Maybe a dozen seconds had passed when they finally all poured out of the tent. The aftermath of the detonation was still chaotic, dust was covering everything, while some smoke was pouring out of the now collapsed tunnel entrance. Up a hill, behind them, a massive area of forest had sunken several feet and was now turned into a post-apocalyptic landscape of broken half-buried trees. Large pieces of rock stood pointing out of the ground in all sorts of weird angles, with smoke and dust still pouring out of the cracks.
Above this sunken swath of land, in the air, hovered a party of people. Back in the cave on the elevated overlook, there had been a total of six or seven people in grayish white robes. But now, standing in the air, there was at least twice as many. The leader of the group took of his hood revealing his face. To Jack's utter surprise, he was not human. The man had long pale white hair, and skin of similar tone, judging by his looks, he would've been at most thirty years old. But there was one feature on the man which made this assessment doubtful – long pointed ears on the sides of his head. In other words, this man was clearly an elf.
"I had an inkling that people who could destroy all our demonic beasts could be resourceful, but I never expected you to be this resourceful. In any case, you will all regret this deeply. I know you called in a battleship to render assistance. Don't worry, they'll have a great time sorting through your bones."
The next moment, he threw something into the air. Moments later, this something was quietly hovering in the air above the whole ruin. Then, a pinkish-purple pentagonal box sprung out from the item and spread out around it. The box started glowing with purple light and then a cluster of pink lightning bolts started raining down towards the ground, aiming for the red command tent. But just as they were about to hit the ground and char everything, instead they hit an invisible barrier.
Then, to the surprise of both Jack and Mike, as well as the enemy, the invisible barrier slowly become visible. It was a massive oblong halfshell covering the whole ruin. But what struck Jack the most, was the fact that is was black. Not black as a solid color, but tinted, less so towards the ground and almost opaque sooty black at the top where the pink bolts were still trying to burn through.
It took Jack a few seconds to realize that the reason why the shell was black, was because the blood of the dead demonic beasts was also black. And this was the barrier Fichte had set up. This was the reason he had ordered some of his men to collect all those vats of beast blood.
"Stop gawking at it." Fichte said, putting his hand on Jack's shoulder. "I am not a sorcerer. And at this rate this barrier will last no more than fifteen minutes."
"What about our sorcerers?" Jack asked.
"They are already reinforcing it," Fichte replied. "Without them, it wouldn't even last five minutes."
"Is this barrier magical or physical?" Jack asked.
However before anybody could give him and answer, there was a development. The elven leader, clearly annoyed about the progress, gave a slight wave and about a dozen people from his party descended through the air, effortlessly penetrated the black barrier and landed on the ground.
"I guess, that answers that." Jack said.
"Men, ready for combat!" Fichte shouted
"Ready!" Everybody shouted in unison.
Soon, the soldiers were locked in combat with the people in dark gray robes. Individually they were no match for the robed people, but 6 to 8 magic soldiers per robed enemy were almost able to tie them down.
"Mike, where did you put all the ammo for this weapon?" Jack asked, pulling the Barrett rifle from his back.
"Over there." Mike pointed at the sheds near the former entrance to the underground.
"We need to get there at once."
"I will assist you." Tiana said.
"Hey, Mike, can I borrow your rifle?" Jack asked. "You can carry this." He handed Mike the light fifty.
"What do you want to do?" Tiana asked.
"Just a bit curious." Jack said, as he shouldered the rifle.
He picked a group of soldiers particularily in a pinch with their cloaked opponent and just as the opponent had once again managed to push the soldiers away from him, Jack directed a three round burst at the figure.
Of course none of the rounds hit. The opponent was clearly a skilled fighter, putting up a barrier right before the rounds hit him. But this little distraction was enough, because a moment later, one of the soldiers fighting him had put a sword through his chest. While not a fatal injury, this nevertheless slowed him down and allowed the six magic soldiers ganging up on him to gain an upper hand.
Jack took the same approach with three more cloaked figures. Two of them went down easy but by the third one, somebody has taken notice of his interference. Just as Jack was about to aim, out of nowhere another figure in gray cloak landed before him like a meteor and gave him a light push.
This light push lifted Jack in the air and threw him dozens of feet back, landing on the ground and still sliding, giving him a painful road rash on his side. He could only see that Tiana was trying to attack the figure, but was similarily thrown back.
