Chapter 21: 21

“I’ve read in a book that guns existed in this world, but I didn’t really figure it’d be so commonplace . ”

Firearms were probably the best, and at the same time, the worst invention humanity has come up with so far .

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Unlike weapons such as swords or bows that required one to be proficient with them, using guns as weapons of war were far easier to familiarise yourself with . As a matter of fact, a person only needed to pull the trigger to ‘kill’ your opponent .

However, the guns in this world were treated as more of ‘decorations’, and for a good reason, too .

Instead of using gunpowder, these musket rifles relied on the concept of requiring ‘Mana’ to fire, which was why they were used mainly by the magicians .

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Did that mean only they used it, though?

Nope, wrong .

Whether you were a knight, a mercenary, or even a commoner, as long as you knew how to wield Mana, divinity, or even demonic energy, you could potentially use guns .

Many magicians and alchemists spent the past 200 or so years researching the ways to further refine this advantage of firearms . And the eventual result arising from all that was… them being simple ‘decorations’ .

What was the reason for this, you ask?

“…Utterly nonsensical Mana consumption . ”

Firing just one shot consumed an exorbitant amount of Mana, that’s why .

I read that even the most skilled magicians would exhaust all of their Mana reserves after firing only about five rounds or so . It was also said that you’d need at least five minutes to gather enough Mana to generate a bullet, too .

Meanwhile, the firing range was even more pathetic at only around 50 metres . And so, a question related to this whole thing that required an answer: was it powerful enough to compensate for its shortcomings, then?

Nope, wrong again .

Right after firing, the coagulated Mana would begin breaking down and scatter away in the air . It wouldn’t even be able to fatally wound an enemy 50 metres away .

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Investing that five minutes in casting an AoE(Area of Effect) attack magic instead would actually deal a greater level of damage to your enemy . When considering the required Mana expenditure, you could safely say that this method was much more efficient overall .

Nevertheless, guns still existed in the world, and there were two reasons for it .

One, for the purpose of ‘dieting’ .

There wasn’t any proof of a correlation between one’s fatty tissues and Mana, but even so, I learned that ladies of nobility had taken up range shooting as it was apparently a good way to lose those extra kilos .

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Another one was with affluent nobles and their maniacally obsessive hobby of collecting stuff .

The firearms served well as decorations, and since rich nobles only wanted the ‘authentic’ stuff, so I assumed that magicians were probably crafting these firearms as expensive ornaments and nothing more .

It seemed to me that these nobles could be pretty dumb sometimes . They would invest a hefty chunk of coin just because they wanted to put the guns on display, even though these things didn’t serve any other purpose than losing weight .

Well, plenty of normal people also collected all sorts of junk for the purpose of their hobbies so there’s that, I guess .

I wonder, how much was this particular musket rifle? I heard that each one of these things could cost an arm and a leg…

“Still, what a waste . If only I knew how to make gunpowder, I’d be living large as a munchkin by now…”

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What could I even do? It wasn’t as if every cat or dog could learn how to mix and match chemicals, and I certainly didn’t think about studying the related subjects while knowing that I’d be thrown into another world .

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I lightly shook my head and moved to put the musket rifle back on the wall, but then, I had a change of mind after sneaking a glance around .

“Should I try firing it, at least once?”

All of a sudden, I felt unnecessarily curious .

It was fun to mess around with a musket rifle of this world, but it might be even more fun to actually fire one .

Besides, I figured that injecting a tiny sliver of divinity wouldn’t result in anything too powerful anyway . I’d probably just scratch the furniture or some such .

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With this thought in mind, I sneakily took the rifle off the wall once more .

Rather than shoving an iron ball and gunpowder down the barrel using a rod, this particular rifle was a breech-loading type . The reason for a lid in the chamber must’ve been to let off the heat accumulating inside it after firing, or so I thought after looking at the design .

I took the rifle, and quietly breathed into where the bullet was supposed to go in, or in this case, Mana .

[A bullet has been generated through the usage of divi…]

[You have entered Divinity Control state . ]

[Divine Aura has activated . The equipment will temporarily be enhanced . ]

[An even more precise bullet has been generated . ]

Huh?

Messages began filling up my head . Since I had already seen some of them pop up like this before, they didn’t really fluster me, but the ‘Divine Aura’ one did .

One loved by the gods, or the one blessed by the gods, whatever – that was one of those unexplainable powers where all kinds of modifiers found in this Continent would be attached to .

The [Divine Aura]…

This ability was a supernatural power unrelated to Mana, divinity, or

even demonic energy .

“It’s supposed to be treated like some kind of superpower in this world, right?”

Hang on, could it be that this body wielded this power even before I took over? Sure, he belonged to a super-duper important bloodline, but still, I didn’t expect him to possess such an ability despite that .

“How mystifying…”

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Now that I thought about it, I involuntarily used this power while facing off against the zombie bear back then, didn’t I? My shovel got reinforced and I was able to defend against the monster’s vicious attack .

“So it temporarily enhances any equipment…”

I guessed that it’s quite similar to ‘reinforcement’ .

Maybe that was the reason? The divinity consumption wasn’t as high as I feared . Although I did feel a bit dizzy, it wasn’t as bad as when I created holy water .

I had no trouble moving my body afterward too .

The time it took to generate a bullet was about a minute or so .

That could be because I ended up making a rubbish bullet, but I had no way of knowing that yet . Even the skilled magicians supposedly needed around five minutes to do this, so there was no way that I could’ve done it in only one .

I raised the musket rifle and aimed it at a vase resting on a shelf . I was really curious about its firepower now .

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I felt like a little kid experimenting with his newly-purchased BB toy gun . With an expectant face, I pulled the trigger while murmuring a soft little sound effect .

“Bang . ”

What started off as me fooling around…

BOOOOM-!!

…Ended up becoming a huge problem .

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A humongous explosion noise reverberated throughout the mansion .

I fell on my ass with a dumbfounded face as I let go of the rifle . Not because I was too shocked, but more to do with the fact that I couldn’t deal with the weapon’s recoil .

I heard servants and maids scream outside the window . They were shocked by the sudden explosion .

Bang! Bang!

“Your highness! What happened?”

In the next second, I heard the urgent voice of the Paladin from beyond the door . He sounded rather different from his previous machine-like calmness . Yup, he must’ve been shocked silly by the explosion a second ago too .

Since my response was late, the Paladin simply decided to break open the door’s lock .

“What ha…”

I quickly got up and pushed the Paladin back out of the door before he could set foot inside .

“It’s nothing,” I responded .

“Pardon? But, your highness…”

The Paladin’s eyes quickly shifted inside his helm, trying to observe the state of the room . It seemed like he wanted to confirm something, so I summoned all of my strength and pushed him back .

“Come on dude . It’s really uncool to intrude the room of a boy going through puberty, you know?”

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I actually had half a mind to kick him in the shins if it meant making him retreat . Of course, I knew it’d be my leg bearing the brunt of the pain from that action due to his armor, so I could only pound on his chest plate and push him back .

After finally forcing the Paladin outside, I quickly shut the door .

While breathing a sigh of relief, I alternated my gaze between the musket rifle lying on the floor, and the hole as big as a person’s head in the nearby wall before frowning deeply .

“Decorative ornament, my ass!!!”

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Who the f*ck was it? Who said that these guns were useless ornaments only good for some diet routine?!

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With that much firepower, a regular person or even an undead would definitely get killed in a single shot .

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