"Are you okay?" Nathan asked, crouching beside Katie, who was collapsed on an air mattress after her shower.

"Yeah," she answered. "I'm just really sore."

"I can tone back your training," Nathan told her. "You told me to push you as hard as I could."

"I know," she told him. "I want to improve my skills so I'm not as useless. Seeing you and Keith spar was… yeah. I'm behind."

"A lot of people are behind," Nathan said. "They're going up a demigod and a prodigy, both of whom were forged by an outside-the-universe force to be superior. Are you too sore to come do something else with me?"

"What?" She asked.

"You aren't awakened," Nathan said. "Keith and I are. We want to make a gun that draws on mana, even in the unawakened. Everyone has some mana, even if only a little bit. We managed to get the magically-made bullets down to costing 1 Mana at the base, which everyone has, even an infant. We're hoping the tweaks we did over the last couple of weeks allow it to work for someone who doesn't have their magic awakened. You're here. So we wanted to test that."

"It's not going to blow a hole in the wall, is it?" She asked.

Nathan and Keith had told her about their first successes, and how they could shoot through solid, durable stone from another dimension.

"No," Nathan answered. "That was because that gun's magical bullet power was dependent on the shooter's magical power. This one uses a magic crystal to control that. It'll supply magical power if needed, but the enchantments also control how much magical power can be fed into it."

"I see," she sat up, groaning. "Yeah, that hurts. I can help you."

"Excellent," Nathan helped her to her feet. "Come on, we're going down to the gym so you can shoot straight across. Keith created a magical barrier for you to shoot at. Also, the bullets that break walls don't cause a breaking of our dimensional space. Keith and I think the Overseers adjusted the dimensions for this to factor in powers that can do that."

Which disappointed the pair. They had wanted to see what would happen if they broke the wall, confident that the Overseers would prevent them from dying, especially after the one's comments to Nathan. When they tried, however, they found that even though the wall did break open and there was a blackness beyond… the bullet came back out behind them. Their dimension was looped, so that when it ended, it began again on the exact opposite side of that section.

Which caused Nathan to be struck by his own bullet, but he had managed to put up a barrier in time to prevent himself from actually being hurt. That was done in their last run with just the two of them, not their current run, so the damage was gone, Katie unaware of it.

Because of the looped state of their alternate dimension, Nathan and Keith decided to speak telepathically about plans to damage the fabricated dimensions rather than vocally. And if that proved futile, they would do it telepathically outside of the game.

Nathan led Katie to the gym for the testing, then pulled a gun out of one of his storage cards, causing Katie to frown.

"I've been wondering," she said. "But what does that symbol mean?"

"Which symbol?" Nathan asked, examining the front of the card. "There are several that can be found on the various cards.

"The one on the back."

Nathan flipped the card over. All of their 'ready' cards, the ones they had improved to a point they were comfortable with the enchantments of, had a black back with a white circle on it. The same emblem as on the chill card they had given to the agent of the Black Orb, with its diamond on it, split into three sections.

"It's a pair of A's," Nathan showed her, covering the bottom half of it, then flipped the card over and did the same. "See?"

"Okay…" she frowned, staring at it. "Your name starts with 'N', and Keith's starts with a 'K'. Your last names start with 'H' and 'I'. I'm not sure what your company name will be, but-"

"Hunter-Ingram Magitech," Nathan informed her.

"And that doesn't have it, either," she said. "Why do you have an A as your emblem?"

"It's what I am," Nathan told her. "Keith came up with it."

"With what?" Keith approached them.

"The 'A' on his emblem," Katie answered.

"There are two A's," Nathan told her. "It's not a mirror image."

"What's it mean?" She asked.

"Agent of the Alternates," Keith answered. "Which is, essentially, what Nathan is. What I am, too, actually."

"I don't get it," Katie told him.