The next moment, a thunderous deafening roar sounded out. Jack was the first to understand what is was, and he looked at the hooded figure and Mike staggering not far from him. The hooded figure stood there, seemingly stunned, with a small flame slowly enveloping his robes.
Then another bang roared out.
Despite his injuries, Jack got up and rushed towards Mike and the cloaked figure. The cloaked figure was no longer stunned, he wasn't even alive, collapsing into a smouldering pile of innards as Jack reached Mike.
"What the hell was that?!" Tiana protested.
"Green tip, silver ring. Raufoss high explosive, incendiary, armor-piercing. Usually these would pass soft targets like regular ball ammmunition, but apparently this sorcerer's body was much harder than regular person's."
"If you can take out sorcerers like that, why don't you do anything about that pink death ray in the sky!" Tiana griped.
"And what would I shoot at?" Jack asked.
"Didn't you see it when it activated? It is just another destructive distillation array. If you can take it out then the sorcerers under section 8 can deal with something important, not just reinforcing..-"
Jack turned to see what had shut Tiana up, only to see another sorcerer in a dark gray robe land not far from them. Before any of them could react, a faint trace of smoke flashed and the midsection of the enemy exploded, literally everything between his shoulders and knees was turend into red mist and wet kibble which now rained down on the trio.
Jack traced the faint trail of smoke back to Edwin, shouldering a disposable anti-tank launcher. Just as the magic soldier was giving him a thumbs up, a massive black bird with a golden beak landed right next to him, opened its beak and swallowed him whole.
For a moment Jack was stunned, only then did he grab the rifle, and aimed at the long neck of the bird, pulling the trigger. The round hit the bird, its flesh tough enough to trigger the explosive effect. The high explosive round tore its neck wide open, with buckets of black steaming blood dropping on the ground. The next, and final round hit the bird's spine, tearing the head from the rest of the body.
By that time the body of the creature had slumped on the ground and semi-conscious Edwin slid out of its gullet without much resistance. But the worst was yet to come. As Fichte had explained to Jack, fresh blood of a demonic beast was corrosive as hell. And despite Tiana showering him in magical water, Edwin still suffered the effects of the blood, with his clothes charring and his skin becoming pale, then yellow, and finally starting to slide off his flesh.
"He's a goner," Tiana sighed, unless a higher level sorcerer heals him, he will not survive."
She eyed Jack with a stern look.
"This is a lesson for you as well. If any of us, Commander Fichte or me included, gets eaten by a demonic beast. Do not try to save us! Being dissolved in their stomach is reportedly much faster and less painful than being extracted and dying in pain and fully aware of what's happening. You want to help? Solve that-"
This time Jack did not turn to see what had quieted Tiana. He could see it all around him. The bird that had eaten Edwin was not the only one. Suddenly dozens of those birds landed all around them. Some of them were dispatched with the single shot rocket launcher, but new birds landed and attacked the people with the launchers at once.
However Tiana did not gape at that, instead, she was looking at Jack and blood pouring from his side, which had slid across the stone.
Jack pulled the magazine, lazily dropping it on the ground, he then put in a new one, filled with regular armor-piercing black tips. With a lazy gait, he approached the dead demonic bird, ignoring the black blood pooling under his boots.
"What are you doing!" Mike shouted.
"Didn't I tell you that it is corrosive?!" Tiana added.
But Jack no longer cared. This was an endgame. There was no way they could wait for the battleship to arrive. Before that the demonic birds would eat everybody present. There was no way he could fight them all. There was no way even if all the soldiers knew how to use the otherwordly weapons they had.
There was only one thing left to to.
Ignoring the sizzling coming from his boots, he rested the bi-pod of the rifle on the carcass of the dead bird, looked through the scope and directed his rifle high above the column of lightning in the middle of the purple pink array, where a silvery sword hung. Hitting a person a at 1200 yards in the chest was way easier than hitting a sword at less than half the distance, never mind the MOA rating of the anti-materiel rifle or the rounds themselves, so this was a long shot both literally and figuratively.
Jack pinned his reticule on the sword and pulled the trigger. The shot pulled his sight slightly off target, so he could not verify the hit, but the massive purple array in the sky evaporated into nothingness and so did the pink lightning drilling down on the barrier.
Moments later Bert, the old sorcerer, had produced a curious looking staff of blood red wood and stabbed it into the stone floor. The floor in a sixty foot circle around him turned into crushed stone, pouring out rock dust. The small pieces of crushed stone slowly levitated up and then with a deafening crackle of thousands of small supersonic shockwaves, the stones rushed out, flying like thousands of little bullets. These bullets exclusively aimed at the black demonic birds, riddling them with holes, while curving around all human targets without any harm to them.
