Chapter 38 - Combat Training

Chapter 38 – Combat Training

Author's Note: None Today!

I've been testing out the Light Maintenance Rifle in the forest.

The monsters that I was shooting up weren't high level or anything, but the gun was making light work of them.

Because I had such a high level, my bullets travelled hyper fast and did tons of damage. Many were uprooting the trees behind the monsters.

My bow was also generating infinite 5.56 bullets for the rifle, so I only had to take a break now and then to let the barrel cool.

The weapon didn't have many mechanical flaws, other than slightly subpar quality in contrast to modern day firearms due to the fact that the Arcian factory workers had no experience building such relatively complicated objects, but it was good enough. Anyways, it was leaps and bounds ahead of the other nations, which barely had functioning muskets.

I'm so glad that I was a military fanatic back in the day.

Despite how much I love this new weapon, it was only useful against weaker monsters. For the more powerful ones, regular bows would have to be used.

As I walked back to the castle, a strawberry-haired woman clad in armor approached me. She had a beautiful face that would befit a wicked witch.

"Greetings, bow hero. My name is Éclair Seaetto, and I am a knight of the Kingdom of Melromarc."

Seaetto. I had heard that her family were the governors of Raphtalia's old village that got destroyed by the waves.

"Greetings to you as well. My name is Satoshi Sera, and I am the president of Arcium."

What did she want from me?

"Nice to meet you. Saying this, could we have a friendly spar? I would like to assess your combat capabilities before the return of Her Majesty the Queen."

Why not? I needed to do even more testing with the machine gun anyways.

"Agreed. We shall head to the royal gardens this instant."

A group of castle guards stood near the outskirts of the garden, and one of them acted as the referee. My party members were busy doing other tasks, so I didn't bother summoning them to witness the match.

"Let the duel begin!" The referee cried.

Éclair was 50 steps away from me in order to make the fight fairer. Or so she thought.

I stuffed a fresh magazine into the rifle and pulled the bolt. The bow would reload the magazines for me, but I still had to stuff them into the rifle. How this worked, I didn't really know. I also made this gun really easy to reload, so it took me fractions of a second to do so.

As Éclair approached me and brandished her sword, I let the rifle rip.

Four three-round bursts fired in her direction. Using her skilled swordsmanship, she blocked all of them.

There was no time to waste. Full auto time, baby!

I adjusted the setting of the gun and moshed the trigger.

18 rounds of lead emptied at an insane rate in her direction. Impressively, she was able to deflect quite a few, but the rest obliterated her armor and spiraled straight into her body.

"Éclair! Are you alright?"

"Yeah…" She coughed blood. "Tis but a scratch."

Blood was gushing out of her. That wasn't a scratch.

I made sure not to hit her vitals, but she was really hurt.

"Doctor! Get a doctor!"

Using my medicine kit, I tended to her injuries, extracting a bullet or two out of her body. Most of the bullets hit the armor or were deflected due to the angles I shot them at, so she would be healed up soon.

After cleaning her up, some professional Melromarc doctors carried her away. I could only do some patchwork, but those guys were the real deal.

Grabbing a mop, I proceeded to scrub the ground dry of any blood or grime. This was going to take a while.

After completing that, I wrote a letter to the Arcian military, which was promptly delivered via pigeon.

"Light Maintenance Rifle extremely effective. Effective even against high leveled master swordsmen. Mass production authorized."

Feeling really bad about literally tearing her apart, I headed to the market to buy some apology sweets. Finishing that task, I headed to the sick bay to check up on her.

"Sorry for all the trouble I caused you. If you may forgive me, please accept this token of apology."

"It is the nature of the duel." She calmly said. "One must get hurt. Besides, this wound is minimal. It should be healed up by the end of the day."

Saying that, she grabbed a sweet out of the basket and chomped on it. Ironically enough, it was an éclair. I actually did not intend to do that.

"Your swordsmanship is remarkable." I commented, while eating one of the eclairs that I bought for her. "I would be honored if you would teach my party members such a remarkable skill."

"It would be my pleasure."

