Solution (1)
Solution (1)
All right, fine. I had to admit it looked cool.
Watching someone hold a pair of automatic pistols that perfectly captured that uniquely vintage twentieth-century design, each one even loaded with a different elemental round, was enough to make me feel a little impatient.
And when I thought about that utterly impractical, romance-soaked armament, a vague unease crept in, as though I might have gotten my own concept wrong from the start.
A bolt-action rifle with a wooden stock and handguard could count as charmingly old-fashioned by twenty-first-century standards, but by the early twentieth century, when plastic hadn't yet properly made its way into mass-produced goods, it was just a common rifle. On top of that, mine was an imperial army standard-issue model, which made it even less special. Honestly, the biggest reason I'd picked it was that its ammunition was the easiest to obtain within the Empire.
Strictly speaking, a shotgun was also a firearm that violated "chivalry." I'd chosen it purely for practical reasons, and since it was just a very ordinary pump-action shotgun, there wasn't much to debate about whether it looked cool or not.
If I had to pick something I'd chosen for style, it would only be the Wexler revolver. But even that was widely used by the Empire's military, so by anyone else's standards it hardly counted as particularly old-fashioned.
The two Koch Model 98 pistols Lena used were, of course, military-issue firearms in the Autonomous State.
But by imperial standards, they were unfamiliar-looking pistols from another nation.
Fighting with a gun in each hand might not have been all that strange by twentieth-century standards. During that era, the perception that a pistol was simply a weapon you held and fired in one hand was quite strong. There was a reason the Chinese character for fist was used and why English called it a handgun.
So, by this world's standards, using one in each hand might have just been met with the thought, "Ah, so she's that confident in her marksmanship," and then been dismissed. Besides, Lena actually was a good shot.
But here was the thing.
No matter that I had lived in this world for over ten years and had adjusted reasonably well.
In my head, dual-wielding pistols still fell squarely into the category of romance. Why else would akimbo, which was actually less efficient, show up so often in FPS games? Because holding a gun in each hand and firing away looked that cool. There was a reason people wanted that feature in their games, even knowing full well there were plenty of reasons not to do it in real life.
To be honest, I'd suspected that Lena might already know my true identity.
Maybe she too was a possessed human, and upon seeing a character like Sylvia Fangriffon who hadn't existed in the original work, she'd decided to mess with me.
But after steadily observing Lena for several days after class, I found nothing unusual. In her room, Lena diligently maintained her character by hugging a doll, practicing her posture as she walked around, and rolling on her bed.
From my position watching outside the window, I felt a strong urge to go over and ask her to please close the curtains, but since that would have made it abundantly clear I'd been observing her the whole time, I couldn't bring myself to say anything.
...... Then again, would there really have been another person who, like me, had gone out and prepared a high-performance telescope or binoculars specifically to observe the inside of a teenage girl's window in detail?
......
And the day that thought occurred to me, I stopped observing Lena.
*
"You want all of this processed into bullets?"
The workshop craftsman asked with a slightly dazed expression.
"Is that not possible?"
"No, it is, but..."
The workshop owner studied my face and spoke carefully.
"Well, you look very tired."
Of course I did.
Leo and Claire were a pair that never got tired. Every weekend they roamed around diligently, carrying out requests involving slightly tougher beasts with an absolutely staggering work ethic.
Lately they'd even roped in a few others and were going around as a group of four. Although the other two aside from Leo and Claire varied each time. It seemed to reflect how the original game let you bring different party members each time you went on a quest, but still...
Anyway, thanks to that, I had to get up truly early in the morning and run around like mad just to gather even a tiny bit of Marmaros.
On top of that, without telling anyone else, I'd scoured even the places that might later turn into dungeons. I hadn't perfectly soloed any dungeons, but I thought I'd at least visited every spot near the entrance where my memories suggested Marmaros might be found.
The Marmaros I'd gathered that way amounted to quite a substantial quantity for an individual to leave with a workshop.
Wasn't this enough to yield at least twenty rounds once processed into bullets? Though I'd only estimated by eyeballing the size difference between the bullets and each individual piece of Marmaros.
"...... That was the situation."
"Is that so..."
The workshop owner seemed to have decided that asking for more details might be dangerous.
He looked down at the Marmaros, the rifle, and the revolver I'd placed on the counter, then asked with a serious expression.
"In that case, for which firearm would you like me to make the ammunition?"
"That would be..."
Hmm.
Honestly, if this was for reloading purposes, revolver cartridges would be ideal. Loading them one at a time was convenient, and if necessary, using a moon clip to load them all at once was actually faster than loading a rifle.
