Both my contribution and cash deliveries arrived within a few days of one another two weeks after ordering them. I was actually very excited to play with my new toys after the examine I had taken the week before.
Taking an over-tiered slime bath in a next-rank dungeon must have been good for me because my MP rating had gone up from the lower forties to fifty-one.
The affects were basically the same as my working out. However, when added to my dedicated workouts my one-legged squatting alone has gone up by over ten pounds without strain and I was getting ready to try warming up with four-hundred pounds pretty soon. Once I reached a point where I could one-legged squat three-fifty for a full one hundred on either leg in another two weeks or so I would let myself peak there and work on endurance until I entered the upper F tiers.
My body was looking like a skinny version of a JoJo character because of my age, I still had more filling out to do. If I focused on gains by working out I would end up becoming slow from macho. My main physical feature right now was the increased leg strength MP gave me, putting too much dense muscle tissue on top of that would make me a tanker.
Now that I had my guns I was taking them to a Bureau firing range. Unlike some firing ranges that let a person buy a lane and bring all the ammo and guns they can shoot while offering some for sale or rent, you brought your weapons kits here and they filled your kit once. Since some weapons used in this three-basement-floor building and around its twenty acres of open range had high capacity, you could not bring more ammo than they gave you.
I paid for three lanes with five hundred yards of reach and set up shop at a middle set of tables while a couple of employees and vehicles set up targets along my lanes. For one hundred dollars per lane and three gun kits, I had almost a hundred and fifty bullets to fire between my two revolvers. My new combination rifle that came with two drums and three magazines came with a whopping three hundred and fifty rounds to familiarize myself with.
A shotgun sporting two short thirty-five-round drums and four spare twenty-round magazines gave me three hundred more booms to make. This was one of the reasons the regulations and prices on this place were as they were, to keep people moving in and out of here. I was going to take up three outdoor lanes for around half as many hours.
I was going to enjoy it, too.
First-up would be practicing the new style of sidearm combat The lanes were all marked with a single target in various position at every ten yards for the first hundred yards, thirty for the next two hundred yards, and the last four targets were all fifty yards apart despite their brightly colored enamel that helped them stand out against the distance on fairly level ground, these targets were all made of a C grade steel designed to stand up to the test of time and repetition.
Likewise, the loadout supplies by the facility used a special porcelain round that shattered and smoked upon striking the targets to help confirm distant hits with audio and visual affects.
Loading and emptying the two revolvers as fast as I could while taking aim at the first six targets in the first lane, I hold the guns level and together while using my body to aim at the person shaped target. The main goal was to get a quick understanding of timing the recoil and reloading, but I actually managed to hit the first three targets with impacts from both guns.
The other targets only had as many impacts as bullets in one shot, so they were dismissed as half hits despite the difference in distance, landing, and spreads.
The rest of my porcelain speed loads were spent slowly firing the first four shots to learn to control the recoil and trajectory in continued firing. For this exercise, I used the fifty-yard target for the first reload and then the forty to test and the sixty-yard marker to resolve my findings with the third speed loaders.
At fifty-yards, even though I could hold and aim the gun properly I initially had less that fifty-percent accuracy with both guns while at forty I could hit six of the eight shots fired with fuller impacts. From the last two more carefully aimed shots in either chamber I decided it was worth putting effort in to better snipe at an unaware target with both sidearms.
With the little experience I had gained overall, I was able to get eight permissible shots out of twelve on the more distant target. This, of course, was done with the target rounds. Once I fire more first live round from either gun while aiming at the thirty-yard target of the second lane, I felt the difference.
The length of the recoil itself changed with the type of body being propelled by a different grade of ammunition as it flew through the barrels. The porcelain bullets still left the barrels before the guns even moved, but there was a clear difference in both power, weight, and recoil after firing so many in only a few minutes.
My first shots still loudly rang out from metal on metal and scuffed the already chipping enamel on the second thirty-yard target. However, after that first shot I foolishly started free-firing at the forty-yard target with roughly a second between shots. My average was still around fifty-percent proper hits, which meant at least three bullets hit the target every time, so I was not dissatisfied.
My second load of live rounds in the pair of revolvers was spent practicing my recoil control on the second sixty-yard target. Every shot took a little longer than a second to fire but all twelve sets of bullets had more than three pings on the sixty-yard target. Thankfully, I had already spent long hours practicing at aiming different guns with my body because I would usually be aiming at much larger bodies than my own.
Centering two Protector Revolvers at the same time quickly became fairly easy as I used my third set of live ammunition to continue practicing these selective shots. Once again, full hits of at least four bullets on every combined trigger pull. My confidence in 'short range' sneak attacks and similar situations was now raised by a bar or two.
