Ch.225Wavering Hope

Two days had passed since we delivered supplies to the Wellord Mine.

With sufficient food and the safety of the barrier tower secured, the mental state of the mine residents quickly stabilized, and the lesser demons’ rock-throwing attacks decreased in frequency as time passed. This made sense, as the rocks hurled at the village were simply gathered by the lesser demons from the surrounding rocky mountains. Unless they started breaking apart cliff faces for ammunition, it was a resource that would eventually run out.

As the aerial assault entered a lull, the miners’ morale improved further, and they began recovering usable items from collapsed building debris under the escort of Ancestors. The successfully recovered items were mainly preserved foods like canned goods, along with some bedding such as blankets and quilts—essential items for enduring even one more day in the hard, uncomfortable mine.

Meanwhile, Mina and I proposed the idea of building and installing a steel canopy in front of the mine entrance. Since the barrier tower’s range barely covered the mine entrance, hiding inside the mine alone wouldn’t allow them to purify the black mana. The solution was to install a canopy outside the mine entrance where people could rest while purifying their accumulated black mana. The residents, who had been worried about this very issue, enthusiastically welcomed the idea and helped with the construction. Once the sturdy canopy was installed, they began rotating in groups of ten to purify their black mana.

Food was secured for the time being.

The barrier tower’s safety was ensured.

Monster attacks were gradually weakening, and they could now safely purify the black mana accumulated in their bodies.

Everything seemed to be progressing smoothly, until…

‘BANG!’

With a single gunshot heard from a distance, the situation at the Wellord Salt Mine changed drastically.

“Move the wounded inside and close the mine doors!”

“Everyone get away from the entrance! Hurry!”

“Where’s that mage girl?! Tell her we need healing magic!”

When one of the miners resting under the canopy collapsed from a mysterious gunshot, the Wellord Mine instantly turned into chaos. The shock of having a casualty just when they thought they were finally safe was significant, but the fact that someone had been “shot” was far more alarming. Of course, this shock was fully transmitted to us as well, as we had been resting and chatting inside the carriage.

“What happened? Who fired a gun…?”

“I’ll go find out what’s going on. Jessica, please take care of the wounded.”

“Ah, got it. Hey! Don’t move the patient anymore, keep him lying down!”

Jessica rushed off to treat the injured, while I approached the residents who were blocking the mine entrance with pale faces.

“What happened? Was it an accidental discharge?”

“N-no! It came from outside the village!”

“From outside? So you’re saying… it was a sniper attack from the exterior!”

“Who could have? How?”

The Wellord Salt Mine was completely surrounded by hundreds of lesser demons, and to target someone at the mine entrance with a rifle, one would need to approach the perimeter fence of the village. Whether the shooter was a vicious outlaw or an ordinary person, they would certainly be attacked by lesser demons before they could snipe a mine resident.

In that case, there were three possibilities: either the culprit had already sneaked inside the barrier tower’s range, they had means to deceive the lesser demons’ eyes, or…

‘Or one of the lesser demons has a gun.’

While magical bullet guns distributed in Grantis are basically unusable by monsters, automatic loading types are an exception. If the enemy had picked up and was using that kind of rifle, it could be quite troublesome…

“I should go out and take a look.”

“It’s dangerous alone.”

“You know my skill, right? I’m confident I won’t be ambushed, so don’t worry.”

The moment an enemy aims at me and pulls the trigger, I should be able to pinpoint their position through my danger detection skill. If the enemy is hiding within the barrier tower’s range and close enough, I might even be able to counterattack and take them down.

“…Alright. Good luck.”

I acknowledged Seti’s worried yet encouraging expression with a nod, then tried to carefully open the mine door slightly to go outside. At that moment, through the small gap in the door, I felt an intense killing intent!

‘BANG!’

The source of the rapidly approaching killing intent was over 100 meters away. Since the door wasn’t even properly open yet, it was impossible to visually confirm the enemy, and even if I tried to counterattack with Quick Draw, it would be meaningless against a target well beyond my revolver’s range. I had no choice but to abandon the counterattack and focus on avoiding the enemy’s attack.

‘CLANG!’

“Eek!?”

