Holly gripped the wooden staff in her hand tightly, the cloudy white gem on its tip glowing brightly with a dim holy light. She murmured a chant as her mana shot out in a wave, encapsulating Leo and Melvin in the same holy light emanating from the gem on the tip of the staff.
Elaine waved her arms in a clockwise wanner, and a crimson glow covered Leo’s and Melvin’s body.
Under the effect of the support spells given by the two at the back, their perception of time warped to a significant degree while their muscles roared with newfound vigor. Melvin flailed his grassy whip as if it were a living snake while Leo rushed forward covered in the vague silhouette of a divine lion made out of lightning.
A horde of ogres ahead of them brandished their weapons with murderous intent as if some sort of bestial instinct was urging them to kill these outsiders.
Winds howled loudly atop the icy peaks of the mountain range they found themselves in, with bits of snow falling from the grayish-white sky.
The two parties clashed with spells and martial arts flying off in an array of colorful lights. Electricity crackled, wooden spikes surged out from the ground, holy light healed wounds, while time warped to slow down incoming attacks or hasten their speed.
It was chaotic and disorderly. Working as a team was harder than what they had thought, especially with a high number of people and unfamiliar members. Luckily, Melvin was experienced with such situations, while Leo, an heir to a dukedom, was trained to handle these types of problems.
Holly and Elaine were inexperienced with combat, so they were focused on providing support from the back, while Leo and Melvin stayed at the front to handle the group of incoming ogres. Fortunately, they were on higher ground on the slopey mountains, providing them a much better fighting condition compared to the ogres rushing upwards toward them.
Melvin flung a wooden sphere at the middle of the ogre horde below them, snapping his head and causing it to explode in a storm of shrapnel. The wooden shards were particularly sharp, enchanted by magic, and dug into the thick skin of the monstrous ogres. With another snap, the shards of wood released a dim green light and squirmed like worms, expanding and growing into flowers that swiftly drained the stamina of the ogres.
The entire battle was under their control, and Melvin was confident they would win without much problem, but his eyes soon widened in surprise as they heard a distant roar.
From the distant peak, a larger horde of ogres came rushing in, twice as large as the group of five they were fighting against. Leo was already struggling to keep them focused on himself, while Melvin attacked from a distance. If they were suddenly to increase by more than twice the amount, they’d be in deep trouble.
“Don’t worry, you little newbies,” a voice said with a bored tone. Melvin shifted his eyes to the source of the voice; it was Rob, standing tall and holding a weapon, that while unfamiliar to this world, was something he had quite the deep impression of.
It was a gun, so to speak, but Melvin could tell it was a more crude and alien version, unlike anything he had seen before. Guns weren’t a foreign concept to Tyr, no, they had been slowly gaining popularity over the decades, even in this time of peace.
Magic had been at the forefront of national might, with mages compromising the bulk of an army’s power. But, with technological improvement came the slow progression of non-magical alternatives, and hence the existence of guns.
Weapons with fairly destructive abilities powered by gunpowder - it wasn’t that expensive to make, but fairly inefficient as of now. It was anonymously expected to be something of great value later on, but not now in the present.
Rob cocked his newly made weapon, a gun in simple terms, with the appearance fairly similar to a rifle, with more of a silver color and lacking greatly in wooden parts. In fact, it was entirely made out of metal, from handle to sight and barrel.
An illusory circle appeared right above the rifle, a magical sight of sorts that allowed him to easily zoom his vision on the distant ogres and lock in on the group’s supposed leader, the one leading at the front and wielding a dangerous-looking stone club with spikes. A dangerous hum can be heard from the rifle as mana poured into its body, and inside it, mana coalesced and gathered behind the metallic, bullet-like object loaded inside.
He took a deep breath, activating another one of the various enchantments he had placed on his highly dangerous, self-made gun, and caused a fiery red circle to form on the end of the nozzle.
“Here goes nothing,” Rob mumbled with a grin. Finally, he can test this thing out!
With nothing but the sharp sounds of howling winds and a fiery burst of flames, a bullet coated in fiery light flew through the air at breakneck speeds, breaking past the sound barrier and piercing through the head of the distant ogre.
Not stopping its trail, the bullet flew past the leading ogre until it found itself close to the middle of the group. Then, under Rob’s control, the bullet erupted into a burst of flames, akin to the explosion formed by a fireball, and burnt the nearby ogres, leaving them with charred flesh and singed eyes.
“Argh!”
Pained roars boomed from the distant peak as everyone else stopped whatever they were doing.
Melvin and Leo looked mortified by the abnormal result, while Holly and Elaine looked fairly shocked, but not as surprised by the duo. Ignorance was bliss, they supposed.
Leo remained shocked for a while, but Melvin was more experienced and hastily steered his mind to the remaining danger they had to deal with. He used a relatively big chunk of his mana reserves and finished the last part of his series of spells.
Another flash of verdant green light appeared from the blooming flowers on the ogres, draining more of their vitality and allowing the flowers to grow lusher and lusher, bigger and bigger, rooting themselves deep into the ogre’s bloodstream and flesh, siphoning everything they could acquire to nourish themselves.
