Chapter 138: It's the Smart Ones You Have to Worry About

"I know what you're probably thinking right now."

Old Biggs tapped his temple with a chestnut shell.

"'Since Enchanted Bullets work on evil creatures, why not just carve the enchantment inscriptions onto an ammo belt, set up a machine gun, and mow them down?'"

"'Or at the very least, toss a cartload of enchanted explosives over and blanket the area with firepower.'"

"Is that what you were wondering?"

Richard uttered an awkward "uh."

He really had thought about it.

Thoughts right before sleep were always the most unbridled.

Sometimes he would lie in bed and seriously imagine putting together a heavily armed squad. If he could, wouldn't all those "high ether anomaly zones" across the entire north just be lining up for him to sweep them clean?

In movies and novels, suppressing monsters with heavy firepower was the most thrilling trope, perfectly aligning with modern industrial aesthetics.

He didn't let it show on his face, though, merely following the thread of the conversation. "Would that not work?"

"It would," Old Biggs answered crisply.

"Huh?"

"I said, 'it would.'" Old Biggs shot him a glance.

"The whole point of enchantment inscriptions is to translate physical destructive power over to the ether layer."

"Ordinary lead bullets just tickle evil creatures, but Enchanted Bullets bite into their flesh. Regular explosives won't even make a sound on the other side of the veil, but enchanted explosives can blow them wide open."

"In theory, it's flawless. If you get the inscriptions right, an ammo belt fed through a machine gun really could shred swaths of lower-level evil creatures to dust."

"Then why doesn't anyone do it?" Richard pressed.

Old Biggs chuckled, popping the half-peeled chestnut into his mouth.

"Who says nobody does?"

"Someone tried it?"

"Decades ago."

He swallowed the chestnut and leaned back in his chair.

"Back then, steam engines were just rolling out. Factories were belching smoke everywhere, and inscription engineering caught the first wave of that technological boom. A few young engineers in charge of the military industry were slamming their hands on the table, making a racket..."

Old Biggs mimed the gesture, slamming his own palm down onto the desk.

"'What do those little things behind the veil matter? We have the Inscription Master Guild, we have enchantment techniques, we have foundries!'"

"'Lower-level evil creatures? Clear them out with three-round bursts! Mid-level? A ten-cannon volley! Just add a few more rings to the enchantment inscriptions and pack the firepower tighter. There's nothing that overwhelming firepower can't solve!'"

"Sounds completely reasonable, right?"

Richard nodded slowly.

"The logic itself was sound," Old Biggs continued.

"So the higher-ups actually approved the project. They formed a unit called the 'Fourth Technical Squadron'—the full name was way too long, I can't remember it."

"They temporarily pulled a few hundred official Hunters from the system to assemble the team. They were outfitted with twenty Maxims retrofitted with enchanted ammunition feeding mechanisms, eight enchanted field guns, and dozens of carts packed with enchanted explosives. That's not even mentioning the lighter arms."

He picked up his teacup and blew on it, shifting the subject.

"Do you know how much money the Empire spent just to put all that ammunition together?"

Richard shook his head.

"I don't know the exact number, either," Old Biggs said.

"I just know that the Northern Inscription Master Guild had over a thousand certified masters at the time, not even counting the apprentices, who outnumbered them several times over. They worked overtime for an entire year. Just producing the enchanted ammo belts for those machine guns ate up the guild's entire production capacity for the year."

"That year, independent Hunters who wanted to buy Enchanted Bullets couldn't get their hands on a single one."

Richard frowned slightly. "And converted into money?"

Old Biggs rubbed his fingers together.

"Hearing the older generation tell it, by the time the whole project wrapped up, the funds they burned through were enough to build another cruiser."

Hearing this, Richard already started to feel a looming sense of dread.

This venture was likely a loss before they'd even fired a single shot.

"Anyway, back to the main point." Old Biggs wiped his mouth.

"The target was an old sacrificial scar deep in the heartland of the Western Continent."

"According to regulations, even Minor Adepts weren't allowed anywhere near that place alone."

"That team just grabbed their gear and charged right in."

"At first, the results were so good that everyone else wanted to slam their hands on the table, too."

"They set up the machine guns, the enchanted ammo belts clattered as they spat fire, and the swarming evil creatures fell in droves. A single shot from a field gun could instantly scatter a massive horde of wandering spirits. The squad members were ecstatic."

"The commander sent a telegram straight back to the Imperial Capital on the spot, saying, 'Plan effective, please send the second batch of ammunition.'"

At this point, Richard already had a vague premonition of what was coming.

"They were happy for about ten minutes," Old Biggs said. "Then things started going wrong."

"The evil creatures swarming them didn't dwindle—they multiplied."

"And their levels kept getting higher."

"Why?"

"Because every Enchanted Bullet and every enchanted artillery shell that hit the ground was lethal to the evil creatures, but it was also a chisel tearing into the seal buried beneath that land."

Old Biggs paused.

"...The world behind the veil is all connected. The more noise you make, the easier it is to draw out the things hidden in the depths."

Richard's fingertips went cold.

"The terrifying thing about enchantment inscriptions is exactly that they deal damage on the ether layer."

Old Biggs set down his teacup and gestured with his hands.

"They deal damage to the evil creatures, but they also damage the veil and the structural integrity of the seals just the same."

"When an ordinary bullet hits the ground, at most it makes the 'skin' of the seal tremble. But when an Enchanted Bullet hits the ground, every single round punches a tiny hole in that seal."

"A machine gun's rate of fire is six hundred rounds a minute."

"A single field gun blast covers dozens of square meters."

