Leyla and Abby Nukem entered the Grand Temple's dueling chamber to find me already present, polishing my new weapon with a rag. Unwilling to shrink back down to the point I was flat enough to fit in my old Earth clothes, I instead shrank down only enough to fit into some borrowed clothing from one of the Grand Temple's few alpha nuns.
"The fuck is that?" Leyla demanded, pointing at my weapon.
"My magical weapon for the duel," I said. Now, to stake their pride on letting me use it without question... "Abby knows how to fight people with swords, but I'm pretty sure she has no idea what the fuck to do about this thing."
"Reach past it and stab the idiot holding it," Abby said, sneering. She was wearing her arming clothes- the padded underlayer that her plate armor normally attached to. A bold choice for a duel to first blood, in which the loser would very likely have at least one tear in their clothing, but then, she clearly didn't expect to lose. Hell, she might not have even expected to actually fight at all; the Nukems didn't think highly of me, and had quite firmly suggested that I just run away.
Tough shit, idiots. I'm not fucking scared of you.
"Before we begin, we must re-establish the terms of this duel," Amelia said. "The duel is to first blood. There will be no personal spellcasting, no armor, and only one enchanted weapon per duelist. Should the Archmage win, she and her knight are merely banished from Manor Nukem and the surrounds in a ten mile radius until they retrieve the Teapot of Eternity. Should the Duchess win, the Archmage and her knight shall be summarily executed for insults and injuries to House Nukem. Do both duelists understand and assent to these terms?"
"Aye," I said, nodding and standing up, disappearing my rag into void space.
"Yeah, yeah, let's get on with it," Abby said, unsheathing her sword.
"The duelists will stand back to back in the middle of the chamber," Amelia commanded, and so we obeyed. "The duelists will take ten paces away from each other." We strode away from each other, counting our steps silently. "The duelists will turn and face each other, weapons lowered."
I turned to face Abby, a mixture of boredom and anticipation writ large on her face. I marshaled my own features into a blank look she could glean nothing from.
"Archmage," Amelia called. "Are you ready, or do you forfeit?"
"I am ready," I said.
"Duchess," Amelia continued. "Are you ready, or do you forfeit?"
"I'm ready," Abby said.
"Witnesses, stand well back," Amelia warned, taking her own steps back. Soon, the only person in a forty five degree cone in front of me was Abby herself, my target for this duel. "The duel will begin with the crack of thunder. Duelists ready, in three. Two. One."
So, let's talk about guns and gunpowder for a bit. A lot of e-ink has been spilled about how guns revolutionized warfare because now a peasant with a gun could kill a knight. And while it was true that a peasant with a gun could kill a knight, it was not true that a peasant with a spear couldn't kill a knight. Some decent cohesion and the lightest bit of drill, and a hundred common men who didn't really want to be there could form a square with spears braced against charging cavalry, even if you still couldn't quite get them to advance.
No, the real revolution brought by gunpowder- in Europe, because that's where it revolutionized warfare first- was that now, suddenly, there existed siege artillery that was capable of knocking down castle walls in a practical and usable way. And the reason that happened in Europe and not in China or India was because only in Europe were fortification walls built tall and thin, from stone, to resist escalade- that is, climbing over the wall. China and India, which had stronger states, instead built forts with thicker- and necessarily somewhat shorter- rammed earth that was faced with stone. A more labor-intensive construction for a given amount of resistance to escalade, but far more durable against siege artillery, as rammed earth is somewhat self-sealing.
And naturally, when kings and emperors in Europe got hold of cannons, they started conquering and taking power away from their vassals and centralizing it under their own authority, forming and strengthening states, until a critical mass was reached and the era of rapid, bloody conquest slammed to a shut with the advent of European rammed-earth fortifications, which then developed into the star forts or trace italienne fortifications that some of us may know and adore today, those fancy spikes and lines having been carefully designed in such a way as to maximize the amount of gunnery one can mount on one's defensive walls to stop the assault from reaching those walls in the first place, obviating the concern with escalade in the first place.
And of course, naturally, the antagonistic coevolution of artillery and fortification continued, until finally, in World War 2, the mighty industrialized armies of the world more or less gave the fuck up on fortification altogether and fought wars in a completely different way than their ancestors had fought them for the past several thousand years.
Amelia's thunder cracked and the duel began.
But anyways. It was true that guns required a lot less training to use effectively in a fight than pretty much any melee weapon. Point at enemy, pull trigger, now report to the range for ten minutes of practice every day for the next six weeks, congratulations you've just learned that US Army Basic Training is a lot more than just learning how to kill brown people for Uncle Sam as efficiently as possible.
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That's what the Air Force and especially their drone strike division is for.
No, I've never actually been in the Army. I was never that desperate and depraved. Also, trans. They didn't want me.
But we're getting side-tracked; guns were easier and quicker to learn to use in a fight than just about any other weapon, and that was in fact true. So naturally, when I had to make a weapon to win a duel against a legendary knight, and also had confirmed that ranged weapons were allowed, it was blindingly obvious that I would be making some manner of gun. And when I'd first arrived, I likely would've tried making a shitty revolver, whose cylinder I had to advance manually after each shot, and which fired individually-enchanted replica cartridges. And then I would've remembered that I'm not allowed to have a ranged weapon with more than one piece of magical ammunition, so I would've panicked and made a big deal about literally getting only one shot, and the symbolism of that.
