“Strafe test number one. Fire.”

Holy shock~ Gotta say, sometimes I got to do some amazing things. Strafe is one of them. In the forest(again), I was testing the capabilities of Strafe, and man, does this thing packs a punch, if not equal, but stronger than Zerstörer.

Okay, IT IS stronger than Zerstörer, but only if I charge above 70%. Hmm… The charging is taking too much time. Can I upgrade Strafe, so to make it better? Oh, I can. It appeared another list of ingredients for this pie, and I bet most of them I would find on the Dunes.

Most of the materials, were from monsters that had a Lightning or Fire affinity. Why? Well, first of all, Strafe doesn’t use Lightning to power it up. It uses, actually plasma. For any information, Plasma is considered the Fourth State of matter. And Strafe uses that, to power itself.

In fact, I got surprised when I scanned the Charging System of it. It uses Nucleons to charge the rifle up. This is reaaally strong. Unfortunately, I made a huge mistake. You see, Lightning, as much as fire, heat things up. AND! The barrel I made, put into simple terms, is but a pipe. Results? Almost melted.

Yep! The barrel almost melted. I mean, I guess I was an idiot for constantly shoot the bullets. Also, I’m using Steel for the bullets. It’s the metal in great abundance on the capital, and it desn’t melt when I shoot it sometimes. But I’m starting to think, that neither steel, titanium, even fantasy metals won’t be enough for the bullets.

After some deep thought about all of that, I walked back to the blacksmith.

So, few problems with Strafe:

• Bullet Materials = Risk of bullet melting inside the chamber

• Bad construction = Risk of barrel melting

• Risk of Exploding in my face = High

The solution for the 3? Basically add another material to the mix. The best option, was Tungsten. No, not it’s carbide, but the normal Tungsten.

Surprisingly, Tungsten has a higher melting point than its carbide counterpart. And yep! Tungsten has a melting point higher than even Mondálium! How can a ‘real’ ore be better than a ‘fantasy’ one, geez. So anyway, instead of leaving the barrel exposed, I’ll create a cover to it.

First of all, I used [Advanced Transmutation] to take the Mondálium out of the outer side of the barrel. Second, I dismantled the barrel, taking the Vraxa ore out too. Well, the mix between Vraxa, Titanium, and the Adaptive Solution. Third, I created the frame of the barrel’s protection.

I wanted the protection to be a bit heavy, since I could feel a lot of sway while trying to aim. And another point, I didn’t need a scope. My left eye made things easier. Put that together with those glasses I made from before, and boom! 15X times scope on the eye!That surprised me.

After making the sketches, I started working on that. I needed a strong and hard material, for both the protection, AND the barrel. What should I do? Well, thankfully, the Dwarf thought me that.

First, I would need to Normalize the parts. Normalizing, relieves the metal’s internal stresses made by forging or welding(scan is helping a lot on that). This makes the metal much harder, and can resist to impacts. Should have done that to the idiots weapons… Meh!

Second, after Normalizing, I started the Hardening process. This one, makes the metal harder too, but also stronger. But, it makes the metal brittle. With the Normalizing, that is taken down a notch.

Last one, Tempering. This one, reduces the brittleness of the metal, relieving the stress. But I must be careful, because if the temperature is too high, the metal becomes soft, and it will all go for nothing.

Thankfully, everything gone well. The metal was strong as Mondálium now, and had a much higher melting point. This is the best part about this world, mana can change some of the traits of things. Putting everything together, and another shiny thing!

And it changed again. Instead of black, with a yellow lightning, it had now a Dark-Gray, WITH a black lightning. Imagine a 50 BMG sniper rifle, but with a cover on the barrel.

Oh, and the barrel got shorter. Why? Was it unnecessary? Now, with 1.5 meters in length, with a black lightning on the protection. Even when I activated the charging system, the lightning produced was black. Uoooouuu… That. Is nice~

“Nice. Hmmm… Should I… Remake all of my weapons? Satz and Schicksal are a no. I can just add the Vraxa ore on them. Gemetzel… Yeah, kinda useless if I think about it. But I think I can make it work.”

Don’t get me wrong, the Fire Breath effect was strong, but it had its flaws. It needed to be up-close to gives lots of damage, and it consumed a fire stone/core every time I shot. Sure, I could shot all the rounds on the clips with a core, but Fire Cores aren’t easy to come by. And stones, I can only shoot 3 times before it becomes dust.

