Estella headed to the Baramgol Training Ground with the Squirrels, holding the long gun Thunder, which Dolan had completed, in her arms as carefully as if it were a baby. The Baramgol Training Ground was located in a narrow, long valley wedged between a mountain and a gorge on the northern outskirts of Wintfall Castle, and had mainly been used as a training site for soldiers; it got the name Baramgol because the wind blew there a lot.

However, because, true to its name, the wind blew so much that it was hard for the soldiers to train, Cassian had moved the soldiers’ training grounds inside the main castle as soon as he inherited his title. It had not been used for a long time now and was all but a ruin.

“Wow, this is really a spectacular view.”

Lily stood at the mouth of the gorge and admired the scenery. The neighing sounds of the horses they had ridden there echoed back and forth between the cliffs like a chorus. Estella was just as impressed by the breathtaking landscape you would expect to see only as a desktop wallpaper.

“It is a bit of a waste to use this as a training ground.”

Whoooooosh.

True to its nickname, Baramgol, the sound of the wind passing between the gorge walls was anything but ordinary. But Estella had no worries at all. Because she had a wonderful mage who could block a mere wind like this as much as she pleased.

Half-broken wooden dummies and tattered signboards sat in ugly patches all over the training ground. Every time the wind blew, the way they creaked and swayed made it feel like watching a scene from a horror movie. Everyone rubbed their forearms, spooked, but to Estella, who wanted to test Thunder’s performance as quickly as possible, everything in sight just looked like a target.

I want to hit that, and I want to hit that over there too!

Just thinking about it made her fingers itch.

Preparation went smoothly and swiftly. Everyone was extremely curious about the destructive power and range of the new weapon. On top of that, if there were no major issues during the test firing, the gun would go into mass production, and there was a very high chance that the weapon would end up in their own hands as well. They earnestly hoped it would be a successful demonstration.

“But seriously, Boss, how in the world does the young lady even come up with a weapon like that? Isn’t it amazing no matter how you look at it?”

Lily, with a wooden dummy for a target hooked under each arm, came over to where Ciel was and asked him quietly. Seen from a distance, the way the dummy’s legs dangled and wobbled made the scene itself look frightening.

“Because Estella is just that smart.”

Ciel answered Lily’s question without a moment’s hesitation, and his face overflowed with pride and satisfaction. His gaze was fixed on Estella and would not leave her. That someone could look at a person who did not share a single drop of blood with such tenderness—Lily honestly found it astonishing every time she saw Ciel.

“If someone saw you, they’d think you were the one who gave birth to the young lady. Even the Marquis doesn’t look this proud. You’re just dying of how much you like her, dying.”

Lily, unable to bear it, raised her voice to tease him, but Ciel only kept grinning from ear to ear. They said people turned into idiots when they fell in love, and it was obvious the Boss had long since blown past that stage. In truth, even as she teased, Lily really liked seeing Ciel make such a soft expression.

Back when the mercenary band had wandered aimlessly all over the Empire with no fixed abode, he had acted slick and easygoing, like watered-down liquor, but in her eyes, she could see the deep loneliness and wounds hiding behind Ciel’s smile.

Whenever she glimpsed the despair and frustration that surfaced now and then, her heart ached with pity, like looking at a youngest sibling who did not even exist. And at other times, when she saw him charge headlong into danger without a thought, she would get so angry she wondered if he had a death wish. There were more than a few times when she had sincerely wanted to flick his forehead as hard as she could.

He had always lived like someone who did not know if there would be a tomorrow. But the Ciel now was dreaming not only of tomorrow, but of a distant future he would build together with Estella. The constant anxiety Lily had always felt when she looked at Ciel, as if he were a child left alone by a riverbank, had disappeared without her noticing. The only problem, if you could call it that, was that the anxiety had now moved over to Estella instead.

Lily let out a deep sigh as she looked at Estella, who was holding the new weapon and smiling innocently like a child.

“Ahh, my fate.”