While this was going on, Mike and Tiana had already extracted Jack from the black pool of corrosive blood, with Tiana healing his side, while Mike pulled his boots off, right as the inner soles were being eaten off by the liquid.
Finally, the elf in the white robe came down personally. And with that, the reason he had poured such effort into defeating the barrier became evident. Apparently elves were different from humans, not just in outside features, but also magically. And as the white-haired elf crossed the barrier that enclosed the ruins, the barrier finally collapsed into large shards which sublimated before hitting the ground.
"I never expected to have to personally dirty my hands in this matter. But you have earned my attention. And my ire. You should be proud! All of you."
He looked around the ruins.
"You have forced the grand sorcerer Orchard of the Radiant Sun Sect to personally kill you. There aren't many mortals at your level who have achieved that."
"Hey, watch who you are calling a mortal." The old sorcerer Bert replied.
"Dear Bert, you should know best that compared to me, even you are a young mortal. Pfft, you're nothing! Nothing but a first level sorcerer unable to break into the second level, unable to exceed the 200 year limit. You have maybe 10 years left on your lifespan, right? And your underlings, they're barely out of the proto-sorcerer stage. What a joke!"
"And what about you?" Bert fired back. "Elves live over a thousand years, so there should be plenty of time to become ungodly powerful. But how old are you? Seven hundred, eight hundred? Which of us truly has the worst talent?"
"I think there is no point in continuing this, Bert."
With a single step, the image of the elven sorcerer blurred, and the next moment Bert's neck was within the elf's grasp with his fingers slowly tightening.
At the same time the rest of the sorcerers rushed towards Jack.
"Quickly!" the middle aged sorcerer reached Jack. "Attack the elf!"
"Even if i did, the regular bullets would not even get by his barrier." Jack replied.
"We know! Use this!"
The man handed Jack a single round. However this was no ordinary .50BMG round. The casing was brass, but the bullet seemed to be solid crystal of lilac.
"There is no time! Do it before he kills master Bert!"
Jack chambered the round, took aim, and fired. Immediately he felt that something was different. The kick from the rifle was several times stronger, as if there was either way more powder in the case or it burned way faster than usual. Despite the stronger recoil, he could still see how the sorcerer noticed the round, raised his hand to stop it, but the round penetrated his personal barrier, his palm and entered his head right under the eye.
This kicked him back half a step, and he dropped Bert, clutching his head as he staggered another step of two.
"What the hell is this?!" the elf cursed.
"You should know what it is. You used this to kill my master back in the day."
"Do you really think this little of the crystal will hurt me?"
"No, it was never designed to kill you. You are a second level after all. This was just to slow you down."
"Slow me down for what? You think it will stop me from killing you? I might as well start with the rest of the wretched mortals!"
"No, you won't." Bert replied.
As he said that, a bright red spot of light traveled across the ground and up the elf's body, finally resting on his shoulder. The next moment his shoulder was gone, his whole arm was gone with a gaping hole between his hip and neck, spurting blood.
Seconds passed from this shocking moment without a sound with everybody frozen in spot. Only then a loud and fast thunder rolled and crackled across the sky, becoming more and more deafening.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"What the hell?" Despite covering his ears, Jack could still read Tiana's lips.
"Hypersonic cannon of sorts." Jack replied.
"This is the ultra-long range sniping cannon on the Imperial battleship Vindicator."
"So what do you think?" Bert asked, looking at the elf. "This was just a warning snipe. In a minute the long range cannons are in range, a minute after that, the main armament enters the range, a minute after that..."
"Well, I'd better get going then." The elf smiled wryly. "But this is not over. The Radiant Sun Sect always gets what it wants."
The elven sorcerer took his time to stand up, seemingly not too concerned about half of his body being missing, he used his other hand to draw some circles and make some handseals. This cause a weird tension in the air as well as a faint hum akin to AC power. Then suddenly a blinding bolt of lightning struck the ground right where the elf was standing, and moments later the elf had disappeared along with the bolt.
"Fuck!" Tiana swore. "Why'd they have to do it like that! Why couldn't they just kill him?! Why couldn't you-" She grabbed Jack's shirt only to let it go after seeing his eyes.
"Fucking Radiant Sun Sect!"
