Mika took out the magic-guided rifle, inserted a blue crystal into the energy slot, and pressed down the lever to ensure the tightly sealed gears were perfectly closed to prevent the arcane energy reaction device inside from exploding.
Currently, the rifles on the market in the Western Continent are all bullpup designs. For stability, Mika laid prone on the wind-eroded rock and set up the rifle.
After carefully counting, the well-dressed geological survey team had four members, and the guard team had eight soldiers, all wearing high-mobility light armor and carrying a type of firearm Mika had never seen before.
Decades ago, the guns developed by the mages of the Tower Alliance had already reached, and even surpassed, mid-19th-century Earth standards.
Blueprints for automatic firearms had long been designed, but the craftsmanship and materials for the air chamber and recoil spring were problematic.
Because the Magic Energy Industry was extremely powerful, automatic firearms were somewhat outdated. These inventions, which could incite rebellion among ordinary people, were naturally shelved.
Until the military factory in the Imperial City New Industrial Zone, where the lathe and parts machining technology matured, making the production of automatic rifles possible.
However, the decision of the Alan Royal Court was to introduce them into the army but not to mass-produce them, to avoid overproduction.
The Alan Army already held enormous advantages, with magic-guided heavy firepower weapons far surpassing the inventions of Akasa’s guests or Lagrange’s team.
In name, Lagrange and his team were Akasa’s guests and were under Akasa’s command.
There was no need for weapons that could turn the tide in urban warfare for civilians. If such firepower were massively deployed and replicated, the biggest beneficiaries would be the mudlegs.
The weakness of military government in a society that relies entirely on force is that there will always be some who cannot endure loneliness.
Of course, on the Western Continent, where secret methods and arcane magic exist, these inventions were of little significant value to truly skilled individuals.
But they also posed a risk of increased unrest and the rise of dangerous ideologies.
The firepower of magic-guided firearms was a dimensional blow to the firepower of new firearms.
But the advantage of new firearms was their extreme cost-effectiveness, the cost of making one was almost equivalent to a hotpot meal. When compared to magic-guided firearms, it wasn’t just a suppression, it was a massacre, hanging them on the fan and directly screwing them.
Scholars with no more than a few gold coins who had nothing better to do would get ideas; imagining a military coup reminiscent of the late Eastern Han Dynasty. If you gave them a musket, they might still hold some reverence; give them a modern firearm, and they’d immediately start rallying their friends, wrecking everything.
In short, this was not Lagrange’s most valuable invention. The Royal Court valued him for his economic contributions, with the successful operation of the train system giving Aran a dependency path.
Military power doesn’t need you; the Emperor has his choices.
The Empire’s lifelines, most importantly, were communications and transportation. Creating a nationwide communication network and means of travel was more important than anything else.
Now, lying on the wind-eroded rock, Mika felt a bit insecure. The magic-guided rifle given to him by the deceased group leader was a piece valued at about ten gold coins.
This magic-guided rifle, too, had impeccable metal craftsmanship; its accuracy, power, and lack of reloading requirement during rapid fire were all unimpeachable. Its effective range was over 1,000 meters.
Looking at the Alan soldiers below, he wondered if Aran was now wealthy enough to arm each soldier with a magic-guided rifle.
It wasn’t that Mika didn’t recognize the weapon but rather that in the Western Continent the consensus was: all-metal craftsmanship meant magic-guidance, while smoothbore guns were a combination of wooden stocks and metal bodies.
Mika had been deep in thought and now, at this life-and-death moment, Caily was still gasping.
The solid iron rod silenced her completely.
Mika’s expression darkened; he rarely killed proactively, usually only out of necessity, whether in boarding battles or gang warfare.
If Liszt were here, he would have slaughtered them all.
As a Royal Knight, one must have the determination.
Mika had no sense of brotherhood with the Aran people. When he was an official at Chenxi Port, he had wanted to slap those smug faces with a sanitary pad.
Being a hangman was never a good job, and even as a forensic doctor, he was still a civil official, often pestered by arrogant Constitutional Soldiers looking for trouble, giving him a few silver coins to indulge in food and women before leaving.
Mika indeed harbored deep grievances.
A bunch of corrupt officials, a bunch of pretentious figures, strangers stay away, and acquaintances should piss off. A shot to the head for the Alan officials, teabagging by the military police and Constitutional Soldiers, crazily hitting the squat button over you.
Not to mention, this was for Su Yizhana.
Kill the threatening soldiers first; these academic personnel needed good interrogation.
The magic-guided firearms were advantageous in their slightly noisy operation, but beyond ten meters, they were completely silent during firing, with no explosion of a firing pin hitting a bullet primer.
An Alan soldier taking a leisurely walk had his neck pierced by an arcane missile guided by magic energy, blood spurting like a geyser, half his head rolling several times on the ground.
The Alan Army, the Imperial male lions, were not on the same level as the Constitutional Soldiers who came to Londen City to pad their resumes last year.
The remaining seven soldiers instantly reacted, identifying the direction of the shot. The new firearms they carried resembled Browning automatic rifles, which could be equipped with bipods to function as light machine guns. However, the difference was in their all-metal, completely black design, with a twenty-round capacity and extremely fast firing rate.
When the machine gun swept towards the wind-eroded rock, Mika evaded in advance, hearing the noise and being stunned by it – what the hell was going on?
The barrage of bullets rained down, but Mika had the high ground advantage and completely avoided it.
This sounded like the firepower from five firearms teams, yet the opponents only seemed to have seven people?
Caily, who had been ravished by Mika’s spell iron rod, also noticed this commotion.
She had gone to the Boneyard three hundred years ago, and Mika’s use of the magic-guided rifle had already amazed her. Now, this firepower surprised her even more.
But no amount of it could truly threaten her life form; she just found it interesting.
Among the four academic personnel responsible for the geological survey was a demure woman. None of them had ever seen such a commotion, all huddling behind rock cover, leaving the soldiers to handle it.
"Bell is dead, damn Resistance Army!"
"How could there be an ambush on the high ground? We clearly surveyed this area before."
"Be careful, this is no ordinary person. Only someone with exceptional speed could have climbed up to that wind-eroded rock."
The seven soldiers quickly dispersed, surrounding the wind-eroded rock, ready to shoot Mika on sight.
Mika’s heart raced; what were these things? They had deployed a brigade to deal with him.
Perceiving Mika’s danger.
"Those things are useless against me. This isn’t a desert, the energy dispersion is slower. I can help you, just let me out." Official source is NoveIＦire.net
Mika remembered the group leader’s kindness. This enchanting demon must be given to General Fen for study.
With an opponent ready, he wanted to see what would happen if he pushed the power of these spell tattoos to the limit.
Without further words, he stood up and leaped down from the wind-eroded rock.