"Rumble."
For some time now, the city of Constantine has been experiencing strange "thunder" noises. At first, there were rumors spread by bored idlers that "the God of Thunder has descended", "the gods are punishing those who don't respect the gods", "a farting rock giant has come to the mountains", "the demonic ruins have activated the magic statue", and so on, "The Demon Ruins' statue has been activated" and other rumors, but after a long time, everyone became accustomed to it, and there were fewer people who cared about this strange sound.
Occasionally, some drunken blacksmiths would tell people that the vampire hunters were testing a new weapon. Most of the others would laugh it off, confusing it with a rumor that the statue had been activated.
But that's the truth of "Thunder".
At the moment, in the mountains south of Constantine, a group of hunters are testing the "Test Rampage Artillery".
This gun was actually just a "Test II gun" with the addition of a ruler and a simple sighting system, still the most primitive front-mounted smoothbore gun.
But even this most backward of cannons was sought after by a small group of hunters, after all, the power of cannons could already catch up with third level fire magic.
Some people even began to advocate the "uselessness of silver swords" and became the first members of the "Cannon Sect".
There are also a small number of hunters who are not excellent in either sword or bow skills, but are naturally gifted at artillery, and they are the guild's current focus on training artillerymen.
Evelyn is considered one of them.
She was actually pretty good at swordplay and holy magic, but it was child's play compared to her amazing talent for snogging.
She didn't have any prior knowledge of ballistics, but was so good at calculating the angle of fire of cannons and predicting where the shells would land that it was as if she could see the trajectory of the shells as they flew.
Now, the "Test Wrecker" had just been assembled and had only fired one test shot, and after observing the point of impact of the shells, Evelyn directed the hunters to adjust the angle of fire and aim at the hill 400 meters away.
That was the maximum range this smoothbore could theoretically achieve, yet Evelie confidently lit the fuse.
"Ah! Perfect hit!"
Renka sacrificed [Telekinesis] and saw the target on the distant hill shattered by the cannon.
After she finished speaking, Chocolate, the lion scorpion, poked his head out of her arms, the little guy had just hid in Rinka's arms because he was afraid of the sound of the cannons.
Now that Chocolate was already longer than an adult house cat despite having been raised by the hunters for less than a month, burrowing into Lenka's arms was already a struggle.
Finishing her snogging, Evelie gently held the chocolate out before affectionately nuzzling her cheek against the cub's furry belly.
Chocolate kind of didn't like that, and raised her hindquarters to stomp Evelie.
To other hunters, the move was horrifying, as even juvenile lion and scorpion beasts are highly poisonous in their claws.
But Chocolate was quite humane and knew not to show his claws when messing with this third owner, so the cat kick did no harm.
After stomping away from Ivory, it spread the small wings on its back and flew onto Renka's shoulder.
For her part, Evelie continued to move up and tickle the chocolate's chin with her hand, and this time the little lion and scorpion beast didn't fight back, but allowed the huntress to do her bidding.
"I wonder what Shannon and Kayne are doing." Renka cocked her head and rubbed the chocolate, then said.
"Yeah, Kayne doesn't even come over to test fire the guns these days."
Since discovering Evely as a great gunner, Kayne had come to try out the guns himself less and less often.
At this moment, in the "Stigmata Skin" guild, the newly awakened Shaziran realized that neither Chocolate nor the owner was with her.
He yawned, then licked his front paws a few times before lazily standing up.
His stomach was actually getting a little hungry, but he still maintained his elegant posture as he slowly burrowed his way out of his master's room.
"Ah, it's a Vanilla." A few hunters in the corridor saw the beautiful lion and scorpion beast, and they made strange noises to tease it, but Shannziran condescendingly ignored them.
Through a small door left just for it and Chocolate, Vanilla entered Kayne's room.
The Second Breeder, who was radiating a powerful pressure, was sitting at the table and busy with something, so Shankilan stood in the doorway and called out softly.
The owner turned his head and saw him, so he came up and petted his head, then brought a tray of milk and put it in front of him.
Vanziran took a few well-behaved licks of milk and staggered his mouth contentedly. Though its stomach wasn't full yet, it was a bit curious as to what its owner was doing.
It wanted to just spread its wings and fly up to the table, but the chocolate that had done so before was reprimanded, and Shannon didn't follow in her sister's footsteps.
It came to Edward's feet, jumped lightly onto the corner of the chair, then stepped on the feeder's thigh and peeled itself up onto the edge of the table.
Then it saw a tiny clay doll on the table while the keeper was trying to fit a magic stone into the chest of the clay doll.
For some reason, Shannon had developed an inexplicable hatred for such things, and she meowed disdainfully before jumping out of her chair and going back to drinking her milk.
What Edward was fiddling with was a small magical statue he had tried to make.
After that time when he escaped from death at the hands of the demon statue, he became interested in this powerful killing golem.
However, he searched every corner of the "ancient literature", but could not find any books on how to make a magic statue.
Then he found the store manager, who gave him a copy of Puppet Manipulation, Puppetry and Magic Statues from an old bookcase.
This is not a textbook, however, but a semi-biographical novel.
"The method of creating a magic statue golem is only held by the Jouyuu Empire, and the vampires keep this secret so closely guarded that only this book contains a description of it, and there are rumors that the mages of the Western Continent relied on this to create a magic statue."
Despite what the store manager says, the book is vague on how to make a magic statue, so trying to learn how to make a magic statue is akin to following Cobalt and the Sorcerer's Stone and learning how to make an avada.
But in Constantine there is only this book "Puppet Manipulation, Puppetry and Magic Statues", so Edward can only read it first, and also skip the love-hate plot of the main character with a dozen female protagonists, and pluck out the parts related to the production of magic statues from the meticulous descriptions that make one's blood run cold.
Not only that, but you have to weed out the authorial intent from the already pathetically small amount of information... No, the literary creation part.
It was a good thing that Edward now had a rudimentary understanding of this world's magic system, and was able to tell which was useful information in line with the principles of magic, and which was a purely literary creation.
Then combined with experimentation, he was sure he could get a little glimpse of magic statue making.