"An inept ! A fucking outcast ! Even the scoundrel useless young master or a lowly Noble would've been a better option!" Adrian murmured as he swung his axe down on the wood in front of him. "Just my luck! Of all possibilities, I was born inept, unable to use magic in a world that discriminates based on magic!" His frustration increased as he thought of his current circumstances. Just thinking about it made his blood pressure shoot up. His grip on the axe tightened, and he brought it down with all his might on the wood below, splitting it in two.
With a sigh, he put down the axe and crouched down to pick up the scattered wood pieces. This was basically a routine for him in the past fifteen years of his life ever since he 'regained' the memories of his old life when he was barely five years old. "I may have overdone it today," Adrian shrugged, rubbing his sore shoulders after putting away the wood and the axe in a small wooden shed.
"At least I have something good to look forward to today!" His frustration turned into excitement at the thought of that thing being completed today. His gaze landed on the wooden house in front of him. "Better get on with it, otherwise the old man will start without me," Adrian muttered to himself as he closed the shed and walked inside the house.
As he entered, he heard the call of the old man. "Adrian, are you done with the wood?"
"Yeah, I am done, old man. Is it ready?" Adrian answered as he removed his shoe.
"Quickly come inside or else I am starting without you."
Hearing this, Adrian quickly removed his shoes and made his way inside. The inside of the house was very spacious with only sparse furniture laying around. Adrian made his way into a large room where an old man was facing the table, holding onto a glass jar with something red inside it.
"Master, where is it?" Adrian asked impatiently.
"What's the hurry? We've waited this long, what's a few more minutes? It's in the corner over there. The worker from the smithy just delivered it now," the old man replied.
Adrian quickly made his way to the cloth bag in the corner of the room. He quickly uncovered the cloth covering the object like a kid opening his birthday present. His eyes sparkled at the sight of the object as he was hit by a wave of nostalgia. In front of him was something that never existed in this world before, something that may be considered sacrilegious by many, and something that could change the world order, ending the age of mana and mages.
In Adrian's hand was something that changed humanity forever in his past life: the gun. More specifically, a rifle, a smoothbore rifle to be exact, as the blacksmith in the village wasn't skilled enough to add grooves to the rifle. Contrary to what fiction would make you believe, not everyone who gets transmigrated has photographic memory or encyclopedic knowledge of all things on the technology tree, especially something out of their field. The irony was that he was an actual engineer, fitting the stereotype of a typical transmigrator, but the catch was that he was an automation engineer in a world where neither electricity nor computers exist. "I doubt having a degree in mechanical or chemistry will matter as all the materials on Earth don't exist here, and mana-altered materials have vastly different properties."
The only thing he could make use of was the basic principles. He held the rifle in his hands, feeling its solid build and weight.
"Boy, if you are done daydreaming, get it over here," the old man said, snapping Adrian out of his thoughts.
Adrian quickly took the rifle and put it on the wooden table. "Is it good enough?" the old man asked Adrian.
"It will do fine, master. Shall we test it out?"
"Here, it's your idea; you can have the honor. I have many years of research ahead of me, besides I'm too handsome to die," the old man remarked as he handed over the glass jar with red powder to Adrian.
Adrian ignored the old man's remarks and carefully took the glass jar from the old man's hands. Looking at the contents of the jar, both Adrian and the old man had proud looks on their faces. This simple red powder was the result of years of research and experimentation. In order to create a gun, the first thing one needed was gunpowder. As a certified fan of transmigration novels, one thing he knew for certain about was gunpowder.
It was simple, actually; it only needed three ingredients: saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. The charcoal was the easy part, but the other two didn't exist in this world. So Adrian, with the help of the old man's vast knowledge, set out to find an alternative. Finding explosive stuff wasn't hard in this world, but finding something that can be used like gunpowder and don't kill the person using it was the hard part. After countless experiments and countless explosions later, they developed this red powder which was as close as they got to gunpowder, but there were some minor differences. The red powder was a mixture of the powdered seed of a fire fruit tree, which is highly flammable, mixed with powder of crystals obtained by heating extracts from the waste of a horse-like animal in a type of oil used locally. It was hard to get the right combination, but with the knowledge of the old man through his experiments helped speed up things a lot, but it still took them almost five years to perfect this formula.
"That time spent wasn't wasted though since we got a lot more things while creating this new gunpowder which will be useful in the future," Adrian thought.
"Master, shall we go outside to test it?"
"Of course, we are going outside! Do you want to burn down the house like last time?" the old man lashed out.
Adrian shuddered at the thought of the incident that almost burned the house down. "Yeah, let's go outside. Preferably somewhere open with no things to burn," he replied.
"That would be better," the old man nodded.
Soon, the old man and Adrian found themselves at a clearing in the woods. Adrian took the rifle and the powder from the sling bag on his back. He carefully opened the jar and, with a measuring spoon, took a little powder and put it inside the barrel of the gun, followed by a metal ball matching the size of the barely opening. He put the ball in and used a wooden stick to push the ball in carefully. The red gunpowder was more explosive than normal gunpowder, and the amount needed was also low. Also, it came with the added advantage that it didn't create smoke or clog the barrel after each shot, so it doesn't need to be cleaned like black powder guns. The amount Adrian put in was carefully selected after countless experiments.
Adrian took the gun and turned back to look at the old man standing behind him at a safe distance. With a nod from the old man, Adrian aimed the gun at the white cloth fixed on a tree fifty meters away. Adrian took a deep breath and pulled back the hammer on the gun. The hammer mechanism was similar to the flintlock guns of Earth, but instead of using flint to ignite the powder,it used a type of metal which, when hit by the same metal, produced high-temperature sparks that ignited the powder. This was much more reliable than the flint mechanisms of Earth and would even work reliably in rain.
Adrian carefully aimed the crude sights on the gun with his target and pulled the trigger.
BAM!
Gunfire echoed through the surrounding area, causing the birds and animals nearby to flee. But the gazes of the two humans present were fixed on the target cloth, which now had a tiny hole in it, extending a few inches into the tree, almost making it to the outside.
That single shot created history that day and sparked a new revolution that challenged the very foundation of magic. Millions of shots would follow that single shot, and history would forever change.