At the very least, even if Jack felt rather relieved that the battle had ended like that, he at least could understand Tiana's rage. The night had been long. So many of her comrades had been enslaved. And now, the bad guy had gotten away, they themselves had not been able to defeat the enemy even with the help of the otherwordly weapons as well as sorcerers. They were tired, and they had lost lives.
They had achieved their goal of keeping the nuclear weapon from the enemy and stalling for time until backup arrived, but that was it. In no way was this a win.
"You think she was mad, Fichte is going to be even angrier." Arandas said.
"At who?" Mike asked.
"At himself." Jack replied almost at once.
"Indeed." Arandas agreed. "Those were his men and women. His soldiers. He picked them. He trained them. He is responsible for them. It doesn't matter that the odds were overwhelming. He will still feel that their deaths are his failures."
Jack felt as if Arandas did not speak those words as mere theory. Those words were from the heart. As if from his personal experience.
"By the way, what was that last spell?" Jack asked, "self-immolation?"
"No, just a very high level teleportation spell. It looks a lot more arcane in open air than inside a building though, as you just saw." Arandas explained.
"Why the snipe shot?" Mike asked, "Why not just execute him?"
"Politics." Arandas said
"Politics exactly," Arkon added before Arandas could continue.
For a moment, his eyes stopped at Jack's bare feet.
"You really think, we wouldn't want to kill him? Fichte definitely does, you yourself do. Killing him would not be hard if we really wanted to. There are plenty of old sorcerers in the empire stronger than that pale bastard. But the real problem is, that behind him stands the Radiant Sun Sect.
Usually sects like that have little interest in mundane things and they are focused on cultivating sorcerers. Some sects have as much raw combat power as the Empire itself, and Radiant Sun Sect could be considered as one such organization.
The emperor will want to avoid going to war with such a sect if possible. Certainly, an all-out war would be an over-reaction compared to this little skirmish. And us, Section 8, or the imperial sorcerers annihilating that elven bastard would be perfect pretext for the Radiant Sun Sect to openly start opposing and even attacking the Empire. Thus, it would have been perfectly fine to kill him in self-defense when he was raining hell down on our soldiers or in a good clean fight, but killing a weakened opponent, or killing him in cold blood, there would be no way for the Sect to swallow that. Especially, as that cunt is one of their elders."
"So in essence, when he was choking Bert, if the battleship had been in range and had taken a killshot at his head, that would have been allowable?" Jack asked.
"Yes." Master Bert said, having finally made his way to Jack.
"I must really thank you." He continued. "without you there was no way that we would have lasted until the Vindicator got in range. This last move with those Goldbeak Crows was truly heinous."
"I just did what I could." Jack replied, "but lets be honest, even that was not enough."
For a moment, Jack's vision moved past the old sorcerer towards the center of the ruins where Fichte was taking a headcount of the surviving soldiers. Edwin was definitely not the only victim, but having met the people just night before, Jack had no idea how many had perished.
"It may not have been enough, but it was plenty. You can rest easy now, Richter and his team will arrive soon and take over securing the site." The sorcerer glanced at the sky above the planes in the distance. "I think that's him."
This made Jack glance towards the horizon as well. It took him a while, but finally he noticed something that was not right. There was a cloud that was not moving with the rest of the sky, instead it defied the winds and slowly headed towards them.
"And that is the range of its sniping cannon.." Mike wondered out loud.
"No, this is already the range of its main armament." Bert replied.
"I have never seen a battleship up close." Mike continued.
"Most people haven't," the old sorcerer continued. "They are a piece of rare equipment with a dedicated purpose, after all, capable of projecting as much power as a high level eccentric sorcerer. And most people who do see these ships up close never live to tell about it."
The strange cloud was no longer hovering it the sky. Gradually it got lower and closer and finally it stopped. Seconds later a wooden ship emerged from the cloud front. Visually, it looked like a strange sailing ship without sails nor a hull meant for moving through water. It was a wide twin-hulled catamaran with a central platform connecting the two hulls. Each of the hulls looked like ancient galleys, with rams covered in metal, lacking only the sails and oars. Instead, there was a large superstructure designed to look like traditional Asian housing or temple, especially with the curved rooves.
The vessel descended further and finally came to a rest berthed on the side of the stone floor of the ruin. The footprint of the ship seemed to be more than half the area of the ruins. On the sides of the ship were large letters spelling out its name - Vindicator.
