My father brought us to the backyard, with Rachel reluctant to follow him. I don’t understand, shooting guns is fun, isn’t it? The backyard is just a backyard filled with trimmed grass right behind the mansion. Fences surround the entire backyard, for security, most likely. Inside that backyard, two targets made from wood were standing.

“Today, I’ll teach you how to use this, this is an MH breach-loading rifle,” he shows the rifle to us. That rifle is almost as tall as me and probably as tall as Rachel’s shoulder. It looks awfully similar to the Martini-Henry rifle that the British used in the past. However, I notice that there are muskets too on the wall.

“MH stands for Martini-Henry?” I ask.

“Nope, my daughter, it stands for Martin-Harry, it’s a rare rifle in this region, not most people have it, only select people or elite mercenaries use this kind of rifle, and that’s why as a member of the Ferrett family, you must know how to use this,” He gives me the rifle.

It’s not as heavy as it looks, other than the fact that the rifle is as tall as I am. I aim the rifle at the target, then I put it in the ready position, and the barrel immediately touches the ground from the lack of height problem that I have. Still, it feels well-made.

The steel is polished and oiled. The wood stock is definitely smoothened and polished. It’s definitely a rich man’s rifle, no doubt about it. There is a lever located right behind the trigger for reloading the rifle. I pull the lever down, and a hole appears to load a bullet in.

My father mumbles, “Did Albert teach you how to use a rifle yet? You seem to be proficient at it.”

I nod, “Yup, he taught me how to use an MH rifle when I visited his house.”

“Ah, I see, it looks like Albert has done his part. So, are you willing to do the honor, dear?” My father puts his hand in his pocket and gives me a bullet. Yeah, as expected, this is the real duplicate of the Martini-Henry rifle. The bullet itself is all the same.

I put the bullet into the chamber and pull the lever on the back of the gun upward and aim at the target. I pull the trigger. The bullet flies out of the barrel of the rifle, and it stabs itself into the thick wooden target. Lots of smoke emit from the end of the gun barrel, emitting that it is a regular black powder.

The recoil is rather mild, for a rifle of its caliber, mainly because it uses black powder, but with my small body, it’s rather as violent as a battle rifle, even more.

“Good shoot, Helen, did Albert teach you firearms safety also?” My father asks.

I nod. “Never point your rifle at something that you don’t want to shoot, always assume a rifle is always loaded, and make sure to maintain it, I guess?” The rests are common sense, as far as I can remember from the old firearms safety law.

Rachel looks at me in confusion. “I don’t recall you ever read a book about firearms shooting. Still, it must have been Albert that teaches you.” Rachel then crosses her hand, almost reluctant to even touch the firearm.

“Rachel, why don’t you try to shoot one bullet?” I ask, genuinely wanting to know her marksmanship skill.

“No thanks,” she shakes her head.

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“Rachel lost one of her thumbs when she fires a firearm for the first time, due to a freak accident,” my father says. Then, Rachel raised her right hand, there are only four fingers on her hands. The place where her thumb is supposed to be is flat like the rest of her hand.

So, she is traumatized by shooting a rifle. That’s not something I expect from my father, especially since he has a lot of firearms and I doubt they are of low quality. Well, it doesn’t matter though, I enjoy shooting a rifle every once in a while, even though it’s an ancient one.

My father gives me another bullet and I load it into the rifle. I aim at the wooden target again, this time, I aim at its head. I pull the trigger and the bullet flies to the head of the wooden target and it stabs itself there.

“Nice shot, Helen,” My father praises me. He then gives me three more bullets. “Go give it some more.”

I keep shooting at the targets while Rachel just observes while keep looking at her thumbless right hand. Is a rifle remind her of that and only that? I’ll never know, to be honest. I continue shooting the rifle until all of the rounds provided by my father runs out.

“That was good sportsmanship, maybe you can do better next time, Helen,” he retrieves the rifle back from my hand. “Perhaps, Ostwald can teach you more about pistol shooting for the sake of self-defense.”

I ask my father, “What’s your story with Albert?”

“Albert is just a friend, and happens to be a good materialmancer,” he says with a straight face. I expect him to answer much more than that, but again, I shouldn’t have expected too much from it. There might be a secret between those two because I don’t believe that their relationship is anything but normal.

“Really? I heard he was a legendary gunslinger, do you have any idea why he settles here?” I ask my father again.

“That’s why she’s a good teacher, my dear, is there anything that’s wrong with him?” My father suddenly asks with a concerned tone. Better to throw that question away from my father before this father bothers the dead sick person from his bed.

I shake my head.

“Don’t worry, Albert is a good teacher, he will give you everything that you’ll need,” He says. He then pats my head before entering the mansion again with the rifle in his hands. Rachel walks in my direction.

She then whispers very closely to my ear, upper ear, “Don’t you think he’s too busy?”

“What? Father? He’s a landlord, if he’s not busy, then he’s a bad landlord,” I answer.

“Yeah, he’s a good person, even though he used to be a former soldier,” she says.

I noticed the armor in his office several days ago. He probably used to be a former soldier before a bullet hit him in the chest. However, judging from the technology of firearms, it should be a long time ago that a knight's armor like that should be gone.

This world might have an access to an exotic material capable of deflecting bullets while having to be light enough in weight to make it possible to craft a knight armor capable of defending from bullets. However, I prefer to believe it’s because the propellant used is black powder, not smokeless powder, which in turn reduces the velocity of the bullet.

I’m still at the stage of discovery of this world, so I don’t have to rush the development of some of the technology that I don’t want to develop. Besides, I am more than positive enough that some minor industrialization has begun in this world, it is only a matter of time before it reaches an advanced enough level. So, I can just focus on making the M4 for now. There’s only so much one person can do anyway.

“Hey, Helen, about the powder that I create, why do you put it inside of a bullet?” Rachel suddenly grabs my hand before I walk to the interior of the mansion to finish the second stage of my plan.

I answer, “It’s an experiment. Why do you ask?”

“It’s not even a liquid mana, and it burns slow, why do you think it will be an improvement?” Rachel asks.

“Well, we’ll find out later,” I shrug.

“Just be careful, if I were you, I’ll ask Albert to give me a hand,” Rachel says before she enters the mansion first, leaving me alone in the backyard. Truth be told, I do want to get some training again before making an actual gun.

However, one of my main concerns is whether to use aluminum or just go full steel on the construction. Aluminum is lighter, but without anodizing, it won’t be as durable as steel. However, steel is also very much heavier than aluminum.

Albert can teach me more about it, I guess? After all, the only thing that I can do is to make a gun barrel, but not to make a precise and durable gun barrel out of ordinary steel. I walk into the mansion to head back to the library. I need to draw the rifle.