With the full percent accuracy of roughly sixty-percent bullets in my quick snipes, I spent the last live load simply experiencing a higher rate of recoil on the twenty-yard target. I really did just want to experience it, so I learned little from it. However, since gun range days were my second rest days in a 'week', this could be counted toward exercising my wrist strength.
Next week when my name went back up for open assignments, I would diligently practice my dual-sniping with the full loadouts at my disposal. But the week after that, probably right before my next mission, I would just enjoy the opportunity to free-fire through a hundred shots. Today, I could only dabble in both shooting types I wanted to become proficient in.
Now, though, I loaded in the thirty-five-round drums containing six-inch shells. Each shell was charged with two hundred grain disks and packed behind a three-inch stake of a slug. Because the standard issue option came with rifled slugs and barrels, the bullets themselves looked like devilishly sharpened drill bits. I absolutely loved them.
Even the standard issue stake slugs came in scrap iron with around forty MP and could punch through humanoid armor plating in C grade dungeons where subhumans became more civilized. Because of its basic firepower, the gun was registered in D grade despite the low MP qualities. Loaded with some E or even D grade bullets and the unofficial grade given to a modded shotgun's output was low to mid C.
Before I enjoyed myself with the rifle portion of the gun, I spent the first drums then and there just aiming from the hip and moving my body while pumping away. The entire back half of the property was sunken down about ten feet below street level and surrounded by all the piled up dirt in a twenty-foot hill around the property.
My shots were not likely to hit the distant neighbors of this remote facility, either, when most of them were sparking and shattering loudly against the higher grade steel targets.
Even though a few of the double-barrel shots only had half impacts I was still satisfied with my overall aim scattered around the first forty yards of the first and second lane. Since each lane was ten yards wide, shooting between two lanes caused the usual distances to vary. Even then my general hip-fire accuracy was over sixty percent for full impacts.
Out of thirty-five pairs of slugs, that was between twenty and twenty-five pairs of slugs bot hitting their marks. In live combat like the recent portal, I would probably be aiming at larger targets in greater numbers. In an underground tunnel, I could almost never NOT miss a shot unless I had to repeatedly turn in one-eighty degrees.
This was, of course, while using a small gauged shotgun despite the dual serving of extra heavy package.
The recoil of something comparable to two high caliber handgun rounds in a full-length shotgun with the weight of a rifle on top of it was next to nothing. When I loaded the first twenty-round magazines into the shotguns, I picked the third lane's untouched fifty-yard target and held my rifle low by my waist.
The gun was so heavy that as soon as I casually fired at the target dead ahead of me, creating two poofs of porcelain dust and debris in the lower middle of the rectangular target, I could use the recoil as a pump-assist and fire smoothly.
The twenty-round clips emptied out in around ten seconds and all of the painted the middle areas of the fifty-yard target with chalky residue. No shots missed even though the target was only as wide as I was from shoulder to shoulder. I originally had some reservations about the small shotgun gauge but the overall control of the oversized shell was beautiful.
It made me enjoy taking my time with the next two pairs of porcelain bullet clips. The proto-suit padded stock of the gun produced next to no pressure when I held it to my shoulder and fired, carefully aiming at the upper center of the targets. Here a black circle existed to mark the headshot bullseye area in the otherwise dark blue targets.
That first created twin poofs of dust a couple inches higher of the headshot area, almost going over the top edge of the target. I did not care, though, that first shot was just to feel the current recoil before actually taking aim down the sights. Because of the bullet calibers and barrel sizes, I did not even adjust my aim while using the top rifle barrel's iron sights.
Once I pilled the middle trigger for the shotgun barrels, the lower middle area of the headshot circle was plastered with chalk smoke and debris. Took two more shots to adjust my aim on the fifty-yard target before I started switching targets. Now I was switching between the targets at forty, fifty, and sixty yards in the first two lanes while firing a 'carefully aimed' pair of slugs ever one-and-a-half second.
The headshot areas of all six intended targets were thickly covered and surrounded in porcelain dust. I was honestly a little pleased with myself, smiling with no small amount of satisfaction as I once again freely hip-fired the last set of porcelain shells. However, when firing the real slugs, I took my time.
The recoil was as different as the barrel lengths between revolvers and shotgun, but only for the fire few shots. The worst part was a phantom feeling that the weight of a half-pound stake of metal had not left the barrel. I think this was because I could feel the much heavier object in that brief instant that it actually left the barrel.
After the first few live drum rolls, though, I barely noticed a difference anymore and practiced my hard aiming while pacing and strafing. For this, I started in the middle lane and started shoot the front six targets of either lane with roughly a second in between shots. I missed two full shots and some partials, sadly, but my hit average was still more than one slug per target overall.
