Zirrilit watched the construction team magically pick up the rocks and put them together, reforming solid bricks out of the chunks.
Because as she understood it, building a wall was technically a type of arcane mastery. They even had spells like [wall of stone] to make stone walls and [mend] to repair basic objects.
So was Mark attempting to cast [science mending] on those scraps of metal he found? She nosed forwards and sniffed at the metal and splintered wood.
The weapons smelled greasy and slightly burned, so she equated it in her mind with the incense and holy oils the healers sometimes used. She understood that science used magic oils they called oil and magic people used magic oil that they also referred to as oil.
But the two types of oil were different. Both wizards and scientists got vaguely offended when she equated them.
“So, what are you doing now?” She asked.
“The bolt on this rifle is still good. See, the front of it got crushed but the back half is mostly intact. I think the buttstock’s even still large enough to be put into my shoulder properly.”
“So you will fix the damaged front half?” Zirrilit asked.
“No, I’m going to check the other weapons to see if they have intact versions.” Mark held up another one of his prizes. “See, the magazine is jammed into this scrap right here, but it looks like it’s intact.”
Zirrilit nodded. “And the magazines are what hold the bullets, so you need a lot of those.”
“Yes, that’s right, but I’m having a problem. The barrels are much too thin and I can’t find any actually useful upper receivers. I have about four usable lower receivers and one with a fully intact buttstock but they aren’t useful if I only have half of the weapon.”
She tilted her head. “The barrel is the problem?”
Zirrilit put a claw on the long and thin section of the weapon to designate what she was talking about.
Mark nodded. “Yes, none of the barrels are straight. All of them are warped at one point or another, see.”
He held one weapon out and Zirrilit did note that the long and thin end was very bent.
“So if you can get one with a not bent barrel it will work?”
“Yes, that’s what I need the most- actually I haven’t checked the trigger housing section or taken the bolt apart but I definitely need a straight barrel for it to work.” Mark explained.
Zirrilit grabbed the barrel and attempted to bend it back into shape, before handing the finished product to Mark.
“Wow- that’s actually… Hold on.” Mark grabbed it and held it up for inspection. “It looks straight, but I don’t think it is.”
He put the rifle’s barrel against the edge of the bed and watched as it slowly rose at a slight angle.
“It’s not straight, I can’t use anything other than perfectly straight.” Mark tried to explain, “If the barrel isn’t straight then the bullet will come out at a weird angle and it will make it impossible to aim with at long distances, if it curves too hard the bullet might not even be able to leave the barrel.”
Zirrilit took the weapon part and bent it again, when Mark inspected it he noticed a flaw in the plan.
“It’s now bent wrong in two places, see, it goes at a small angle here and then goes back here, and it's still not straight.”
The dragonoid whined quietly. She lacked the ability to make things in such fine detail and it grated on her.
“Well what if I just cut the barrel off?” Zirrilit offered. “I could probably cut the last part of this one off here if you want to use this one. It’s bend is way at the end here where it smushed the pipe closed and crushed the last fourth-ish.”
“That could work, yeah like a sawed off shotgun, but a rifle instead.” Mark scratched at his chin, “I mean, the shorter the barrel the less accurate it will be at long ranges, but a short ranged weapon wouldn’t be bad at this point.”
Shorter weapons meant shorter range.
That made sense to her; she nodded and put a claw forwards to help the human saw the end of one of the more intact barrels off.
The human tossed the last fourth of that barrel to the side and then split the entire rifle in half, taking the upper portion and joining it to the lower half of a different rifle and inserting the bolt that was laying on the floor.
He pulled back on a small handle, and she heard a loud clack as the rifle racked its bolt.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“No round’s inserted, but I’m going to break it down again just in case there’s something magic I’m not seeing.”
He pushed the bolt forwards and opened the rifle again, confirming again that there was no bullet in the chamber, before closing and racking the rifle.
Mark held the weapon in his lap, pointed it at the ceiling and tried to pull the trigger.
“The trigger won’t budge, so the safety is definitely working. I don’t know where the safety is though- Ah, this is probably it.”
Zirrilit watched him finger around the weapon, prodding at various latches until he came upon a small dial.
“Safe, semi and auto? I think I saw them firing auto down the hall.”
“Auto?”
Niko stood up from her nap in the corner and approached the group, “We’re making weapons?”
“Yup!” Zirrilit gave an overexaggerated nod.
Mark started explaining while examining his rifle, “Auto is when they fire the whole time you pull the trigger down, semi is when it fires once when you pull the trigger down, safe is when it will not fire even when you pull the trigger down.”
Zirrilit nodded, “And auto is the best.”
“Automatic is inaccurate, usually used to suppress an area. Semi-automatic is what you use when actually trying to shoot someone, because three well placed shots will almost always be better than spraying bullets in a general direction.”
“That’s not true.” Niko corrected.
“Niko, I don’t know if you have ever handled a rifle before but automatic is only actually good for suppressive fire. It’s too inaccurate to properly hit a target at distance, especially because most riflemen will be trying to engage from more than five hundred yards-”
“I know,” Niko interrupted, “but most rifles will have something to absorb recoil on them and most people will have items or blessings that give them a resistance to some forms of attack. The standard is to have a mix of rounds in your magazine and to unload a large number of different types of ammunition at the enemy so that some of them will get through the enemy’s defenses.”
