Chapter 89: Secret weapon (1/2)

After we defeated the basilisk above the lake, the airship continued to press toward the inside of Woodcastle, just like that.

Originally, if we tried to fly over the castle, we would get shot down and couldn’t even complain. However, since the barrier stone was destroyed, there was no one to criticize us.

Or rather, we could save Lyss from a pinch exactly because we quickly rushed in from the unobstructed sky.

There was a basilisk hovering over the castle. Chrisse shot a  7.62x51mm high-explosive magic stone round through its eye socket, making the bullet explode inside its skull, and killed it.

Noticing Lyss, Luna called out from the airship and waved her hands to let Lyss know that she was all right.

“Oneechaaaaan!”

Having confirmed her sister’s safety, Lyss showed a relieved expression.

However, the current situation was an urgent one.

Shia had been wounded. Her maid clothes were stained with blood and her eyes were closed. It looked like she was unconscious.

From the destroyed barrier stone, dragoons were coming out in large numbers.

As I thought, it would really reach the number 10000 that was written in the record book.

Considering the barbed wire was gone, they did good holding out with just the PKM.

To not let their hard works be in vain, I couldn’t let the damage increase anymore.

“Snow! Meiya! Have you finished the preparation!?”

“It’s ok!”

“It can go anytime!”

I nodded at their powerful replies, and called out loud to Lyss, who was hugging Shia below.

“Make a foxhole right now and take cover inside it! I’m gonna shoot a really big firework!”

Lyss heard my words and instructed the soldiers behind her.

The magicians cooperated and made a big, deep hole, and they hid inside it.

Lyss also made a foxhole by herself and hid in it with Shia.

After I’d confirmed that everyone had taken cover, I went and stood in front of the automatic grenade launcher that was based on the Mk19, which I made at the same time as the PKM (general purpose machine gun) as insurance.

Now then, what was an automatic grenade launcher?

Grenade came from the Spanish word ‘granada’, which means ‘pomegranate fruit’.

A grenade that was designed to be thrown by hand is called a hand grenade.

In regards to a grenade launcher, you didn’t throw it manually like a hand grenade; it was a tool to launch the grenade forward ― called a grenade launcher (its name changes depending on if it’s a rifle model, or pistol model etc., but for now let’s just call them all grenade launcher).

Normal grenade launchers could only shoot one shot before having to reload, and other models could reach 5~6 shots, but the automatic grenade launcher I made this time used a belt link to link the grenades together (like a machine gun’s ammo belt) and could continuously shoot 30~50 shots.

If you could continuously shoot grenades that would explode and shower fragments around, then it would be more effective at defeating enemies hiding in bushes or on the riverside than the machine gun; it was a weapon that was made with that ideology.

The construction was also simple, just applying the shooting mechanism of a heavy machine gun to grenades.

However, the ammo for the automatic grenade launcher was 40mm big, so it couldn’t be helped that the launcher was also big.

So normally you would attach a tripod to stabilize it, or attach it to a vehicle or boat.

This time, I attached the automatic grenade launcher at the nose of the airship with a tripod and pointed the barrel toward the barrier stone where the dragoons were pouring out.

‘Pomf!’, the sound of the grenade launcher was a lot less intimidating than the general-purpose machine gun PKM.

However, the effect of one shot didn’t even begin to compare.

“Gyaaaagyaa!!”

The dragoons coming out of the barrier stone were planning to surround Lyss and everyone else, but the 40mm round shot from the airship hit the ground.

The magic stone packed inside the round got destroyed and raised a column of flames.

At the same time, the small iron balls packed inside the 40mm round, as well as shrapnel, flew out into the surrounding area at high speed. Even the dragoons 100~200m away from the impact point fell down.

Frankly speaking, compared to the 40mm rounds in the previous world, the power was overwhelmingly higher.

It was because of the idea I got from the time I fought the twin dragon: using a magic stone.

The magic stone used was bigger than that of the 7.62x51mm high-explosive magic stone round, and the power of one shot boasted the destructive power of a high-end intermediate level spell.

It also had the special perk that the manufacturing process was simpler than the normal 40mm round.

Once you pulled the trigger, it became a monstrous mechanism that could continuously shoot 50 shots (buckshot) at the level of high-end intermediate level spell.

As for the demerits, you may get criticized by other merchants as a result of hoarding a large amount of magic stones.Another was because of using magic stone that costs around 3 gold (300 thousand) per shot. Magic stones not charged with magic power were way cheaper though…… But we didn’t have time to charge them, and we couldn’t use empty magic stones either.