Where'd You Get That Aimbot? Your Conscience Is Dead, Fr (Part 1 Finale)
"I shall… yes. Rest for a moment."
Gordon pressed a hand to his forehead, reeling from the dizziness of watching everything he thought he knew about the world get pulverized into fine powder. He staggered back from his place and withdrew.
"But if it's that expensive, couldn't we just sell the whole lot and solve pretty much every problem we've got?"
Darian, who had been watching Gordon's reaction with keen interest, turned to Felix.
"I mean, debts and all that stuff, right? Just dump all of it, get filthy rich, and live large. Wouldn't that work?"
"…Huh. You're right. Why didn't I think of that?"
Rosaria blinked wide at Darian's painfully obvious suggestion—if they had something that expensive, why not just sell it?—and clapped her hands together as if the idea had only just landed.
If the treasures they held were truly that valuable, then the same way they'd sold off the leftover jewelry and expensive furniture inside the manor in the early days of their possession just to scrape together capital, couldn't they simply sell off World Tree branches and dragon scales—without, of course, asking Tene's opinion—and solve every problem at once?
"It is not that simple to resolve."
"…Why?"
"Yeah, why not?"
"…*Sigh.* I'll explain, so listen carefully. You too."
Felix let out a long breath at the pair of them, then crouched down on the training-ground floor and began sketching diagrams in the dirt with the stick in his hand, laying it out so even they could follow.
"You understand that World Tree branches and scales aren't merely expensive—they're insanely, ridiculously, absurdly rare, right?"
"Yeah."
"Got it."
"So what do you think happens if someone starts selling those rare goods in bulk inside the Empire?"
"…Customers flock in?"
"Ah, that one! So many people that stock runs dry the second you put it out, right?"
"Oh, sharp. That's my boy."
"Hehe."
"…..*Sigh.* No! Of course people would find it suspicious! Goods that even the Emperor of the Empire can't freely possess, being sold out of a mere count's territory? Massive chaos would follow!"
Felix walked them carefully through what would actually happen if the count's territory began selling elf branches—or scales from the Black Dragon, Tenebrix Nox.
"Those two materials, used properly, have enough power to unify the Empire—no, this entire continent. But what if it isn't the Empire that approaches us for those treasures, but the Empire's enemies? And what if they don't just buy them—what if they steal them, or plunder them outright? And then those enemies of the Empire craft weapons from those materials and invade?"
"Uhh…"
"Then…"
"It becomes pure pandemonium. And there's no way the Empire's leadership wouldn't know about it, so they'd come straight for us—dig into the true nature of the goods, or slap us with treason or whatever charge they feel like, eliminate us, and seize the materials."
"That serious…?"
"Whoa…"
"That's how much of a crisis we'd face if word got out that we have this many of these treasures. We can't handle something on that scale, so we hide them thoroughly."
"Why do you think Father and Grandfather have been locked in meetings for days over selling World Tree leaves from this territory? Because it's that dangerous. They're racking their brains to sell them with as much safety as possible."
"I-I see… I had no idea…"
"Me neither… I just thought we could sell them for a high price…"
When Felix finished, the two of them finally understood why someone as brilliant as Freya and Estel weren't simply dumping the goods on the market and were instead calculating every angle with meticulous care. They stared at each other with dazed expressions.
"Anyway, you can open your ears now."
"Ah, yes!"
Felix finished talking and gave a couple of taps to the shoulder of Shalle, who had been crouching in the corner with her long ears folded flat, cutting off sound at the source. They had already sent the outsider well away on the grounds that this was important family business, and on top of that had made her block her ears—elf hearing being what it was.
"Anyway. Let's start with the performance test."
Bang—
Crack—
"O-ohh…! The feel of this is killer…?"
After a few practice shots to zero in her point of impact, Rosaria shattered the wooden target set up for her. She pulled her eye back from the scope and rubbed it, her whole body trembling as she struggled to contain the rush of exhilaration flooding through her.
"How is it? Taking the last experiment as a lesson, this type dials down the destructive power and boosts penetration. Of course, even with lower destructive power, it's still strong enough to punch straight through an ordinary beast in one shot. Range is no problem out to about five hundred meters!"
"Yeah. At first I was a little nervous, figuring something that would tear up the training ground again was about to come out… but this is basically a complete gun, isn't it? I could never shoot this at a person."
Even with a considerable distance between her and the target, the moment she pulled the trigger the target had been obliterated. Rosaria clutched her faintly trembling hands, looking a little dazed.
"The magic bullet you just fired is the anti-personnel type."
"While I was adjusting the firepower, I made various versions of magic bullet, so feel free to practice. There's also a non-lethal type that only delivers a certain amount of impact without any killing power when you shoot someone, so don't worry."
"…That's somehow creepy."
Felix held out one of the magic bullets he'd made, looking thoroughly pleased with himself as he showed it off.
The round resting on her palm was a touch large, but its shape was nearly identical to the 5.56mm rounds she had seen until she was sick of them in the military.
"When you load magic bullets, use this magazine—by the way, it holds exactly ten. Put the rounds you want to use in here, seat it into the coupling section below, then pull the bolt-action-style lever on the side to chamber a round. Even I don't know that much about firearms, so you have to load them one by one like this."
