The Strongest Gun Magus: I Cast Bullet!-Chapter 51: Revolver Revolver
With the treasures from stolen Blue Bismuth School items, Reynard didn’t have to worry about money for a long time, even while renting a forge.
He spent several weeks refining and practicing the designs that he had had in mind for a long while. Reynard didn’t know how long it would take for him to refine his aura, and with better guns, he hoped to have an advantage even over Albedo magi, whom he might get in trouble with.
Ideally, he wanted to be able to defeat anyone who might come hunting him and Marien.
Reynard had over a dozen basic barrel-loaded pistols, but with extra time and money, he could afford to smelt casings for bullets and make back-loaded firearms.
And Chili was making his work easier. He didn’t grow large enough to smelt metals, but Reynard was training him to hold ingots in his mouth until they were hot enough to smith. He was like a natural oven that ran on biofuel.
With his help, Reynard made a prototype of a very basic back-loaded gun. It was very much like his old pistols, except loaded from the back with bullets, and it worked as intended, too.
Next, Reynard’s prototype was a six-chamber revolver forged from Black Salt-tempered steel and using brass bullet casings.
***
Standing in the middle of a snow-covered field, Reynard aimed it at the target he drew on a distant tree and carefully directed a pulse of mana. He didn’t want to make all the bullets go off at once...
BANG!
The shot hit the target, and the revolver’s barrel spun to the next position. The empty bullet casing fell onto the snow. Reynard grinned and aimed again.
BANG!
And again.
BANG!
"Gah!"
The revolver’s barrel exploded, sending shards of metal flying and ricocheting off Reynard’s spirit armor. He staggered back and fell into the snow, with the revolver falling out of his hands and landing nearby. Where snow touched it, it began to melt.
Reynard picked it up and looked the gun over. The revolver barrel was terribly deformed.
"Shit. This is entirely ruined... I knew this won’t be so easy."
Without getting from the snow, Reynard took the revolver apart. Many details were too bent to be separated without an application of force, but Reynard had a lot of force to apply.
Inside the bent barrel was a bullet, too deformed to tell what made it misfire in the first place.
Reynard clicked his tongue.
’Yeah, not easy at all.’
***
It took Reynard several weeks to exclude all common reasons a gun could misfire and fix the mistake with the cylinder design that made it deform and misalign on repeated shots.
He worked during the day, then met with Marien in the evenings, and they took strolls through the snowy city or dined in local restaurants. In Darland, even food was different.
Marien also liked to talk about the magi she got to fight against or alongside, and Reynard liked to know that she was doing well.
***
"I’m almost at the Albedo stage. THIS close," she asserted, showing a pinched pointer and thumb. "I have gathered everything for my projection. I just need another good fight to finish the Fiery Tempering refinement method."
"Nice! And I finally finished my revolver. Which is like a gun, but with six shots! Now I just need to make it actually useful. For Albedo magi, it’s barely more than a toy."
"Oooh! Will you show me? What does it look like? How does it shoot?" Marien asked, leaning closer over their dining table.
"Not here! We are in a restaurant!" Reynard laughed, then smiled slyly. "And... Only if you kiss me, my songbird."
Marien blushed.
"My kisses are worth much more than this! But, I suppose for you, I can make a gift of them. Even if you act like a scoundrel."
Reynard smiled more gently.
"I will make an honest woman out of you, Mari. I swear! As soon as we both get old enough for that."
Marien smiled widely and raised her chin.
She looked beautiful like that and brimming with pride and brattiness that Reynard adored despite everything. Her full pink lips glistened invitingly, and her blue eyes shone like sapphires.
Instead of boring robes, Marien got to wear beautiful clothing that hugged her chest, waistline, and hips. The dark blue color of her current dress made her face look ever more radiant.
"You better! But you will have to prepare a good bride price to marry someone like me, dear... I’m not some cheap peasant wench!"
"Not even close," Reynard said with love. "But I can’t wait for that day, anyway."
’You don’t even know what kind of dreams I get in this teenage body,’ he thought. ’I will definitely forge enough stuff that you agree to marry me, Marien!’
***
A lump of mysterious, magical gold was lying on the anvil in front of Reynard. He grabbed it with tongs, raised his forging hammer, and smashed the lump as hard as he could.
DINNNNNNG!
The sharp sound echoed in Reynard’s ears. Chili grunted unhappily from his corner. Both were used to the sounds of forging, but this was still very loud.
And when Reynard pulled the hammer back, he saw that the lump of metal wasn’t dented even the slightest bit.
"Incredible," Reynard breathed out. "I knew this thing wasn’t even close to ordinary gold. It has to be some gold-looking alloy. I hope I have what it takes to smelt it..."
Reynard glanced at Chili. Chili oinked.
"Do you think you can eat this?" Reynard waved the lump in front of the boar. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢
Chili had grown to be as tall as Reynard’s waist, but was still far from the full size of a Forge-Boar. He watched the golden lump with interest, but without appetite—he wasn’t trained to smell metals yet.
Reynard chuckled and scratched Chili’s bristle.
"Old-fashioned methods then. Help me start up the oven."
He poured fresh coal into the smelting furnace and got to the bellows. Soon, the fire in the smeltery was white-hot, and Reynard placed the golden lump inside.
He watched it turn red, then orange... But this was it.
As hot as Reynard made his oven—and it was hot enough to melt steel—the gold alloy refused to melt!