“Instead of using every time a core… why don’t I make it shoot, randomly a strong bullet? Like… a Gambler. Yeah, that can work.”

My idea, was to, every time I pressed the trigger, it would have a chance to shot a Fire Breath shell. No wait. I can connect to my Digi-Storage, and the shells are inserted on this, passing through a chamber. Then, in that chamber, there will be a Fire core. With that, one of shells, I dunno, each 10 shots, will be powered up, and cause massive damage. Yeah, that can work.

And so, I searched for my Digi-Storage for Fire cores. No lucky. Will need to buy one. Clicking my tongue, I got out and searched for good Fire Cores. Most were ranging from F- to C-rank only. That won’t do.

Oh, by the way, I’m searching through Alchemy, and Blacksmithing shops. Selling cores out of those, or the Guild is prohibited. It took sometime for me to find something good. Once again, not the BEST core, but a good one. A-rank core, was the least I could find.

Back at the workshop, I modified the entire weapon. No longer with that same frame, it looked more like a cannon. Much like Strafe’s barrel protection, which had a rectangular shape. Now, much like Satz, it would be connected to my Digi-Storage.

“Speaking of which, I need to make more bullets.”

With a barrel of around 45 Centimeters, with a cylinderclose to the trigger. But that, was the new upgrade, the Gambler. Shells would pass through there first, and one of them would receive a super charge of Fire, and one of the shells would have a fiery explosive effect. I will rely on RNG, but whatever.

With that all finished, I just put the stone and all together. It shone, but this time, with a red light. The shotgun, now had more red on it. The barrel had a stripe on the two sides right at the middle, but had a splash of orange on them, like the splash is coming towards me.

“Oh, yeah. Almost forgot to scan the two.”

Scanning both Strafe and Gemetzel had new things on them! Oh yeah… I forgot to scan Strafe before… oops.

► Plasma Charging Rifle Strafe ◄

A powerful rifle, capable of charging bullets way beyond what both Satz and Schicksal are capable of.

This rifle, powers its bullets up, reaching high speeds, and massive firepower, whenever it’s charged to 100%. If the rifle isn’t powered to 100%, bullets will have less power behind them. Nonetheless, bullets not charged, have the same capabilities of Satz and Schicksal put together.

This is a Relifact, what did ya expect? Can only be used by the creator of Relifacts, Kenji. ► Gambler Shotgun Gemetzel ◄

The new version of Gemetzel.

Albeit it lost its Fire Breath shells, it received a much stronger effect.

Every clip of this shotgun, will have a bullet charged with high quantities of Fire Mana, resulting in a super powered shell, capable of exploding upon contact, decimating anything on its path.

Thanks to the Creator Kenji reaching a higher level on Technomagic, now its clips are connected to the Digi-Storage, and no longer requires to reload it manually.

“Nice~ This is interesting. Now, for the bullets… Hmmm… I’ll use Tungsten coated with Vraxa for Strafe, and make use of any leftovers I have inside my Storage for Gemetzel. Also will make bullets for Satz.”

I made around 10 clips with 7 bullets for Strafe, and used a lot of leftovers on my Storage for Gemetzel. Which, was more than 120 shells. Don’t have enough, but I’ll try to find more in the future. But as for Satz? Wow too, cause I made more than 500 bullets. I used Caidrum ores, since I didn’t had a good use to them right now.

New project! You see, sometimes, I’ll need to protect me, and the girls. Yes, the Shielding Badge is super good, but not practical. And with me acquiring the Vraxa ore, that ups things again. So, my solution, was a shield. Yep! A shield!

With scan, I passed through some shapes and form, finishing all with a hexagon shape, but with the lower part extended, which would protect my legs of course.

And another thing I’ve found out. Vraxa, when it’s heated up, and thinned, it can become almost transparent. Not only that, but it gets wavy too. Imagine a lava lamp, but with waves, on a flat surface, and made out of glass. Yeah, it’s pretty much strange.

The shield was all well and good when I tested, but… Something was missing. Don’t get me wrong, absorbing mana and getting even more harder? That’s not something to play with. But something was needed to finish this thing.

“What is it? Wait… If it can absorb… would it be able to toss it back? Much like my Shockwave. An absorbing shield… An absorbing Kinetic shield!”