It was the same for the rest of the Squirrels. They were all people whose burdensome wounds made them lean on each other like family just to keep living, so they absorbed the happiness Ciel radiated as if it were their own, and rejoiced in it as if it were happening to them.

Bang! Bang! Thunk! Thunk!

The sound of stakes being driven into the ground here and there rang through the desolate training ground like a woodpecker’s cry, incessant and frantic. Even Lily and Airi were stronger than most men, so the dozens of wooden dummies and signboards they planned to use as targets were fixed in place in the blink of an eye.

The targets stood in regular intervals of twenty meters, and the farthest target was placed at approximately two hundred meters. It was the farthest distance inside the training ground. Compared with the K14 sniper rifle Yoon Seo-yi had used, the effective range was much shorter, but in this world, it was hard to even imagine hitting a small target at that kind of distance.

“Can she really hit something that far away with that thing?”

Haru looked at Estella holding the gun and muttered with a bewildered expression. In his eyes, there was nothing like a bowstring on what Estella was holding, and there seemed to be no threatening mechanism attached that would fly fast and sharp enough to smash a target.

“The young lady surely knows exactly what she’s doing.”

Bruno spoke as if there was no need to worry about that, but in truth, even he did not know anything about the strange lump of metal Estella was holding, so he could not be certain. He simply believed vaguely that it would be fine this time too, since nothing Estella had made so far had ever disappointed them. Without realizing it, an absolute trust in Estella had taken firm root inside him.

The one most nervous among those waiting for the demonstration was Dolan. He had done his best to make it exactly as it was drawn on the blueprint he had received from Estella, and as a result of studying magic stones day and night—a subject he had no interest in—he knew, at least in theory, that it could not possibly fail. But he could not help being anxious.

What if I made a mistake?

What if the young lady gets hurt because of my mistake?

Tens of thousands of worries rose up at once and filled his head. Dolan moistened his parched lips with his tongue as he nervously waited.

Please, please let it succeed.

He put his large, rough hands together and prayed earnestly to every god that existed in the world.

With several pairs of worried eyes on her back, Estella planted her feet on the dry, hard earth as if she were driving them in. Dolan and the Squirrels, unable to withstand Estella’s insistence, had stuffed their ears with cotton. Estella had also blocked her ears tightly in preparation for any unforeseen situation.

Because she had not yet confirmed how loud a noise Thunder, which had never been used before, would make.

Vvvvvmmmmm!

In case anything happened, Airi had a barrier prepared and was standing by. At the slightest sign of danger, she planned to immediately wrap Estella up in her barrier.

Whooooosh!

Wind howled through the gorge. Estella’s blonde hair, tied back in one tight bundle, fluttered like a flag and then, at some point, settled back down calmly.

With her other hand—the one not forming a barrier—Airi drew a magic circle and floated it in the air, and a transparent membrane formed in the sky above the training ground. It blocked the wind from outside and prevented the noise from the training ground from leaking out.

Estella thanked Airi with a glance and then lifted the long gun high, as if taking aim.

The long, smooth barrel glinted dark blue-black as it caught the sunlight. A satisfied smile spread over Estella’s lips at the way the barrel stuck to her hands just right.

She supported the underside of the barrel with her left hand, rested her right hand naturally on the grip, and pressed the buttstock snugly against her shoulder. Thunder fit Estella’s body without a gap, as if it had existed for her alone for a long time.

At the smooth, flowing movements, Dolan and the Squirrels standing behind her stared, spellbound.

“Has the young lady ever used that weapon before?”

Even though it was the first weapon he had made of its kind, Estella looked so familiar with handling the gun that Dolan muttered without realizing it.

Estella slowly rested her finger on the trigger. Her heart pounded at the cold curve of metal touching her fingertip.

“Hoo…….”

A trembling sigh escaped her lips on its own from the tension. The surroundings were wrapped in silence, as if in a vacuum. The moment her right eye lined up the front sight and rear sight in a straight line, strength entered the finger Estella had on the trigger.

“Get ready. I’m firing.”

In the middle of the silence, Estella’s low voice was heard.

