Chapter 379: The rifles for Bloodimina
TWO WEEKS AFTER THIS DECISION BY NECTUS, GRAND COMMANDER BLOODIMINA GOT HER GIFT.
Standing on a landing pad near her portable camp-fortress, she opened a wooden crate carried here all the way from the Bee Empire by a dragon. Inside were neatly stacked rows of long items draped in fabric for protection.
Bloodimina pulled out one. A few dozen bees that were busy unpacking other crates had stopped to look at her curiously.
Normally, Bloodimina would’ve chided them for getting distracted, but she was distracted herself. After all, this was the cargo her Father has warned her about, and which she awaited impatiently since then.
She unwrapped the cloth. Underneath was a long, polished steel barrel, a complicated-looking chanism attached to it, a sleek handle and a smooth wooden butt.
If an ordinary musket was a wasp, then this thing was a murder hornet—much stranger-looking, and much deadlier. The taphor fell apart a little because this weapon was still the size of a musket, but Bloodimina didn’t care.
She inspected it, then raised the weapon to her shoulder and aid at empty air. The weapon fit her hands better than any shooting weapon Bloodimina used before.
“This is good stuff, these rifles, but you need special bullets to shoot. Cartridges, Father called them. They are in another crate,” said another bee, waving toward several other dragons on the landing pad and the crates that they brought.
The bee that spoke was the dragon rider of a dragon whose cargo was already standing in front of Bloodimina. Now the massive beast was resting and feeding, and the dragon rider was hovering near Bloodimina.
“Yes, I know,” Bloodimina said curtly. “Father explained what my soldiers will get. Why are you here and not with your beast, Worker?”
The dragon rider folded her arms over her chest. Her previous excitent dimd and her brows furrowed stubbornly.
“I was about to say that Father asked , Dragonmaster, to show you how these rifles work and how to care for them, Grand Commander, before I leave this place. And before you try to load them from the front like old smooth-barrel muskets and they need fixing up!”
Bloodimina lowered the rifle.
“You should’ve started with this, Worker! Then let’s not waste any ti here.”
***
The new rifles had a powerful kick to them, which was hard to manage while flying. On the good side, since they were reloaded from a special opening to the side, a bee could reload quickly without having to set the rifle down to stick gunpowder and the bullet down the barrel.
Dragonmaster showed it all herself to Bloodimina and two dozen other officers that Bloodimina picked among her Chief Warriors, as they all gathered on an empty clearing outside of the camp.
Just a few kiloters away from here was a massive camp of the Naregan army, full of humans and their beasts.
This place was very empty in comparison—only grass, a few trees, and easy targets. Bloodimina’s fighters have already burned through everything too dangerous, but wild beasts would co here anyway and they needed to be killed *again*.
It was a good place for live training exercises.
“You just stick the cartridge here, into the ‘breech’, pull this small lever—the ‘bolt’—then aim and… Fire!”
There was a bang; a lone gnat that was buzzing through the air forty ters away fell from the sky like a rock.
Bloodimina’s officers gasped in shock, and Bloodimina herself raised her eyebrows in surprise.
The gnat didn’t fly fast, but it was small and far away. It’d be a hard shot from this distance from a crossbow, and an even harder one from a stinger-gun.
And with an ordinary musket, it’d be almost impossible!
Dragonmaster smirked.
“Oh, I spent ti training not for nothing—but the rifle did most of the work, Grand Commander! They are really easy to aim with—all the bullets go in one place, not at all like the muskets. It’s thanks to their rifled barrels. And they are more powerful, too. At this distance, the bullet doesn’t fall or get affected by the wind almost at all—it just flies straight at the target!”
The bee took a cartridge out of her belt pouch and raised it higher for a show. It was an interesting thing—a portion of gunpowder and a bullet packed neatly in wax-covered paper.
Dragonmaster quickly reloaded her rifle again and shot again, this ti without aiming for so long.
This shot was aid at a massive slug crawling between the trees in a three dozen ters. The bullet hit it square in the side, leaving a bleeding hole the size of a finger.
Despite the small size of the wound, the massive pile of at that was the slug shook and wobbled.
“There’s not enough power to kill a beast like that from a single shot, but trust , it doesn’t feel well. These bullet cartridges use a special design of bullets that ruptures inside the target and sses up their innards,” Dragonmaster explained with pride. “I bet even humans won’t like it.”
“They aren’t for humans. We have a limited amount of bullets, and it will be so ti until we can get more. We can’t and *won’t* waste them on enemies for which fire is enough,” Bloodimina replied sternly, turning her head toward her officers to make sure everybody understood. “This includes slugs. Today, we are shooting only at things that fly, and we do our best to not miss.”
With these words, Bloodimina raised her own new rifle and took out a bullet cartridge. She repeated all the actions Dragonmaster did to reload it—only slightly slower than Dragonmaster herself did it—then aid at another gnat twenty ters away.
Then Bloodimina rembered she didn’t need to account for the wind—this wasn’t a crossbow!—shifted her aim a little and fired.
The gnat jolted away, unhard. Bloodimina’s Chiefs watched in silence; Dragonmaster opened her mouth a little.
Before she could be interrupted, Bloodimina pulled out another cartridge.
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