Magic has mana, but also movement. And so, with movement, it has kinetic energy. But what if I’m able to absorb the mana of, say, a spell, convert it to kinetic energy, and be able to toss it back to the target.

“Okay. Do I have a skill to help me in that? I do! {Force-Field Generation}… And it does have both Assimilation Shield Creation, and Repulsion Field! I can make it work.”

It was on the session of Techno-Spell Casting, but I could make it work for sure.

Again with the theory. What is a shield? What is repulsion, and Assimilation?

A shield, is a barrier, able to prevent things from entering, but it can also prevent from leaving. Repulsion, is… Wait. I can apply my Shockwave to this! Now Assimilation… Absorbing and converting at the same time. I could think of it, like a waterwheel producing energy from the movement of water… Yeah it could work.

Putting everything on paper, and making sketches of the HUB. Since I would be using Vraxa heated up, I separated the glass Vraxa into 4 parts. Reason being, well, a thing transformed into glass, isn’t very resistant, is it?

So, I made a frame, with a cross shape on the middle, with the same shape of hexagon. Divided into 4 glass parts, I installed them on the frame. By the way, the frame was made with Mondálium… I’m not taking any chances.

With that, I installed the HUB, on a round shaped thing on the middle of the shield, right where the cross interconnected. And I used an Earth core I got from the Mining Dungeon. It was a B-rank core… I mean, 4 B-Rank cores. What a pleasant surprise!

And when I finished, it simply shone. Good, I don’t need to give a na- WHAT?! My surprise was understandable okay? Since the shield literally entered my left gauntlet.

“Uuuuh… What?”

My gauntlet color didn’t changed, but it did appear a new round spot right at the top of it. The blade was still there, thankfully. But when I circulated mana to the round spot, the shield appeared. So, I have a compact shield now… Wow.

And with that, another day was spend. And I rest once again. Well, not until Suzuki appear to pester me for haste things to rescue Naomi-san and Yumi-Sensei already.

I ignored her, and fell asleep, cause I would need to expend the next day doing a little bit of repair, with that nodachi I found in the dungeon.

Red Dragon’s Tooth. A material anyone would want to put their hands on. The Dwarf was impressed too, and asked if I would sell. Answer was no, of course. The sword needed some polish to make it beautiful, grinding to take off all the excess material it had, and a new scabbard, cause the one it came with, was kinda destroyed on the inside.

So, I took to the forge, heated the sword, and starting grinding. No, I didn’t used the circular grinding, that one that you keep stepping on, and it’ll spin. Unfortunately technology on this world didn’t invent power hammers, nor good sandpaper yet. Which is a surprise.

I was using a rectangular stone, that is used to take rust out. Usually, people uses other methods, such as using liquids to take the rust out. Kinda like rust remover. With scan, I was able to left no nicks and chips on the blade. Since it scanned the blade completely, I could see anything wrong with it.

Although being made out of a dragon’s tooth, it did had rust, surprisingly as it might be. After that, I polished the blade to have a more chromed look to it, and started sharpening the edge. It was a slow procedure, so to not let one side bad and the other good.

After I don’t know, the entire morning, I finished the sword polishing. The edge was back, and to test it out, I used some meat to cut. No, not just cut and use to roast or anything, but cause I wanted to see if the edge was good. It was better than good, and when I held with my left hand, and activated Fire Manipulation, the blade had a bright red hue to it.

“Nice. Hey, old man, did you-”

“Yeah, yeah, here. The scabbard ya asked.”

The scabbard had a very normal appearance to it. Black outside, with a dragon’s head drawn on one side. It also had a fire pattern below, and some wings on the scabbard too.

“Nice. It entered the scabbard smoothly.”

With that out of the way, I stored the sword away, because I wouldn’t use it. I found it too big for me, and I didn’t had a good catch for it. It was a powerful sword, not gonna lie, but it wasn’t my style.

And when I returned, I got immediately dragged to the dungeon! The girls were, well, anxious to go there. Wild instincts?

I let them fight, and would only collect the spoils. Incidentally, I was at LVL 40, even after going through the dungeon recently. Amara was at LVL 167, Kasumi at LVL 48(wow), and Lucy at 47! Why am I the only one at the lowest? (Author’s Note: Yeah, sorry. I’m getting too lazy to make the Status page of them and put on the glossary. I’ll try to put after this chapter comes out. Also because I’m working on images of the MC’s weapons, cause I feel some of you is like: WTF?)

