Thomas didn't know exactly how a claymore mine was made off of the top of his head. He only knew the general principle of the mine. It should be a directed explosion that releases a cloud of shrapnel and is triggered by a tripwire. He was pretty certain that he could cobble that together without too many issues. He even had wonderful Trolls to test the mine on. Oh yeah, he also needed to put legs or spikes on the bottom of the mine so that it could remain standing and aimed where he wanted it to detonate.

He looked over his supplies and shook his head. Using Origin Steel for this project would have two terrible downsides. First, it was just a plain waste of excellent steel. Second, he didn't want to leave any of the steel behind to be collected as scraps and reused by the pirates when they returned to their cave. So he was left with regular steel. He pulled the last of his iron ingots out of his inventory and turned some of them into plain steel for use with the mines. He left the rest as iron to make the front plates of the mines. He didn't have any special materials so he planned to use physics to generate his shaped explosion. By making the backplate and sides of the mine thicker steel with a thin iron plate for the front; he would force the explosion to travel the path of least resistance. That would be the weaker and thinner iron front plate.

He carefully planned out how he was going to make the claymores before getting to work. The first step, making shrapnel. He was beginning to hate this process to his bones. At least this time he didn't need to use the extruder. He simply picked an iron ingot and used his Transmutation to reshape it into a long thin iron bar. Sadly he couldn't directly transmute it into small cubes, but just this saved him at least a couple of hours of work at a forge and extruder. He made a couple more bars of iron so he could make plenty of shrapnel for the claymores. He wanted them to be beyond deadly.

Once all the bar stock was made, he conjured a thick straight blade that looked like an elongated cleaver with a razor's edge. The modified cleaver was used to roughly chop the bar stock into cubes that were approximately one centimeter on each side. Since he was hand cutting them they weren't perfectly uniform like a machine would have made but they would still be plenty effective. Once all of the bar stock was chopped up into little cubes he had hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of shrapnel for the mines. If he didn't use it all he could just transmute it all back into a single piece. He felt that it was a tad unfair that he could put things together but not take them apart.

With the shrapnel ready, Thomas picked up a steel ingot and began to reshape it. The ingot turned into a piece of flat metal a few millimeters thick with four walls rising up the side. It looked similar to a small metal baking pan. The excess steel was pulled to the side on a thin spur and broken off. It didn't take more than a fifth of the ingot to make the backplate for the claymore. He looked over the piece and arbitrarily picked one of the longer walls to be the top of the claymore. He quickly formed a small hole that the firing pin would be fed through. He planed to make the claymore's work similar to how grenades did, just their firing mechanism would be slightly different.

With the hole prepped for the firing pin, he grabbed some leather and created a rectangular pouch about a quarter of the size of the claymores interior. The reasoning for this was simple, Firestone Gem's were way more explosive than regular Firestone. He was even worried that the pouch he made might hold too much. He went with the small pouch because the explosion should spread through the empty space inside of the mine before the pressure caused it to look for a way out. This should spread the force of the explosion behind all of the shrapnel and force it all out together. Hopefully.

He placed the leather pouch inside of the mine and adjusted it so that the opening in the top seam of the pouch aligned with the hole in the claymore. When it did he fused it in place. His next step was to create the faceplate of the mine. He used simple iron for this and made a plate that was just a little thicker than a piece of paper. The backplate was used to get the dimensions right. After removing the excess iron the plate was set down and shrapnel was laid out on it in a single layer. Once the shrapnel was all set, a piece of leather was placed over it and fused to the faceplate to tightly hold the shrapnel in place. This would prevent the shrapnel from moving around and keep it at least somewhat uniform inside of the mine.

Once the shrapnel was in place the faceplate was fused onto the backplate creating a thin rectangular box that looked pretty unassuming. Next, he pulled a small bit of steel off of what remained of the first ingot and began breaking it into several pieces. The first two were small triangular pieces with a hole through one of the tips. Then he created a thin bar that could fit through those two holes followed by a straight bar with a matching hole through the middle. These four pieces would make up the trigger mechanism of the mine. He created two more small triangular pieces with holes in one point and made a matching hole through the trigger bar at one end. The last piece he made was a simple spring.

The plan was pretty basic. The bar would pivot using the first two triangles while the second two held it in place with the pin. Once the pin was removed a spring below the bar would push one end up forcing the other end down. The end moving down would have a small fully charged mana crystal that would make contact with the firing pin and activate it. Then, BOOM! There would be no time delay with this one. As soon as the mana crystal touches the firing pin it will activate and provide the spark to the ground up Firestone Gem inside of the mine. Looking over the parts, Thomas had a truly wicked grin.

