Episode 9: Slug TCC-07
“Whoa, you’ve got a pretty refreshed look on your face. I was watching from above, and it was amazing. You even took down a dragon-type monster.”
“Die.”
Bang, bang! I shot at Dad’s feet with my handgun.
“Whoa! What the heck was that?! That’s dangerous, isn’t it?!”
“Shut up, I’m tired.”
I had been facing ferocious monsters in an unfamiliar forest. Thanks to the defense drones, I came back completely unscathed, but I was still exhausted.
“…So, that’s your trump card?”
“Hmm, well, one of them, I guess.”
“You have others? Whoa, there’s a hole in the ground.”
“That’s just how that weapon is.”
I easily cleaned the dirt off my body, pulled out a chair, and sat down. This chair is also a relic from a past era.
“A metal chair? What’s that?”
“Hey, Dad. You know, I think I have memories from before I was reborn.”
“Huh? What are you talking about? Did you get hit with some kind of Mental Attack?”
“…I’ll shoot you again.”
When I aimed the gun, Dad backed away.
“Sorry, just kidding. But memories from before you were reborn?”
“Probably, yeah.”
“Hmph. And?”
“Before I was reborn, I was a soldier. And this is a weapon I had stored in my Spatial Storage back then. I have other things too.”
“Claffy.”
“What?”
“What’s a soldier?”
“Huh? Don’t you have armies here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Come to think of it, this country only has Knights Orders, right? And there aren’t any wars with other countries?!
“Umm, it’s a specialist who fights to protect the country or invade other countries. You know?”
“Like a Knights Order?”
“Yeah, yeah!”
The kingdom’s military strength consists only of the Knights Order and the soldier groups under them. I certainly haven’t heard of an army.
“Ah, I see. So, not a Knights Order, but a soldier? Belonging to some country?”
“More like the Unified Space Force.”
“…Never heard of it.”
“Probably not.”
I spun the gun around in my hand and put it back into my Spatial Storage. Now, what will Dad’s reaction be?
“So, what kind of weapons do you have?”
“Huh?”
“Was that thing you used earlier a weapon that fires pebbles?”
“Nah, it shoots bullets made of Magical Power.”
“Magical Power? Ah, that’s why there’s nothing left inside the hole! It dissipates because it’s a Magical Attack.”
“Exactly.”
“Hmph, how powerful is it?”
“Powerful enough to pierce a War Orc’s head.”
“Huh?”
Well, yeah, makes sense. It can pierce the head of a War Orc, which has a level of hardness that can shatter steel daggers.
“A War Orc, you say? When they get to that level, their bodies are protected by Magical Power, so you shouldn’t be able to pierce them easily, right?”
“That’s because it automatically gets a Barrier-Piercing enchantment.”
“Barrier-Piercing? Enchantment?”
“The generated bullet is made to pierce magical or electronic walls. Like this.”
I took out one of the War Orc corpses. The one with a single bullet hole in its forehead and no other external wounds.
“…Monsters, big or small, cover their bodies with Magical Power. Especially A-rank and above, they have it at such an absurd level that it’s hard to even scratch them.”
“Yeah. That’s why these weapons were developed to be able to defeat them with human hands.”
And it’s also a weapon made to deal with humans who can create Barriers.
“War Orcs are similar to humans in terms of skin… well, they’re actually pigs, but because they’re that type, the bullet can pierce them as long as it can break through the Magical Power Barrier. Of course, against monsters with Carapace or scales, you need a bigger gun than this.”
To fight the black-scaled dragon I chased away earlier, a handgun wouldn’t be powerful enough. I also had assault rifles and shotguns, but since there was some distance, I fired a Magic Launcher, fully prepared for a forest fire.
Even so, it was a dragon, after all. It wasn’t like I could just get rid of it with one shot. After a staring contest, it left. I didn’t intend to chase it down and fight, so I let it escape.
“You were also using a sword that was glowing.”
“That’s the SB Lance. It’s also a powerful weapon. To put it simply, it’s a sword that can cut anything and never dulls.”
Apparently, it can’t actually cut anything, but I’ve never heard of anything it can’t cut.