And I was also receiving a bit of XP from their battles, like, what? 5 to 15%? Dunno exactly. The good thing was, I got lots of cores. Most F- to D-rank up till the 20th floor, but afterwards? Only C- and up. Also got lots of pelt, teeth, bones, eyes, meat, and so on.

Once again, carapaces, mandibles, venom, chelicerae, and all of that from before. Unfortunately, no more Vraxa ore. Also, I recently got the [Intuition] skill, and with it, I had the feeling that I shouldn’t expend all of the ores that I have difficulty to find.

Those including: Mondálium, Caidrum(both white and black), Vraxa, Adamantite, Mythril, Hihi’irokane, Tungsten(cause it’s not that easy to find), Titanium(this one too), Wufril, Reglite(I had just a nugget of it), and Krelium.

I don’t know why, but it was a feeling, so I wouldn’t expend them completely. Soon, we reached the 35th floor… And the girls finished the Harpy eagle with extreme ease. SERIOUSLY?!

Lucy took flight, and used her [Feather Artillery] to stop the eagle from taking to the air, while Amara used vines to lock the eagle in place, and Kasumi used a Shadow Ball spell to finish the job. In fact, the Shadow Ball blew the eagle’s head. Her spells are stronger than before. Hm?

“Kasumi… your tails.”

She glanced behind her, finding 5 tails on her. Which means she’s an adult Fox now. But her size didn’t changed.

(Kenji-Sama, you’re asking yourself why my size didn’t changed, right?)

“Uuuhh… yeah.”

(Mainly because a bigger size means I’m an easy target. And I won’t be able to stay in your shoulders while big.)

“Ooookay! Got it.”

“Kenji-Sama, was this the room?”

“Where I’ve found the sword and a few things? Yeah.”

Another chest, but no sword and strong core. Also, the core was an A-rank from before, but this one was a C-rank, much to my surprise. And we followed to the next floors.

Surprise again! The floors 36 to 40 is a bog! Nice place, with lots of acidic waters, with plant monsters(much like Amara), Lizards, poisons, and things that you can find on a bog! Also some swamp things.

36th floor, was full of fungi… Like, a lot. Mushroom spores, Mushroom that shoots acid, mushrooms that mitigated damage, and finally, an acid insect on the end for the next floor. Drops were edible mushrooms, antidotes ingredients, seeds, and some skin… Yeah, these monsters had skin.

37th floor… Lizards. Or better, reptiles. Alligators, Crocodiles, Iguanas, and even a Komodo Dragon! LIKE A REAL DRAGON! I mean, it’s a Komodo, and it had all of the capabilities of a normal Komodo, except the acid spit, that was an extra.

Needless to say, but the most problematic of this floor, wasn’t the Komodo, but the Crocodiles. You see, Crocodiles, approach their preys reaaaaally slowly. And with the bog’s humid climate, we needed to rest sometimes, and close to water. So we were attacked a lot while trying to rest.

As for the Iguanas, they had a bigger size, like a NORMAL Komodo, had blue skin, and a blade on their tails. I heard that Iguanas tail sweeps hurts like hell, but these ones? I bet they’ll kill me. The blade wasn’t easy to defend. And that was when my shield came into play. And man, I’m thankful for making it before coming. Tail lashed, hit shield, energy stacked, toss it back, kaboom. No, really kaboom.

The Komodo Dragon wasn’t as hard as the Crocodiles. The monster was quite fast, and with powerful scales. Shame Zerstörer is much stronger than that! But my first toss of Zerstörer was bad. Cause the monster’s acid was good enough to melt it.

Drops of the 37th floor, were nice. Their skin, venom, blades, and cores. No meat(dunno if I would ever eat it). The core of the Komodo Dragon was of S-Rank, although it was an Earth core, and the heart was really small, like, the size of a phone.

38th floor, were more plants, even Alraunes had here… But the worse, was a giant 5-headed carnivorous plant. Not only the Carnivorous plant had the heads with sharp big teeth, being able to eat me in one go, but also had scales(yeah, scales, like a snake), spikes, and could move around quite quickly.

Incidentally, there was only Alraunes and that giant 5-Headed carnivorous plant, called, Hydra Snap Plant. And what hell was to fight that thing. First of all, the plant had vine whips, with spikes on their tips. And what a luck! I was hit on my back, right on my shoulder blade, and it even coiled around my left arm. THANKS!

