WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist Doesn't Want to Leave the First Floor ◈
Chapter 61
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“Is that a gun?”
“That’s right.”
It looked like an illegally assembled rifle made in a workshop.
What made it unusual was that it did not use gunpowder ammunition. They said it could fire anything, stone, iron, or lead, as long as it was shaped to fit the caliber.
“It’s not that powerful for a gun. Its effective range is around a hundred meters.”
“Hmm.”
“They say that’s because it doesn’t use gunpowder.”
It was a launcher rather than an explosive weapon.
Judging by the small Mana Battery inside, it seemed to have been made by processing and combining otherworldly devices and miscellaneous junk from the boxes.
‘It probably didn’t originally look like this.’
He accepted it gratefully.
He did not know whether he would use it himself, but properly analyzing it might let him apply the principles to making other equipment.
‘A shotgun would be better than a rifle in a place like this.’
He would not need to shoot far away anyway.
Mobs would come charging in from every direction.
“But isn’t this valuable? Are you sure you should give it to me?”
“Ah. It’s not that valuable.”
“Really?”
“As you know, all kinds of things come out of the boxes. It was made by combining those things.”
“The firing mechanism too?”
“Ah. There wasn’t a finished product, but there was a recipe, um, something like a blueprint. I found the things shown on it and put similar parts together, and it worked.”
“I see.”
Looking more closely at the gun, he thought he had seen similar parts in the mountain of junk inside his Subspace.
“You said its effective range was around a hundred meters?”
“But I don’t know exactly... There are people in the Clan who completed military service. They were the ones who said it.”
“Ah.”
“They’re still using them, but they say it can’t pierce Wolf Pelt from a hundred meters away.”
“It can’t pierce it?”
“Yes. It’s about as strong as hitting something with a blunt weapon. But the closer it gets, the stronger the damage becomes.”
“And the penetration.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
They said it also depended on the material used for the bullet. Iron and stone were simple examples.
Stone was light and fast, but difficult to penetrate with. It shattered on impact and dealt damage that way. Iron was heavier and had greater penetration.
“But it has to fit the specifications. If it’s bumpy, it can scratch the inside of the barrel and damage it, so it needs to be smooth.”
“I’ll have to process them with a Skill.”
“That would be the surest way.”
Even if the barrel were damaged, it would not be a major problem if he had the same resources to repair it.
The problem was accuracy.
If every bullet had a different size and weight, there would be no way to know where or how it would fly each time he fired.
“Hmm.”
A mana launcher.
It merely took the form of a gun. Its concept was different from the firearms he knew. Still, it used a trigger because that made it easier to handle.
“So instead of striking a firing pin to ignite gunpowder, it works more like a firing button.”
“Uh... Probably.”
She seemed more surprised that Juggernaut had not made something like this already.
There must have been similar components among all the machines and scrap that had come from the boxes.
‘I should look for them.’
He accepted the gift gratefully.
He wondered whether she should have given him something like this, but perhaps it was a kind of bribe or insurance.
“Then, take care.”
“Yes. Keep it up too, Juggernaut.”
The moment he returned, he entered his Subspace and dismantled the Mana Rifle in question.
Whether it had been designed for easy repair or because complex processing had been difficult from the beginning, its structure was fairly simple to disassemble and assemble.
After loosening several screws and pulling a retaining pin, the barrel, body, and firing mechanism separated easily.
“It’s simpler than I thought.”
Of course, being simple did not make it easy to understand.
After looking at it for a while, he arranged the separated parts in order.
The barrel, the part that pushed in the bullet, Mana Battery components, a flat metal plate connected to the battery, and so on.
When he pulled the separate trigger component, a faint light spread from the pattern engraved on the metal plate before fading.
Unlike Earth firearms, which used a firing pin to ignite gunpowder, this seemed to use the pulling motion of the trigger to reconnect the interrupted flow of mana.
“Then is this the firing mechanism?”
He remembered seeing parts with a similar shape.
Heading to the place where all kinds of junk were piled up like a mountain, he searched through things for a long time.
Rusty mechanical arms, metal pipes of unknown use, broken gauges, gears, and wires both thick and thin were pushed aside in every direction.
“I sorted these by type once before, but they’ve piled up again.”
His “companions” regularly sorted them, but this was relatively low priority compared to their other work. When they were busy with something else, they apparently just piled everything up like this.
“Is this it?”
Then he found a metal component smaller than his palm.
Its shape was different, but the engraved pattern in the middle and the position of the slot connecting to the battery were similar.
“I think this is right.”
Once he found one, similar pieces began to catch his eye one after another. There were numerous parts with slightly different sizes and shapes.
After gathering them separately, he called Companion No. 1 and ordered it to search for similar components.
“I know you’re busy, but keep an eye out whenever you have time.”
“Yes, Master.”
It was a little disappointing.
