I turned to Silver. “We’ll take this one,” I said, easing off of Aren and helping him up.
“You don’t want to test the others?” Silver replied, looking at me with one eyebrow raised.
“Nah, we’re okay,” I nodded. "This weapon is his passion, and it's a much more flexible choice than a bo, a bat, or a whip. Easier to transport covertly, too."
Aren turned to me with a huge grin. “You gotta teach me that move.”
“If we both live past tomorrow, I will.” I nodded at him.
“Speaking of which,” Silver cut in, “Since Aren has his whole kit, it's your turn, Razel. Let’s start with the big guns, hm?”
Those six words were music to my ears. I made an exaggerated shrug. “If you insist.”
She smirked. “You’re an idiot. Come on.”
I obliged her and followed, Aren following closely behind, playing with his tonfa.
“If you break anything, you will buy it.” Silver said in a threatening tone, not bothering to turn her head. Aren immediately put his tonfa away. “Alright, here we are.”
“Here we are indeed,” I said, crossing my arms deep in thought.
“Credit for your thoughts?” Silver turned to me as she watched me scan the multitudes of racks before us.
“Well, from the briefing Kornok gave us, the building is in the Underside and in a fairly remote industrial storage area. There are fewer chances of being seen by Civilians that can raise the alarm, so we can go for weapons that don’t have to be hidden.” I tapped my watch, navigating through the menus to reach my “Documents” folder. Pulling up the floor plan of the warehouse, I pushed it to Silver and Aren’s Novas. “If this is accurate, the building is pretty cramped, with small rooms and a fairly full warehouse. So we don’t need anything long-range.”
Silver hummed to herself. “And if you get in a scuffle with the Priests, a prolonged engagement isn’t on the cards. Do you know how many of them there are?”
I made a non-committal sound. “Not really. A couple of recon drones flew above it and saw 4 priests patrolling the outside, and from the skylight, they saw at least one Priest in the main storage area. Still, the drones couldn’t exactly get a good look inside the warehouse before getting vaporized, so there may be a couple more in there.”
Silver let out a soft whistle, shaking her head slowly. “At least five Priests in a single place. Razel, I don’t know what you got yourself into, but you remember the rhyme, right?”
I shuddered at the memory and nodded at her.
“What rhyme?” Aren piped up.
Silver looked at him and smirked. “If the priest is one, then it's time to run. If the priests are two, you might make it through. If the priests are three, you’ll cease to be. If the priests are four, hope is no more. If there are five, no one will survive.”
Aren made a sour face. “What a lovely tune. Your childhood sounds like a hoot.” He waved at Silver to continue, “Well? What does it mean when there are six?”
Silver shrugged. “Dunno, never heard of more than five Priests in one spot save for the Sector 11 excommunication. You two are in deep shit.” And yet, she had an excited smile as she turned to me. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Shotguns?” I smirked.
“Shotguns.” she nodded.
We both rushed to the shotgun section and started looking through the guns like a starving pair of ferromoles that broke into one of the sub-surface farming facilities and searched for the tastiest morsel.
“Hey, how about this one?” Silver said, her hands barely peaking above one of the free-standing racks holding a shotgun. It was a thing of grace, painted a matte black with a long barrel. I examined it.
----------------------------------------
[Pump Action Shotgun of Bloodletting]
Rank: Rare
A shotgun crafted by Sister Silver. Using the [Magnoferric Coating] subroutine, projectiles fired from this shotgun are coated with spikes, creating grisly wounds. Activating the subroutine for a second time causes the coating to fly back into the gun, damaging everything on its way back and refreshing the subroutine's cooldown.
“Getting shot hurts. Getting shot with this REALLY hurts.”
----------------------------------------
I hummed in thought. “Not bad, but I feel this works better as a tool of intimidation. The priests would get seriously hurt by it, sure, but we’d be dead long before their wounds caused them to retreat to the nearest Cloister,”
“Fair enough,” Silver said, lowering the gun out of sight.
I looked down at the weapon I had in my hand.
----------------------------------------
[Energy Vampire Shotgun]
Rank: Rare
A shotgun crafted by Sister Silver. Using the [Energy Transference] subroutine, energy projectiles fired from this shotgun that hit a target that runs on electricity will return part of the target’s energy to the Shotgun, allowing for uninterrupted firing.