The magical bullet that narrowly grazed my face flew toward Seti who was standing behind me, but with her excellent reflexes, she swung her spear and deflected the bullet. The deflected bullet embedded itself in the mine ceiling, and traces of black mana were seeping from both the spear blade where the bullet had hit and from the ceiling.

I hastily closed the mine door again and checked for any injuries.

“Is everyone okay!?”

“I barely blocked it. But my spear…”

“Whoa!? There’s a crack on the surface of the titanium spear blade!”

Not only was the shooter’s skill impressive—accurately targeting through a narrow door gap—but the speed and power of the magical bullet that just flew in far exceeded the performance of rifles commonly found in Grantis. And what shocked us most was the color of the bullet.

“That bullet just now… it was black, right?”

“Yeah, I saw it clearly too. A black magical bullet? What kind of attribute was imbued in it?”

“It’s not the effect of attribute imbuing magic. It seems like they made a bullet out of black mana and fired it.”

Jessica, who had just finished emergency treatment of the wounded, said this while looking up at the ceiling where the bullet had hit.

“That person also has black mana infiltrating his body through the wound. It’s not as lethal as a dark elf’s darkness blade, but if it’s truly a gun that fires black mana, getting hit multiple times in non-vital areas would be far more dangerous than taking one shot to a vital point.”

“A gun that fires black mana? Wasn’t that supposed to be impossible?”

“Hmm~ Since the bullet engravings on cylinders are originally adaptations of white mana formulas, making them react to black mana should theoretically be impossible…”

“Regardless of the theory, we have to accept what’s right in front of us. The problem is that judging from the bullet’s velocity and power just now, it seems far more powerful than the settlers’ rifles.”

I’m not sure about its range, but the black magical bullet that just flew in was not at all inferior to Phyllis’s repeating rifle in terms of velocity and power, even after her upgrades. Phyllis’s rifle achieved that level of performance thanks to titanium materials and Mina’s technical skills, but could a commercially available rifle with comparable performance really exist?

“…It might have been the Replacer L-1 model produced in ’89.”

“Replacer?”

“It’s a large sniper rifle designed to take down huge monsters or wild animals from a distance with a single shot. Only about twenty were made to order before it was discontinued. It’s big and heavy, and consumes an enormous amount of mana, but in terms of power and bullet velocity, it’s top-class among all commercially available rifles.”

“A large sniper rifle… could it be that man?”

The mine supervisor, who had been listening to my conversation with Mina, reacted to the mention of a large sniper rifle.

“Do you have something in mind?”

“About five days ago… five adventurers with a pack horse stopped here for food supplies before heading southwest. One of them was carrying an enormously large rifle. It was so big that he had to carry the barrel and body separately.”

“That’s it. The Replacer L-1. As far as I know, it’s the only gun that requires carrying the barrel separately and assembling it before firing.”

So the sniper’s identity is one of the adventurers who resupplied here and left. It’s unlikely that a lesser demon that emerged from a dungeon could handle such a rare sniper rifle, and the skill to target someone’s head through a door crack could only be demonstrated by someone who has handled that gun for a long time.

“Did that adventurer get mentally controlled by a monster or something… this is getting complicated.”

“It’s possible all five of them have become enemies. Can you tell us about the weapons the other four carried?”

If, as Jessica suggested, all five adventurers who headed south have returned as enemies, there might be someone with an even more dangerous weapon than the sniper rifle. The supervisor put his hand to his chin, carefully recalling his memories, and described the weapons of the adventurers he met five days ago.

“As for the others’ weapons… two people used revolvers, one was a mage with a staff, and the remaining one had a common hunting rifle, if I remember correctly.”

“We should be especially careful about the mage. Any other notable details?”

“Ah, come to think of it, one of the adventurers—”

‘BOOM!!’

As the supervisor was speaking, a loud explosion suddenly erupted outside the door. It seemed to have occurred not too far from the entrance.

“What just exploded?”

“A mage’s explosion spell?”

“Don’t open the door! You’ll get sniped!”

“Ugh…!”

Phyllis, who was about to open the door to look outside, startled at my warning and stepped back, while the mine supervisor continued his interrupted story with a pale face.

“D-dynamite.”

“What?”

“One of those adventurers claimed to be a mining expert and had lots of dynamite.”

“Oh…”

A sniper, a mage, and now an explosives expert…

It seems the crisis at Wellord Mine is only just beginning in earnest.