Bang!

A massive thunderous roar, enough to shake the gorge, exploded out.

“Uwaaaah!”

“Uuurgh!”

Even though the Squirrels had been warned over and over by Estella, the sound was so much louder than they had expected that they screamed before they knew it. They had been so startled their legs went weak and trembled.

“W-what…… is this……”

The signboard at the closest twenty-meter mark had shattered into pieces, and wood fragments were scattered all around.

But the very person who had created the noise stood planted with both feet firmly on the ground, without a single tremor.

Her stance with the gun did not show so much as a hair’s breadth of collapse.

Leaving the reverent gazes behind her, Estella calmly organized in her head the feel of firing Thunder, comparing it with the K14.

'If the K14 had a stable strength bracing it between shoulder and hand, Thunder feels like the metallic mass is much stronger, and the balance point is weighted farther forward, so it takes more strength in the arms and wrists. But behind the heaviness, there’s this subtly condensed vibration. Is my mana reacting? I’ll have to observe a bit more.

And Thunder’s recoil feels like it curls inward in a strange way. It’s completely different from the K14, where the straight-line recoil pushes into your shoulder. It’s probably because of the Plareon…….'

The biggest difference was that Thunder did not eject any shell casings.

The long gun Thunder’s bullets did not use gunpowder; it was a weapon with a structure based on explosive mana pressure centered on a Plareon core. It utilized the property in which the mana compressed inside the Plareon reacted to external impact or ignition and expanded and exploded instantaneously. In other words, it was closer to a rapid expansion of mana than to a physical flame.

Gerard had to toil for days on end to break this principle down in a way Dolan could understand, but the result was astonishing.

“Not bad at all.”

At Estella’s praise, a bright smile finally spread over Dolan’s face, where he had been standing stiff with tension. Even though he could breathe a little easier now, there was still a long way to go, so Dolan steadied himself again and watched Estella holding Thunder with meticulous eyes.

He tried to figure out which parts shook the most especially when she fired, and whether Thunder’s structure put any strain on the young lady’s body.

As the Squirrels stood with their eyes wide, not knowing what was going on, Dolan and Estella’s gazes quickly crossed.

Estella’s eyes, calmly comparing and organizing things against the K14 sniper rifle, were more serious than ever. It seemed she would have to fire several more times to grasp the exact details.

Clack.

Estella’s muzzle shifted toward the next target.

Leaving the Squirrels’ shocked faces behind her, Estella slowly aimed at the next target. It was a wooden dummy missing one arm.

“The head.”

At Estella’s cool voice, the Squirrels flinched and hurriedly clamped their palms over their ears.

Bang!

Estella murmured in a low voice and the gunshot rang out, and the next moment the wooden dummy’s head was gone. They had not even seen it fly; when they closed their eyes and opened them again, the head was already rolling far away on the ground with a huge hole through it. The Squirrels now forgot even that their eardrums were ringing and stared blankly, mouths hanging open.

“Wow……. If that had been a person.”

At the words Bruno muttered without realizing it, the Squirrels’ eyes widened in horror.

“Holy crap! You two really made something insane! This is crazy!”

Lily shouted like a roar, fists clenched in excitement.

Bang!

Bang!

Estella’s firing did not stop, and the targets lined up in a row were shattered in turn or toppled with holes blown through them. A true hundred shots, a hundred hits.

Thunder and Estella looked like one body.

“Woooooaaaahhh!”

As Estella’s final shot ended, the Squirrels gathered at the Baramgol Training Ground let out cheers as if they had just won a war.

“Boss! How about you keep some dignity!”

Lily, who had been screaming her head off, threw a line at Ciel, who was running around shouting and jumping with excitement just as much as she was, and Ciel shouted back even louder.

“What’s the point of any of that when Estella is this incredible!”

Ciel shouted, then swept Estella up in his arms and spun her around in place.

“Kyaaaah!”

A delighted scream, girlish and bright, spilled from the lips of Estella, who just moments ago had been mercilessly obliterating the targets.

Chapter 244

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