[Warning. Insufficient information provided for complete synthesis. Based on current materials, partial creation is complete.]

[Congratulations, you have received: Unnamed Mage-Knight Hybrid Manual.]

[Grade: Unquantifiable. Estimated to exceed Top-Grade Top-Tier.]

Adrian stared at the floating blue screen in shock.

’It is ranked higher than a Top-Tier manual?’ he thought, his eyes wide.

He quickly got the system to spit out the manual from the dungeon’s storage room.

It felt heavy in his hands. The cover was blank and the book itself was thick with multiple pages. It was the thickness of four knight manuals combined.

He flipped it open to the first page and began reading the translated text.

His excitement vanished almost immediately.

The biological theories inside the book were brilliant. It detailed exactly how a mage could puncture a microscopic hole between their mana vein and their physical artery.

But it was completely unfinished. The system had warned him about the lack of information for a reason.

If someone actually tried to practice this technique right now, the risk of a gruesome death was almost ninety percent.

Without the missing stabilization steps, the pressure from the mana vein would instantly rupture the physical heart. The user would explode from the inside out.

Adrian sighed heavily.

He closed the book and tossed it back into his system storage.

’I am not going to do something stupid and risk my own life just for power.’ he thought. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

He needed more base materials. He needed high level magical theory books, advanced biology texts, and probably a few more rare knight manuals to feed to the system.

Only then could the system fill in the blanks and make the technique safe to use.

That meant he had to leave his territory.

His barony was running smoothly right now. The food issue was solved thanks to the Viscount’s cattle. His new troops were training hard under Claire. Damian was perfectly capable of handling the daily trades and administrative tasks.

There were no immediate threats lurking around Oresfall. The local gangs were completely bankrupt and terrified.

It was the perfect time to travel, gather resources, and recruit struggling mages.

’But I cannot fight.’ Adrian thought, looking down at his empty hands.

If he ran into bandits or hostile knights outside his territory, he was dead meat.

His curse, the Pacifist’s Shackles, prevented him from holding any weapon made for war. He couldn’t hold a sword, a spear, or a bow. He couldn’t even pick up a dagger if he intended to stab someone with it.

He needed a loophole. He needed a way to protect himself on the road.

He sat back down and thought about the power scaling of Earth.

He traced the history of human warfare in his mind.

It all started with bare hands and random rocks. Then came crude stone toolsm, then metal blades, iron armor and steel swords.

Eventually, the era of swords ended entirely. The modern age belonged to firearms.

Adrian compared that evolution to the power scaling of this fantasy world.

A regular knight with a sword was terrifying up close. A mid-level knight at Rank C or Rank B could move faster than a normal human eye could track. Their physical strength could shatter boulders.

’But what happens if they face a bullet?’ Adrian thought.

If a Rank B knight stood in front of him without any heavy armor, they were just flesh and bone.

It didn’t matter how fast they could swing a sword. A well placed shot from a basic pistol would drop them instantly.

Armor complicated things, but kinetic energy was still kinetic energy. A high caliber round would punch right through standard steel plate.

He didn’t know much about the higher ranks. To be specific, he didn’t see an A or S+ rank knights in action but he knew that they were different.

But he had read about them. In the webnovel, A rank and S rank knights gained a supernatural danger sense. They could slightly predict an opponent’s intent before an attack even happened.

That slight prediction made a huge difference in close combat. A bullet might not hit an S rank knight if they sensed the danger and dodged before the trigger was even pulled.

’But I don’t plan on picking fights with S rank monsters.’ Adrian thought.

Up to a B rank knight, he was completely confident. As long as he had a gun and good aim, he could defend himself on the road.

There was only one problem.

The dungeon system could not just pop a fully loaded pistol into existence from a simple mental picture.

The system required him to understand the exact internal mechanisms, the moving parts, and the chemical reactions required to create something complex. He had to give it step by step instructions himself.

He he also needed to make gunpowder from scratch as it wasn’t created in this world yet.

On top of that, there was another issue of his curse. He couldn’t wield any weapon of war but there was a loophole in this system.

Curses and blessings would only consider the world’s state of the same second that a baby was born. Which meant that if someone was born a few centuries ago and one minute later, a blacksmith made a sword hundreds of kilometers away, then this sword could be used.

And Adrian knew that there were no guns created in this world yet, which meant that as long as he created one, he could use it freely.

He didn’t waste another second as he linked his mind to the dungeon and created another empty room.

He needed three basic ingredients to make black powder. Saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur.

If he took the normal route of gathering all the ingredients himself, then Charcoal would be incredibly easy. He just needed to burn some wood.

Sulfur was a bit harder. It could be sourced from volcanic areas or bought directly from territories near such places.

The hardest part was the potassium nitrate, which was also known as saltpeter and he would have to synthesize it artificially, which took a few months time.

But unlike others who had to take the long route, Adrian had his broken dungeon.