By the end of it, the group of five ogres lied dead on the ground, covered by a mass of colorful red flowers. Melvin seemed to have been exhausted by this spell, as he huffed and puffed and almost buckled down to his knee.
Holly hastily waved her staff and another wave of holy light washed over Melvin’s body, invigorating himself with vigor and washing away his exhaustion. As he took a deep breath, he moved his gaze over to the distant commotion, with the faint bang echoing in his ears from time to time.
Rob stood perfectly still, with his magical rifle doing its work just as he expected it to. Each of its bullets pierced through the ogres with relative ease, the magical sight doing wonders for his aim as he accurately shot the bullets through the brains of the ogres. The only problem he found was that it took a little while before he could gather enough mana for another shot.
The design of his rifle was fairly simple - at a glance. It was a rifle in the most mundane of ways but created in a way to suit his magical strength. Rather than having a switchable magazine full of bullets, the rifle would gather mana from the air, or from himself, and use magic to either alter the chunks of metal he had brought with him into bullets or transmute the chunks of dirt into metal then into bullets.
After that, rather than using gunpowder for the bang, Rob would load the bullets with mana and use that as the catalyst for the explosion, and the genius thing about this design was that the mana would remain inside the gun itself, acting as ambient mana that can be gathered to power the various autonomous enchantments he had placed on this thing.
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Not only that, it has a magical sight, various powerful enchantments that would buff the bullets with various spells and even acts as a sort of staff that empowers his spells and ability to wield mana. And with how a casual bullet was able to kill a fucking ogre in one shot, albeit with great aim and exploiting their natural weakness of needing a brain, it wouldn’t take a genius to realize just how absurdly powerful the thing was.
“If you’re wondering,” Rob muttered as he casually shot another bullet. “This thing is not for sale.”
“Oh,” Leo hummed. “Hmm, are you sure? I’d pay a fortune to buy one from you, and more so for its blueprint.”
“I’m not so loyal to this empire that I’d give out this little advantage of mine for some petty cash,” said Rob. He already knew he’d catch a few eyes when he finally tested out his newly made creation, but it was an inevitable thing, so he might as well do it sooner rather than later.
In fact, he was doing this for multiple reasons. First, it would greatly inflate his value as a person, and lay the groundwork for his later… achievements, to say the least. Rob wasn’t afraid of showing off his abilities, but lacking fear and being stupid are two different things.
Displaying his talents now would circumvent a lot of problems later on, especially when he dips his toes deeper into various fields like alchemy, enchantments, craftsmanship, the military, and other random things he would later find interesting. He had done this type of thing numerous times in his life already that had spanned eons, so experience would tell him that his actions were moving him in the right direction.
One can’t just be courageous and fearless, one needs to act smart and wise.
“How did you even create that thing?” Elaine asked, scanning the rifle-like gun with curious eyes. The distant ogres were fully taken care of, but they had decided to take a bit of a rest before looting their corpses for more profit unless they wanted to face an unexpected horde with their mana reserves half full.
“You know, hobbies,” Rob said with a wistful smile. He inspected the metallic object with a bit of a smile - a marvel of metal magic and alteration magic.
Rob had great talent in earth magic, everyone in the class knew that, but one thing that wasn’t as well known was his talent in metal magic. It was above average for the most part, unlike his earth magic, so the previous Rob Fortune, the one who wasn’t the Supreme Existence known by many vile names, decided to focus his efforts more on what he was more talented at.
But now, Rob had spent a bit of time on that particular magic, because of his later plans. And, since earth magic needs some semblance of skill in alteration magic for one to get good at it, he had another excuse as to why he was also skilled at that branch of magic.
So, with all kinds of lucky coincidences, he had a reasonable reason as to how he was somehow skilled enough in metal magic and alteration magic to make this thing. The only problem was the enchantments, but since alchemy had some connection with enchantments and making a gun doesn’t require too much skill, well then, who was to say he wasn’t just hiding his skill up till now?
He did defeat Leo Regulus in one hit and displayed great talent across the course of his school life.
After resting for a while, the group then headed out towards the distant corpses to loot them for additional points.
What a load of shit. The academy is just profiting from child labor. Rob wore an amused smile as he skillfully plucked out the eyes of some ogres. It was disgusting, but with a bit of magic, no blood managed to even touch his skin, much less his clothes.
They all unanimously decided Leo would be their main storage since he had his rich kid storage ring after all. So, after a bit of hard work, the five left the charred corpses behind in search of the Boss Monster of this dungeon so they could finally get out of this place.
Unluckily for them, just as they were about to descend the mountain peak they were on, they heard distant rumblings march forward in organized steps, and from another mountain peak, they saw it.
It was a humongously large ogre, standing over seven meters tall and wielding a club made out of Deep Ice Stone, a magical mineral harder than diamond and had various uses in smithing and such. It was like a walking mass of muscles and flesh, with killing intent seeping out of its eyes.