"You made a gun after all, didn't you?!"
"Calling it a gun sounds weird! Could you call it the Magic Bullet Launcher MK II—Improved Version?"
Felix was determined to insist it was a staff, but with a scope, a trigger, bolt-action loading, and a magazine, it was a firearm in all but name.
"*Sigh*… Anyway. Well… I guess I'll practice with this for a while."
This is so fucking badass. A sniper rifle in a fantasy world… damn. This is sick!
Outwardly Rosaria muttered as if she couldn't believe it, but inside, her heart was hammering at the fact that she now owned a sniper rifle—the kind of thing that made a man's deepest fantasies stir.
"Mom! What's that!"
"Huh? Ariel. You're here?"
Just then, Ariel—who hadn't shown herself until now—popped into existence in midair with a little *poof!*, spun in circles around Rosaria's head, and fixed her attention on the Magic Bullet Launcher MK II (Improved… just a sniper rifle) in Rosaria's hands.
"This? Ah, this is a weapon that can hit targets far away."
"Show me! Show me!"
"Haha, well… Alright! Behold the skills of a special-class marksman who completed his full army service!"
Ariel's interest only sharpened at the explanation; she perched on Rosaria's shoulder and bounced up and down. Shoulders swelling with pride, Rosaria immediately leveled the muzzle at the remaining targets and began to aim.
Then—
Bang—
Thwack—
"Hell yeah~ That's what I'm talking about!"
"Wow! Amazin'!! Amazin'!!!"
Rosaria held her breath for a beat and hit the target cleanly in one shot. Ariel zipped wildly around her in pure delight.
"Me too! I wanna try too!"
"…Huh? You too?"
Then, all of a sudden, Ariel latched onto the sniper rifle Rosaria was holding and threw a full tantrum about wanting a turn.
"Umm… but Ariel's body size doesn't match, so it might be hard?"
A sniper rifle built for ordinary human proportions was far too large for Ariel, who was only about the size of Rosaria's palm.
"It's fine!"
"…Huh? Ariel? What are you doing…"
But Ariel shook her head vigorously at Rosaria's words, then set her hand on the sniper rifle.
Flash—
"Eh?!"
The moment Ariel's hand touched it, the sniper rifle began to glow. Rosaria squeezed her eyes shut against the dazzling light.
"What's with this sudden light… huh? What's this?"
When the light faded enough for her to blink her eyes open, Rosaria found a windmill-shaped mark engraved on the side of her sniper rifle—the same mark that sat on the back of her own hand.
"Mom! Do it again! Again!"
"Umm… alright, for now."
Still completely in the dark about the sudden development, Rosaria had no choice but to shoulder the sniper rifle again under Ariel's insistent urging and put her eye back to the scope.
And then—
"…Huh? Was it always like… this?"
The scope Felix had enchanted with vision-enhancement magic had felt, the last time she fired, like nothing more than a telescope bolted on. But after whatever Ariel had done, something strange had been added.
Through the scope, like something out of a computer game, a semi-transparent but unmistakably clear line was now visible.
Outside the scope there was nothing. Put her eye back to it, and that suspicious trajectory appeared again.
The alien sensation threw Rosaria for a moment, but she steadied herself, reacquired her aim, and lined up the target she needed to hit.
Bang—
Thwack—
Her finger pulled the trigger once more, and just as before the magic bullet cleanly punched through the target.
But then—
Thwack—
Thwack—
Thwack—
Thwack—
"…What?"
Under normal circumstances, a fired magic bullet should have hit its target, continued past it, and then crumbled into dust as the powdered magic stone inside was spent—taking the round itself with it.
But this magic bullet hit the first target, then curved along its trajectory, punching clean through the second, third, and fourth targets beside it in succession, until every last wooden piece set up as a target had been completely obliterated.
"Yahoo! I hit them all! Mom! Did I do good!?"
"Th-that just now… was that you?"
"Yeah! I did good, right!"
Rosaria stared in a daze at Ariel, who was cheering and bouncing wildly beside her. Ariel just nodded with a radiant smile.
"This is… incredible. Is it because Ariel's a wind spirit? I never thought she could control the magic bullets…"
"Is that what it is?!"
"Yeah! This is fun!"
Felix, who had been watching from the side, stroked his chin with clear interest as he explained what had just happened. Ariel giggled and chirped an affirmative.
"Hah, haha… this. Isn't this a complete cheat-code-level weapon? It's basically an aimbot."
And just like that, Rosaria had not only a sniper rifle—she could control the bullets themselves.
With that broken weapon in her hands, her body trembled of its own accord.
"Still, this level is reassuring. Honestly, I was worried."
"…? About what?"
Felix nodded to himself and muttered the thought aloud, and Rosaria looked at him in confusion.
"In a month, you'll be going back to the Academy, right?"
"I'm going to the Academy too as an honorary professor, but there's a limit to how much I can protect you. At least with this, you won't get looked down on wherever you go."
"…Ah."
The reminder of a fact she had completely forgotten made Rosaria's mouth fall open.
The Academy.
The vacation the Academy had granted them was almost over.