“Doesn’t look like a sword to me.”
“It’s a sword, but not really. It can also be used as a baton… a stun rod. Does that make sense?”
With a whoosh, I deployed the blade.
“Ah, I kind of get it. But a sword is good. Here, you have to face a lot of incredibly tough monsters, so you can never have enough swords.”
Dad, Uncle Daz, and other top-tier hunters in the village come here regularly to thin out the monsters. Fighting those kinds of monsters would definitely ruin your weapons quickly.
“…Hmm, I could give you the SB Lance and the Slug TCC-07.”
“Really?! Are you sure?! And what’s a Slug?”
“I can also set user permissions so only you can use them. And the SB Lance and Slug TCC-07 can be used for a long time without maintenance. Oh, the Slug TCC-07 is the successor to the handgun I was using earlier.”
There are other weapons that don’t require much maintenance, but it’s scary to let an amateur use them where I can’t keep an eye on them.
“No, but I feel bad. Getting such valuable Magic Items, especially from my son.”
“It’s okay, I have a lot. I have so many that it’s ridiculous to count.”
“How many do you have?! Why do you have so many?”
“Well, a lot of things happened.”
A lot of things happened.
“I see. So, that’s why you’re so calm and collected, huh? It comes from experience.”
Dad was somehow convincing himself of something.
“Experience?”
“Because you were a soldier, right? So, you must have faced death many times, right?”
“Ah, that’s true.”
“Compared to that, training with me is just training after all. You weren’t in any real danger, and you had weapons if anything happened.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Dad said that and patted my head.
“Your judgment is correct. With weapons this powerful, you shouldn’t show them to people. You’ve done well to keep it hidden this long.”
“Dad.”
“I’ll only use them here, and I won’t tell anyone, not even Gaia. So, give them to me.”
“Dad…”
That ruins everything.
“It’s getting late!”
“Yes, yes. It is, isn’t it!”
After that, I registered Dad as the user of the SB Lance and Slug TCC-07 and taught him how to use them.
The SB Lance is a sword that compresses Magical Power. He complained that it had no weight, but he quickly got used to it.
On the other hand, the TCC-07 is a handgun. Dad is also a master archer, but since it was his first time using a gun, he couldn’t hit the target well at first, even when aiming carefully.
Both weapons just require charging with Magical Power. Dad has a lot of Magical Power, so he should be able to use them semi-permanently. Well, the Magic Core will deteriorate, so he’ll need to replace it before that happens.
The Slug TCC-07 is a handgun that can fire up to 24 bullets. And if you charge it with Magical Power while using it, you can refill the magazine as many times as you want. It requires little Magical Power and is said to be easy enough for even children to use. Most other Magic Guns can only be charged after emptying the magazine and require a special charger, so this innovative system has made it popular not only in the Unified Space Force but also among civilians.
I prefer the magazine-reload type Slug TCC-06 because it’s too light.
Anyway, Dad, armed with this weapon that can easily unleash high power with little Magical Power, wasn’t satisfied with just hitting the target and went down into the forest to try it on moving targets.
Well, I wanted him to get used to it to some extent, so I agreed, but that was a mistake.
This man was as excited as a child.
Of course, it’s better than a bow and arrow, right? It’s simply more powerful, has a longer effective range, only consumes Magical Power, and doesn’t take up space.
“You’re playing too much…”
Dad, with the SB Lance and Slug TCC-07 in each hand, was slashing and shooting enemies left and right.
He was originally a skilled hunter. He quickly got used to handling the weapons and continued to fight, getting carried away.
At first, he was properly holding the Slug TCC-07 with both hands, but before I knew it, he was hitting targets with one-handed shots, and he seemed to have grasped the effective range, as monsters were dying the moment they showed their faces. Isn’t he better at it than me?
And when battles broke out, a large number of corpses were created, attracting familiar and unfamiliar monsters one after another.
The numbers gradually increased, and I couldn’t leave it all to Dad, so I started using assault rifles that could take down a large number of enemies at once, and high-powered shotguns.