He started lining the parts up on top of the mine, getting them into position so that the trigger bar was properly aligned with where the firing pin would be. He had to be at least somewhat precise in this instance. Though he did have a few ideas to mitigate the possibility of a misfire, like making the mana crystal flat and oversized so it was guaranteed to touch the firing pin even if the trigger bar was somewhat misaligned. He wasn't too worried about the mana crystal being left behind. The crystals were pretty fragile so the explosion would easily obliterate them and leave nothing but small scraps or powder behind. The Firestone Gem powder was even less of a worry, it would all completely burn up in the explosion.

After making sure the alignment of the parts for the trigger mechanism were all set, he fused them all in place. To test it he created a simple pin and lowered the trigger bar onto the spring. Once the hole in the back of the trigger bar lined up with the holes in the two smaller triangles, he wiggled the pin into place. Once he let go of the trigger bar the pin held it in place perfectly. He gave the whole mine a few sturdy shakes to see if anything would come loose easily but everything held together well. The shrapnel inside the mine didn't even make any noise. To test the mechanism, he put his pinky through a small loop he'd created on one end of the pin and pulled. The pin popped out with very little resistance from the pressure of the spring. Once it was removed the pressure of the spring pushed up on the trigger bar and tilted it so that the other end dropped into the spot where the firing pin would be later.

Thomas laughed and gave himself a pat on the back. It was crude and wouldn't be likely to survive in harsh conditions but it worked! He set down his work and got his pestle and mortar along with a piece of Firestone Gem chipped off of the main block. He ground it into a fine powder though he made sure to do it slowly so he didn't generate much heat through friction. He still had no idea how sensitive to heat the new form of Firestone was and he refused to take any chances. Once the Firestone Gem was ground into a fine powder he fed it into the mine using a funnel conjured from Metal magic. He made sure to push it into the pouch and fill it completely. Once it was nice and compact he only had a few steps left.

He recocked the trigger bar and locked it in place with the pin. After that, he broke off a piece of the massive Amalgamated Mana Crystal and reshaped it into a flat disc before fully charging it with mana. The flat mana crystal disc was then glued onto the trigger bar. He felt glue was more appropriate than trying to fuse the metal with the mana crystal. It was more fragile and more likely to be blown to bits without leaving any purified mana crystal stuck to the trigger. It was one of the few pieces that he expected would be likely to survive the explosion. It was simply a solid piece of metal after all.

He picked up the spare steel and pulled off a section that he split into two pieces. These would create the legs for the mine to stand on or to be stabbed into softer ground. They were basic and simple. The two pieces were formed into a V shape. Once formed the tip of the V shape was fused to the bottom of the mine so that the mine could stand on four legs without falling over. He could have done something more complex, like folding legs, but he couldn't bring himself to waste more time designing the perfect claymore mines. He needed these to be fast and easy to mass-produce alone.

With the mechanical components finished he just needed to enchant and install the firing pin and the deadly device of war would be complete. Once the pin was installed, all he would have to do is pull the pin and it should detonate and release a spray of fire and shrapnel that should at least wound anyone nearby. He wasn't nieve enough to place his hopes on the mines flat out killing the pirates, not with the materials it was made of. He shook the thoughts out of his head and collected his enchanting supplies. Once he crafted a pin with a wide flat top, he got down to the enchantment. This enchantment was actually really simple. Once mana was introduced it was supposed to create a small flame at the tip of the pin.

The enchantment took on his preferred circuitry-like design. The center was a circle with jagged lines radiating out of it towards the edges. He wanted to make sure that no matter where the mana crystal came into contact with the enchanted pin it would touch a line and activate the enchantment. It only took a few minutes of carving with the summoned engraving tool for him to complete the enchantment. Once it was done he carefully held the pin by its head and channeled a small amount of mana into it. Instantly, a little flame sprang to life at the tip of the pin. It would be more than enough to ignite the Firestone Gem powder inside of the mine.

After cutting off his supply of mana the flame immediately died out and left the metal cool to the touch. That was a bit of a bonus to magic, ignoring the laws of physics like that. Thomas made sure to face the mine away from himself before beginning the process of installing the firing pin. The odds of the mine going off were minimal but just in case any accidents happened he at least wanted the shrapnel to be fired away from him. It would just make it far more likely for him to survive the explosion if the mine detonated. He gently inserted the firing pin into its hole bringing it into contact with the packed in Firestone Gem powder. Once it was in place he fused the very edge of it with the mine to lock it in place permanently.

System Notice: Please name your creation.

"Claymore Mine."

System Notice: You have created an Uncommon rarity Claymore Mine. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 2,848 Magitech Engineering experience. Weapon Type: Claymore Mine Rarity: Uncommon Quality: Excellent Description: The Claymore Mine is a single-use item. When the pin of the mine is removed it will cause a directed explosion that releases a spray of shrapnel.

+Deals damage with a Power of 350 within 5 meters

+Power drops by 50 for every meter beyond 5