Chap 5: Firearms

Viscount Cely and his family did not understand the appeal of the weapons. They looked quite pleasing to the eye indeed, but they seemed useless. Especially this tiny thing, what could it do on the battlefield? Scratch the horses? "What kind of weapon his this? I've never seen this before. They seem quite useless to me." Leofric snorted.

He was raised with a superiority complex and an overly arrogant and prideful personality. Leofric always thought, 'whatever they have, I deserve it a thousand times more'. He was quite similar to his sister and father in this way, but he did not possess his sister's acting skills and scheming nature, or his father's experience in society. In other words, he was just a haughty noble without much talent and whose only value in his parents' eyes was being born as a boy thus as the successor.

Eufemia wanted to laugh at this boy who did not seem to understand that he had already been labelled as the 'buffoon' in his family that his father could easily manipulate. She only answered normally with a light smile on: "I will demonstrate what my weapons could possibly do with one of these."

"Would you summarize quickly the nature of these weapons?" Alfred rubbed his chin as he crossed Eufemia's eyes with interest and a smile. Leofric blinked in confusion as he looked at his equally confused father for answers.

Why did the duke find these weak-looking weapons interesting?

"Of course, Your Highness. I assume your Highness has already held a crossbow?" She smiled as she picked up the normal gun from the suitcase.

"Of course." Alfred's eyes never left the weapon Eufemia was holding. Just when she started talking about the crossbow, he had a feeling that it would be interesting.

"As your Highness can see, there is a trigger, right there." She pointed at the trigger and showed it to him. He nodded. "And, there is a chamber with exactly nine holes of a specific size." She showed again. Eufemia picked up the 9 millimeters standard bullet from the suitcase and showed it. It was reflecting the sunlight as she turned it in her fingers. "This is a bullet. The concept is quite simple. Place the bullet inside the highest hole of the chamber—you can observe that it fits perfectly. Then, you simply do this…" She pulled the slide. A sound could be heard.

"Bastien, do open the window." Her voice was calm and steady even though she was holding a gun in her tiny hand. Her finger over the trigger, tightly clenching her fingers on the grip, she raised her arm to point out of the window, straight on the bottle that Bastien had placed on the balcony's edge.

Then, she pulled the trigger.

A loud detonation was heard quickly followed by the sound metal being heavily hit. Bastien applauded. "It's a bull's eye, my lady."

She smiled and lowered her arm, before putting back the gun in the suitcase. Alfred was stunned.

He did not even see the bullet, yet not even a second after she had shot the bottle at ten meters had been hit. "Young lady, it appears that I hold a peculiar interest in your 'firearms'. Would you kindly bring back more of these to my estate in the following days?"

"My, but of course, your Highness. It would be my honor." Eufemia got up from the couch and made a reverence.

"W-Wait! I want to buy these weapons too!" Martin Cely yelled out of impatience. He then cleared his throat and smiled. "Lady Lowthe, I also have great interest in those weapons of yours. How about you make a price?"

Eufemia's eyes darkened. This man was truly shameless. If she was a naïve person, she'd definitely be fooled by his kind smile and sweet talk.

But that was useless on her.

She had survived in a world a thousand times more difficult than his, after all. To her, his acting was rookie level, and with her eyes that could see the truth about a person's heart, she would not be fooled even if she was not able to discern the difference between his fake smile and a genuine one.

Eufemia smiled. "Why would you want to use my weak-looking weapons? It does not suit the Cely Viscount." She said in a falsely wondering tone.

"Of course, for my personal guard. They appear to need new weapons." He cleared his throat. Eufemia didn't feel more disgusting in her whole two lives.

Disgusting. What a good thing that she had wore gloves today. "My apologies. I am afraid that these weapons would not be good to use for such matters." Her apologetic tone sounded so real that even a snake like Martin Cely could not discern whether she was mocking him or was truly apologizing.