It would have been much easier if he could have received the blueprint along with the gift.
‘But asking for that too would be a bit much.’
For now, he decided to examine the original.
After reassembling the rifle, he left the Subspace and prepared a test target.
A spacious logging yard.
Wolf Pelt had been wrapped around the outside of a fairly thick log.
The first bullet was a round piece of stone. The second was an iron bullet of the same size.
The specification was one centimeter in diameter.
It seemed to allow for a slight margin of error, but he made them as identical as possible to the samples he had received.
“Hmm.”
The one assigned to fire was a worker from the logging yard.
If he fired it himself, Wolves would crowd between him and the target, making even a test shot impossible.
Thunk.
The sound came next.
It was too quiet to be called a gunshot.
Rather than an explosion, it sounded like a rubber hammer striking a hollow metal can.
The stone bullet did not properly pierce the pelt.
Some shattered fragments embedded themselves in the pelt and damaged the wood behind it, but not very deeply.
“They said it was about as strong as a blunt weapon. They were right.”
Next, they cut the distance in half.
After firing a stone bullet, they switched to an iron bullet.
The iron bullet clearly pierced the Wolf Pelt and lodged in the wood. But even with the distance cut in half, it did not sink in as deep as one finger joint.
“If it were fired at a real Wolf... at best, it would be hard to inflict a critical wound.”
He had the worker reduce the distance to twenty steps and fire again.
Only then did the iron bullet lodge fairly deep.
“This is acceptable.”
He repeated the same experiment.
If the bullet differed even slightly from a perfect sphere, it often flew off in a completely unexpected direction.
‘Even with a Skill, processing something into a perfect sphere takes more time... Still, I can’t just make them roughly.’
Overall, the stopping power was not bad.
But it seemed difficult to hunt a proper mob with this.
“For rabbits, it would be more than enough, but for Wolves...”
If dozens of people fired at close range all at once, they could kill one. Alone, though, it was still questionable.
And what if the target were Sangun?
After thinking for a moment, he shook his head.
“It might deal damage, but it would probably just make Sangun angrier.”
Maybe it had been given away as a gift because it was such a mediocre weapon. Still, it was not useless.
“I can adapt it.”
He could handle the processing.
The question was whether the components he combined would actually work.
‘There’s nothing for it but trial and error.’
Thus began the grueling work.
The first copy he made did nothing even when he pulled the trigger.
On the second, the battery’s mana drained all at once, and the grip became scorching hot.
“If I control this properly, I might be able to make a hand warmer or some kind of cold-weather device. I should set this aside for now.”
On the third, the bullet got stuck halfway down the barrel.
He finally succeeded in firing the fourth.
But the bullet only popped out about two steps beyond the muzzle before falling.
“...”
Noticing Companion No. 2’s gaze from nearby, he shook his head.
“They say failure is the mother of success.”
“Yes, Master.”
The failures kept piling up.
Reusable parts were dismantled again. Components that might be applied elsewhere were gathered separately.
Hunting, exercise, meals, and sleep.
Research time was added to his existing daily routine.
“Let’s keep at it.”
Naturally, he could not succeed in just a day or two. He continued failing for quite some time afterward.
Before he knew it, the rain had lessened.
The soggy ground slowly hardened, and yellow began to mix into the forest’s deep green.
“Whew.”
Seo Hajin looked over the traces of his work so far.
There had been some results, actually.
Around ten days after he began, he had managed to reproduce something comparable to the rifle he had received as a gift.
But that was not what he wanted.
‘A hundred meters is actually too far.’
Rather than a sharp, fatal long-range shot, he wanted one powerful hit that could strike hard even right in front of him.
‘There’s no need to obsess over penetration.’
He shortened the barrels.
He increased the size of the bullets.
Since it was impossible to create something like a shotgun, he tried attaching multiple barrels to create a similar effect.
At first, there were four.
When he pulled the trigger, the four bullets collided in front of the muzzles and shattered.
“Damn.”
Reducing it to three prevented the collisions, but the power dropped so much that he would have been better off stabbing with a spear or swinging a hammer.
In the end, two barrels remained.
It came to resemble a double-barreled shotgun.
Unlike a real shotgun that used shell-shaped ammunition, however, it fired one large bullet from each of its two barrels, for two simultaneous shots in total.
“Is this as far as I can go?”
Two shots at once.
That was the best he could do with his current ability.
The problem was the trigger.
Each barrel was connected to a separate trigger, so to fire only one shot, he had to pick one and pull it.
“It’s harder to fire just one.”
Maybe because his hands were large and his fingers thick.
Pulling only one of the two triggers was more difficult.
He would rather fire both sides simultaneously with one trigger, but he had not yet found a way to deliver mana equally to both firing mechanisms.
“This is why people need to learn.”
Since he knew nothing, all he could do was build up failures and discover things one by one.
Yet the process was more fun than he expected.
