74. Guns Are Powerless

Guns Are Powerless

Ever since my abilities had been grouped together on the panel, using them had become easier, especially when combining several powers to create one complicated effect.

Here, Force Adjustment weakened gravity’s grip on the pile of earth, making it light as bark while preserving its inertia.

It also temporarily reduced friction and cohesion so the dirt could be shaped more easily.

The shaping was done through Nearby Object Manipulation, molding the claylike mass into a hollow imitation of one of the fireball-throwing demons, which I could wear like an extremely thick outfit.

To make it more convincing, a second layer of Force Adjustment formed two spheres around the false claws, amplifying the collisions of air molecules and rapidly heating the air into fireballs.

“So, Martin?” I altered the sound waves so that my voice rumbled and echoed in a low growl. “Can you shoot me now?”

I lifted the “clothing” around me and slid forward faster than those prettied-up lesser demons could actually move, suddenly appearing within reach of him.

“How about now?”

He raised his rifle and did fire.

Or at least, he tried to.

No matter how hard he pulled the trigger, it refused to move.

Under the force field I had placed over the rifle, every bit of force he applied was canceled out, locking the trigger in place.

I dismissed the fireball over my right claw and tapped Martin lightly on the forehead with the edge of a superheated fake nail.

The point of contact hissed. He cried out and fell backward onto his rear, startled by how quickly I had gotten closer than he could track.

He stared up at me with wide eyes, and there was not a trace of condescension or lechery left in them.

“As you can see, guns are very easy to interfere with in magical combat,” I told everyone as the gravel and dirt slid off me without a single grain sticking.

Moving in that thing was awkward. I had to split my attention between controlling it like a marionette and moving around.

So even though it made my point easier to demonstrate, and seeing through it with Force Sense meant its biggest drawback was not a problem, I still discarded it.

Besides, being pretty was great, and it also helped prove that you should not judge magic by appearance.

“That is the biggest problem with relying on weapon tools, but not the only one. Since more and more people on our side are using weapons, someone had to come up with solutions.”

“If the solution is running at monsters and punching them in the face, I’ll pass,” another dissenter cut in.

At least this tall, thin man in camouflage seemed to know something about me.

“Even if guns aren’t reliable, they haven’t failed any of us yet, and they won’t fail if we shoot the caster from a kilometer away.”

His weapon, a long-barreled rifle nearly as tall as he was, strongly supported that opinion.

It also made him a victim of the second biggest problem with guns.

The real solution was either to abandon firearms entirely or to become a gunsmith in addition to being a gunner.

I suspected this group would not accept that answer.

Because I kept silent, the sniper, probably one of the few surviving soldiers sent in from outside who possessed such a weapon, prepared to speak again.

An older voice cut him off.

“Don’t be too sure, kid,” Zhao Linshou grunted. “Little Black and I have been hunting those things since the first night, and I’ve seen plenty of situations where even good guns struggled.”

He stared motionlessly at the broken skyline of the distant city, lost in memory.

The other soldiers gave him the time and respect they had not given me.

For the first time, I began wondering what Zhao Linshou had been doing while Chi Li, Cheng Rui, and I had been slowing the enemy’s advance, and why he was so famous and respected among his fellow gun nuts.

At least stop calling them gun nuts, the annoying little voice in my head mocked.

“Trust me, you do not want to get caught when your gun fails. That is why I called all of you here,” the old man finally said.

The soldiers nodded reluctantly.

“All right, let’s try again,” I told my apparently captive audience, pointing at the sniper. “You may shoot me with that long gun. If you can bring me down before a bad guy crosses a great distance to reach you, you can all skip class, and I will be left with bruises and humiliation. No tricks this time. I will not interfere with your gun.”

I tossed my hair and struck a textbook challenge pose.

He looked at me, then at his rifle, then back at me.

Then he snorted, and quite a few of his friends snorted with him.

“Did I say something funny?”

“Do you know what kind of rifle this is?”

I silently shook my head.

“Do you know what my ability is?”

I shook my head again. He sighed.

“Then how can you issue a challenge like that? Do you have a death wish or something?”

“No. But I have been shot before, and those wounds did not do much to me.”

Also, Force Sense gave me a good idea of the rifle’s basic power, and how much force enhancement would be required to make it dangerous. He clearly did not have that kind of ability.

“So don’t worry. Shoot.”

“You asked for it,” he said, taking a firing stance and bracing himself carefully. “My ability doubles this rifle’s confirmed range of two kilometers to six. How much time do you think that gives me?”

Ah. That was why he had laughed.

“Given known enemy speeds, three minutes should be long enough,” I answered innocently while floating to the other side of the clearing, since I did not want anyone hit by ricochets.

He merely smiled at me, gave a thumbs-up, and fired.

A steel-core bullet almost as thick as my thumb erupted from the barrel in a blaze and crossed the distance slowly, almost lazily.

I could have moved out of its path with ease. Even if it had tracking, I could have shaken it off through sheer speed, or burned it out of the air with any number of force effects.

I did none of that.

I stood there until the bullet splattered against my thigh like a lump of mud.

If this lanky sniper was superhuman, his marksmanship was not very impressive, or he was still worried about my safety.

That earned him some points, at least.

Then the next bullet came, and the next. In one second of normal time, he fired five bullets. To me, that second felt almost like a full minute.

“Is that all?” I asked him.

Then I flicked the last flattened bullet back toward him for inspection. Nearby Object Manipulation reached out, making the nearly two-ounce piece of metal look as if I had casually snapped it perfectly onto the man’s rifle.

On its edge, of course.

“No!” he roared, dropping the empty magazine and pulling a new one from a pocket that had been empty a moment before.

Then another five-round barrage came at me, moving at what looked like very fast fastballs, which meant that in reality they were flying several kilometers per second.

He had doubled the bullets’ speed, just as he could double the rifle’s range.

That felt familiar.

This time, the full-metal bullets shattered on impact. To a normal person, it would have felt like being struck by small thrown stones. Annoying, but largely harmless.

“You’ll have to try harder than that!” I shouted.

His face flushed red.

Yes, I was being a little obnoxious.

But he was still holding back.