I also fought a large, dragon-sized beast earlier. Where did that monster even come from? The Magic Launcher fired repeatedly. If I hadn’t been able to restrain it with a Command Seal, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.
“Seriously, some of those things have incredible power. And you can summon dragons too? Give me one of those.”
“I can’t hand that over, it’s too dangerous. If you misjudge the distance with that thing, you could end up taking out yourself and your allies.”
After a certain amount of time passed, the Monsters finally stopped attacking. And the sun was about to set.
The massive number of corpses were stuffed into my Spatial Storage and the Magic Bag that Dad said he borrowed from the village. Dad’s Magic Bag, which apparently has a considerable capacity, was starting to get full. Just how many did we defeat?
“This is bad. If I don’t get back in time, I’ll be considered dead.”
“Ah, now that you mention it, I think I heard something about that.”
No choice.
“Let’s head back for now… Todoma, Karara too. Let’s go.”
“Alright, are we in a hurry?”
“Not really. I still have a secret.”
I raised my hand and summoned a Spatial Jump magic circle in the air.
“Huh?”
“It’s what you’d call a warp. I am a Spatial Magic user, after all.”
I opened the space in front of me, connecting it to another space. A space battleship like the Amur Adonis required a Magic Core to perform long-distance Spatial Jumps, but moving within the same planet, a distance that could be covered in a day, could be done with my own Magical Power.
“Ah, I see. So Spatial Storage is Spatial Magic. I guess that makes sense… So you can use Teleportation Magic too… Hey, why don’t you quit being a guard for the Lord and stay here?”
“Like I can quit now. More importantly, are you going to get left behind?”
Dad’s the one who suggested it in the first place.
“Oh my, you’re all beat up.”
“Mostly because of Dad…”
“Well, yeah, um. What’s with that?”
Don’t look at me like it’s my weapon’s fault.
And what’s tattered is just the clothes I was wearing today. We made sure to wipe ourselves down properly.
“So, what did you bring back?”
“Ah, right. I had you collect all sorts of things. First, bring out the Strike Eagle.”
“Huh? Which one?”
“The bird that attacked us in the air.”
“That one, huh?”
It’s a bird Monster with black wings and a brown belly. When it spreads its wings, it’s quite large.
“Hmm, I guess we should do this in the yard.”
“That’s a good idea. It’ll get smelly.”
“Dissection? You’re doing it now?”
“Because we don’t have time, right?”
“…Well, we’re leaving tomorrow.”
And early in the morning, too.
“You’ve never dissected a Monster from the Black Forest, have you? They don’t circulate in the market, so there aren’t many dissectors who know how to dissect them, or what the valuable parts and edible parts are.”
“Claffy has a Magic Bag, so you bring back a lot, right? But it’s a waste to just leave them as they are.”
So, it seems like it’s study time.
However, since they’re basically birds, beasts, fish, plants, and demi-humans, there aren’t any major differences in how to dissect them. I was taught about Monsters with strong Poison, parts that can be used as medicine, and different procedures for dissection, such as needing special blades or taking out certain organs first.
Can I even remember all of this?
“Should I write some notes…”
I’m not even trying to hide it from my parents anymore, so I’m bringing out one of my past relics. A notebook and pen. Even something like this is a rare item in this era. However, Dad is pretending not to notice, and Mom is focused on explaining, not paying attention to me.
I’m sure Dad will explain it to me later. Yeah.
“War Orcs have exquisite meat on their bellies, shoulders, and legs.”
“How many did we collect? This is the first time I’ve been afraid to check what’s inside the Magic Bag.”
“There are a lot, so I’ll bring out mine. But help me dissect a few.”
I took out a War Orc with a hole in its skull and a War Orc with its head severed.
“What beautiful corpses. This one’s head was severed with a single flash? Claffy, aren’t you better with a Sword than Dad?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Dad seems a little depressed, doesn’t he?
After Mom’s dissection talk and cooking class, we had dinner.
Then it was time for bed. The next day, I set out on the journey back to the Lord’s capital with Raymond-san.
Just like on the way there, Raymond-san took care of all the negotiations for lodging in the villages along the road, which was a great help.