Chapter 41: Sniper Rifle (1/2)

Lute, age 13

I had been under the care of the household of the Dragon Continent’s magic device developer, Meiya Dragoon, for several months.

In return for the food and lodging—I had taken her as my disciple as she requested.

As my disciple, I had been teaching her about the process of making guns; but, of course, there were conditions.

The three conditions are thus—Not to spread the techniques as she pleases, not to misuse it, and to follow my instructions if any problem occurs.

To my conditions, Meiya exclaimed with an honest look in her eyes: [If I were to somehow break these conditions, I will bite my tongue in front of Lute-sama and die].

This girl’s no good, she’s scary

I didn’t think she would seriously, honestly swear an oath of suicide.

But on the other hand, this means that Meiya would not betray me.

However, no matter how she’s praised as a genius magic device developer, the work seems to be hard for her.

First, she couldn’t make the small parts out of magic liquid metal.

If she poured magic into it it should have become hard, but the metal sheets she took out was hard on the right side and brittle on the left—she could only make out-of-balance things like that.

The forms were uneven, and the thickness and strength were also defective.

Maybe she lacked the power of imagination, or maybe some other reason….

I tried having her make cartridges, but it seems that she could not imagine smokeless gunpowder to begin with.

It’s not like I told her to simply make cartridges just by stuffing it with explosion magic.

But to tell Meiya, who hadn’t seen nor heard of smokeless gunpowder, to imagine it, transform magic power, and put it into the cartridge, is a mistake from the start.

For now I would start by having her do some classroom learning about the basic knowledge regarding guns—the difference between the ammo for the revolver and the assault rifle, the purpose of rifling, the strength of metal required for use in handguns, etc.

At the same time as Meiya’s classes, I was also coaching Chrisse-ojousama on how to control her magic power.

Ojousama’s magic power is about the same as mine

So if she could remember how to control her magic power she can do what I could.

Excepting the time used for research, it took me about 30 days until I could remember the technique to control my magic power.

It should take about the same amount of time to drill this technique into ojousama.

At midday

The Dragon race has their meals in the mornings, noons, and evenings.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do—ojousama and I properly had three meals a day.

In the afternoons we would do practice battles to build up ojousama’s strength.

Ojousama would get changed into rough clothes, tie up her long hair, and do warm-up exercises.

Firstly, she would make a run around the outer bounds of the Meiya estate.

Running to build up her body strength.

Ojousama had no body strength owing to being a shut-in.

Which is why she was doing practice to increase her base strength.

After she’s done running, there would be unarmed combat and sword practice.

For unarmed combat she would do some serious sparring with me.

For swordplay, I had her practice swings with a wooden sword and exchange blows with me.

This training regiment is the same as the one Gigi-san taught me.

(I wonder why Gigi-san betrayed the Vlad house he loved so much…)

No matter how much I think about it I won’t get an answer unless it’s from the person himself.

That was another reason why we need to gain strength and return to the Demon Continent.

At night, once ojousama’s fatigue is at its peak, she had dinner, a bath, and went straight to sleep.

Meiya and I holed up inside the workshop and worked on making the sniper rifle.

The rifle we were making—was a Remington M700P.

To be precise, we intended to make something with the M700P as a base.

Firstly, what is a “sniper rifle”?

Until the First World War, infantry troops would stand in ranks separated by a distance of several hundred meters to 1000 meters and attack using bolt-action rifles (bolt action is a method of firing guns by shooting one bullet at a time and reloading by manually operating the bolt (cylindrical part situated behind the chamber) using its handle). However with the appearance of machine guns, these ranks of troops were easily mowed down.

If an infantry troop were to attack a machine gun emplacement the way they have always done they would inevitably turn into a mountain of corpses. So things like attacking at night or digging trenches to allow close-quarters combat became commonplace. However, with the bolt action rifle, during the time taken to reload the bolt after shooting they would be vulnerable to attack from enemies.

So rather than guns that need to be carefully aimed from a distance, infantry would seek guns that could fire rapidly from a short range.

Then submachine guns (small machine guns that could be used like a pistol) and assault rifles were developed, and the tactic of barraging the enemy with bullets became mainstream.

However, weapons that could be precisely aimed and fired from a long distance was indispensable for eliminating enemy commanders, radio operators, and machine gunners situated a long distance away. So the simple and high accuracy bolt action rifle received attention once again.

The bolt action rifle that was sought for a new role received various improvements and strengthening necessary for sniping.

Thus, the [sniper rifle] was born.

But although they’re all called [sniper rifles], there are various kinds according to target and usage like ones for military use, hunting, and for shooting games.

For example, for hunting use—the bolt action rifle is lightened and called a [mountain rifle].

The [mountain rifle] is a [relatively lightweight guns having a long range capable of taking down big game].