As soon as the vessel came to a stop, several large planks were extended onto the stone platform of the ruins by which a large number of people started to disembark.
One smaller plank was extended right at the spot where Bert, Arkon, Mike and Jack were standing. This was used by several soldiers and then a tall muscular man in ornate clothing, which looked a modern interpretation of baroque-era upper-class clothing. Primary color was black with accents of gold thread. There was a long coat, with pants and jackboots. The most curious thing was an ornamental bicorne hat.
From the facial features the man was already in his sixties, with a full beard with gray streaks, several lesser sword scars on his face and a single massive one which bisected the beard on his left cheek, all the way from his ear to his mouth. Under the thick eyebrows there were olive green eyes, which seemed to be unfocused.
The mass of people who had left the ship started to clean up the scene, using both magic and manual labor. Sorting through corpses, cleaning up the beast blood. Some started ferrying the more intact demonic bird corpses back onto the ship while others started setting up a massive black tent right next to Fichte's blood red command tent.
"This is quite a clusterfuck you had here, Bert. You're lucky we arrived when we did." the man in fancy black and golden clothes said. "I assume the standard terms apply right? We can take everything valuable we find during the cleanup and do as we please?"
"Anything except the otherwordly artifacts. Those belong to Section 8."
"Naturally." the man in black said. "I don't want that crap on my ship anyway. Nor will I tolerate any one of my people even touching that shit. Still you put a lot of that to good use. Didn't you? Especially these two."
"If you had arrived faster, we wouldn't have had to." Bert replied.
"If. Much like every sorcerer, every a single battleship is a valuable resource. If you yourself had arrived earlier, you could've appraised us of the situation earlier, and we would not be talking right now."
"How did you..?" Master Arandas asked and then fell silent.
"Besides, you had the situation handled."
"This isn't exactly 'handled' that your people are cleaning up."
"I've seen worse," the man shrugged.
"You're still an asshole, Gregory." said Bert. "you always consider whether the action hurts you personally and then as a lesser priority whether it is right, just or even whether it is an order or not."
"What's your point?" Gregory asked. "I mean, by that logic, you're just as much of an asshole. I know how you operate, I've seen you operate. You freeze upon every undulation of demonic aura, you check everything with localized time inversions, instead of doing proper recon."
"My point is that I have to check for my safety, you have a source of massive power under your feet."
"I have means of massive firepower, not a source. I am still the same as you. Or do you think it is a coincidence that no nations have ever gone to war with battleships against battleships? It takes time to reconfigure the loadout. Thus, against mounted battleship level weapons or a flock of level fours, I may do more damage to myself running in willy-nilly than to the enemy."
"I have grown tired of this conversation, Bert. Good day." He added after a pause.
"By the way," Captain Gregory stopped after walking a few steps. "If the two youngsters who handled the artifact weapons take half a step onto my ship my men have standing orders to skewer them."
"And that's why Gregory Richter is an asshole." Bert finished.
*
The cleanup took a better part of the remaining day. Soldiers and mages working under Gregory Richter removed all the intact corpses of both beasts and enemy sorcerers and burned all the rest of the remains. All of the perished magic soldiers of commander Fichte were lined up on the side and covered with sheets. Out of approximately 200 soldiers, a total of 17 had died as a result of fighting. Most were eaten by those huge black demonic birds so identifying the remains was nigh impossible, based on the remains alone. However, as the men had divided up into teams to fight the enemy sorcerers, each team could tell which of them was no longer there.
During the cleanup, Jack basically had nothing to do, besides inspecting all the surviving weaponry which had been brought up from the underground. This mostly included small arms and their ammunition, from assault and battle rifles, to sniper rifles and even rocket launchers. Most of the weapons were late 20th, early 21st century. Some of which maybe would have been helpful, if he had known about them better. Such as the 25 and 40mm grenade launchers. Or an actual man-portable rotary cannon, running small caliber rounds with ridiculous amounts of powder behind them. Something akin to Polish anti-tank rifles of WW2.
This made Jack think that maybe these weapons were not from his world, but from some other similarly developed timeline.
While the cleanup was in progress, another high level meeting was organized between Fichte, Arandas, Anton, lord Arkon, as well as the sorcerers and captain Richter. Fichte gave an overview of the mission failure and Jack gave an overview of the later recovery, as well as the danger of the thermonuclear device. Suffice to say, captain Richter had a much greater appreciation for the destruction a single Mark 41 could produce. Therefore he quickly agreed to take command of the ruins and set up a defensive perimeter until a permanent fortification could be built.