“Waiting is for chumps. You just shoot.”
----------------------------------------
I sighed with longing and placed it back. I never got the chance to fire an energy shotgun yet, but with our targets being Priests, it would be impossible to carry it without being detected as soon as we got within 500 meters of them. So it would have to wait for another day.
“Hey, what’s that?” Aren said, making me jump with surprise. When had he gotten so close to me? The sneaky bugger was going to give me a heart attack.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Rings, you scared me. What’s what?” I turned around to see where he was pointing and froze.
It was hanging in a display case. A lever action, short-barrelled shotgun with a rotary cylinder. The pistol grip and the foregrip were made of dark red wood. Actual, real wood. The main body, cylinder, and barrels were made from dark metal ornamented with intricate golden circuitry going down the length of the entire gun. It looked as much a work of art as a weapon.
It was beautiful. I think I heard a choir singing as I examined it.
----------------------------------------
[Overdrive]
Rank: Epic (Masterwork)
A Masterwork Shotgun created by Sister Silver. The lever mechanism engages the [Overdrive Shot] subroutine, which draws power from a rechargeable, high-density power cell hidden in the main body. The energy is stored momentarily in an internal capacitor to supercharge the effects of the next projectiles fired. The [Overdrive Shot] subroutine can be engaged 6 times in a single charge.
“Charge. Aim. Overkill.”
----------------------------------------
“It’s… Perfect.” I whispered.
“Well, I knew you had a taste for the finer things in life,” Silver said, walking up to us and facing her weapon with pride evident on her face. “I made this baby two years ago, the second weapon I created that the system deemed a masterwork.” She opened the case and took the gun out.
“It’s certainly impressive.” I hummed, looking at the weapon more closely. “How has nobody bought this off of you yet? And what’s up with the rotary cylinder?”
“Well, that’s the thing. It’s an epic quality gun and a masterwork, but it’s fairly… Limited.” Silver sighed. “Most other epic-quality weapons have multiple subroutines with flashier and more powerful effects than [Overdrive Shot]. Why get a gun that can strengthen your bullets when you could get a weapon that can shoot deadly fireballs, create walls of fire, and wrap your enemies in molten chains?”
“Okay, I see that,” I said thoughtfully.
Silver nodded. “But here’s the thing, the reason why [Overdrive] is considered an epic quality, masterwork gun is because of the flexibility of its one subroutine. That’s where the rotary cylinder comes in. With the effect affecting all sorts of projectiles, why limit yourself to one kind of bullet? Why not load this baby up with six different kinds you can access at a thought?”
My eyes lit up at that. “And unlike other epic weapons with multiple subroutines, because it has only one, and a relatively simple one at that, it won’t be detected by priests.”
“Exactly, but someone who can afford an epic rank masterwork is the sort of person who is smart enough not to tangle with the Ecclisiarchy. So it’s at a weird spot of too expensive for people who would use it and not powerful enough for people who would afford it.”
I sighed theatrically. “Truly an unfortunate fate for something so beautiful. I will do you this one favor and take it off your hands.” I smirked at her playfully.
“Oh, will you now? Go ahead.” Silver said with one raised eyebrow. I took the gun, and it fit perfectly into my hands. It felt good. “I’ll add it to your tab.” Silver grinned.
“Go ahead,” I nodded, never taking my eyes off the shotgun. It would still be a bargain even if it took me five years to pay off this sort of weapon. I examined it closely and noticed a loading port on the underside. “It takes shells?” I asked with obvious surprise. Such archaic design was rare to see. Most guns of uncommon quality or above would have an ammo fab by default. The magazines carried the dust necessary for the fab to make the bullets on the fly, but where a magazine with physical bullets could fit thirty of them, a magazine with dust could hold hundreds of bullets.
“Ah, about that.” Silver coughed, looking slightly awkward. “That’s another reason why nobody wanted to buy it. It takes a special kind of hyper-compressed ammunition that only I can make. Each shell can be fired around five times before it needs to be changed. Six in the cylinder and six in the tube magazine means a total of sixty shots, but…”
I saw where she was going with this. “But nobody wanted to be reliant on you or the Orphanage for the ammo of their new and expensive gun. A gun with a lower bullet capacity than average,” I said wryly.