For a lightweight gun to fire a heavy bullet, the recoil is severe.

But rather than the recoil, the fact of having to lug a heavy gun while trekking on a mountain is considered, so the gun was made lighter.

As for the case of shooting games—game rifles do not come with a magazine, and it had a unique shape because it was specialized for use in games, no consideration was put into making it easy to carry.

Which is why although the game rifle can shoot with accuracy, it does not have any practical use.

There is no instance in which a game rifle is used for sniping as-is.

Then, for military use—military and police [sniper rifles] were designed with a shape that was easy to be carried, and had a reasonable weight though not as light as mountain rifles, it is a gun with good balance. Normally, when you say [sniper rifle] you would mean the military/police use ones.

The gun I was making this time was also a military/police use sniper rifle.

Anyway, there were also cases where an automatic rifle, that had a lower accuracy than a bolt-action rifle, were chosen for a military troop.

The reason is that while a bolt-action rifle can only shoot single rounds at a time, an automatic rifle can fire 2, 3 shots between reloads, giving it a higher adaptability (for example when having to deal with several terrorists simultaneously).

However, the automatic rifle reloads automatically after firing. At that moment, the vibration from the parts moving inside interferes with the firing and this makes its accuracy lower than that of the bolt-action rifle.

Because I made the AK-47, I had the option of making the semi-automatic sniper rifle SVD Dragunov that was officially adopted in the former Soviet Union.

The Dragunov’s internals were made based on the AK-47. With the scope included, it weighs 4.3 kilograms, which is light for an automatic.

There was an automatic rifle called H&K PSG-1 that weighed 8.1 kilograms.

But this time, since we aim to rescue master and madam, there was a possibility that either one or both of them would be used as hostages.

In that situation, if we could save just madam, master could be free to act to free himself.

So I needed a high accuracy sniper rifle that had an allowable error of less than 2 cm in 100 m and 6 cm in 300 m, and so I used the M700P as a base.

The M700P is a high performance sniper rifle intended for use by police and army special forces made based on the hunting rifle M700 by the American small arms maker Remington LLC. The M700P had a long barrel and high accuracy. It was a bolt-action rifle for use by police special forces and in hostage rescue scenarios requiring certainty within the first shot.

Its specs were as follows.

Caliber: 7.62 mm x 51 NATO rounds

Overall Length: 1662 mm

Barrel Length: 660 mm

Rounds per Load: 5 rounds [Inner box Magazine]

It’s a sniper rifle well suited for our purpose.

Firstly I started making the core with the rifling carved onto it.

The sniper rifle requires a higher accuracy than the AK-47.

I had to do all the production work carefully.

Concentration is important.

“…. I feel a bit tired. I think we should stop here for now.”

Then after a few hours of work, I ended at a suitable point, and went to the room given to me for a late night sleep.

I laid down on the bed, and as I closed my eyes I quickly fell asleep.

This is how I spent my day nowadays.

▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼

In the afternoon, time for the unarmed combat practice.

At the courtyard, ojousama and I were having a mock battle.

Ojousama, in rough garb with her hair tied, was lunging at me with all her strength.

She was of course using body strengthening to support her body.

I easily avoided her right straight by circling around sideways.

I stopped her with a left jab, and kicked her with a right side kick.

[tsu!?]

Ojousama guarded for the kick at a dangerous moment.

But she lost to the force and rolled down onto the ground.

“Ojousama, your attacks are too sloppy. You should’ve moved to anticipate the opponent’s next move. If it’s just hitting each other even a child could do it. Hurry up and stand.”

Ojousama supported herself with her hands on the ground, breathing roughly, and made no sign of moving.

Not minding that, I started to hurl insults at her.

“Seriously HOW long are you FUCKING going to lay down there? Get a hold of yourself MAGGOT!”

Ojousama, still breathing roughly, raised her face with a difficult expression.

“You are this world’s lowest lifeform. You’re not a demon race. You’re not even worth trash scrounged from amphibians! What is it? If you don’t like it then show me your guts!”

Ojousama picked herself up while gritting her teeth and braced herself.

“So you can stand! You’ve got guts. I’ll work you to the bone as your reward. I’ll work you till you drop dead! I’ll work you till you have to drink milk from your ass!”

“Hey——!”

I turned my head toward the angry voice, and there was one of ojousama’s childhood friend, the Demon race, Centaur clan Karen Bishop there.

Standing behind her is a maid carrying a large travelling bag that looks to be hers.

Karen squared up her shoulders and stepped up to me, her ponytail swinging.

“Lute! You’re a servant! What the hell are you saying to Chrisse! I don’t really get what it means but I know it’s something bad!”

“!? Welcome, Karen-sama! It looks like the letter safely—”

As I was about to give Karen a warm welcome, the owner of the place Meiya popped a vein and angrily interrupted me.