By nightfall, wagons from the Compound finally arrived to transport both the soldiers as well as the weapons. These wagons also brought a much-needed new set of boots for Jack. As to why they couldn't just mend the ruined boots with magic, Arandas had explained it best. Apparently the blood of level 4 demonic beasts even after it had cooled and been rendered chemically inert, was still magically pretty active. And this activity resulted in dampening all kinds of magic, unless the substance was washed off before hand or in case of porous materials, washed out. This was why it was impossible to heal people swallowed by the beasts, as well as why the enemy elf had to first try and burn out the defensive barrier Fichte had set up with beast blood, rather than just descend and use his full power or just do a single massive aerial strike.
As to why they could not retreat to Coldwood, after captain Richter took command, the reason for that was quite simple. Coldwood was a mess, and it would be a mess for some time afterwards, until the family that owned the town could send a high level representative to once again set up proper governance. Until then, it was a lawless land more dangerous than the black forest surrounding the town.
And now, as he was once again reviewing all that had happened in the past 60 or so hours, a new day was once again dawning. And Jack was resting at the Compound that he had named on a whim after the plane it contained in its secret vault.
Although Jack had previously only seen the courtyard, the throne room, and the vaults, it also had amenities for a sizeable amount of nobles, as well as servants and a garrison. And thus one such room was now allocated to Jack.
Despite having been awake almost three days straight, and feeling tired, at the same time he was fully alert. He had tried to sleep, but strangely, living through life-threatening hell and experiencing it once again in sleep were two completely different matters. In the latter case he had much less of a control over how everything went. And although in the dreams he still survived until being jolted awake, the whole battle progressed way worse than it had in real life.
But there was something else as well. Something had been gnawing at him for the entire time, ever since they went on the mission. It was only subtle at first, but by the time they had finished the great battle, the issue had become pretty obvious, at least to Jack. Even after they had gotten back to the Compound, the first thing Jack did was not resting or anything else like that. It was setting up a test bed to prove or disprove his theory. And now, all he lacked was a third party comparison and confirmation.
At this moment he heard a knock on the door. It was Mike.
"Hi, you said you wanted to see me, once I had had some rest. What's up?"
"A lot. Maybe." Jack replied. "Let's head outside, to the wall."
Jack led Mike into the stone corridors of the castle. The layout of the building was quite simple and logical and it didn't take them long to reach one of the corner watchtower of the external wall.
"Did you get any rest?" Mike asked.
"Nope." Jack replied. "Too many things on my mind."
"Too bad. I heard Arandas say that if you want, you can stay for another day here and rest."
"I don't think there is any point. I think getting back to school life would be a welcome change of scenery even if I haven't slept a wink in almost three days."
"What kept you up? The battle?" Mike asked.
"The battle, among other things. Apparently conscious mind handling such things well does not mean that the unconscious acts the same. Doesn't matter though, all it needs is time to become desensitized to it."
"What are the other things then?"
"You'll see." Jack replied cryptically.
It did not take them long to reach the Western wall. On the wide wall, all the equipment Jack had set up was still there. This included a long table filled with various weapons. Small boxes of ammunition for each weapon, roughly 20 rounds per, as well as a modern viewing scope on a stand.
"You set up a firing range?" Mike asked.
"Yes I did." Jack said. "I went through all the garbage of the artifacts and collected about twenty or so glass bottles. These have all been set up at far end of the range, roughly 1200 yards out. You can see it for yourself in the scope."
Mike took a glance through the scope, and indeed, twenty wine bottles of varying color were set up on wooden shelves in two rows, with at least a few feet of space between each bottle.
"So. This is what we used in the mission." Jack took the German bolt action hunting rifle from the table. "An 8 millimeter Mauser. We tested these beforehand up to 1300 yards under ideal conditions." He shouldered the rifle while standing. "Well, these are not ideal conditions. I am standing, I am dead tired, and have no idea about the wind, air pressure or anything else, I'm not even sure about the exact distance."
He aimed for a few seconds and pulled the trigger.
From the scope, Mike could see how the first bottle in the row was reduced to fine snow of glass.
"That's a hit." Mike commented.
"Yes, I anticipated that."
The next thing Jack did, was to remove the optical scope form the weapon using the quick-release screws.