Of course, it was the first. But that, he did not and couldn't possibly know. "Why would that be?"

"You see, my weapons are not adapted when it comes to close-up combat. The worst might be accidentally aiming at an innocent citizen. These bullets are fast enough to pierce through flesh and bones. I'm afraid if someone were to be shot by this, no matter where, their lives would take a great turn. Shooting someone in vital points and organs will be a lethal threat." She explained calmly. Truthfully, she was also giving sly details to the duke, who carefully listened to her every words.

"This is not a problem, at most a life is lost, we compensate. Anything else?" It seemed like he had completely forgotten about the duke. The Viscount, immersed in his fantasies of whatever power he could hold by having these weapons, had indeed forgotten about the duke's presence and forgot to maintain his gentlemanly behavior as he was getting impatient.

Eufemia truly disliked this man. She loathed this ant. "Also, just as knights needs to train their swordsmanship to wield a sword, someone who will want to handle these will need proper training. Aim is absolutely necessary, along with some physical strength. If someone missed their aim, the wrong person might be shot, while if they lacked physical strength, they could injure their own arm, hand, wrist, etc. I managed to shoot because I had trained previously. However, it would be dangerous for everyone around if someone inexperienced were to hold a firearm without proper training. The employer could even get injured. The best would be to find people with proper physical strength, mental and the best vision possible." Eufemia pointed at her eyes. Martin gulped, seemingly understanding what she had said.

However, Eufemia knew that the only thing he cared about was when she said, 'The employer could even get injured'. A man so selfish would not care about reasons that do not concern himself. "I understand. We will excuse ourselves for now."

The Viscount got up and and was soon followed by his family. "Bastien, do send the guests out." Eufemia smiled. Martin made a small head bow, and an extravagant salute to the duke.

"It was our honor, your Highness." He smiled; Eufemia saw a trace of disgust pass in Alfred's expression as he nodded. "Then, we will be off." Martin left with his family like a family of ants crossing the road one behind another.

When the footsteps finally faded, both Eufemia and Alfred burst in laughter. "Ha—Hahahaha!! No—I can't…Ha haha! It's too ridiculous—oh goddess. Pft—Did your Highness see the way these foolish worms were looking at you!? Ha hahaha…I can't believe they thought I fell for it. How very stupid…" Her laughter sounded childish when compared to the man's.

"Young lady—haha...I saw. Pft—he even forgot that I was here after seeing your performance—hahaha!!" the both of them hardly calmed after a few minutes. Finally, they coughed a bit and grinned. Alfred was the one to speak first.

"You're not planning on selling them any weapons at all, are you?" He raised an eyebrow as he sipped in the tea. It had gone cold, yet he still drank all of it.

"Of course not. As I carefully explained, handing these to an idiot is equivalent to killing my business. Using them for self-defense, he'll shoot everyone in sight and make my firearms banned! Do your Highness know how much money I could get from those? They can kill someone in one bullet and are not pricy. I would get rich in no time." Alfred chuckled. The honesty of this surprising and not so childlike child was very refreshing.

"So? What could the Imperial army gain with these weapons?" He went back to a serious tone. Eufemia put her empty teacup back on the table and picked up a grenade.

"This is an explosive. This one is not armed, but if you pull the pin, it will explode in the following seconds. Very useful if someone is injured and cannot move, you pull, throw then wait for the enemies to become quiet as dead." She caressed the bomb and put it back carefully, before taking the machine gun.

"This is a machine gun. It does the same thing as our standard handgun, but it is an automatic weapon. Pull the trigger, stay like this, and tons of bullets will be shot. The bullets are longer than the handgun's." She explained and showed the machine gun's bullets. After that, she mimed using the machine gun, which of course wasn't armed.

The duke and Eufemia spent the entire morning talking about weapons and finally decided that they would meet for further discussion about an eventual contract between them at the Carell estate in three days.

Eufemia was peculiarly happy the remaining days.