I spent the remainder of the next day very carefully scouting the city, avoiding packs of strange monsters here and there until I found another pack of dire rats I knew I could defeat. I needed another blue orb to charge my bullets, and the dire rats seemed like the safest monsters to kill.

  In an abandoned warehouse that was missing most of one wall, its roof slumped down and providing little protection from the elements, I spotted a small group of rats that had a sub-boss glowing blue in their midst. The blue light was interesting because it didn’t actually illuminate the dim interior of the fallen warehouse, but it still seemed to glow to my eyes. The fact that it didn’t actually produce light must be why the night wasn’t full of glowing beasts when I looked down on the city from my apartment, but I had no explanation for why it appeared blue to my perceptions if it wasn’t actual light being generated. I chalked it up to another mystery of this world and put it out of my mind for now.

  The beasts were easy to defeat now that I had their measure. I collected a handful of stones and approached the warehouse from a non-collapsed side, where a partially blocked door led into the warehouse. The stones themselves, thrown with my enhanced strength, dazed and injured them as I sniped them from the door. It took several seconds for them to realize they were even under attack, and by the time they scrambled to attack me, I had already injured several. They piled over each other to get to me, and I made short work of them with my knife, easily killing them before they could get through the blocked doorway.

  Behind the swarm of lesser rats, the sub-boss was the only creature that did not mindlessly attack me. After I managed to kill the last of its smaller brethren, it turned to retreat from me, finally recognizing the danger I represented. I admired its intelligence, but I wasn’t about to let it escape me now. It was my turn to be the hunter around here.

  “Not so fast,” I said, slinging a stone at it as I climbed over the corpses of the rats piled in the doorway in front of me. My stone clipped its behind, sending the large rat tumbling sideways. The injured sub-boss turned and hissed at me, but I continued to pelt it with stones. Not taking any chances, I did not try to approach it. I struck it over and over with stones, walking closer as I did, making my throws do even more damage to the wounded creature. It tried to escape, but I had no mercy in me and pelted it with stones until it died in the middle of the warehouse floor, collapsing to the ground with a final sigh of breath. Even then, I waited a few feet away until the now-familiar stone began to rise from its body. I stepped forward, grimly satisfied with my success, and grabbed the stone.

  Dire rat defeated—1 experience awarded.

  Four more announcements followed for the regular dire rats.

  Dire rat sub-boss defeated—5 experience awarded.

  I retreated to my apartment, not wanting to spoil my first successful hunt by getting attacked by something more powerful than me. Once I was settled down on the floor of the dusty apartment, I pulled out my bullets and the blue stone. The merchant hadn’t explained the exact details of how to charge an item with the stone, but after just a few moments of experimenting, I found that touching the unpowered runes to the stone caused them to fill with energy. It didn’t require any special skill on my part, which was good news.

  I felt a smile stretch across my face, my body reacting without conscious thought to my feeling of happiness at the sight of the glowing bullets. I quickly charged the rest of the bullets. When I finished, I noticed the blue stone still had energy inside of it despite having charged the twenty bullets I had made. The merchant had told me that a blue stone of this quality could charge a maximum of about twenty arrows, but maybe the bullets took less energy because of how small they were.

  That was potentially very beneficial. Despite their size, the bullets were significantly more deadly than the arrows, if my theory was correct. If they also took less energy to empower . . . well, that was good news for me.

  I still had some iron scraps left over, so I set my nanobots to crafting as many steel bullets as I could. Then, sliding the six-shooter out of its holster under my left armpit, I loaded the gun with six magical bullets. I spun the wheel and flicked it closed with my wrist. The gun closed with a satisfying click. I smiled at the sound.

  Now, where to test it? I looked out the window and saw that it was only a bit after noon, so I still had plenty of light before the sun fell. I wasn’t sure how loud the gun would be since I wasn’t using gunpowder, but I still didn’t want to risk firing the gun too close to where I planned to sleep in case it attracted a swarm of monsters.

