I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 138 What I fear most is a clever person.

"I know you're probably thinking about something."

Old Big pointed to his temple with a chestnut shell.

"Since enchanted bullets are effective against evil creatures, why not just put the enchantment runes on the ammunition belts and then just set up a machine gun and start 'rat-a-tat-tat' spraying them down?"

"At worst, we can throw a truckload of enchanted explosives over there for overwhelming fire."

"Is that how you're thinking?"

Richard grunted.

He did think about it.

Thoughts run wildest before sleep.

Sometimes he would lie in bed and seriously imagine that if he could one day assemble a squad with heavy firepower, wouldn't all those "areas with high incidence of ether anomalies" in the north be lined up waiting for him to clean them up?

In the movie, the use of heavy firepower to suppress monsters is a brilliant scene that perfectly embodies modern industrial aesthetics.

But he didn't show it on his face, instead simply following up with, "Is it not possible?"

"Okay," Old Big answered readily.

"what?"

"I said 'okay.'" Old Big glanced at him:

"Enchanting inscriptions are originally used to translate 'material destructive power' into the 'etheric layer'."

"Ordinary lead bullets can tickle evil spirits, while enchanted bullets can bite flesh."

Ordinary explosives wouldn't even make a sound on the other side of the curtain, but enchanted explosives could rip it open.

"In principle, there's nothing wrong with it. If you do the inscription correctly, the machine gun's burst of ammunition can indeed shred large groups of lower-level evil creatures into dust."

"Then why doesn't anyone do that?" Richard pressed.

Old Big chuckled and stuffed the half-peeled chestnut into his mouth.

"Who says nobody does this?"

Has anyone tried it?

"That happened decades ago."

He swallowed the chestnut and leaned back in his chair.

"Back then, steam engines had just been deployed, and smoke was billowing everywhere in the factories. Inscription Engineering also reaped the first wave of technological benefits."

Several young engineers in charge of military industry slammed their fists on the table, making a deafening noise…

Old Big imitated the way he slapped the table, pressing his palm down on the surface.

"What's that behind the curtain? We have the Inscription Guild, we have enchanting crafting, we have the cannon foundry!"

"Lower-level evil? Three shots to clear the field! Middle-level? Ten cannons firing simultaneously!"

"Upgrade your enchantments and inscriptions, and increase your firepower density; there's nothing that overwhelming firepower can't solve!"

"That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?"

Richard nodded slowly.

"That makes sense logically," old Big continued.

"So the higher-ups actually approved the project and formed a team called the 'Fourth Technical Squadron,' the full name of which was so long I can't remember it."

"A total of several hundred hunters from the official system were temporarily pulled out to form a team."

It was equipped with twenty Maxim guns fitted with enchanted inscription feeding mechanisms, eight enchanted field guns, plus dozens of truckloads of enchanted explosives, not to mention the other light weaponry.

He picked up his teacup, blew on it, and then changed the subject.

"Do you know how much the Empire spent just to equip this batch of ammunition?"

Richard shook his head.

"I don't know the exact number either," Old Big said.

"All I know is that back then, the Northern Master Masters Guild had over a thousand master masters, not even counting the apprentices who outnumbered the master craftsmen by several times. They worked overtime for a whole year."

The enchanted ammo belts alone for those machine guns consumed the entire guild's annual production capacity.

"That year, hunters who wanted to buy enchanted bullets couldn't get their hands on any."

Richard frowned slightly: "How much would that be in money?"

Old Big rubbed his fingers together:

"I heard from the older generation that the money burned through the entire project was enough to build another cruiser."

Upon hearing this, Richard already had a vague sense that something was amiss.

This debt may have already been incurred before the fight even began.

"Alright, let's get back to the main topic." Old Big wiped his mouth.

"The destination is an old sacrificial site deep in the western continent."

"According to the rules, even a minor expert is not allowed to approach that place alone."

"That team charged in with their gear."

"At the beginning, the results were so good that everyone wanted to bang on the table."

"A machine gun was set up, and enchanted ammunition belts spewed out with a 'whoosh,' and the surging evil creatures fell in droves."

Once the field artillery fired, it could scatter a large area of ​​wandering spirits, and the team members were overjoyed.

"The commander immediately sent a telegram back to the capital, saying, 'The plan is effective. Please send a second batch of ammunition.'"

Upon hearing this, Richard had a vague premonition of what was going on.

"I was happy for about ten minutes," old Big said, "and then things started to go wrong."

"The number of evil creatures surging up has not decreased, but rather increased."

"The level is also getting higher and higher."

Why?

"Because every enchanted bullet you fire at the ground, every enchanted shell you fire, is deadly to the evil creature, but it's a chisel to the seal pressing down beneath that piece of ground."

Old Big paused for a moment.

"...The world behind the curtain is interconnected; the more commotion you cause, the easier it is to bring out something deeper."

Richard's fingertips felt cold.

"The power of enchanted inscriptions lies in their ability to cause damage in the ether layer."

Old Big put down his teacup and made a gesture:

"It can damage evil objects, and it can also damage the curtain and the sealing structure."

"When a regular bullet hits the ground, it will at most make the sealed 'skin' tremble."

The enchanted bullets struck the ground, each one creating a small hole in the seal.

"The machine gun has a rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute."

