Chapter 301: Orochimaru’s Surprise!

At a secret base belonging to Orochimaru, several dozen kilometers outside Konoha, Orochimaru arrived at one of the training grounds with a bundle of storage scrolls in his arms, accompanied by Uchiha Ren.

When Uchiha Ren had previously asked Orochimaru to develop modern firearms, Orochimaru had promised to produce some results within three days.

True to his word, Orochimaru had already made considerable progress in the field of firearms during those three days. His request for Jiraiya to help test the weapons earlier that day had not been entirely an excuse, either.

The reason Uchiha Ren was in such a hurry to come here was to see the results of Orochimaru's research.

Uchiha Ren stopped and looked at Orochimaru, his gaze fixed on the storage scrolls in Orochimaru's arms.

"Senior Orochimaru, we've arrived at the training ground. It's time to show me your results, isn't it?"

Orochimaru did not mind his impatience. He smiled, selected one of the storage scrolls from the bundle, and handed it to Uchiha Ren.

"Let's take this one step at a time. These are several firearms I manufactured completely according to your designs. Take a look first."

Uchiha Ren took the storage scroll and immediately opened it, forming hand seals to release everything stored inside.

Poof!

A burst of white smoke erupted.

Four unusual weapons gleaming with metallic luster appeared on the ground, along with a pile of various types of ammunition.

Orochimaru set the remaining storage scrolls aside, picked up a palm-sized black firearm from the ground, and skillfully loaded it.

"Ren, this is the 'pistol' I made according to your design. It has a twelve-round magazine. I haven't had time to measure its other specifications yet."

Uchiha Ren's eyes lit up.

"How's the firepower?"

Orochimaru handed him the pistol.

"Why don't you try it yourself, Ren?"

Uchiha Ren took the pistol and began examining it with obvious fascination.

Although this was a high-level world filled with supernatural power, what man didn't like guns?

The pistol had a crude design, was completely black, and its grip and overall feel were far from perfect.

After all, Orochimaru had literally handcrafted this thing. The fact that it worked at all was already impressive enough.

And besides...

It was a gun!

Its rough appearance actually gave it a distinctive charm.

"How do I use it?"

Uchiha Ren asked.

This was his first time actually handling a firearm in this world. Since it had also been handcrafted by Orochimaru, it was perfectly normal for it to differ somewhat from the standardized firearms he had seen in his previous life.

Orochimaru explained, "Since this is a prototype, I didn't make the safety mechanism included in the design you gave me. Just pull the trigger."

Uchiha Ren nodded.

He raised the pistol, aimed at a wooden target in the distance, and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Several muffled shots rang out.

Uchiha Ren emptied the entire magazine in one go.

Perhaps because he was accustomed to using thrown weapons such as shuriken and kunai, combined with the fact that his current strength completely negated the pistol's recoil, all twelve shots hit their mark.

Wood splinters flew everywhere as the target was riddled with bullet holes.

Orochimaru began explaining.

"In terms of power, the bullets fired by this pistol are already comparable to shuriken or kunai thrown seriously by an ordinary chūnin."

"But compared with shuriken and kunai thrown by an ordinary chūnin, the pistol also has some significant disadvantages."

Uchiha Ren was surprised.

"Oh? What are the disadvantages?"

He was already extremely satisfied with the pistol.

Judging from those twelve shots, its operation was practically no different from the firearms he had seen in his previous life.

He genuinely hadn't noticed the shortcomings Orochimaru was talking about.

Orochimaru explained, "The first problem is the trajectory of the bullets after they're fired."

"Once you pull the trigger and the bullet leaves the barrel, it travels along a fixed straight line. For a shinobi, an attack like that is extremely easy to block or evade."

"Furthermore, the firing motion is too rigid for a shinobi. Even an ordinary shinobi can observe the movement of your wrist, determine when you're about to fire, and predict where the bullet will land, giving them time to react."

"In short, compared with a shinobi's attacks, a firearm lacks a certain... flexibility."

Uchiha Ren nodded.

"That's true. After all, it's a machine. It can only operate according to a fixed mechanism. It isn't difficult to figure out how it works."

The shinobi of this world were no ordinary humans.

Even the lowest-ranking genin, who might know only a few techniques, possessed physical abilities, eyesight, and reaction speed far beyond those of ordinary people.

