I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

”I know what you’re probably thinking.”

Old Big tapped his temple with a chestnut shell.

”’Since Enchanted Bullets work on Evil Beings, why not just put the Enchantment Inscriptions on a Bullet Chain? Set up a machine gun and mow them down, RAT-A-TAT-TAT.’”

”Or failing that, get a truckload of Enchanted Explosives and saturate the area with firepower.”

”Is that about right?”

Richard grunted.

He had, in fact, thought of it.

The thoughts that came before sleep were when one’s imagination ran wildest.

Sometimes he would lie in bed and seriously imagine it. If he could one day assemble a small squad with heavy firepower, wouldn’t all those ”areas with high Ether anomalies” in the North just be lining up for him to clean out?

In movies and novels, using heavy firepower to suppress and deal with monsters was the kind of awesome scene that perfectly matched the modern industrial aesthetic.

But he didn’t let it show on his face. He just went along with it and asked, ”So it doesn’t work?”

”It works,” Old Big answered bluntly.

”Huh?”

”I said, ’It works.’” Old Big glanced at him.

”This Enchantment Inscription stuff was originally created to ’translate’ physical destructive force to the Ether Layer.”

”A regular lead bullet just tickles an Evil Being, but an Enchanted Bullet can take a bite out of them.

Regular explosives won’t even make a sound on the other side of the Curtain, but Enchanted Explosives can rip them open.”

”The principle is sound. If you make the Inscription correctly, a Bullet Chain fired from a machine gun can indeed shred hordes of Lower-rank Evil Beings to bits.”

”Then why doesn’t anyone do it?” Richard pressed.

Old Big chuckled and popped the half-peeled chestnut into his mouth.

”Who said no one does it?”

”Someone tried?”

”It was decades ago.”

He swallowed the chestnut and leaned back in his chair.

”Back then, the steam engine had just become widespread, factories were belching smoke everywhere, and Inscription engineering was reaping its first wave of technological benefits.

A few young engineers in charge of military production were slamming their tables hard enough to shake the heavens...”

Old Big mimicked slamming a table, pressing his palm flat against the tabletop.

”’What are those things behind the Curtain? We have the Inscription Master Guild, we have Enchantment techniques, we have the Cannon Foundry!’”

”’Lower-rank Evil Beings? A three-round burst will clear the field! Middle Tier? A ten-cannon salvo!

Just add a few more rings to the Enchantment Inscriptions, concentrate the firepower a little more, and there’s nothing that overwhelming firepower can’t solve!’”

”Sounds pretty reasonable, right?”

Richard nodded slowly.

”In principle, they weren’t wrong,” Old Big continued.

”So the higher-ups actually approved the project and formed a unit called the ’Fourth Technical Squadron.’ The full name was super long, I can’t remember it.”

”In total, several hundred Hunters from the official system were pulled out on a temporary basis to form the team.

They were equipped with twenty Maxim guns with enchanted feed mechanisms, eight enchanted field guns, plus dozens of cartloads of enchanted explosive packs, not to mention all the other light firearms.”

He lifted his teacup, blew on it, and his tone shifted.

”Do you know how much money the Imperial government spent just to supply that ammunition?”

Richard shook his head.

”I don’t know the exact figure either,” Old Big said.

”I only know that back then, the entire Northern Inscription Master Guild—a full thousand professional Inscription Masters, not even counting the apprentices who outnumbered the master craftsmen several times over—worked overtime for a whole year.

Just supplying the Enchanted Bullet Chains for those machine guns ate up the Guild’s entire production capacity for that year.”

”That year, any Hunter in the private sector who wanted to buy Enchanted Bullets couldn’t find any stock.”

Richard frowned slightly. ”And in terms of money?”

Old Big rubbed his fingers together.

”The old-timers say that by the time the whole project was over, the money they burned through was enough to build another cruiser.”

Hearing this, Richard already had a bad feeling.

’This operation was probably a losing proposition before the first shot was even fired.’

”Alright, back to the story,” Old Big said, wiping his mouth.

”The target location was an old sacrificial scar in the heart of the Western Continent.”

”According to the rules, not even someone at Minor Mastery is allowed to approach a place like that alone.”

”But that squadron charged right in with all their gear.”

”In the beginning, the results were so good everyone wanted to slam the table in celebration.”

”They set up the machine guns, the Enchanted Bullet Chains spit out with a CLATTER-CLATTER, and the swarming Evil Beings fell in droves.

One shot from a field gun could dissipate a huge swath of Wandering Spirits. The squad members were ecstatic.”

”The commander sent a telegram back to the Imperial Capital on the spot, saying, ’Plan effective. Requesting a second shipment of ammunition.’”

Hearing this, Richard already had a vague premonition of what was to come.

”They were happy for about ten minutes,” Old Big said. ”Then things started to go wrong.”

”The number of swarming Evil Beings didn’t decrease. Instead, there were more and more of them.”

”Their Level was getting higher and higher, too.”

”Why?”

”Because every Enchanted Bullet, every enchanted artillery shell that hit the ground, was a weapon against the Evil Beings, but it was a chisel against the Seal buried beneath that land.”

Old Big paused for a moment.

”...The world behind the Curtain is all connected. The bigger the disturbance you make, the easier it is to draw out the things from the depths.”

A chill ran down Richard’s fingertips.

”The power of an Enchantment Inscription lies in its ability to cause destruction on the Ether Layer.”

Old Big set his teacup down and made a gesture.

”It causes destruction to Evil Beings, and it can cause destruction to the Curtain and the structure of the Seal all the same.”

”A normal bullet hitting the ground, at most, makes the ’skin’ of the Seal tremble a bit.