“Ah.” Mark muttered. “That makes sense.”
Because clearly, full auto suddenly makes sense ‘because magic.’
The human shouldered the rifle, suddenly wondering if it operated normally. “Okay, so would I still hold it like this-”
Mark watched the harpy stare before snapping her head around to peer into the hallway outside of their room.
“Someone is coming, hide everything.”
Mark leapt up, then ran over to slam everything into the dresser.
Zirrilit sat watching, she was too worried that her claws would damage something to assist Mark’s efforts.
He closed the dresser’s drawer just as he heard the footsteps in the hall crest his doorway.
“Mark! Hello again!” The major’s purple maw held his ever present grin. “My apologies for abandoning our dialogue earlier, duty calls as they say.”
Mark smiled, “Oh, no problem. I had things to take care of as well.”
“Really, like what?” The major asked.
“Well-” Mark’s mind went blank. “You know, stuff. I’m usually pretty busy, it’s not like I sit around watching TV all day.”
A half lie, he did not sit around watching the television and he considered himself busy.
The major still considered it to be a weak attempt at deflecting though. They both knew Mark was hiding weapons away, and that the human was attempting to keep it a secret.
“I see, well. It appears that there has been talk recently about lifting the quarantine. As it has been quite a bit of time and there have been no obvious outbreaks of unknown afflictions, unless you consider assassination to be a viral infection of course.”
“Really?” Mark let the shock leak into his voice, though he held some trepidation.
He had, after all, been told the original village he visited was real.
He wondered momentarily how he could prove whether what he visited was real, before concluding that for all he knew the hospital itself was a fake.
Nothing in his hands was real without a doubt. The only thing he could do was roll with the punches.
It brought a conflict of emotions within him. He desired the outside world, to see these alien species for himself.
But the hospital at this point was the only real place he knew, for all that he had hated it everything within these walls was a known factor.
He knew where to eat and sleep, how would he acquire food and a place to sleep, but outside of here?
Was he going to have to get a job? What did people even do for money around here?
The major sensed his conflict as if seeing right through the human and responded accordingly. “You are a protected species, so you will of course require a subtle retinue of trained guards to ensure that there are no incidents as a result of culture shock or unknown racial combinations. I apologize, but at this point we will simply be moving you from this confined medical center to a facility meant to deal with foreign diplomats.”
Mark breathed out a sigh of relief, he felt absolutely unqualified for any sort of work on this planet.
“Oh, so… When is this going to be?”
“We should be leaving by the end of the day.” The axolotl nodded.
Niko choked on her snack.
Mark similarly gaped like a fish for a moment before finding words. “That’s very soon, no warning? No final checkups or paperwork or anything?”
“Well, considering that the hospital’s defensive staff was compromised, the lead to a slaver’s guild was allowed to expire, a terrorist destroyed the hallway outside of your room, and you were personally forced into a melee… Lets just say that this location’s capabilities have fallen into question and it had a bit of an impact on the higher up’s decision.”
“Aren’t there… Were they reflections? The medicine god’s version of angels are stalking around right now, right?” Mark countered, “Isn’t this the safest place I could be?”
“So then, what is the plan for when that goddess turns their attention… elsewhere?” The major countered.
“Well…” Mark thought for a moment, “Okay, I guess. I mean-”
The human stuttered for a moment before collecting his thoughts, leaving this place was good. It was something he would have to do.
But so far he had been isolated, kept in a fairly safe location with no one but familiar faces. The concept of so much change was enough to send his heart pounding in his chest. It was a familiar feeling to his first day at school, or the first job he had ever worked.
Though he was an adult now. He knew that he could control such emotions.
“I understand.” Mark concluded. “So what are we doing right now? Is there a change of clothes or- where’s Core?”
His other suit of armor was already packed. He didn’t have many changes of clothes, but he did have a shovel he would need to bring with him.
“First, we will acquire appropriate attire, then we will take photos for proper identification cards, then I will have a set of luggage delivered to this room so that you may pack your equipment… And the blankets you appear to have been sleeping on.”
“Like, right now?” Mark asked.
“Is ‘attire’ armor, because I still haven’t got mine.” Zirrilit whined. “They said they measured me and that they would have to make mine special. Is it done yet?”
“Well, no but we should get a move on. We only have so much daylight left and I feel that you may be tired if we have to work past midnight.” The major remarked. “If you will take a left outside of the door, I will be right out.”
The human, draconoid and harpy stepped out of the room and the Major took one extra moment to glance around.
The human had made obvious mistakes in his goal to hide his scrap weaponry and yet-
The major lifted the edge of the mattress on a hunch and eyed the hidden contents.
Dried foods, a wand, two stolen wallets.
A wand and two wallets had been reported missing from the corpses out in the hall, though considering the nature of the corpses it was reasonable to assume they had been lost or destroyed.
Clearly the hidden rifle parts were a mere distraction, you would never suspect the second hidden cache within the same room.
The cash would get you a lot further than a rifle would, especially in a proper intelligence type species’s hand.
The major hummed as he walked into the hallway, then jogged slightly to catch up to the human and his escort.
Tomorrow, they would hit the town and he would get a chance to see what the human really was.