I ignited my left arm, and the vines retreated, and without waiting, one of the heads came at me with jaws open. Without further ado, I extended my left hand, and burned the head a bit. Satz and Schicksal weren’t very useful, even with the fire wasn’t enough.

So it was time. Time to use Gemetzel. Like my two handguns, I could pour mana on it, but it would only boost the bullets, nothing more. Since it didn’t had a cartridge on this weapon, the shells could or not have the Gambler effect.

And boy, I clutched that one. Amara couldn’t stop all the vines, and was having problem with 2 heads. She was holding it though. Kasumi was escaping one head and more vines. She couldn’t attack the monster, since she needed to focus on her spells. As for Lucy, she was using her Feather Artillery a lot. Why she’s not using magic?!

And when we were having more and more difficulties, the effect came. The shell came out, and hit the monster. I didn’t expect all of that though. Not only it burned the monster, but also exploded, causing a shock wave, sending us backwards. I got up fast, and jumped flash stepped away, avoiding all the vines.

“You’re aiming at me now?! Come and get me!”

Jumping around, I jumped above the monster, avoiding some of the vines, and aimed with Gemetzel. PLEASE! GAMBLER! My prayers were attended, and the first shell shot, was the Gambler. The shot hit straight on the middle of the plant, piercing and burning the life out of the creature.

And since I got some injuries, when the monster died, I was still in the air, and fell on the ground without much of a care.

“Aaah… Aaah… Is everybody… okay?”

“Fine…”

“Alive!”

(Still not dead.)

After waiting some time, which I activated the Shielding Badge, because we were messed up a lot. After resting, I used [Restoration] to patch us up. Wow. This monster was able to pierce the Odyssey Outfit. How?

Checking the chest that appeared, we found the vines, which were like ropes, except being much stronger than normal, the teeth and spikes, which surprise! Had a piercing capability, ignoring any kind of defense, and the core… Huge. Like, what? An enterprise chair? Yeah, that one.

Storing everything we simply got out of the Dungeon. So, our fight wasn’t that much special huh? Shrugging that, we simply rested a lot. And did nothing more for more 2 weeks. That’s when Suzuki-san started to visit everyday to haste things more.

“ARE YOU GOING OR NOT?!”

“Enough already! You’re deaf or what?! They won’t make a single move, until they capture me! The only thing I did all this damn time, was fight and fight! Is having a rest a problem?! HUH!?”

And she kept coming every single shocking day to make me even more angrier. In the end, I waited for a full month to pass. After that other battle, we finished things off, and I was waiting, around 5AM on the gate, with Raubtier out, and with a motorcycle helmet in hands. Pink of course.

“Why so early?” Suzuki grumbled.

“Why indeed?”

I was sarcastic, and she noticed that. And when she rubbed her eyes, and looked at the pink helmet, she frowned.

“Seriously?”

“Alright. I’m going alone then.”

“Okay! Fine, dammit.”

She climbed on Raubtier, and grabbed me from behind, and yelped.

“Eeeek! What is this chilly feeling?!”

“Dunno, don’t care. Let’s go.”

“What about your helmet?”

“Don’t need one.”

I activated the [Agility Mode] and put the glasses from before. It wasn’t only to amplify my vision, but it protected my eyes too.

“Try to keep up Lucy!”

“I will!”

She said irritated, opened her wings, and took flight. I poured mana on Raubtier, and hit the road. Gotta say, what a nice feeling. Having the wind brush on my skin, the hair being carried away… Hair? I grabbed my hair with my left hand, and noticed it was reaching the base of my neck, and actually… it was getting blue on the tips.

Shrugging, I simply reached the highest speed on Raubtier, passing Lucy who was flying right above us. Amara was coiled on Lucy’s neck, while Kasumi was on a spot right below my chest. Wait… Suzuki’s trembling… and is putting some strength behind her grip.

Taking those things out, we would reach whatever city we could on our way to the Vampire Fortress.

“I estimate, around a week, maximum… At minimum, less than 4 days I think.”

If we didn’t stopped on any village on the way, that was it. But if I stopped, than yeah, would take that time. The cities I was expecting to stop, was the Xerssas city, which was the capital of the Solari Dunes, prior to Goldguard’s empire, Cazias town, a merchant’s city, with lots of goodies, and the city close to the Vampire Fortress, Sizias town.

“It might be funny, if I think about it.”