But by my own standards, the Ergensen rifle was still my primary weapon.
While I was mulling it over, the workshop owner spoke.
"If you'd like to mix and use multiple elemental properties in your ammunition, I could make a slight modification to the rifle."
"To the rifle?"
"Yes."
He pointed at the left side of my rifle with his finger.
"I'll install a magazine cutoff, so that the next round isn't loaded automatically. That way, you can normally fire the rounds already in the magazine, but when you need to, you can cut off the magazine feed and use it like a single-shot firearm."
Oh.
That actually sounded quite plausible.
True, with the clip-fed firearms used during World War II, loading single rounds was difficult because the loading port was the same as the ejection port. But on my rifle, where the rounds went in was different from where the spent casings came out. If I just blocked the rounds from feeding from the magazine into the chamber, I could use it like a single-loader, feeding individual rounds.
"Marmaros ammunition is expensive, after all."
"How long would the modification take?"
"It shouldn't take very long. I have some leftover military parts."
"Does the military use rifles with magazine cutoffs installed?"
"In the past, when ammunition manufacture was more difficult than it is now, they did. It seems that from the perspective of those commanding the army, every round flying off into the air on full-auto looked like money. But if you issued the entire army rifles only capable of single shots, you'd later have to manufacture separate rapid-fire rifles. So they manufactured repeating rifles first and then added the cutoff. These days, adding a cutoff just increases the parts cost."
"Is that so."
I nodded.
"Then please do that."
"Yes, understood."
"And..."
At my words, the workshop owner, who had bent down as though to gather the items and get straight to work, raised his head again and looked at me.
"By any chance, do you have any automatic pistols with decent reliability?"
"An automatic pistol? Don't you have a Wexler pistol?"
"That one is..."
I hesitated for a moment.
In truth, reliability didn't actually differ much. If anything, I thought the Model 98, with its more complex operating mechanism, was more likely to malfunction.
But... still, if I had the choice, I wanted something that looked a little more like a weapon.
"If you're looking for the level of function and reliability of a revolver, then I can tell you that no such pistol exists at present."
"...... Is that so."
I couldn't quite bring myself to ask, "Do you have one that's prettier than that?" I nodded, and the workshop owner fell into thought for a moment before his expression turned resolute.
"If Your Imperial Highness wishes..."
He glanced around for no particular reason, then lowered his voice slightly.
"The truth is, I've heard a rumor that I might be the one selected to designate the new standard-issue military pistol."
That was news to me. If such a rumor was circulating, Jennifer must have been the one to spread it. She seemed to rate this man's skill that highly.
"Ahem, so, in case such an opportunity arose, I do have a prototype I designed myself."
When I simply gazed at him as if to say go on, the workshop owner opened a drawer with a slightly hesitant expression, took out a firearm, and placed it on the table.
"It's a slightly larger caliber than existing rounds, and it's a pistol I designed to make the mechanism as simple as I possibly could. One round in the chamber, seven in the magazine, so eight rounds fully loaded. It boasts stronger firepower than an eight-shot revolver with a smaller caliber, while holding the same number of rounds."
"......."
As if entranced, I picked up the pistol. It was quite heavy. Probably over a kilogram? But the weight difference from my revolver didn't seem significant, so it likely wouldn't be a problem.
It was the kind of pistol you typically pictured when someone said automatic pistol, complete with a slide.
...... To put it another way, it was literally the gun most people "commonly" thought of when you said pistol. A .45 caliber automatic pistol that even someone with the barest interest in the subject would recognize. The hammer protruding from the rear of the slide looked somewhat different from the firearms popular in the twenty-first century, but on the other hand, that added an antiquated touch that gave the design an air of dignified elegance.
"As the military requires, it also has two safeties. Unless your hand is on the grip, the trigger cannot be pulled back—"
"Workshop Owner."
"Y-Yes. Your Imperial Highness."
When I cut him off and called him that, the workshop owner answered in a fluster. I could hear the fear in his voice that he might be punished for having manufactured a firearm based on leaked information.
I turned the gun this way and that as I continued.
"It occurs to me I never asked your name. May I inquire?"
Even when Jennifer had introduced him, she'd only mentioned that he was a "capable workshop owner" and given me the workshop's location.
"Ah, yes."
The workshop owner hesitated briefly, as if thrown by being suddenly asked his name, then slowly opened his mouth.
"It's James Browning."
Browning.
...... No, seriously, wasn't that a little too on the nose?