  I packed up the scraps being formed into bullets and placed them into my backpack, where my nanobots could continue to work on them. Then I re-holstered my gun and made my way down the stairs of the apartment building. As I maneuvered down the rickety stairs, I practiced pulling the gun swiftly and aiming. My body was ambidextrous, so I could use either hand to fire the gun, but I chose to use my right for now and practiced pulling the firearm while holding my knife in my left hand. The combination of knife and gun should let me fight off anything close to me and far away at the same time.

  Outside the apartment, I made my way through several nearby streets, looking for the telltale signs of a tusk-rat nest. I holstered my knife and gun and picked up some loose stones, flinging them at various piles of debris and refuse, hoping to stir a tusk-rat from a distance. After about a half hour, I found one. It reacted immediately to my stone slamming into its nest, stirring the garbage and debris it was hiding under. I waited until it was fully revealed. Its large, armored body turned toward me, revealing an angry pair of eyes that promised the rat would hurt me for disturbing its home.

  I drew my revolver, took careful aim, and fired. The gun fired with a soft exhalation. It was much quieter than a gunpowder revolver but still made an audible sound. The bullet ripped forward so fast I couldn’t track it even with my enhanced vision. The effect on the tusk-rat was immediate. The monster was slammed backward against its nest as a loud cry of pain escaped it. I waited, watching the wounded creature. It shook itself, trying to stand again. I stepped closer, firing again at the creature’s unarmored head. This time, the bullet was easy to track as it struck the creature’s head. Its skull shattered, brain and blood spraying backward across its shell and the debris behind it like a painter tossing a bucket full of red paint against a blank canvas.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  The explosion of gore was surprising, and I took several quick steps backward, but nothing further happened. The monsters slumped to the ground, clearly dead.

  The runes had worked perfectly. Even better than I had even expected, honestly. The combination of the force of the runes and the barrel of the six-shooter must have accelerated the bullet to even faster speeds than I had initially estimated. The results were a very dead armored rat. I stepped forward, inspecting the body of the tusk-rat. The first bullet had penetrated its armored hide, something my knife hadn’t been able to do when I fought one of these the first time. I traced where the bullet passed through its body, climbing the mound of debris the creature’s body lay on, and found an exit wound through the other side of the monster. The bullet had been strong enough to pass completely through the tusk-rat, penetrating its armor twice, and from what I could see, it had also continued down into its nest until it was lost in the debris. That was some serious firepower.

  I dug through the debris, unable to find the bullet. It had dug through several feet of stone and wood, burying itself so deep I couldn’t find it unless I stayed here and shifted the entire pile. While the revolver had been quiet compared to a traditional firearm, I didn’t want to stick around too long in case the sound had attracted something else.

  I did take the time to inspect the head of the tusk-rat, finding the second bullet had penetrated the skull and come out of the back of the creature at an angle that made it easier to trace. I searched for a moment, finding the bullet wedged deeply in the solid stone of the wall the tusk-rat’s nest had been built against. The bullet was lodged several inches deep in the stone. I pulled out my knife and chipped away at the shattered stone until I could pry the bullet free.

  Surprisingly, it appeared to be intact. The rune to enhance the durability of the bullet was not a joke. Whereas a normal bullet would have flattened out and lost most of its penetrating power, this bullet had continued unimpeded, fully formed. That, combined with the speed of the bullet being magnified by the Penetration rune and fired through a rifled barrel, meant these bullets were especially deadly. They wouldn’t flatten upon initial impact, instead retaining their shape and penetrating even deeper into whatever I shot.

  I was a bit shocked by how effective the revolver was. I had hoped it would give me a ranged weapon I could use to defend myself, but this was even more powerful than I had anticipated. The gun was such a simple concept, but in a world of magic, technology had clearly never developed as much as it had in my world. Why would anyone experiment with new types of weapons when you could just learn a new skill that granted some mystical spell or attack that did something similar? Plus, it seemed like nobody had had much time to experiment in a long time, given how tenuously this part of the world was holding out against the hordes of monsters that attacked every night. Maybe that was different in other parts of the world. I also had a unique advantage; my nanobots were able to copy a rune perfectly, and I had knowledge of my old world to help me design a modified revolver that could work with the magic of this world.