Simply changing the position of one component changed the output.
Digging the pattern on the metal plate a little deeper made mana flow faster, but making it too deep drained the battery in one shot.
After countless failures and broken parts, he found an appropriate depth.
A month later, he had unified the triggers into one. Another half month after that, he succeeded in attaching a Drum Magazine beneath it.
‘I’m not sure whether this even counts as success.’
Click.
A faint sound came from inside the Drum Magazine as it pushed two bullets upward.
Then... a third bullet rose with them.
“This can’t happen.”
Only two bullets should rise into the chambers.
But no matter how much he adjusted things, a third bullet followed them upward like this two or three times out of ten.
It could not fire in that state.
He wondered if it could simply push out two or three bullets, but perhaps the flow of mana became tangled inside. The entire mechanism stopped working.
“Hmm.”
He did not even have an idea where the problem was, so naturally, he lacked the skill to make fine adjustments.
Instead, he came up with a solution in the way he could.
“If another one rises, I’ll make it come out separately.”
He added a short tube beneath the barrels.
If a third bullet rose, he changed the internal structure so it would enter that tube.
It was not easy, but he almost forced it into working. If time had not been something he had in abundance, he could not have even attempted it.
“The ones that go in here... I can take them out by tilting it forward like this.”
The result looked like a triple-barreled gun from the outside, but only the two upper barrels actually fired.
It was inefficient.
But it worked.
‘My skill is lacking.’
He caught the bullet that rolled from the ejection port and put it back into the Drum Magazine.
“The output seems good enough now.”
Since both the ammunition feed and firing system used mana, the existing battery could not handle it.
He tried connecting multiple batteries, but that only increased the weight and the number of malfunctions. The mana flows became strangely tangled, interfering with one another’s output.
In the end, he switched to using one larger Mana Battery, and that seemed closest to the right answer for now.
As a result, it had become nearly twice as large as the original double-barreled form.
Despite having wooden parts, it weighed over twenty kilograms. If it had been made entirely of iron, it would probably have easily exceeded thirty kilograms.
The bullets were 2.5 centimeters in diameter.
When he loaded twenty iron bullets into the Drum Magazine, their heavy weight pressed against his palm.
‘If this were my real body instead of an Avatar, I couldn’t even aim this properly.’
Juggernaut could handle it, at least.
Going further, he could even hold it in one hand and fire for a short time.
Carrying the finished product, he headed toward a rock he had prepared beforehand. This time, he would fire from close range, so he could do it himself.
The rock was as large as a human torso.
The distance was ten steps.
He braced the gun firmly against his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
Boom!
A shockwave burst from the short barrels.
Compared to the simple Thunk it had made before, the difference was enormous.
A fairly strong recoil pushed against his shoulder.
He shook his head.
“It’s not even a real gun. It would be a problem if the force escapes this way.”
Some of the force that should have gone entirely into pushing the bullets out was leaking elsewhere. If he fixed that, it would be much better.
Boom!
Another shot.
Another burst of recoil.
Even Juggernaut’s solid, heavy body swayed slightly. An ordinary human might have fallen backward.
Rumble.
Then came the sight that followed.
The rock, struck by four iron bullets in two simultaneous volleys, crumbled apart.
“Oh.”
He looked at the faint mana smoke rising from the muzzle. This too was proof that mana was being oversupplied.
‘There are many places to improve.’
It was heavy and inefficient.
When he kept firing, it sometimes spat bullets onto the ground. After firing several shots in a row, the feeding mechanism occasionally stopped.
Still, it worked.
For now, he was satisfied with that.
“It’s for close range, at least.”
Its effective range was only around twenty meters.
To produce proper power, he needed to get within ten meters.
In this forest, that was practically point-blank range. A Wolf or another mob could close that distance in the time it took to blink.
‘It’s not enough to use as a main weapon. At best, it’s a secondary weapon.’
Still, it was not useless.
It had never been made to hit distant enemies in the first place.
What mattered was that he had completed one design.
Making the same thing again would now be much easier than before. He could reduce its weight or change the barrels too.
‘I can roughly see where I need to make changes.’
He raised the gun in one hand.
“I can carry heavy things like this, and I can give lighter rifle-like ones to the Wolf Riders.”
The friends who rode Wolves did not have weapons they could use properly from atop them.
Those skilled with bows were relatively fine, but the rest could hardly hit their targets even with crossbows.
It was not easy to hit a mostly moving target from atop a Wolf that never stopped shaking.
Crossbows also needed to be reloaded. If they focused on that, it could interfere with commanding their teams.
As a result, except for the archers, they could barely use their weapons even when they had them.
Of course, being issued Mana Rifles would not suddenly make them expert marksmen.
But these were easy to load and fire.
And more than anything, they would be riding Wolves and shooting guns.
He imagined the sight for a moment.
“That’s cool.”
That was enough.
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