The chanting, which had begun when it was clear that Tarte’s lightning would strike, entered its final stage.
『Tarte, Dia, you both did great.』(Lugh)
That beetle demon was incredibly strong.
If the vice commander of the Chivalric Order I fought back in the academy had been his opponent, he would’ve been turned into mincemeat in less than a minute.
The girls stopped him from moving and hit him with【Demon Slayer】.
Only the two of them could’ve managed something like that.
Tarte and Dia had done their part perfectly.
So I was now going to do mine.
I poured mana into my Tuatha Dé eyes and got a visual on the beetle demon.
I could see the flow of his mana.
As well as a different kind of power.
That was the power that made demons immortal. It was gathered in the red jewel blended into his heart.
Originally, the heart with a red jewel in it was something conceptual, not visible, and couldn’t be interfered with. However, it was a different story once it was materialized by【Demon Slayer】.
I focused all my attention on sniping.
I had positioned myself two hundred meters away from the beetle demon.
The greater the distance, the less accurate the attack, the longer it would take to reach the target, and the less powerful it would be.
But that didn’t matter.
For my newly created magic, the distance didn’t matter at all. If anything, the most important was to fire a well-aimed shot from a position where I would never be noticed.
This new magic was a legitimate evolution of【Gun Strike】.
What I wanted was a combination of ultra-precision shooting and ultra-power.
The trump card I had been using until now,【Gungnir】, was powerful but too complicated to use.
The time until impact was too long, the area of effect was too wide, the situations where I could use it were limited, and it was difficult to aim.
Which was why, I came up with a new magic to overcome all those shortcomings.
Initially, I tried to do this by bringing【Cannon Strike】to a new level.
However, there was an upper limit to the explosive power the cannon could endure, even if the alloy, which had been hardened to the limit of what I could produce, was coated and strengthened with mana.
Because of that upper limit, it wasn’t powerful enough to serve as a trump card.
And the answer I arrived at was a magic spell that accelerated and ejected bullets using a method other than gunpowder.
I named it…
[【Railgun】] (Lugh)
A long gun around my height was pinned to the ground. I got down and put my hand over the long gun.
I loaded a bullet in it.
Its alloy possessed properties adapted to railguns. Although it was the size of a rifle bullet, it weighed nearly one kilogram.
The long gun was fixed with a gun stand.
This was the magic spell I called【Railgun】. It worked the same way as one.
I placed the bullet between the rails made of special material, and I applied a large electric current to it while it was in contact with them. As a result, an interaction between the bullet and a magnetic field was created at the point of contact, generating propulsion.
…The principle itself wasn’t very complicated, but its mechanism was fairly intricate.
I couldn’t create one every time I had to fire it, so I usually stored it inside my【Leather Crane Bag】.
In a sense, the gun was a wand for using【Railgun】magic.
I fitted a Fahr Stone into the long gun, and finally, I finished chanting the incantation.
【Railgun】was a composite magic consisting of three spells cast using【Multiple Chanting】.
The Fahr Stone was filled with colorless mana. It burst and overflowed with colorless mana, which was converted into electricity by the first spell.
The lightning magic that Tarte used earlier was a byproduct of the creation of this spell.
The first spell caused a super large electric current to flow through the long gun.
At that moment, the second spell was triggered.
It rapidly cooled the long gun down to nearly absolute zero.
It was a spell designed to reduce electrical resistance.
When an extremely large current was applied, heat was generated, and that heat could distort the mechanism, or damage it at worst.
However, when its temperature was close to absolute zero, it almost had zero resistance, and no heat was generated.
Cooling magic not only protected the long gun, but also increased its power and accuracy by eliminating the loss caused by resistance.
Then, the third spell was activated. Wind-blocking magic, since if it were fired normally, the bullet would burn up before it reached its target.
The ejection speed of【Railgun】was that great.
It was thanks to this magic that it could reach the target.
I fired the bullet.
…Even with my Tuatha Dé eyes, I couldn’t see it flying.
The moment right after it was released, a large hole was made in the chest of the beetle demon.
Then after a short pause, everything above his heels was torn to shreds.
And then, far behind him, the bullet landed on the ground and formed a crater.
[Ultra-precise shooting on target and flawless firepower. Now that’s an easy-to-use magic.] (Lugh)
I nodded with satisfaction.
There was probably no magic more suitable for sniping than this one.
When I tested it on an uninhabited island, the initial speed of【Railgun】fired at full power was 5.9 km/s, which was about seventeen times the speed of sound.
It had an energy of 17.4 MJ.
It was a super weapon that fired rifle bullets containing twice the amount of energy of a tank gun, and since that power was concentrated in a single point, the penetration power was several times higher.
With a bullet of this size and such a large amount of kinetic energy, you could get rid of every conceivable external element within its margin of error.
Furthermore, the time it took to land was overwhelmingly short.
The bullet traveled 200 m in 0.03 seconds. This was another major factor in increasing its shooting accuracy. The shorter the travel time, the less it was affected by gravity and such.
The greatest asset of this【Railgun】was its accuracy.
It was such a dream-like weapon that if you fired it straight at your target, it would hit exactly where it was supposed to.
There was probably no other magic that was specialized in assassination like this one.
Its power was inferior to【Gungnir】, but it had many uses.
If I had to point out one of its disadvantages, it’d be that the electrical conversion of the mana contained in the Fahr Stone and the two other magic spells required all the mana I could release, and since they were difficult to control, I had to focus all my attention on them, which made me completely defenseless.
The other drawback was that I had to cast the three spells at the same time, meaning that I couldn’t use that weapon without【Multiple Chanting】.
The fact that I couldn’t use it without a skill I borrowed through【My Loyal Knights】was a major downside.
…Even so, being able to snipe a few kilometers away with super firepower was appealing.
I loaded the next round.
I had positively hollowed out the heart embedded with a red jewel that served as the demon’s core.
However, if the【Demon Slayer】spell had actually been defective, or if my assumption that immobilizing and crushing his red-jeweled heart would kill him had been wrong all along, then he would come back to life.
If that happened, I would fire another round to give Tarte and Dia, who were on the frontlines, time to escape and retreat as fast as they could.
I continued to maintain the same level of concentration as for the first shot and kept my eyes on him.
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