"Nathan," Keith explained. "Is the Agent of the Alternates. He exists to act on behalf of everyone within every world and dimension of this realm. Every alternate dimension that exists within it, he's meant to be the agent of, the person who acts on their behalf to save their souls. It's a simple design, but why make it complex just because the mission is?"

"Oh," Katie looked at the back of the card with a new understanding.

"I think it's stupid," Nathan said.

"You think a lot of things are stupid," Keith rolled his eyes. "Ready to test the gun?"

"Yeah," Nathan held the gun out. "Katie? If you would, please?"

"Okay," she held the gun up, aiming at the far wall. "I just pull the trigger, right?"

"First, you turn off the safety," Nathan indicated it. "The gun won't shoot if the safety's on. That's why it's called a 'safety'. It's also something that's logical for a gun to have."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Nathan, that was rude," Keith said.

"It's also true."

"Forgive him, he's still working on his issues."

"They aren't issues," Nathan said.

"Katie," Keith looked back to her. "If you would?"

Katie made sure to switch off the safety, then aimed the gun once more.

"You're holding it wrong," Nathan stepped behind her and grabbed her hands. "Here, like this."

He adjusted her position to a better shooting stance, then stepped back.

"There isn't a bang like with normal guns," Nathan told her. "It's purely magical. There's also no kickback, either, so don't expect either of those. Don't tense up, don't flinch, just aim and pull the trigger."

Katie nodded, then took a deep breath before pulling the trigger. A small burst of blue light shot out, a bullet forged of pure mana soaring across the gym, crashing into a shimmering purple barrier that formed a few feet from the far wall.

"Good job," Nathan said. "Can you do that until you run out of bullets?"

"Yeah," Katie fired again, watching as the bullet impacted the barrier, before pulling the trigger once more. She fired until she could no more, then looked at Nathan. "That's it, I suppose."

"Shame," Nathan sighed. "Only 8 Mana as your base."

"We expected that," Keith said. "But even 1 Mana might be enough to stop someone. These guns are more for the people who are already awakened and have mana training. Most will just be using the ones that make their own bullets through magic crystals or using enchanted bullets."

"Katie," Nathan said, and the other two looked at him, finding the demigod frowning. "Didn't you know what your Mana Energy was? You were able to shoot a hundred and two bullets with a Stat Increase of zero-point-four and at Level 53."

"You do the math on the weirdest things," Keith told Nathan. "I did forget that she was in the System, though, which meant she had more Mana than she actually has in mana."

"What does that mean?" Katie asked.

"Your Mana Energy," Keith said. "Is a multiplication of your Mana Stat. You have 10 Mana Energy for every 1 Mana Stat you have, and the Mana Stat is the measure of your actual mana. In reality, you only have 8 Mana, but the System is bolstering this. We can actually see the 'artificial mana', as we call it, when we use our magic sight to look at your mana. Same with the Health shield everyone has, if we bother looking at that. If the System was stripped from you, you'd not be able to do those hundred-something bullets, but only eight."

"Which won't matter in the end," Nathan said. "The System is getting destroyed, so you'll have to adjust to that. Everyone in it will have to. It might cause chaos across the realm, but everyone will adjust in the end. Everyone will lose its boosts."

"I'm sorry," Katie said. "Let me get this straight for a second before we continue. I only have 8 Mana in actuality?"

"Yea," Keith said. "You told us you had 80 Mana when the System gave you access. That's your base with the System. However, that's not actually your real mana. Here, we can show you. Nathan?"

Nathan pulled a card out and touched it to Katie's forehead as he activated it, startling the young woman. She jumped back as he pulled it away, a screen of magic forming above the card to display the number eight in blue.

"Blue," Keith explained. "Means you're normal. Not a demigod, necromancer, or psychic. The eight is your mana, valued the same way the System measures it. Your raw mana, not just your stat. It strips away what the System adds on."

The display faded, and Nathan touched the card to his own forehead and activated it. A white 4,246 appeared.

