Being born as a child prodigy used to be a blessing for Claire Rivers, especially in a world where the survival of the human race was the ultimate goal. Always be the smartest person in the room, treated like the most essential personnel, having a c...
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CHAPTER TEN the calm before the storm.
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ㅡ Day 27 ㅡ
THEREwas always a moment, before the attack, the chaos, the disturbance, the crisis. A moment of absolute calm. It was here with them. That unusual sense of quiet tranquility right before all hell broke loose. There were a lot of little warnings that something big, powerful, unstoppable was coming their way. She could feel it from her skin down to her bones and in the air around her. She could see it on the faces of the people she passedㅡa look of worry as they all knew what came after the calm.
It was two days after Jasper had succeeded on blowing up the bridge and delaying the war. Everyone had recovered, except for Connor who couldn't be saved even after being treated. They were getting ready for the Grounders' attack, though no one knew when. And while the others were busy guarding the walls, Claire was busy helping Jasper to make more gunpowder.
There were three materials needed to make gunpowder; charcoal, sulfur, and pottasium nitrate. They didn't have any problem to get charcoal as they bassically surrounded by woods. They got sulfur from a hot spring that Claire found in one of her exploration episodes. Pottasium nitrate was the hardest substance to come by. It could be created via a reaction between manure and urine, but again, thanks to her hobby of exploring, they found a natural source of potassium nitrate; the deposits crystallizing from a cave wall and the accumulations of bat guano in it. The extraction was done by immersing the guano in water for a day, filtering, and harvesting the crystals in the filtered water.
"That's it," Jasper exclaimed excitedly as they managed to collect the three substances, "Now all we have to do is mix it up, give it to Raven, and voilàㅡ we've got ourselves a thousand more bullets."
"1234 to be exact," Claire corrected, not used to the imprecise count, and like always, she was all-business, "but Raven says she wants to use some of these to turn the gully into landmines and build grenades. That's 9261 grains for landmines and 2317 grains for a grenade. Let's say she's planning to make 8 grenades, which leaves us only 3087 grains for bullets. And since we need 25 grains for one bullet, that's just 123 more bullets."
That might just be simple math, but seeing Claire do it so quickly and in detail made it look so cool. And even though it wasn't the first time he had witnessed her quick thinking, it was hard not to be amazed when he saw it again. "Wow, did you just calculate it all in your head? Is there a calculator in there or something?"
"Irrelevant," the brunette responded, unfazed by the implicit compliment.
Jasper forced a chuckle at the not so surprising reactionㅡit wasn't their first day working together. "Okay, why would we trade a thousand bullets for eight grenades?" he asked confusedly, following her back to all-business, his brows furrowing, "I mean, how many Grounders can we kill with that? Won't a thousand bullets give us more dead Grounders?"