"A bundle of explosives cracks the entire foundation."

"They kept firing for fifteen minutes."

Old Biggs's voice remained soft and airy.

"In fifteen minutes, they completely shattered the sealing anchors that had kept the area under that sacrificial scar locked down for over a thousand years."

"What was originally just a 'crack' leaking a tiny trickle was blown wide open into a 'door' by those clever idiots."

"And the things inside that door were on a completely different level—one a Maxim gun couldn't solve."

Richard asked, "What came out?"

"Nobody knows exactly what it was, because no one came back alive." Old Biggs shook his head.

"The investigation team sent by the Branch Office only dared to approach it two days later, and from a distance, they saw that the entire sky over the area had turned purple."

"I don't know how many people died subsequently to patch up that seal."

He picked up his teacup and blew away the steam.

"All I know is that, to this day, that entire area remains a restricted zone."

"What did this grandiose military operation accomplish in the end?"

He threw his hands up.

"Absolutely nothing."

"Instead, it weakened the entire seal in that region by a full grade. The rising density of anomalous events in the Northern Industrial Zone over the years can be half-traced back to the lingering aftermath of that operation."

Richard let out a sigh.

The vivid scenarios of "overwhelming firepower" he had envisioned had all been completely punctured by Old Biggs's story.

"And it gets better." Old Biggs seemed to be getting more animated as he spoke.

"Twenty years ago, there was a lone wolf."

"He got his inspiration from reading the files of the Fourth Technical Squadron, but he thought he was smarter than those fools."

"What was his idea?"

Old Biggs tapped his thumb against his head.

"He said a large battalion doing carpet bombing was too conspicuous, burned too much money, and drew too much trouble."

"So instead of going in person, he would just throw things in. Small-scale, directional, precise. He called it 'surgical demolition.'"

Old Biggs grinned.

"According to his plan, he'd toss the explosives across from this side of the veil, use a rope to anchor them in place, and set a delayed fuse. After the explosion, he'd reel the rope back in, recover the fragments, and see what was inside."

"Sounds airtight, doesn't it?"

Richard nodded slightly.

Old Biggs added, "But he forgot one thing."

"What?"

"Enchantment inscriptions require a 'stable ether environment' to be maintained."

He rapped his knuckles on the table.

"You can't just carve an inscription and call it a day. It's a program on the ether layer. It needs a stable 'interpreter' to read it before it can execute along the path you designed."

"On this side of the veil, the ether in the material world is stable, so inscriptions honestly execute exactly as they're written. But once they cross over to the other side of the veil... they need a human there to supervise them constantly."

He shook his head.

"What was originally written as 'directional kill' might be rewritten into 'directional opening.'"

"What was originally written as 'detonate' might be rewritten into 'guide.'"

"What was originally written as 'destroy' might be rewritten into 'summon.'"

A fine sheen of sweat broke out on the back of Richard's neck.

Old Biggs picked up a chestnut and popped it into his mouth.

He chewed twice, then said slowly, "His neighbors said he went down into his basement that afternoon and never came back out."

"His research notes on inscriptions were confiscated by the Branch Office, and when they were archived, they were stamped 'Do Not Circulate.'"

After hearing this, Richard didn't speak for a long time.

This world had no shortage of so-called "smart people."

Every single one of them thought they had figured out the missing step that their predecessors hadn't.

And every single one of them ended up as just another file in the 'Do Not Circulate' archives.

The Empire stamped those files to prevent them from circulating, perhaps precisely out of fear of the next such smart person.

Richard had also wondered if, as technology advanced, they might create enchanted missiles, enchanted nukes, or even the orbital cannons and star destroyers from sci-fi.

But then again, he knew absolutely nothing about just how deep the world behind the veil actually went.

Who was to say that in the deepest reaches behind the veil, there wasn't some profound darkness capable of devouring planets, or even multiverses?

In this world, the most terrifying thing of all was making rash, thoughtless decisions without doing the research.

"So," Old Biggs pointed at the Webley.

"This old thing looks plain and unassuming. It's a hassle to load all six rounds, and the recoil is stiff."

"But it's simple, and simplicity is a virtue."

Old Biggs had spoken a rare line that sounded somewhat like a maxim.

Richard cracked a smile.

He stared at the three guns on the table for a moment before bringing his gaze back to the first one.

He wasn't willing to gamble his life on an automatic pistol with a high failure rate.

"I'll take the first one, then," he said.

"The Webley Police Mark III?"

"Yeah."

"A safe bet." Old Biggs packed away the other two gun boxes and placed the first one right in the middle of the table.

"The price?"

"Branch Office internal price: five pounds. It comes with a holster, cleaning tools, and two twelve-round boxes of bullets."

Richard pulled his coin purse from his pocket, counted out five pounds, and set the money on the table.

Old Biggs took it, counted it once, slipped it into a drawer, and pulled a sheet of paper from another drawer.

"Sign here."

After Richard signed, the gun box was pushed in front of him.

"The gun is yours."

Old Biggs took a sip of tea and wiped his mouth.

"Also." He fished a small Iron Box out from the bottommost drawer of the desk.

Old Biggs opened the Iron Box. Inside rested a piece of black cloth, and lying on the cloth were six bullets.

They had silver-white casings, and a ring of fine inscriptions was carved into the surface of each warhead.

"Enchanted Bullets?" Richard's gaze locked onto them.

"The single-ring ones I showed you last time."

"For me?"

"You're going out of town for your winter break internship." Old Biggs pushed the Iron Box over.

"When you're out there, having a few more rounds on hand will give you some peace of mind."