With the next spare clip spent in free-fire across the three different sixty-yard targets, I spent the last two sets of twenty-shot magazines once more picking my shots within the three sets of sixty-yard targets. Until the last five shots. Those shots were all aimed at the center of mass of the middle lane's one-hundred-yard target.
The first pair of slugs sparked in either the left and right halves of the target, the second pair of slugs pumped out the next second landed low and a little to the side with only one slug in the circle. The third shot landed high but with both sprays of sparks in the top of the circle. Three shots in three seconds at one hundred yards with five out of six slugs in the target area.
Slug pairs four and five landed even higher than three and further away to the side. The last shot two shots were fired in blind succession but still managed to hit the target itself. At one hundred yards.
Finally came the time I had been dying for ever since I came here close to half an hour ago as I removed the empty magazines from the bottom of the gun. After taking a moment to just look at and appreciate my new toy with a vague smile on my face while it cools off, I load in the first drum of fifty porcelain rounds. Standing up and somewhat sideways with my legs shoulder-width apart, I aim at the middle lane's bare seventy-yard target and start randomly firing in one, two, and three-shot bursts.
Less than forty out of fifty shots actually hit the mark at less than one hundred yards away, but I was not bothered. Instead, I aimed the second porcelain drum at one of the one remaining clean one-hundred-yard targets and started more seriously picking my shots one at a time.
At first I fired one shot within the frame of two seconds or two in the space of three but after the first ten or so I started pulling the trigger one every second. After finding the right ratio between the gun's recoil strength and my own flexing or stabilizing strength, I hit all fifty shots in or around the center of mass black circle. After that, I spent the remaining twenty-five round magazines of porcelains rounds aiming at the seventy-yard target's headshot area.
Just like before, I started off aiming at the middle one-hundred-yard target and tested the recoil different with a few different short bursts of trigger pulls. The proper rifle rounds, despite their size and length modifications, were much smoother when fired and I felt nothing at all but the heavy recoil of roughly three hundred grains of powder behind what was essentially a third small slug.
The bullet and barrel size were not the only things three-hundred about the .300/.410 Protector Combination Rifle. They were just the only things about the gun compatible with the original .300 rifles. The actual casings and bullets were now too long for the original guns to fire, but the original .300 certainly fit in the new guns.
The first shot on the middle lane's one-hundred-yard target hit a little outside of the middle black circle but I did not let it bother me. The following burst of three rounds had one below, one in, and one above the middle circle. The last burst of only two shots bother landed in the middle of the lower and upper halves of the circle.
After the first five shots of the drum, I was ready to casually fire my way through the first drum of fifty live rounds. This time, more than forty rounds hit the target but not even thirty of them actually landed within the central circle. Next, I loaded in the second drum and took up position straight across from the only remaining clean one-hundred-yard target in the third lane.
Like last time when I was picking my shots I started with one shot in more than one seconds, but in less than ten shots my aim and pace both leveled out. Once again, all fifty shots hit the target but this time almost forty sprays of sparks originated from somewhere in the headshot circle. I was satisfied.
Back in the academy I had been trained for medium range sharpshooting with a variety of three-barreled weapons. One of which was a 3-30-30, a lever-action rifle that fired several modified 30-30 rounds at a time with thirty inches of barrel length. For fun I made it my goal to become proficient with the weapon at three hundred yards.
Much to my dismay, the weapon I had fondly trained with was a fifteen-hundred-point sniper class Protector rifle.
However, my training could easily be applied to weapons with less firepower and recoil than the 3-30-30. Even modified shotgun slugs, especially of such a small caliber, could reach near expert levels and ranges of marksmanship. After emptying that drum, though, I could only stop for a moment and think to myself.
Would I be able to maintain expert levels of marksmanship under live combat pressure in close quarters?
Even if I could successfully emulate someone like Emilia in the use of firearms, could I be as effective as she was ten yards and retreating from the gushing monstrous head of an evolving upper D grade slime spider? To help assure myself of the answer to that question, I spent the remaining magazines picking my shots one every second or more at the middle one-fifty-yard target's headshot circle.
Out of fifty shots from two clips, almost eighty of them hit the target with fifty of them within the edges of and even a few around the center of the headshot circle. Even though I would not be testing the combined firing option of the back trigger today, I was confident from training with a three-barreled sixteen-gauge in handling such recoiling.
For the final twenty-five-round magazine, I took aim at the two-hundred-yard target's center of mass circle and took my time between shots just to see if my shots hit or not. It was hard to see sparks at this distance even against the darkly colored targets. However, I was certain of seventeen out of twenty-five shots hitting the target.
How many of them actually hit within the circle, though, I had no idea.
*