Chapter 11: GUNS X MAGICS

Two weeks finally passed and I finally finished the entire library in this castle. Why so fast? That's because I train my reading speed to go beyond normal human limits. I got these ideas from my derivative skills of my innate skills [Mind Acceleration]. I realize that other than combat, this skill can actually be used in gaining more knowledge too.

Besides gaining knowledge, I also improved my status a lot from the first time I saw them and even unexpectedly gained two new derivative skills from my farmer's skill after training them on a bunch of plants I got.

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Name: Nomura Kentarou Age: 17 Years Old

Gender: Male Level: 2

Class: Farmer?

Strength: 150 Vitality: 500 Resistance: 200

Agility:100 Magic: 1200 Magic Resistance: 200

Skills:

[Soil and Earth manipulation]

[Plant Growth stimulation] [+Plant Growth Manipulation]

[Plant manipulation] [+Plant Structural Manipulation]

[Plant Appraisal]

[Chemical production]

[Seed Formation]

[Language Comprehension]

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[Plant Growth Manipulation] is a derivative skill that allows me to change the growth limit of plants to whatever I like. So I can make a gigantic banana or a pea-sized watermelon. This is very useful in making some small plants bigger. Although of course, I need to consume more mana which is transformed into nutrition for a bigger plant.

On the other hand, [Plant Structural Manipulation] allows me to manipulate the structure of a plant that is already grown completely. This allows me to shape them to whatever I like from swords, hands, and even guns!

Yes! I finally started to make a gun secretly in the past two weeks. But it's not a normal gun but a plant gun!

I found the idea after discovering a plant that is similar to a peashooter in this world. According to [Plant Appraisal], this plant is called "peashot" which is a type of plant that shoots its seed in the form of a pea to a very far location with air pressure for reproduction.

With both my new skills, I tried to create a normal gun like a hunting rifle and failed as I discovered that its power is only the same as an airsoft gun on Earth. It is so weak that it can be considered as useless as in a world of magic, this airsoft peashooter is too soft!

With this failure, I decided to improve upon this as I make the seed/peas harder and sharper at the end for more penetration upon impact. I also make a bigger chamber for gas accumulation to give out greater air pressure when shooting. Of course, I also strengthen the gas chamber to be able to contain more air pressure before being released using a lever mechanism like a gun trigger.

Furthermore, I decided to make a magazine plant that produces the bullet from the ground by absorbing nutrients and sunlight. This makes me able to continuously create bullets as long as there is sunlight and soil below me. However, I deem this to be useless in a labyrinth as there is no sunlight. So I can only rely on my mana to grow my plants.

Now, the shape looks very similar to Kar98K in WW2 with a magazine and a semi-auto fire which can be fired every 5 seconds. It can't auto-fire as the plant needs to accumulate air pressure to create sufficient energy to launch the bullet.

Why does the plant need to accumulate pressure? It is because I still don't have a better mechanism for the bullet. Modern bullets have their gunpowder inside the bullet shell to make it possible to reload quickly unlike the ancient guns like flintlock where you need to put the gunpowder inside first then the bullet.

However, the requirement for this is I have gunpowder and chemicals that can produce spark upon a slight shock like mercury fulminate. Although I can make a spring coil and touch-sensitive tissue using the plants to stimulate shocks for the bullet, I can't compress the entire air inside the shell casing as the bullet plants can't hold a great amount of pressure.

So why don't I use gunpowder? Although I can produce them, I can't mass produce them as there is no industrial equipment here. Don't think about the simple black powder recipe 75% potassium nitrate, 15% sulfur, and 10% carbon you can find easily on the internet as it is not the gunpowder used in current weaponry. Modern weapons used smokeless gunpowder as a black powder (ancient gunpowder) produces too much smoke that is able to make any autofire gun jammed and unusable.

Smokeless gunpowder is made through a variety of complex chemical reactions. Even the most simple one, "guncotton" you need to prepare a lot of things. You need to extract glycerol from animal fats which is usually a byproduct of a soap factory, you need to obtain Nitric acid (HNO3) which is very hard to obtain in nature. You can only get it through a reaction of Sulfuric acid(H2SO4) with any nitrate salt like Ammonium nitrate(NH4NO3) or Potassium nitrate(KNO3). But nitric acid is not enough, you need to get a fuming nitric acid which is a nitric acid with a concentration of higher than 86%. You can only get that through distillation with alcohol like ethanol.

After you get fuming Nitric acid, you can then combine it with glycerol from animal fats to create Nitroglycerin which a guy with certain anger management issues can just sweat from his hands through a fuming reaction. Of course, Nitroglycerin is very unstable just like that guy's personality, just a slight shock can explode the substance making it unsuitable for gunpowder. That is until you combine it with cellulose.

