Chapter 404

Few people truly paid any attention to anything inside a dungeon that they couldn’t take with them. It was a defense mechanism so that they wouldn’t regret all the wealth they had to leave behind. While Ajax was playing with the rifle they had found Xavier took on the bull mini boss. 

After ten minutes of examining the rifle Ajax finlay brought the sight up to his eye and aimed for the cowboy hat he placed on top of one of the fence posts.

BANG!

The sound distracted everyone from Harold who was putting his limited skill as a chef to use searing a chunk of the mini boss. Some of the people there however were already looking towards Ajax since before the sound came, an instant before a strong pulse of mana could be felt.

“You figured out how to use it?” Lexi was very interested in that.

“You squeeze this and it releases the projectile.” Ajax said as he pointed to the trigger. “Works a lot like a crossbow.” 

What was a lot more interesting to Ajax was that the bullets didn’t have any sort of gun powder packed, they did however have a small gem attached at the end that was packed with mana.

Looking towards the hat Ajax could see that he missed his target by a few inches despite not being more than fifty feet away from it. Wanting to see if this could increase his [Aim] skill Ajax slowly loaded the next bullet, took aim, and finally pressed the trigger.

“What happened?” Lexi asked as the bullet's mana was released in a burst into the surroundings. 

“I’m not sure.” Ajax said confused, how did the dungeon break guns? They weren’t all that hard to figure out in his old world. Hammer hits bullet, gunpowder ignites, bullet is launched out the barrel by the tiny contained explosion.

“The runes on the inside of the barrel are all damaged” Lexi said as she examined the rifle’s other end while Ajax was inspecting the hammer. “Maybe it only works a few times.” 

That could very well be the case but Ajax doubted it. The floor theme was clearly based on the historical West and that should mean that as long as you had ammo and took care of your gun it would shoot, this wasn’t the era of muskets.

Thinking back to what the cowboy had done, Ajax realized he had missed a step. The cowboy had infused the gun with mana, Ajax had thought that he was loading the bullet but all of the bullets were already loaded so where did the mana go?

Inspecting the handle of the gun Ajax found a set of runes that were intact. Even more interesting was the fact that they were clearly part of the gun however he couldn’t find any way for them to connect to the mana released by the bullet. Ajax slowly started to inject a small amount of his own mana into the runes.

He went much slower than the cowboy had done both out of wariness as well as curiosity as he paid very close attention to what the enchantment did.”It restored the runes!” Lexi was happy as she saw the runes inside the barrel of the gun look usable again.

Looking to see if that was what he was missing Ajax loaded another bullet and this time the rifle fired when he pressed the trigger. Once again however the runes inside the barrel were damaged, oddly enough however it wasn’t the bullet that damaged them. Instead the mana that was released to activate them was more than the runes could handle, effectively burning out the runes after every shot.

After restoring the runes a second time Ajax carefully removed the barrel of the gun and split it in two so that he could get a closer look at the runes.

“What an odd take.” Lexi murmured as she inspected the runes. “It’s almost like they are the same runes but not quite.” 

Lexi had spent a long time with her father looking at runes and while some of the ones inscribed inside the barrel were similar to ones she had seen before they weren’t exactly the same. If she were to guess the difference would be that while the runes she had available focused on the integrity of the rune structure and material it was inscribed on surviving an overinfusion these runes would instead focus on completing the activation regardless of the damage to the structure and the material.

Lexi wasted no time taking out an empty scroll as she started carefully and meticulously copying the runes. None of the others had realized what was going on but as soon as they saw Lexi so focused on copying the runes they figured out that there must be something special about them.

Darkcalw and Elara wasted no time joining Lexi as they did their best to perfectly copy the runes on their own pieces of parchment. “What’s so special about these runes?” Arianwyn asked.

“They work based on a different fundamental principle.” Lexi squealed with excitement. “At least that’s what I think. Grandpa and dad would need to try them out a few times once we get back so that we can do some tests but it's looking pretty likely.”

“What’s the difference between them and normal runes?” Arianwyn asked.

Lexi took a moment to think as she finished copying the last of the individual runes on the barrel and moved over to start copying the restoration enchantment that was on the handle. “The inscribed rune on an enchanted object works like the mana vein of a mage. Our usual enchantments are created so that if more mana than the enchantment can handle is pushed through the enchantment fails at the first step doing little damage to the rune and the material it's inscribed in while also releasing the mana outwards.”

“These runes however activate the enchantment with as much power as they can regardless of the damage to the runes themselves.” Lexi said as she pointed towards the barrel. “It is like Lord Starfury’s overloading of spells. Since the runes aren’t backed by a Legendary skill they break but they do manage to put out an overloaded spell.” 

“The enchantment on the handle looks to be made to repair the damage done.” Elara said as she thought about the process. “Every time its activated however more and more of the material is lost in recreating the runes.” 

“So after enough uses you’re saying that there won’t be enough material to recreate the runes?” Ajax asked, interested in how his old world’s technology was recreated.

“ From what I saw it wouldn’t take all that many uses before the integrity of the material would fail.” Elara confirmed.

With so much new information available the remainder of the floor turned out to be a cakewalk for Benedict, Anna and Lexi. All three of them knew to focus on disarming their human targets of their guns. Without the firearms they had little problems finishing them off. 

On more than one occasion however the prince was forced to step in. Anna had been the first to try her hand at fighting a human miniboss and while she had managed to expertly ambush him so that he would lose his rifle the pistol he drew surprised all of them. 

Another of the mini bosses had a spring loaded pistol up his sleeve, thankfully Lexi’s hastily created ice wall was strong enough to slow the bullets enough that they didn’t pierce through her enchanted shields.

In the end the prince had ended up scouring the entire floor trying to find a gun that he could take outside the dungeon but he still couldn’t find one. He did manage to find a rather sizeable mound of manure that he stuffed into one of his spacial rings but there was no gun to be had. 

As they headed on to the next floor the group wasn’t at all worried about the theme, Harold would be the only one who would be troubled by the theme of their last floor but other than that all of them were more than strong enough to demolish a level eighty four.

While the prince pushed on with Ajax, Arianwyn, Elara, Darkclaw and Harold to the fourth floor, Lexi, Anna, Benedict and Xavier all exited the dungeon. All four of them were prepared for things to have gone sideways, seeing Aranor waiting for them as they exited let them relax for a brief moment before they realized the chaos they found themselves in as they took in the military camp that surrounded the dungeon arch.