  I tempered my excitement about the power of the gun. I hadn’t seen what magic could do in this world, and from what I could tell, I was fighting the weakest of the monsters out there. Given how powerful the few people I had seen were, it was very possible that my gun was nothing compared to their skills or powers. I didn’t have enough information to know for sure at this point, but I was pretty confident that the people I had seen leaping over rooftops to explore the city probably had no problem dispatching a simple tusk-rat.

  One thing I could feel good about, though, was that I was now able to defend myself properly. And I didn’t even have a class yet.

  As I made my way back to the apartment, I practiced drawing, loading, and mock-firing the firearm over and over. My cloak interfered slightly with the act of pulling the gun, which was a small frustration. For now, I tossed the cloak over my shoulder to get it out of the way, and I ordered my nanobots to replicate themselves and begin to incorporate the cloak and the other gear I had recently acquired. Having the nanobots take over my new equipment would allow me to reinforce the items, much like I had done with the clothing I had brought with me to this world, and it would allow me to more easily modify the cloak to fit me better.

  I immediately felt a slight drain on my body as the nanobots began to replicate. I carefully planned out how I wanted to modify the cloak, and as the new nanobots began to penetrate the cloak, I sent them blueprints for how I wanted the cloak changed. First, I ordered them to upgrade the clasp to fine steel so I didn’t have to worry about it breaking on me. After that, I ordered them to bring up one side of the cloak so my right hand was free. The cloak would hang down over my chest, running from my right shoulder and down past my waist on the left. This would hide the shoulder harness of the revolver, in case anyone tried to get a look at it, while allowing my right hand complete freedom of movement. I could still throw the cloak back, allowing me to fight with my left hand, but its default position would cover the revolver while leaving my right arm completely unhindered.

  It looked a bit like a Wild West poncho, covering both shoulders but draping down over only the left side of my body.

  I also set the nanobots to waterproof the cloak and to repair the minor wear and tear on the backpack I had purchased. It would take at least a day for the nanobots to spread and finish their work. By the time I was back in my apartment, I was feeling hungry and thirsty again, my body being drained rapidly from the frantic nanobot work I had ordered.

  I ate a quick meal of dried fish and then settled down away from the windows in the apartment. As my nanobots worked frantically inside of me, I practiced loading and mock-firing the firearm. I had access to all of humanity’s knowledge on firearms, including all kinds of training and tactical guides for using a revolver. Like all of my knowledge, though, it was still theoretical. I needed to train my body as well so that what I knew intellectually became physically instinctive. I accessed information on muscle memory and how top athletes trained. I began to practice those techniques with the revolver, loading, unloading, mock-firing from different angles, and everything else I could think of to begin training my body.

  One of the benefits of my prior existence was that I was more than willing to perform routine tasks over and over for as long as it took to complete whatever goal I had given myself. Whereas a normal human would become bored, tired, or lose focus, I practiced reloading and mock-firing my gun for hours, stopping only to eat and drink. I even switched hands, training my left hand as well so that I didn’t let myself become too dependent on a single hand.

  Night fell, and I refused to stop training. By the time the sun rose on another day, I was able to draw, mock-fire, and reload the revolver so fast that I would have easily beat every record on Earth. The combination of my enhanced body, able to move much quicker than that of an average human, and my single-minded practice had paid good dividends. While I wasn’t an absolute expert, I felt much more confident in drawing, reloading, and firing the revolver now. And all it had cost was a sleepless night.

  I ate a small meal and drank some of my remaining water. My cloak had finished being modified overnight, and I had crafted and charged sixteen more bullets before the orb ran out of power, so I felt as prepared as I could be to face this new, dangerous world. Today, I felt significantly more confident about my chances of survival. I gathered my belongings into my backpack, strapping it tightly on my back. I placed my cloak over my shoulder and practiced drawing my revolver, finding that the newly modified cloak no longer interfered with my draw, just as I had hoped. I gathered my newly charged bullets into the case I had crafted on my belt, re-holstered my knife and gun, and then made my way out of the apartment. It was time to hunt once again.