The Boss Monster wasn’t alone though, it led an army of over fifty ogres. At this point, the group knew they stood no chance of defeating them, especially with their not-full mana reserves and exhausted bodies.
When Rob saw that, he had already activated his divine sense while casting an earth sensory spell to locate for an escape route and swiftly found the entrance to a nearby cave hiding behind a cliff. Even without alchemy magic, Rob was confident in blocking out the entrance with thick enough walls that the ogres would be left unable to catch up with them.
“Follow me!” Rob shouted, running toward the nearby cliff. “There’s a cave there! We’re gonna hide inside, block off the entrance with earth magic, and recuperate inside before heading out again!”
Elaine skillfully cast another spell, warping their time and accelerating themselves thrice as fast as before.
The ogres behind them roared in anger as they chased with all their might, but with their numbers and large bodies, they could only watch as the five ran off into the distance.
As they approached the cave, Rob’s spirit sense whirled to life along with some of his sensory spells. He could sense it, near the cave entrance, a group of ogres were inside. He didn’t know why they were there, but they were there.
“Fuck,” Rob cursed with an annoyed sigh as the rifle in his hand hummed and a bright yellow circle appeared in front of its nuzzle. He didn’t bother to look back at his teammates, and instead just shouted, “After we enter, just run! Just run… After we enter, there will be two paths, go to the right and keep running forward as far as you can! At the end, you’ll find yourself in a large cavern, use wood magic to seal the entrance to the cavern.”
“Why?” Elaine asked, her voice bobbing up and down as exhaustion started to catch up with her. The others were experiencing the same; tired and their stamina drained from the long run.
Only Leo was breathing fine, but his martial arts were particularly mana draining and he didn’t have much talent as a mage, since he was a knight after all, so he was essentially useless right now.
“There’s a small group of ogres ahead near the entrance, at this point, you’re all useless! I still have plenty of mana left, and this thing has its own mana storage and we’re inside a pretty mana-dense place. I’ll handle the ogres for a while, so you guys go on without me!” Rob explained with an annoyed tone.
“What?! You’re saying we should leave you behind?!” Melvin shouted incredulously.
“Shut up! Just stick with the plan! I’ll handle this shit no problem!” Rob clicked his tongue.
As they were about to retort again, they already found themselves near the cave entrance. “Just go you fucking bastards! I’ll be fine!”
The moment they entered the cave, they were met with the small group of ogres that Rob referred to, and it wasn’t small at all. They were large, over ten in fact, and at such close proximity, they could assume a gun wouldn’t work as effectively as it would, but Rob insisted once again that they should just go as planned.
It was stupid, they could tell that, but there was some sort of unwavering confidence, or perhaps arrogance, from Rob that they started to subconsciously lean to the left side of the wall the closer they got to the split.
“Rob, are you sure you’ll be safe?” Holly asked worriedly, their steps not stopping in the slightest as they rushed forward toward the split, approaching closer and closer to the group of alerted ogres.
They seemed to have been resting, munching on some meat of unknown origin and casually playing with one another. Due to that, they weren’t able to respond as quickly as they normally would and they could say they’ll be able to slip past them… if one of them could distract them for a short while.
“I’ll be fine,” Rob said with a smile. They already arrived at the split, and the ogres were rushing to him with angry eyes.
“But-“
“I’ll be fine!” Rob repeated with a glow in his eyes. “Just go, I’ll meet you guys back at the cavern.”
“Promise?”
“Promise, now go!” Rob pushed her back, stomping his foot down and erecting an earthen well in a single second, blocking the entrance and ensuring their safety.
“ROB!” Holly’s distorted voice could be heard behind the wall, and the others stopped in their tracks and looked worriedly at the wall.
“JUST FUCKING GO, YOU NOSY LITTLE BRATS!” Rob shouted as he cocked his rifle forward, wearing a big wide smile on his face. A crazed smile, if you will.
Urged by his unwavering voice, the others forcefully ran away, dragging Holly alone as she left with worried eyes, “Rob…”
Now left all alone, Rob murmured with a subtle smile. They were far enough, he mused. He slowly put down the gun, waiting for the ogres to arrive with an unfaltering grin full of excitement.
He then lifted his arms and pointed them at the rushing ogres, the air buzzed with a strange power as the walls of the cave shook and warped. In a split second, impossibly sharp and numerous spikes shot out ground and ceiling, from the walls, both left and right, stabbing through the ogres in one bloody mess.
He waved his arms, retracting the spikes and allowing the ogres to plop down to the ground, oozing with blood and flesh.
After that, he sat down on the ground, humming a playful tune, and as if his flesh were made out of liquid, he plunged his hand deep into his thigh and pulled out a golden ring. Injecting mana into it, he connected with a pocket dimension and proceeded to take out some herbs and strange vials of liquids.
“Let’s cook, shall we?” Rob smiled, wagging his fingers as the vials and herbs floated in the air, covered in a strange mystical power.
What a lucky day indeed… Rob chortled with a bright smile. A bit rushed and forced, but nothing a little devious stealing wouldn’t fix.