(author note: Don't think anything weird with the word "combine")

Cellulose is an organic compound typically found in plants like in leaves or flowers. Thus nitroglycerin needs to be combined with cotton which has a high concentration of cellulose inside it. This combination is then named guncotton in which the military usually grind it and make it into pellets or strips for quicker combustion.

Of course, this is only the one used in world war 2 as current smokeless gunpowder uses a far more advanced recipe that is unavailable due to reasons. Furthermore, all that is only the main ingredient as they usually put some mixture of compound and metal to make it more stable, combust faster, etc for optimization. This is why Hajime finding the combustion stone in Orcus' Great Labyrinth is such a hack as He doesn't even need to do all that stuff.

Other than gunpowder, another problem is of course; I am not Hajime who can control metals as gunpowder explosions will burn the plant from the inside.

Without the ability to transplant other plant characteristics, this plant rifle imitations is the best I can do with my current ability. Only if I can't transplant other plant characteristics such as fire-resistance of a plant called blazing trees and a plant that produces explosive compounds in its fruit, then I can truly create a plant assault rifle that can autofire.

Besides my gun, I also learn a lot of magic from the Earth system. It is a bit of a disappointment to me as there is no ready-made magic for the plant system, but I can create one myself after a lot of trial and error since I am already proficient in this world of magic.

The process of utilizing magic in Tortus was by channeling magic power from one's body into a magic circle by means of an incantation, which would then activate the magic spells. There was no way to directly activate the spells with magic power, one must construct the corresponding magic circles to cast the respective spells.

Also, the magic power that was channeled into the magic circle would increase in proportion to the incantation time. The scale of the magic circle would magnify in accordance with the complexity of the spell, which will inevitably lead the magic circle itself to become larger.

For example, the [Fireball] attack which was a signature magic spell in many games would require a 20 cm wide magic circle. Basic techniques such as attribute, power, range, scope, and magic absorption (The method to channel the magic power in one's body) were required. Other things such as conductivity and sustained duration were also required for the spells, which would end up increasing the scale of the magic circle.

On the other hand, there are exceptions to these concepts. That is one's aptitude. Basically, aptitude means that some people with a unique body constitution could leave out some formulas when using magic spells.

For example, I with my earth Attribute will not be required to write the attribute section of the magic formula. Instead, I can rely on just imagination to make up for this omission. Instead of writing the attribute section, I can just imagine the earth magic while chanting the incantation, which will then bring out the earth attribute in the spell.

Of course, I know the disadvantage of chanting. Hence, I try to minimize it to a certain extent. Although I can't use magic without chanting, for now, I can make it a silent chanting or mind chanting as chanting is actually used to enter the program that has been written in the magic circle. What I do is just a change from voice activation to thought activations.

Most people will have some sort of aptitude, and the aforementioned 20 cm diameter of the magic circle is an estimate for an average person. In my case, I have a very high aptitude for earth and plant systems which actually can be considered abnormal. After all, normally farmers can't even do magic while Aiko sensei can only do some small magic on earth and plant systems that correlate farming.

If the average person is 20cm and the average of the Earth's class is 10cm, then I am the same as the Hero level of 1 cm. This makes me very advantageous in magic as I can write a more complex magic circle.

There are two ways to engrave the magic circle; One, by using a special kind of paper which can only be used one time, and two metal engravings which can be used multiple times. The former has a wide versatility, but can only be used once and its strength will also decrease. The latter can be used several times and still retain its strength, but its magic spell cannot be changed and it is bulky. The priests and Ishtar all wield staff that contains the metal engravings.

However, I finally found the third plant engraving! I mean, if you can engrave them on paper which is basically wood, why can't you engrave them on plants? The effect is almost the same as metal engraving as it has the same strength and can be used several times. However, with [Plant Manipulation] I can change the engraving as many times as I want to!

After exiting the library, I went to the training ground which I also go to sometimes as I also need to train my body. I also spar with pretty much everyone in the class and am able to beat everyone with the exception of Kouki, at least on the surface. After all, I limit my strength on the outside to make them not be cautious of me. I plan to do so until the behemoth event where I will go down 'accidentally' and fall to the real Orcus Great labyrinth.

Arriving at the training ground, I can see Hajime arriving with Kaori and Shizuku. Looks like today is the day we go to the labyrinth huh… Sure enough, after the training ended, Commander Meld held everybody back for an announcement. The students were wondering what was going on as Commander Meld used a deep voice to announce.

"From tomorrow onward, we will be conducting our practical training in Orcus Great Dungeon. All the necessary equipment will be prepared by us, I want to use the Magic Beasts outside the capital as practice targets. More importantly, get your spirits up! Have a good rest tonight! Dismiss!"

He quickly conveyed an important announcement like this. As I think of my preparation for the future event in this labyrinth.