But after a month of getting used to mixing magic and enchantment with artifice and mechanism, as well as simply getting better at artifice and mechanism in the first place, I was able to produce something far more capable and performant. Something that, finally, could perform on-par with or even a little better than the state of the art back home.
Duchess Abigail Van Helsing-Nukem sprinted at me with a sword- even without active spellcasting, she was faster than any sprinter back home.
I lifted my weapon, which I'd already set to automatic and safety-off, and sprayed her down like a filthy dog with the gunfire of an ersatz AK-47.
The actual mechanism of an AK-47 isn't actually that complicated. You can find videos of it on youtube, plus animated illustrations of it with see-throughs and cross-sections and shit. But I'll still run through the basics, just in case. The main moving part is the bolt itself. When the gun starts its firing cycle, the bolt moves forward, scoops up the topmost round from the magazine, pushes that into the chamber, and rotates so that it's temporarily locked in place so hot gas doesn't leak back out and into your face. And as that happens, it trips a lever that releases the spring-loaded hammer to strike the firing pin, the bullet is fired, and some of that hot expanding gas is siphoned back through a different tube to push the bolt back- unlocking it from the chamber in the process- and do things like push the hammer back down to be re-cocked, eject the spent cartridge, and let the next one rise into position in the magazine, and then the firing cycle begins again.
There were really only three enchantments on the gun, in varying tiers of necessity. The most important enchantment was the firing mechanism- the firing pin was enchanted such that, when struck on one end, it would produce a small, controlled explosion at the other end, which was in the chamber, behind the bullet. This threw the hot lead on the bad woman without me having to figure out where the fuck I was going to get nitric acid to make real gunpowder- no, that charcoal/sulfur/saltpeter mix we call black powder is not suitable for use in automatic weapons, the residue would foul the action in short order. This enchantment was pretty much essential.
The next most important enchantment was on the magazine. See, I didn't want to sit down and make all of the lead bullets I might possibly need to fire. So instead I enchanted it with its own void space to hold the big ass bar of lead Amelia gave me, and whenever the opening of the magazine was empty- say, after the bolt had stripped the previous bullet out of the magazine and shoved it into the chamber- it would automatically strip some of the lead from the bar, form it into a new bullet, and pop it out of the void space into the opening of the magazine. This also, incidentally, meant that I could fit way the fuck more bullets in a small box magazine than you'd be able to fit in the full-sized banana magazine that's the standard for AK-47s.
The least important enchantment was a silencer. Just because everyone present could get their ears healed afterwards doesn't mean I wanted to need to get my ears healed on account I did something as stupid as unleashing a full auto assault rifle indoors.
I released the trigger as soon as I was sure Abby had been hit, and as she fell over, insensate and bleeding from a dozen new holes, I in turn turned my safety back on, tilted my gun back, and blew the rising wisp of smoke out of the barrel.
"Well, look at that," I said to my shocked audience. "I win."
"Th- the duel goes to Archmage Lucifer Morningstar," Amelia announced, just as shocked as everyone else. See, I hadn't let her watch me test-fire this thing; I'd told her I wanted it to be a surprise, and she'd said that was probably for the best, if she wanted to minimize evidence of collusion and maintain an image of neutrality. "The duelists may now heal themselves."
Abby groaned, still alive, and then coughed a few times, managing to barely lift her torso off the floor before thumping back down. Still, the bleeding stopped in short order, and the bullet holes began to fill back in, with the few bullets that had gotten stuck in her being pushed out by the healing process, tumbling off of her and onto the floor.
"Urgh," Abby moaned, as Leyla helped her up. "Fuck a duck that hurt... what the fuck kind of monster are you?"
"I'm an archmage from a world with no magic, and technology far beyond your own," I said, swapping my borrowed dueling outfit back out for my real clothes and my dueling body for my real body, gaining an extra six inches of height from the thick soles of my shoes to the top of my head, or an extra two feet to the top of my hat. "I'm a proud, stubborn, and dangerous bitch who you've made an enemy of because your daughter is a stubborn idiot." This next line was something Rachel and I had talked about beforehand, and on cue, she came up to stand beside me, where I could put my free arm around her waist. "I'm the biggest-dicked alpha bitch in the land, and I'm the proud lover of the gay knight you so casually threw away." I kissed Rachel, deeply and passionately, in front of the Duke and her council, and Rachel kissed me back, angrily eager to show just how gay she was, and how fucking little it mattered what anyone else in this room thought about it, because they couldn't do a goddamn thing about it.
I pulled back from the kiss, and hugged a very smug-looking Rachel face-first into one of my fat-ass titties that alphas like me weren't supposed to have.
"I'm the bitch who's gonna hang out in Kotor for the next little while," I mused. "Since House Nukem clearly didn't want my tech, I might as well try someone else."
"Fuck you," Leyla hissed, her face absolutely incandescent with seething, impotent rage.
"You had your chances, and you blew them like a cheap whore," I said. "C'mon, Rach. Let's go find someone actually worth talking to." I put my gun away in my void space, confident that any attempt by Leyla or Abby to lay a finger on me outside the confines of a duel would be stopped and then punished by the assembled council, and picked up my girlfriend in a bridal carry, before walking out the door.