"My current Mana Stat is actually a little higher than that," Nathan said. "Because I put 1 Stat Point into it at the start to see if Mana Energy was the same as Mana Stat, or if there was a difference. However, that 1 Stat Point came from the System, and my actual Mana, when looked at it through the System, is ten times as high."

"You actually showed someone how much mana you have?" Keith asked. "That's… odd."

Nathan shrugged.

"It's not like it'll stay there," he told the pyschic. "It'll just keep growing, since my training makes it grow at least one point every day. More if I push myself."

"Yeah," Keith nodded. "And the more you train, the more you'll be able to manage, anyway. So, Katie – do you understand, now?"

"I think?" She asked. "But why are you making guns that run off pure mana as if others are going to be using them, too? Won't that mean that their users would have to train in their magic regularly?"

"No," Keith answered. "Simply using mana is enough to build it, even if it's slower. Regenerating mana means you need more of it, and your mana pool thus expands as your regeneration increases. It's a slow process, but it happens."

"And as for why," Nathan said. "We mostly just want to make them. The other guns are part of our deal with the government."

"The one you guys said you were still waiting to hear back on?"

"We already heard back," Keith shook his head. "The morning we left for this, I got a response. We were cleared for it, with the contracts to be delivered soon. And some people have naturally larger mana pools. They can use these guns. And our magic cards majorly cut down on the need to train specific spells as well."

He pulled out a fireball card, held it up, and threw it after activating it. It turned into a fireball the size of a basketball, which flew across the room.

"Which means," Keith said as the spell slammed into the barrier. "That people can focus less on training spells and more on just magical training as a whole. It would also leave people more open to learning what spells they want to learn and being okay."

"And this is all for when the world finds out magic is real and there really are monsters which go bump in the night?" Katie asked.

"Correct," Keith answered as Nathan began using the gun to shoot at the barrier. Keith gave the demigod an odd look, rolled his eyes, and looked back to Katie. "Since the System will continue to activate on people and force them into the game, it's inevitable word's going to get out about it and magic. That will cause panic, chaos, and riots, and we're contracting with the government to help deal with the situation. If the truth isn't out in two years, that's when we'll publicly announce it."

"Once the truth gets out," Nathan said as he continued to shoot. "The governments of the world won't be able to hide magical beasts anymore. This tech is also going to help with some of the situations that will arise as a result of that."

"Some people will try to hunt magical beasts," Keith said. "Others will try to turn them into pets, others will be scared of them. Some magical beasts will no longer follow the original codes given, and new ones will have to be drafted, as well as new arrangements. You can expect to see monsters attacking people."

"The most important beasts to be scared of," Nathan increased his firing speed. "Are humans. And that's why the government wants defenses in place. Ways to deal with it in advance. We design the tech, they purchase the rights to produce it."

"Though all of the tech," Keith said. "Will have anti-read enchantments on it, we'll need to give them the actual blueprints for the enchantments so that they work, as Nathan and I can't just make every single thing by ourselves."

"There will, however," Nathan said. "Be some things which we will keep secret the enchantments to, like our orbs."

"The scrying orb?" Katie asked.

"Not just that," Keith shook his head. "We've worked on several different types of orbs. One of them is a mana orb, which is essentially a limitless mana storage device, which can be used to power permanent gates elsewhere. That's definitely going to be a secret blueprint."

"Oh," Katie said. "So with that card, will that-"

"Be a government-known enchantment," Keith said.

"Okay," she said. "Do you have any that can read my Status? Or does that not work since it's through the System and not 'real', as you said."

"Erm," Keith said. "Yes, and we can also look at your Stats, and we can also see your Skills and available Skills."

"Really?" She asked in surprise.

"Yeah," Keith answered. "Nathan and I worked on that for awhile, when we were in as a group with the others, then again while we were in the Isles of Darkness Dungeon we told you and Samantha about."

"Have you used it on me?" She asked.

The gun in Nathan's hand exploded, startling the two of them, and they looked at the demigod, who looked a bit sheepish.

"We need to make sure the users can't forcefully override the magical power limitation."