Attaching a belt to the gun, Robert hung it on his back. He noticed a problem with the gun, he had made thick barrels and five of them at that, thus it was too heavy. Deciding to do some more experiments on the strength of the black metal later, he hung the cartridges into his waist. It was only now that he realized something.

When he was increasing the power of the gun and making it able to fire more rounds, he had forgotten to take his weak physique into consideration. Ah, this Riley is too weak, he couldn’t even carry a 10-kilogram load. Robert sighed, I should train my body a bit too.

He got out of his home still struggling with the heavy load and got into a horse carriage. Sophy had arranged him this for moving around in the city.

Stopping by the Black dragon mansion get a guard or two to accompany him on the hunt, all he got was get shouted at by manager Naoki.

“Going to hunt spirit animals as a measly apprentice magic user? Are you asking to get killed?”

Asking this, Naoki was genuinely expressing his feelings towards Robert. Although he was at times eccentric, Robert had given them new business opportunities and thus was an asset to the Black Dragon clan. Not just that, Naoki had taken a liking to this young man. Naoki was good at reading people, as it was an essential skill for the business. He could see that this young man really had a likable personality inside the eccentricity.

Robert showed the gun and its power to Naoki.

Naoki was stunned by this new invention. It was like a crossbow but was also like a cannon. It could fire five arrows in succession and be very destructive in the hands of fire magi. But still, he didn’t feel like this was enough for Robert to be able to stand up to the spirit animals in the forest. They were ferocious and some even had armored skins. Naoki was afraid that if Robert stumbles upon one of those animals, it would be really hard to escape the situation.

Robert kept on pestering Naoki for permission. He wanted to see how the guns worked on spirit animals and wanted to make changes on it.

This boy! Naoki finally had to give in to his repeated requests after he showed no signs of giving in to Naoki’s order. calling for the head of security of the mansion and getting him to arrange a hunting party to go with Robert to explore the outer parts of the forest.

After seeing the explosive power of the gun, Naoki was sure that these were enough to kill wild animals in a single shot. But the thickly skinned low leveled spirit animals wouldn’t go down that easily. And seeing the scattershot of shotgun shells and blinding speed of these projectiles, he deduced that the best animals to hunt with these weapons were the Snow eagles. Naoki had hunted snow eagles in his younger years, with a crossbow and knew about them.

Snow eagles were a type of large eagles that had both power and agility, It can dodge normal arrows and even when hit by them, were not lethally hurt. It was an air element avian which can summon winds to increase its speed in air. The carcass of these eagle had many uses including its feather for high leveled arrows and its sharp claws for many weapons.

“Is it possible to increase the power of the gun to make it penetrate deeper?” Naoki asked. He wanted to make sure Robert will be able to hold up if they came across any of those larger spirit animals.

Robert shook his head. He had thought about it, having a slug instead of buckshot will increase its penetrating power, as momentum is mass times velocity. A heavier slug will have much more momentum to create a greater impact. The problem was the accuracy, he will have to create barrels with no bends and even train a lot with it to gain accuracy. But these were just for testing purpose, what he really wanted to create was a revolver, pistol, or a rifle that can be loaded like a revolver. His end goal being something like a machine gun.

He was never too much interested in guns in his past life and all he knew was the outer structure and the name of a few guns. And the current type of guns that he was creating was only usable by fire magi as he had no means of creating the initial spark for the gunpowder to explod. He wished that he had paid more attention towards these in his past life. The only idea he had to create a spark was using flint and steel, he got the idea from a gun called flintlock, he hoped that this idea would work.

“I can increase the penetration power but it will reduce the chance of hitting a target”, Robert explained the concept of buckshot and slug to Naoki.

Naoki who was a stranger to these terms quickly grasped the idea behind it. He had been a hunter when he was younger and there were people he knew that shot multiple arrows at once from a single bow. This “gun” was the same, it had multiple projectiles that helped it cover a higher target area, but with lesser penetration power.

“Here, you can have 50 golds in advance, I’ll give the rest, 200 golds after you capture him and make him spill the recipe,”

 An old man, completely covering himself with a black cloak, said to a well-built man with a defined face which had a lot of scars.

“Ha! for you to seek us, what level is his cultivation? I hope he is not some journeyman dark magi”

“of course not, Kimura, He is just a puny apprentice level magi and a low level one at that. And as far as I know, he is a light mage”, pausing for a moment the man in the cloak continued,

“I just don't want anyone to know I am behind this”

Finishing up the conversation and closing the deal, the cloaked old man walked out of the narrow alley where they were talking. As he came out, the old man swiftly removed the black cloak after confirming there was no one around. This old man was exactly the Alchemist Isau that Robert has chased away from the black metal weaponsmith.

Isau again anxiously looked around to see if there was anyone following,

From the moment he got chased away from the black metal weaponsmith he was finding a way to exact his revenge on this young man who got him fired. But his priority has been to find a job first. Now he was an assistant alchemist in the flaming volcano family. He also heard about the new cannon that was the black metal weaponsmith's creation. But seemingly, no one knew about the mysterious Black Blaze, the senior alchemist saint that has created this weapon. Mysterious my ass, he is definitely that young guy that took my job. But instead of leaking this information to the families, He made a plan to get his revenge and the secret of the magic cannon at the same time.

He had come personally to the most dangerous area of the city, the cutthroat’s valley to find a mercenary to do his dirty job. Finding a thug called Kimura, he explained the looks of Robert as well as gave the address of Robert’s house. He hired only a low-level thug, not because he underestimated Robert, but he was low on funds. 250 Golds were all from his savings, there was not a silver more to be taken from it.

Isau had been dreaming about a leisure life, getting 100 golds for every month without doing any work. But it was all shattered by that guy. Isau was not yet sure how he was able to guess the alchemical reaction that he was using. But anyway, the fact that he made Isau lost his job made Black Blaze his mortal enemy.

Robert was tired from all the reading and he departed from the mansion as soon as the sun began to set. Riding his carriage back, he read “Fauna around Goldfair.” It had a lot of contents on the wild animals and some low leveled spirit animals in the forest around the Goldfair city. This book was from Naoki's private collection. As Naoki knew that Robert had no idea about the dangers of the spirit animals in the forest, he decided to give it to Robert.

The book was adorned with many animal illustrations, Robert was finally able to see the Rock turtle that had given him earth power. As its name suggested the rock tortoise was a high defense spirit animal that had close to nill attack power. But these animals were excessively hunted for their delicious meat that was considered a delicacy. Robert also read about the Snow eagle that they planned to hunt tomorrow, they had snow white feathers due to air affinity, and thus the name.

The carriage sped through the city, many stores were beginning to lit up with light orbs. The busy streets never stopped bustling with activity.

With a cracking sound the back door of Roberts house opened. A group of 5 men, dressed in tattered leather clothes and armed with daggers and swords entered the house. Led by the man called Kimura, they all quickly hid in different places inside the house.