"One field artillery shell can cover dozens of square meters."

"A bundle of explosives can crack the entire foundation."

"They fought for fifteen minutes."

Old Big's voice was still light and airy.

"In just a quarter of an hour, the seal anchor point that had been pressed under the sacrificial scar for more than a thousand years was completely blasted through."

What was originally a 'crack' that only seeped a little bit along the fissure was turned into a 'door' by these clever people.

"What's inside the door is beyond Maxim's capabilities."

Richard asked, "What came out?"

"Nobody knows exactly what it was, because nobody came back alive." Old Big shook his head.

"The investigation team sent by the branch office didn't dare to go there until two days later, when they could see that the sky there was completely purple from afar."

"I don't know how many people died in the process of repairing that seal."

He picked up his teacup and blew on it to cool it down.

"All I know is that area is still a restricted zone."

"What did this ambitious military plan ultimately achieve?"

He shrugged.

"We got nothing in return."

"On the contrary, it made the seal in that area thinner by one level."

The frequency of unusual events has increased in the northern industrial zone in recent years, and half of the sources can be traced back to the aftermath of that operation.

Richard sighed.

All the "firepower coverage" scenarios he envisioned were shattered in Old Big's story.

"There's something even better," Old Big seemed to get more and more excited as he spoke.

"Twenty years ago there was a lone wolf."

"He got the inspiration from reading the files of the Fourth Technical Squadron, but he considered himself smarter than those idiots."

"What was he thinking?"

Old Big tapped his head with his thumb:

He said that large-scale firepower coverage is too conspicuous, expensive, and troublesome.

"Then let's not go in, just throw things in."

Small-scale, targeted, and precise; he himself called it "surgical blasting."

Old Big grinned.

"According to his plan, the explosives were thrown from one side of the curtain, secured with a rope, and detonated after a delay."

After it explodes, pull the rope back to collect the fragments and see what's inside.

"Sounds perfect, doesn't it?"

Richard nodded slightly.

Old Big added, "But he forgot one thing."

"What?"

"Enchanted inscriptions require a stable ether environment to maintain."

He tapped the table:

"Inscriptions are not something that can be finished once they are engraved."

It's an Ethernet layer program; it needs a stable 'interpreter' to read it before it will run according to your designed path.

"On this side of the veil, the material world is stable in the ether, and the inscriptions obediently carry out their written instructions."

Once they reach the other side of the curtain... someone needs to be there to supervise them at all times.

He shook his head.

"It was originally written as 'targeted killing,' but it may have been rewritten as 'targeted opening.'"

"The original word was 'detonate,' but it was rewritten as 'guide.'"

"The original word was 'destruction,' but it was rewritten as 'calling.'"

A thin layer of sweat appeared on the back of Richard's neck.

Old Big picked up a chestnut and put it in his mouth.

He chewed twice and said slowly:

"The neighbor said that he went into his basement that afternoon and never came out again."

"His notes on studying the inscriptions were taken away by the branch office and stamped with 'not for public distribution' when they were filed."

Richard listened and remained silent for a long time.

There is no shortage of so-called "smart people" in this world.

Each of them believed they had found the step that no one before them had figured out;

Each one eventually became an extra file in the "not to be shared" filing cabinet;

The empire stamped those files with a seal that forbade them from being circulated, perhaps because they feared the next clever person like him.

He also imagined that when technology became more advanced, enchanted missiles or even enchanted nuclear bombs could be made, or even the orbital cannons and star destroyers from science fiction.

But then again, I have no idea how deep the curtain really is.

Perhaps deep within behind the veil lies a profound dark side capable of swallowing planets and even the multiverse?

The worst thing in the world is making decisions without conducting any investigation.

"So," Old Big pointed to Webley.

"This old guy looks rustic and unremarkable, but he's slow to assemble six rounds, and the recoil is quite strong."

"But it's simple, and simplicity is a virtue."

Old Biggs rarely said anything that sounded like a proverb.

Richard couldn't help but chuckle.

He stared at the three guns on the table for a while, then turned his gaze back to the first one.

He dared not gamble with his life on an automatic pistol with a high failure rate.

"Let's start with the first one then," he said.

"Webley Police Type 3?"

"Um."

"Safe." Old Big put the other two gun cases away and placed the first one in the center of the table.

"price?"

"Internal price at the branch office: five pounds, including a holster, cleaning tools, and two boxes of twelve bullets."

Richard took his purse out of his pocket, counted out five pounds, and placed it on the table.

Old Big took it, counted it, put it in the drawer, and pulled out a piece of paper from another drawer.

"Sign here."

After Richard finished signing, the gun case was pushed in front of him.

"The gun is yours."

Old Big took a sip of tea and wiped his mouth.

"Also," he said, pulling a small metal box from the bottom drawer of the table.

Old Big opened the metal box, inside which was lined with a black cloth, and on the black cloth lay six bullets.

The cartridge case is silvery-white, and the surface of the bullet is engraved with a ring of fine inscriptions.

"Enchanted bullets?" Richard's gaze froze.

"The one I showed you last time, the single-ring bullet."

"Give me?"

"You're going to do your internship out of town during winter break." Old Big pushed the tin box towards him.

"When you're out and about, it gives you peace of mind to have a few extra pills on hand."