I'm surprised that she was so kind towards me, since in my world using a machine gun in a swordfight would be considered really dishonorable. Kind of like what Indiana Jones did in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

To express my respect and sympathy, I sat beside her bed while completing a blueprint for the phonograph.

"Please wait a second. I need to grab something."

I teleported out of the room and back to Messeblick, grabbing an electric guitar off the walls of my office. I had commissioned it a while earlier, and it sounded absolutely beautiful. The craftsmanship was superb, since I had one of the best craftsmen in the city working on it, and the wood in this world sounded leaps and bounds better than my world's equivalent of ebony or mahogany.

Due to the fact that I had an affinity for lightning magic, I could send a low current to the electric guitar, allowing it to operate.

After grabbing the guitar, I teleported back to Castle Town.

"Sorry for the wait. I wanted to show you something in appreciation of your bravery and knightliness."

"What is it?"

"A song, commemorating those who fight to keep their dreams alive."

"Interesting. Go ahead."

I started to play "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. I had always been considered unbelievably talented at music, though not prodigy levels of good. I actually had many talents at completely different and unrelated things, but I mostly pursued weaponry, computer science and politics as my main interests.

The exciting and quite foreign music caught her off guard.

"What is this?"

"It's rock music, one of the most popular genres in my world. It gets people really riled up."

"I do not understand this music, but it is certainly energizing."

I continued to jam out.

"It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight. Rising up to the challenge of our rival!"

"And the last known survivor, stalks his prey in the night. And he's watching us all with the eye of the tiger!"

She didn't really understand what I was doing, nor any idea of what I was playing, but the sheer excitement of the song caused her to subconsciously nod her head along with the beat.

After I finished, she clapped in admiration of my performance.

"This song has the tone of battle and determination to it. I quite like it, although it is very foreign to me."

"Nothing but the best for a fellow soldier at arms." I naturally replied.

I really respected her as a fellow warrior, though we hailed from different countries.

"Do you know any similar songs?"

"Oh. I know plenty more. Should I play them?"

"I would be very pleased."

"Ok then." I agreed as I played another guitar riff.

"I'm gonna fight them all!"

After that day, the world had a new diehard rock and roll fan. I returned to the inn and slept happy that night, holding that fact dear to my heart.

The next day, I spent the morning crafting a soccer ball and football out of the balloons that I had killed the day prior. Soon enough, it would be time to introduce modern culture, including sports, to Arcium.

As I was stitching the balloon hide together, a shadow leapt through my window. He delivered me a letter.

"Greetings, President Sera. The queen wishes to meet you at the castle. Please arrive as soon as possible."

Guess it was time to go. Pretty soon, I arrived at the castle gates.

"Greetings, President Sera."

"Greetings, Queen Mirellia."

"I have a few things to discuss with you. Please come inside."

The rest of my party stayed outside, talking with Naofumi's party members who had also arrived along with Naofumi himself.

"Why isn't Naofumi coming in?"

"He and his party will be training with Éclair. You and your party, if you please, will train with Elrasla Grilaroc, the sole expert on Hengen Muso."

"What is Hengen Muso?"

"Hengen Muso," she explained as we strolled through the halls. "Is a legendary, unparalleled technique to manipulate life force in battle."

"Life force?"

"Elrasla herself should explain that to you. Anyways, I heard that you defeated my prized knight, Éclair, in combat."

"Yeah," I guiltily replied. "We had a duel yesterday."

"What happened?"

The queen probably knew what happened, judging from the legions of shadows lurking around. She wasn't called the Fox of Melromarc for nothing.

"Well, she challenged me to a duel, and then I tested out my new weapon…"

The queen was puzzled for a bit, but then she slowly nodded.

"Ah. I understand."

"Fuuuueeeeeeeeeee!"

Rishia's loud wail rumbled through the walls of the hallway and emanated throughout the castle.

"What's going on? I have to check on her!"

Rushing through the hallways and kicking the door open, I saw an old woman wearing a Chinese martial arts costume violently shaking Rishia, the poor girl screaming "Fueeeeeee!".

"This is incredible! The girl is a once in a century prodigy!"

What is going on?

Chapter 39 out soon!