Silver sighed again. “Yeah. I made this during the phase when I thought that making guns that take special ammunition only I can manufacture would be a good way to increase the income of the Orphanage. Naturally, nobody wanted to buy them, so the whole venture ended in abject failure. Thankfully, it all fell through before I could manufacture too many of them. This is the most expensive of those guns I made. There was a good chance that if I had added an ammo fab and another subroutine, it would have been my first legendary rank weapon.” She gave the gun a crooked smile.
I nodded again. “I’ll take it. I don’t mind that at all. The lack of an ammo fab means it has an even lower energy signature. It’s the perfect gun for this mission.”
Silver sighed in relief, “Thank Terra, someone sees the value in this gun. Just thinking about selling it at a discount so that someone would use it made my teeth itch.”
I smirked at her, “A tool is only as beautiful as it is useful, eh?”
She nodded sagely.
“Alright, you got your gun. Now what?” Aren said impatiently, looking at [Overdrive] with blatant envy.
“Well, we need ammunition, obviously,” I said patiently to Aren.
Silver nodded and waved at us to follow her. We returned to her office, and she started looking through the countless drawers that comprised the entire far-right wall. She found what she was looking for and tossed a box to Aren, who caught it in the air.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking over the box as if it contained a neat bug.
“These are four power cells for your [Stormspinner Tonfa]. If you somehow run out of power by using the shield without it striking anyone or absorbing any energy projectiles, you’ll need to replace them. You can change them by twisting the grip head and pulling the battery out.” she said absentmindedly as she continued looking through the drawers. “Ah, here it is,” she said in satisfaction.
She pulled out another drawer closer to the ground that looked empty. Aren and I glanced at each other, but when Aren looked back, he gasped. “You’re a Fluxborn?”
I looked at what Silver was doing, and sure enough, she was controlling a set of four metallic wires coming out of her sleeve, making them tap on various parts of the drawer faster than I could see. She turned to Aren and smirked.
“What, never seen a Metalweaver before?” She closed the drawer and extended her hand towards Aren, the wires undulating in the air like snakes. In the blink of an eye, the wires had coiled themselves in funny ways. All of them now had beady eyes made out of bunched-up wire. One of them had folded itself so it looked like it had a pipe in its “mouth,” another one a monocle, another one a mustache, and the last one sporting a rather fashionable top hat. “Neat, huh?”
Aren looked speechless, staring at her for an uncomfortably long time, so she shrugged and shook her hand, the wires unfolding and disappearing inside her sleeve. She opened the drawer again; this time, it was full of shotgun shells. “Here we go," She grunted, picking up and moving several boxes with different colors to her desk. “Take your pick. The first thirty are free.”
I smirked again, “Ah, lure them in with the free hit first. Smart.” She just rolled her eyes at me. “Fine, fine. What are my choices?”
She pointed at a red box. “These ones are incendiary shells.” Then a blue box, “EMP shells,” then a yellow one, “Acid shells.” This continued for a few more minutes, Silver presenting us with increasingly exotic and situational ammunition types. I decided to put an end to it when she pointed at a pink and yellow box, and she proudly declared, “Cake frosting shells.”
“Silver, how many of these are real?” I said with a long-suffering look.
“All of them?” She said as if she didn’t understand why I would ask that.
“Really? Then please explain to me how cake frosting shells are supposed to be used.”
“Oh, that’s easy. The bullets damage your opponent, while the cake frosting makes it hard for them to see, and the floor where it falls becomes slippery.”
“Okay, I understand that, but why cake frosting?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, it had to have some sort of a smell, so I thought, ‘Why not cake frosting?’ It makes your ammo pouch smell nice, and the unexpected scent might throw off your opponents!” She looked expectantly at me as if waiting for me to agree.
“I mean... I guess?” I said noncommittally. “Anyway, that’s enough options for now. I already know which ones I want.”
“Oh?” Silver said.
I looked down at the boxes and felt a faint smile grow on my lips.
“Go big or go home, right?”