Loading two different ammunition types into the blackstone speedloader caused yet another projection glyph to crop up next to the counter, this time displaying a cross-section of the shell with a label of its projectile diameter. With some practice, Zef managed to make it load the loading tube with a mixture of different ammunition types, dispelling the one worry she held for the utility of the device.

Zefaris had thought herself better, more professional than naming a tool like a gun, even if she took meticulous care of it to the point of making modifications in the field. The past tense of that statement was important - had.

“I never did name you, did I?” she thought, recalling the nicknames and epithets other soldiers and commanding officers had used to refer to her, let alone codenames. Trench Ghost was a favorite… But one was specific enough to her use of a long-barrel sparklock that it was perfect - a name derived from a time she had gotten the opportunity to use Dragonbone Bullets in order to take down a Grekurian cultivator with nigh-impenetrable magical defenses, and no “better” firearms had been available.

She had packed a high-pressure load into her sparklock, knowing full well the upper boundary of what it could take, and the manner in which the chunk of carved dragonbone had blown away its victim’s shimmering barrier had elicited a proclamation from her commanding officer upon which Zefaris now based her reborn rifle’s name.

“Tempesta sounds good,” she thought, deciding to finally take the shotgun for a spin. Even if the holster was too large to reasonably hide under a dress, she could still just wear a belt and hang the holster from it, which was exactly what she did.

Already, ideas of what she could do swarmed about in her head, from means to work the slide-action with only one hand, to perhaps wield both her firearms at once, to cast lightning magic with Tempesta as the focus or even somehow incorporate the Philosopher’s Eye. Zefaris was well aware of the fact that she needed something to round out her rather limited arcane arsenal, and she had spent the preceding month toiling away at that something.

Soon, she would be able to grasp it. Just a bit more polish, and she could truly live up to that ideation the Dungeon had planted in her head - of walking as one with the reaper, of becoming a conduit for the chill of death itself, yet remaining untouched by it.

The cold of a corpse, of the mud within a long-abandoned trench, of the snow in her mouth as she gunned down scores of men in the midst of deep winter. Zefaris had felt the heart-slowing grasp of death not in its form as the thrashing of limbs, gushing of blood, writhing of maggots and rotting of flesh. Death, as Zefaris understood it, was absolute silence, absolute stillness, absolute cold - the depths of a crypt, a skeleton in a ditch, the lifeless ice sheets of the far north, the desolation of Ubul’s Tomb.

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This stillness, this finality, this macabre beauty that often settled in only long after the visceral aftermath of killing - this was what Zefaris had faced in the dungeon, this was the reaper by whose side she walked. Gelum, Rigor, Mortus, Frigus - the scientific designations for the elements involved in the art which she exhumed from her own past meant no more than the actual composition of the gunpowder she used. They were important, true, but in the end, she understood these things in a different, wordless manner, one of feeling and instinct.

Remaining calm despite bullets whizzing overhead.

Reloading a sparklock faster than she had any right to, yet never making errors, always hoisting the gun right into firing position and holding it there.

Being faced with horrors that would’ve broken many, yet merely acknowledging them and dealing with her circumstances as best as she had been able.

She already wielded this power, this “Stillness” - even if she was not entirely aware. It was through embodying this grave countenance that Zefaris was able to hold perfect aim even in immensely tumultuous circumstances.

The past weeks had been a time of great change and constant training for her, breakthrough after breakthrough, and she was never satisfied, never feeling like she had truly grasped anything of note, not until she had taken that pill. It had truly been as if a subtle layer of muck had been washed clean from her, attachments, hang-ups, and remnants of traumas that had subtly restrained her, whose presence she hadn’t truly acknowledged until they were gone.

A great many ideas had taken root within her mind, upon whose multitude she had full intent to act…

…But that would have to come after she had fully grasped the shotgun’s fundamental feel without any additions or changes.

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Year of His Glory, the Architect, 4713

Cultivation Branch ZJ138 Report No. 1

Monikers: The Walking Way of the Eternal Soldier, Bow/Crossbow/Javelin/Gun/Etc. God Cultivation, Deadeye Cultivation, Supreme Law of the Reaper’s Bride,

Cultivation Tier: Class 5

Observation Report:

I have seen this pattern before, and the potency of so-called “Gun God Cultivation” only grows greater as the technology it relies upon is redeveloped. A method rooted in the concept of being close with death and sharing it with one’s foes will, inevitably, lead to the development of a razor-sharp style, wherein the practitioner constantly skims the razor’s edge between life and death without ever tipping to one side:

In other words, the Walking Way of the Eternal Soldier is akin to the Supreme Law of the Reaper’s Bride. To live with a daily awareness of the fact that encountering death is inevitable, yet to eternally reject the idea of dying - the Millennium Privateers have shown this stubborn method to be a viable means of reaching immortality.

“To live day to day, for a thousand years. To walk with death, and be unharmed by her touch as one is by a lover’s kiss.”