If a bullet struck a shinobi directly, seriously injuring or even killing them would not be difficult.

But likewise, even if a shinobi couldn't block a bullet, avoiding it wasn't particularly difficult either.

Orochimaru continued, "The other problem is ammunition capacity. Twelve rounds might sound like a lot, but in an actual battle, they can be fired in just a few seconds."

"And once those twelve rounds are gone, the pistol becomes nothing more than a piece of scrap metal. An enemy shinobi won't give you time to reload."

Orochimaru's concern was not unfounded.

When shinobi fought, life and death were often decided in an instant.

Moreover, Uchiha Ren had already said that these firearms were designed to allow ordinary people to fight shinobi.

Once their ammunition was exhausted, those ordinary soldiers would probably be left with nothing but slaughter.

Uchiha Ren thought for a moment.

"The two problems you mentioned do exist, but they aren't impossible to solve."

Orochimaru immediately became interested.

"How?"

Uchiha Ren smiled.

"The shortcomings you mentioned apply mainly to one-on-one combat. But what happens when we have multiple people fighting multiple opponents?"

"For example, three against three. One person advances, one provides covering fire, and one provides support. Three people create three separate firing positions, making it much harder to evade the attacks."

"If one person's ammunition runs out, the other two maintain suppressive fire while that person reloads."

"That solves both of the problems you mentioned. And the larger the battle becomes, the less significant those weaknesses will be."

Uchiha Ren was drawing on his knowledge of modern firearms and battlefield tactics from his previous life.

Orochimaru had only just begun studying firearms, so it was perfectly understandable that he hadn't considered this.

After thinking for a while, Orochimaru said, "If we're talking about squad-level combat, the opposing shinobi will also have greater numbers. They may even overpower the people using these firearms."

"Only when the scale becomes large enough might the side using firearms actually gain an advantage over the shinobi."

"But the largest wars in shinobi history have involved only a few thousand combatants on each side. Most of the time, even a battle involving several hundred people is already considered a major conflict."

"So whether we'll encounter a war large enough to maximize the potential of firearms remains uncertain. Using these weapons to completely change the current style of warfare in the shinobi world will still be difficult."

The largest war in the history of the shinobi world would probably be the Fourth Shinobi World War from the original storyline more than a decade later, when the Allied Shinobi Forces' eighty thousand shinobi fought one hundred thousand White Zetsu.

Those numbers sounded enormous, but compared with the scale of the wars Uchiha Ren had witnessed in his previous life, they amounted to little more than a battle involving several armies.

Li Yunlong, for example, had once mobilized more than ten thousand soldiers simply to attack Ping'an County.

Compared with that, warfare in this world really was somewhat small-scale.

Uchiha Ren could perhaps use firearms to organize an army of several hundred thousand and sweep across the shinobi world.

But completely eliminating the enemy shinobi's effective fighting strength would be far more difficult.

"It really isn't that simple," Uchiha Ren said, "but it isn't as difficult as you think, either."

"After all, you can run from a monk, but you can't run from his temple. Even if they can avoid fighting us for a while, once they have nowhere left to retreat, they'll have no choice but to face us head-on."

Uchiha Ren already had a rough plan in mind and had taken all of Orochimaru's concerns into consideration.

After all, although he intended to use the power of firearms to pacify the shinobi world, he had never intended to rely on firearms alone.

When it came to mobility, could those shinobi really be faster than White Zetsu?

Moreover, White Zetsu's basic physical attributes weren't much worse than those of shinobi either.

Uchiha Ren put down the pistol and picked up another weapon from the ground, a rifle roughly the length of his arm.

After examining it for a moment, he asked, "What about this one? How powerful is it?"

Orochimaru handed Uchiha Ren a fully loaded magazine.

"Although this rifle is considerably more powerful than the pistol, with several times the range and rate of fire, its overall power is still only around the level of an elite chūnin."

Uchiha Ren held the rifle with both hands, aimed at the wooden target, and pulled the trigger.

A stream of muzzle flash erupted.

The wooden target was instantly cut in half by the barrage of metal bullets.

"爽!"

Uchiha Ren emptied the magazine and let out an excited shout.

Orochimaru simply smiled.

He had already experienced the sensation of firing one himself.

How should he put it?

