristics of dark-element material. Metalworking could be supported and accelerated through magic. In fact, the Eldoria Continent's magical metallurgy was in no way inferior to Earth's—some high-grade military equipment had already reached, or even surpassed, the strength of steel. In that case, establishing an ammunition factory in a short time was no longer some unreachable fantasy.
"But this is way too dangerous," I said, even though I agreed with her in principle. I couldn't help voicing my concern. "Isn't there a safer method? Wouldn't it be better to do research back in Edenmere?"
This was, after all, a human kingdom. Even if there weren't many casualties, the entire training ground had just been blown away. How was Elara supposed to explain this to the kingdom's leadership?
"The high concentration of light-element in Edenmere greatly reduces the activity of gunpowder over time," Reed replied. "Some things have to be done in the lower realm's environment to work."
After resting briefly and recovering, Reed seemed to have completely forgotten the pain. She stood up and immediately started asking the industrial-zone supervisor about requisitioning another site for research.
What shocked me was that the locals in Norvale seemed to have learned nothing from the disaster. Despite that massive explosion just now, they acted as if nothing had happened and agreed to her request without hesitation.
That struck me as extremely strange. I quickly pulled aside a few people and questioned them carefully—only then did I learn why.
"This is also His Majesty King Galahad's decree," they explained. "He ordered us—those of us who were originally weapons casters and smiths—to cooperate fully with Lady Reed's research."
"They say those miraculous weapons brought back from another world can turn a powerless ordinary person into a warrior capable of matching high-rank opponents in an instant. In this world, only Lady Reed can truly understand how they work and replicate them completely. If we can do that, we'll never have to fear monsters invading from the northern wastelands again!"
Good grief—Earth's technological creations were already beginning, quietly, to change the course of this world's history.
As the kingdom's supreme ruler, King Galahad had obviously already grasped the enormous advantage firearms and artillery would bring to future wars. And even without a "transmigrator" like Reed involved, other nations on the continent were surely scrambling to do similar work.
Since stopping it was impossible, the only option was to join it.
In truth, Adrian had been anxious about this for a long time: his golden Gatling ammunition was always tight. In every battle he had to conserve it, and unless absolutely necessary he rarely used it at all. Reed's research could potentially fix that fatal weakness.
"Manufacturing small rounds isn't too hard," Reed said after hearing our purpose. She thought for a moment and then agreed readily. "A manual production line has already been set up in the park."
"But I have to prioritize the original imported standard-issue weapons for the angel corps first. Rare models like the Gatling will probably take a while longer…"
"However," she added, "one of my other research directions just made a major breakthrough, and I happen to need some suitable manpower right now. You came at the perfect time."
With that, she led us to an empty workshop not far away.
It looked like the place had originally been a sword-forging smithy. Reed had built a temporary workbench in the corner. She told us to wait where we were, then bent over the bench and worked for a while. Before long, she came over holding an oval object and introduced it:
"This is a simplified version of High-Explosive No. 8. It can be thrown from the air for ground bombardment."
"Under the protection of a physical magic barrier, it generally won't detonate. But once that barrier is strongly compressed by external force, it will automatically ignite the explosive inside and inflict damage on nearby enemies."
An air-to-ground bomb.
That part I understood immediately. Even though it looked primitive on the outside, if it could be mass-produced and used by flying troops like angels, dropping them from high altitude really could achieve a low-cost, overwhelming form of battlefield dominance.
"Way too easy."
So Reed wanted me to fly up and drop it so she could observe the effect? That kind of test didn't pose any difficulty at all.
I suddenly felt a bit disappointed. I was a transmigrator too—I had a basic understanding of explosives. Being reduced to a mere "detonator" felt like a waste of talent. I was about to object—when my eyes caught sight of another angel landing outside the workshop.
It was Mia, returning after reporting to her superiors.
If it was just menial work, Mia could easily handle it.
But what happened next was completely unexpected.
The moment Mia hurried inside and saw the explosive device in Reed's hand, her expression instantly changed. Then, without a word, she spun around, took off again, and flew away—vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.