An Enchanted Bullet hitting the ground drills a small hole in that Seal with every shot.”

”A machine gun’s rate of fire is six hundred rounds per minute.”

”One field gun shell covers several dozen square meters.”

”One bundle of explosive packs, and the entire foundation is left with a crack.”

”They fired for a quarter of an hour.”

Old Big’s voice was still light and airy.

”In a quarter of an hour, they blew through every single Seal Anchor point that had been suppressed under that sacrificial scar for over a thousand years.”

”What was originally a ’crack’ that only let a little bit seep through was turned into a ’door’ by this bunch of geniuses.”

”And the things on the other side of that door were on a level that a Maxim gun couldn’t solve.”

Richard asked, ”What came out?”

”Nobody knows what exactly it was, because nobody came back alive.” Old Big shook his head.

”The investigation team sent by the Branch Office didn’t dare go over until two days later. From a distance, they saw that the entire sky over that area was purple.”

”I don’t know how many people died afterward trying to repair that Seal.”

He lifted his teacup and blew on the steam.

”I only know that to this day, that entire area is a restricted zone.”

”So what did that grandiose military plan get them in the end?”

He spread his hands.

”It got them nothing.”

”On the contrary, it thinned the overall Seal in that region by a whole tier.

The increased density of anomalous incidents in the Northern Industrial District these past few years... half of them can be traced back to the aftershocks of that operation.”

Richard sighed.

All those images of ”overwhelming firepower” he had imagined were completely punctured by Old Big’s story.

”And it gets better,” Old Big said, seeming to get more animated as he spoke.

”Twenty years ago, there was this lone wolf.”

”He got his inspiration from reading the case files on the Fourth Technical Squadron, but he considered himself smarter than that bunch of idiots.”

”What was his idea?”

Old Big tapped his own head with his thumb.

”He said that using a large military force for firepower saturation was too conspicuous, burned too much money, and attracted trouble.”

”So, instead of people going in, just throw things in.

Small-scale, targeted, precise. He called it ’surgical demolition.’”

Old Big grinned.

”According to his plan, he’d throw the explosives from this side of the Curtain, with a rope tied to it for positioning, and use a time-delay detonation.

After it blew, he’d pull the rope back to retrieve the fragments and see what was inside.”

”Sounds airtight, right?”

Richard nodded slightly.

Old Big added, ”But he forgot one thing.”

”What?”

”An Enchantment Inscription requires a ’stable Ether environment’ for Maintenance.”

He tapped the table.

”An Inscription isn’t something you just carve and forget.

It’s a program on the Ether Layer. It needs a stable ’interpreter’ to read it so it will run according to the path you designed.”

”On this side of the Curtain, the Ether in the material world is stable, so the Inscription obediently executes as written.

But on the other side of the Curtain... it needs someone to supervise it at all times.”

He shook his head.

”What was originally written as ’targeted killing’ might have been rewritten into ’targeted opening.’”

”What was originally written as ’detonate’ was rewritten as ’guide.’”

”What was originally written as ’destroy’ was rewritten as ’summon.’”

A thin layer of sweat broke out on the back of Richard’s neck.

Old Big picked up a chestnut and put it in his mouth.

He chewed twice, then said slowly,

”His neighbor said he went into his basement that afternoon and never came out again.”

”His notes on Inscription research were confiscated by the Branch Office and stamped ’Not for Circulation’ when they were filed.”

Richard was silent for a long time after hearing this.

’This world isn’t short on so-called ”geniuses.”’

’Every one of them thinks they’ve figured out the one step their predecessors missed;’

’And every one of them ends up as just another file in the ”Not for Circulation” cabinet;’

’Perhaps the Imperial government stamps those files ’Not for Circulation’ precisely because they’re afraid of the next such genius.’

He had also thought about the future, when technology would be even more advanced. They could create enchanted missiles or even enchanted nuclear bombs, or things from science fiction novels like railguns and Star Destroyers.

But then again, he knew nothing about how deep the world behind the Curtain truly was.

’Who’s to say that in the deepest parts behind the Curtain, there isn’t some profound, dark side capable of devouring planets or even entire multiverses?’

’In this world, the most frightening thing is making snap decisions without doing the research.’

”So,” Old Big said, pointing at the Webley.

”This old fella looks crude and unassuming. It’s slow to load all six rounds, and the recoil is stiff.”

”But it’s simple. And simplicity is a virtue.”

It was rare for Old Big to say something that sounded like an aphorism.

Richard couldn’t help but smile.

He stared at the three guns on the table for a moment, then his gaze returned to the first one.

He didn’t dare bet his life on an automatic pistol with a high malfunction rate.

”I’ll take the first one, then,” he said.

”The Webley Police Model 3?”

”Yes.”

”Solid choice.” Old Big put the other two gun cases away, placing the first one in the center of the table.

”Price?”

”Branch Office internal price. Five pounds. Comes with a holster, a cleaning kit, and two boxes of ammunition—twelve rounds in total.”

Richard took a money pouch from his pocket, counted out five pounds, and placed them on the table.

Old Big took the money, counted it, put it in a drawer, and pulled a piece of paper from another drawer.

”Sign here.”

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

”The gun’s yours.”

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

”One more thing.” He fumbled in the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a small metal box.

Old Big opened the metal box. Inside, cushioned on black cloth, lay six bullets.

Their casings were silver-white, and a ring of fine Inscriptions was carved onto the surface of the warheads.

”Enchanted Bullets?” Richard’s gaze was fixed.

”The Single-Ring Bullets I showed you last time.”

”For me?”

”You’re going out of town for your winter internship.” Old Big pushed the metal box over.

”When you’re away from home, having a few extra of these on hand will give you some peace of mind.”