Being able to destroy a target completely with nothing more than the movement of a finger really was an extraordinary feeling.

And the vibration of the bullets leaving the barrel somehow made the blood in one's veins race.

Orochimaru continued, "This rifle has a thirty-round magazine, giving it considerably more margin for error than the pistol."

"If we really intend to equip an army, I'd recommend using this rifle as the standard weapon."

"Oh?"

Uchiha Ren did not immediately answer.

Instead, his eyes fell upon another strangely shaped weapon lying on the ground.

"What about this one? This should be a Gatling gun, right?"

Indeed.

Of the two remaining weapons on the ground, one was unmistakably a Gatling gun with six barrels.

Orochimaru bent down and picked up the Gatling gun with one hand. As he loaded its ammunition, he explained,

"In terms of rate of fire, range, power, and ammunition capacity, this Gatling gun can almost be described as flawless."

"The bullets it fires can punch straight through several feet of stone wall. Its firepower is comparable even to shuriken and kunai infused with chakra and thrown by jōnin."

"As for ammunition capacity, the Gatling gun uses an ammunition belt. As long as the belt is long enough, you don't have to worry about running out of ammunition."

"And in terms of rate of fire, this Gatling gun can fire several thousand rounds per minute. The bullets leaving the barrel practically form a continuous stream. Wherever you aim, death follows."

"But it also has one fatal flaw."

As he spoke, Orochimaru handed the Gatling gun to Uchiha Ren and gestured for him to try firing it.

Uchiha Ren didn't hesitate.

He lifted the Gatling gun and pulled the trigger.

In an instant, flames erupted from the barrels.

A continuous stream of bullets tore through the air, sending earth and stone flying everywhere.

But after only a brief moment, a large pile of spent brass casings had accumulated around Uchiha Ren's feet.

The six metal barrels of the Gatling gun were already glowing red-hot.

Uchiha Ren's expression tightened.

He immediately understood the flaw Orochimaru had mentioned and released the trigger before the weapon could overheat catastrophically.

Orochimaru nodded.

"As you've probably noticed, the immense firepower and extremely high rate of fire cause the barrels of the Gatling gun to overheat beyond what they can withstand. They deform after only a short period of continuous fire."

"I've already tested every ordinary metal currently available in the shinobi world, and none of them can withstand this level of stress."

"I haven't tested chakra metal yet. But given the amount of material required for a Gatling gun, I don't have enough money to purchase that much chakra metal, let alone produce these weapons on a large scale."

The technological development of this world was ultimately far behind that of Uchiha Ren's previous world.

The same applied to steelmaking and alloy production.

The materials Orochimaru had used were already among the finest metals available in this world.

They were barely sufficient for pistols and rifles, but they were still inadequate for Gatling guns.

And three days simply wasn't enough time for Orochimaru to develop or synthesize a stronger metal.

That had become the Gatling gun's fatal flaw.

Uchiha Ren sighed.

"Looks like we can't neglect the development of metallurgy, either. Otherwise, we probably won't be able to manufacture the more powerful weapons in the future."

After a pause, Uchiha Ren put down the Gatling gun and looked at the final weapon on the ground.

"What about this rocket launcher? Does it have any flaws?"

The final weapon was essentially a long tube.

Uchiha Ren recognized it at a glance.

It was the weapon he remembered from his previous life—a rocket launcher.

Orochimaru smiled.

"This one doesn't have any significant flaws."

"The explosive power of a single rocket is roughly equivalent to two Explosive Tags, and its power can still be improved."

"The only problem is its projectile speed. Even an ordinary person can clearly see its trajectory."

"But once we increase the number of launchers, and combine them with the other artillery pieces you've designed, that weakness will disappear."

"We can simply saturate an entire area with firepower. Even enemy shinobi won't be able to evade it."

Uchiha Ren nodded.

"Good. Then put mass production of the rocket launcher on the agenda as soon as possible. At the same time, development of the other artillery pieces can't stop—"

He suddenly stopped speaking.

His eyes shifted toward the several other storage scrolls Orochimaru had placed nearby.

"Wait. Have you already developed other types of artillery as well?"

Orochimaru gave him a mysterious smile.

"No. These are some weapons I created by incorporating a few of my own ideas into your designs."

"I think they should give you quite a surprise, Ren."

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