"With iron sights, the gun is useful up to 500 yards. So lets see, how I will fare."
Again he shouldered it, took aim, and fired. The second bottle was blown to smithereens.
"A hit, again. Apparently you are way better than some people." Mike replied.
"Yeah." Jack said without much emotion.
"Let's move on." he lifted the Barrett M82 off the table. "This is Barret M82 50 cal. With regular M2 magine gun rounds, this weapon should have an accuracy of about 3-4MOA at best. 1 MOA is about 1" at a 100 yards, so 36 to 48 inches at 1200 yards. So there should be no way for me to hit anything at all at this distance. And I am going to make it even more diffiuclt for myself, as I am going to shoulder-fire it."
Again he raised the rifle, this time it was much more of a chore, as the gun weighed in at over 30 pounds. With great effort he shouldered it, took aim, and fired. And not just once, he fired 4 shots consecutively, each time doing his best to aim at the next bottle in row.
Mike watched through the scope as the third, fourth, fifth and sixth bottle were vaporized.
Jack lowered the rifle. Setting it back on the table.
"They're all hits, right?" he asked. "The next 4 bottles?"
"Yes. Perfect accuracy."
"Indeed." Jack nodded, "and this is where things get weird."
He picked up a massive pistol off the table.
"This is a .357 Desert Eagle. It weighs over 4 pounds. In skilled hands it can do 100 yards easy, on iron sights. With a scope, 200 would be a maximum. Well, I'm gonna shoot it without a scope. Also, due to the distance, I have to do some indirect fire."
Jack did not aim the pistol right at the bottles, but rather at an upward angle.
"Mind you, I cannot even see the individual bottles from here. I did not set them up myself, I had one of the soldiers do it. So, I don't even know what color the last bottle at the top row is. But i think it might be neither green nor brown, but instead, clear."
Mike quickly took a look through the viewing scope and noticed the clear bottle at the end of the top row. Moments later, it was gone.
"I think you can see the problem." Jack said. "If I am confident that I can hit it, I do and my aim will be impossibly perfect, even beyond any reasonable physical laws."
"What do you think causes this?" Mike asked.
"I don't know. That's why I asked you here. If you can replicate the results, then I can be sure that It is either the weapons or this world, and not just me."
"There's no way I could." Mike replied. "You said belief was a component, right? There's no way I would believe I can shoot as good as you did."
"I know. That's why we're gonna cheat."
He picked another large rifle from the table. This one looked much leaner and lighter than the thing Jack preferred to use against demonic beasts.
"A bolt-action PGM 338. It is lighter, it uses a smaller bullet, bolt action, and match grade bullets. The rounds remain supersonic until more than 1400 yards, and that all translates to 8 times the acuracy of that heavy 50cal."
"8 times the accuracy so about 4-6 inches at 1200 yards?" Mike asked. "How big is one bottle?"
"Don't think about that." Jack replied. "I' ve set up a platform for you to lie down on."
He pointed to the higher table on the side.
Mike climbed onto the platform, unfolded the bipod and took aim.
"I will try for the first remaining one in the upper row."
"Thats fine." Jack said.
It took Mike at least a few minutes to aim, steady himself and the rifle. He then pulled the trigger. Jack observed through the scope as one of the remaining bottles was reduced to dust.
"Very good, a hit. Try the next one."
Having gained some more confidence from this, Mike took to the next bottle, again aimed for a few minutes, and pulled the trigger. This time it was not quite as clean, the round grazed the mouth of the bottle but otherwise missed.
"Where were you aiming? In the center? You grazed it but did not break it."
"In the center, yes."
"OK, try again."
The next shot, as well as the three following that were misses.
"Okay, that does not make me less worried." Jack said. "By the way, you asked abot the bottles. These are wine bottles, so they are about 4 inches across at the widest section."
"So the first hit and second graze were purely luck?"
"It would be reasonable to say yes." Jack replied. "But considering that I used to be an average shooter before, and now I need to put in no effort.." Jack took the rifle from Mike and easily cleared the first 4 bottles in the bottom row in 4 quick shots while standing. "..whatsoever. And that you have 2 days of experience tops, and with the best equipment available and no skill you still managed to get 1.5 out of 6 hits.. I just don't know. Safe to say, this requires more testing, preferably with more people who have learned to shoot."
"So now what?" Mike asked.
"Now, nothing. You can continue practising if you want. I'm gonna go contemplate this some more. Maybe there are other irregularities to figure out."