"My beloved, show me more of your memories!" Elvira pleaded, her eyes wide and sparkling like she'd just discovered a new spell. She followed behind Ben, her hands clasped behind her back, practically bouncing with excitement.
Ben, on the other hand, was doing his best to not make eye contact.
It had been a month since their fight with the Ravagers—and a week since Elvira last dove into his memories. At first, he'd actually enjoyed it. She'd gotten inspired, kept inventing useful tools and gadgets. Life was good.
Even their mobile workshop had been turned into a full-blown RV—complete with tires made from mushroom fiber, enchanted with some kind of weird alchemical elasticity.
Ben didn't know how. And, truthfully? He didn't want to know.
Last time he asked, Elvira gave him a lecture that felt like being back in high school physics—only worse. She'd turned into a professor, drawing glowing diagrams in the air and using words like "mana tension memory" and "aetheric weave elasticity."
He'd spent an entire day nodding and pretending to understand. He didn't. Not even a little.
In his opinion, Elvira was terrible at teaching.
At one point, he even asked, "Can't you just share your understanding with me directly? Like, brain-to-brain?"
She'd tilted her head and replied, "It's not that simple. This level of comprehension requires a layered magical framework and a flexible conceptual foundation built on pre-existing theoretical logic—"
Ben blacked out somewhere around "layered." But honestly, that wasn't the reason he was avoiding her today. No, the real reason was far more traumatic.
Last time she'd peeked into his memories, she'd accidentally wandered into his late-night activities—those memories. The kind that were supposed to stay locked up in a corner labeled "private, do not open." He had nearly imploded from the embarrassment.
Elvira, of course, was completely unfazed. She'd just tilted her head like always, curious as ever, and asked a string of inappropriate questions with all the grace of someone asking about weather patterns.
"No," Ben said firmly, keeping a few steps ahead of her. "Absolutely not. Not after what happened last time."
"Oh come on, my beloved," Elvira pouted as she trailed behind. "I just wanted to check how radar works. And about that other memory—there's nothing to be embarrassed about. I did tell you, as your wife, you can vent those urges to me anytime."
Ben's lips twitched. "Yeah, not helping."
She grinned, entirely too pleased with herself.
"Just go finish experimenting on the gun," he muttered, changing the subject. "If we can get it working, our Krell troops will be stronger. Stop wasting time on your side projects."
"There's no such thing as a useless project!" she protested. "Don't you enjoy them too?"
Ben didn't answer. Because she wasn't wrong. But he wasn't going to admit it. Helping her with her experiments had made him realize something: Elvira was brilliantly focused, but at the same time, easily distracted. If something new caught her attention, she'd abandon her current project in a heartbeat.
In her defense, she claimed every new invention was meant to "enhance the old one," and she was just "optimizing the final result."
In Ben's eyes? That was just fancy justification.
He still couldn't wrap his head around how inventing a jacuzzi had anything to do with building a magical rifle for their Krell soldiers. But arguing with Elvira was like stepping into a magical black hole. He'd ask a simple question, and two hours later she'd still be drawing glowing diagrams mid-air, talking about "mana flow harmony" and "inter-system spell lattice compatibility."
Ben sighed. Long and tired. "Fine. Let's make a deal. You finish the gun—completely—then we can talk about memories again. Until then? Not another word."
Elvira huffed dramatically, crossing her arms. "Fiiine," she muttered, as if agreeing to the terms of a war treaty. "But only because I'm almost done with the firing array."
"Good," Ben said, turning away.
"Also," she called after him brightly, "the jacuzzi's mana filtration system might improve the gun's cooling enchantment!"
Ben didn't answer. He knew better.
The gun they were trying to build sounded simple—at least in his head. Fire enchanted talismans from a storage chamber, make them explode on impact, and carry a decent ammo count. Easy, right?
But what sounded straightforward in theory had turned into a logistical nightmare for Elvira. The problem wasn't the gun itself—it was the ammunition.
Ben had insisted from the beginning that the ammo box be imbued with storage magic—a proper spatial enchantment that created an extra-dimensional chamber. In his mind, it wasn't just about convenience. It was about scale.
He wanted each rifle to hold hundreds, maybe even thousands of talismans, without adding any weight. Ideally, this pocket space wouldn't be tied to just one weapon—but would be linked across all rifles, giving them shared access to a central ammo cache.
Without that feature, the entire idea felt pointless to him.
After all, Krell scouts already had enchanted bows capable of firing arrows at bullet-like speeds. What they didn't have was a way to sustain pressure— limited ammo capacity, and constant delays between shots. He wasn't trying to replace their weapons with something flashy—he was trying to solve real battlefield problems.
He wanted something that could rapid-fire, carry enough ammunition to last an entire fight, and hit harder than anything they'd used before.
That meant two core requirements: a high-capacity, compact ammo system, and a firing mechanism that could cycle talismans faster than any string ever could.
Elvira had handled the easy parts. The talismans were done—customized for various effects and tuned for destructive impact. The firing trigger? Smooth, easy to use, and elegant.
But the real problem—the part still driving her half-mad—was the storage integration.
Enchanting a storage space was one thing. But making it accurately dispense individual talismans, feed them into a firing chamber, and sync perfectly with the Krell's movement, even while the weapon was being jolted, tilted, or slammed in combat...
That was proving to be one of the most difficult things she'd ever designed.