Magic, Gunpowder, Firearms

Marvin had no idea that merely spending three days browsing weapon shops had lowered him in Miss Wuke's estimation.

But even if he had known, he would still have done as he pleased.

Relying on the quest panel to lie low and slowly build himself up was enough. Why get too entangled with the Red Robe Exiles, coveting their resources and connections?

Of course, he visited weapon shops every day not because, as Miss Wuke believed, he wanted to don plate armor, pick up a sword, and personally charge into battle to hack people down.

He was looking for weapons compatible with the spell [Enhanced Mage Hand] in order to maximize its effects.

The first thing Marvin considered was buying two greatswords.

[Enhanced Mage Hand] could summon four energy hands at once.

If every two hands wielded one greatsword, wouldn't that be like having two greatsword fighters as extra muscle in battle?

Unfortunately, while Marvin's idea was sound, putting it into practice presented all kinds of problems.

First, although [Enhanced Mage Hand] had a carrying capacity of 30 pounds—far beyond the weight of a standard greatsword—its swinging speed was quite slow, at no more than 10 meters per second.

A greatsword weighed roughly five to eight pounds.

According to the most basic kinetic energy formula, E = 1/2mv², the destructive force generated when [Enhanced Mage Hand] swung a greatsword could only injure unprotected targets.

If he switched to a heavier weapon, [Enhanced Mage Hand] would swing even more slowly, losing all practical combat value.

Furthermore, [Enhanced Mage Hand] possessed only simple intelligence and could not perform complicated sword techniques. It would be extremely clumsy against enemies; any creature with a measure of intelligence—even goblins—could easily evade its slashes.

At that point, Marvin completely abandoned the idea of having [Enhanced Mage Hand] use melee weapons.

In that case, he would change direction and try ranged weapons.

Bows, which required prolonged training to master, were naturally out of the question.

Marvin first spent two silver coins to rent a heavy crossbow for testing.

After three hours of practice, Marvin could already use [Enhanced Mage Hand] to fire the heavy crossbow and hit a humanoid target 100 feet away.

The hit rate was around 50%.

With further practice, that figure could still improve.

But Marvin was not satisfied.

Even bolts fired from a heavy crossbow had poor ballistic performance, showing obvious drop at a distance of 120 feet.

With [Enhanced Mage Hand]'s rudimentary intelligence, it could never learn to calculate trajectories and adjust its aim.

Moreover, a heavy crossbow required a winch to cock and had a very low rate of fire. Its practical combat performance fell short of Marvin's expectations.

He planned to continue trying new weapons.

When the dwarf owner of the weapon shop saw Marvin visiting again, after being pestered for the past three days, he finally lost patience. He simply raised a finger thicker than a carrot and pointed across the street.

"Wizard, go ask at the Lantanese shop. The firearms they sell might suit your needs."

"Lantanese?" Marvin looked in the direction the dwarf owner indicated.

The sign outside the shop across the street bore the image of a four-spoked gear.

That was the symbol of Gond, god of craft and invention.

Lantan was an island nation in the Endless Sea, roughly a thousand miles southwest of Baldur's Gate in a straight line.

The island's primary races were humans and gnomes, and its official faith was Gond, the god of craft.

The Lantanese excelled at invention and were renowned throughout Faerûn for their advanced mechanical technology.

However, during the [Spellplague], violent tsunamis caused by drastic changes in the continental shelf completely submerged most of Lantan Island beneath the sea.

Another portion was transported to [Abeir], the mirror world of [Toril].

It was not until the [Second Sundering] that Lantan returned to [Toril].

Although two cataclysms had drastically reduced Lantan's territory and population, the new technologies it brought back from [Abeir] had instead increased its national strength.

Now active once more across Faerûn, the Lantanese had established trading outposts in many important cities, selling all manner of wondrous inventions.

Yet from Marvin's perspective as an Earthling, among the Lantanese's many inventions, gunpowder weapons—the ones that should have had epoch-making significance—were not particularly popular.

The primary reason was their high cost.

Long ago, Toril had been just like Earth. By mixing charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur in certain proportions, one could make gunpowder.

Once this miraculous powder with immense destructive power was created, it was fanatically pursued by Gond's followers.

In order to please their god, they used gunpowder in countless reckless experiments, completely disregarding safety, resulting in grievous casualties.

Gond did not want his outstanding followers to die pointlessly in one gunpowder explosion after another. Nor did he want the frequent accidents to make mortals keep their distance from the Church of Gond, reducing the number of potential believers.

So the deity waved his hand and directly altered the laws of chemistry, forbidding gunpowder's explosive reaction.

Only later did the Lantanese invent a magical ingredient, still their highest secret to this day. When added to gunpowder, it restored its explosive properties.

This new type of gunpowder was called "Smokepowder."

Because Smokepowder was expensive to make and few knew its formula, Gond tacitly permitted the production and spread of this new gunpowder.

Compared to expensive and rare firearms, low-circle evocation spells capable of matching or even surpassing firearms in destructive power were better and cheaper alternatives.

Furthermore, in Earth's history, the greatest advantage firearms had over projectile weapons such as bows and crossbows was their ease of use and widespread accessibility.

After two months of training, a farmer could become a qualified matchlock soldier.

Training a qualified archer, on the other hand, often took years.

But in Faerûn, that advantage of firearms was of little use.

This was a vast, sparsely populated continent. Wars between nations were not large in scale; armies often had few soldiers, but every one of them was a classed individual.

Even low-level physical class holders had physical abilities not much inferior to the serum-injected super soldiers from American comics.

A ranger with 16 Dexterity, wielding a fine magical longbow, could fire arrows with killing power comparable to a firearm.

And both their rate of fire and range far surpassed firearms.

For all these reasons, despite firearms having existed in Faerûn for over two centuries, they remained niche weapons.

But for Marvin, firearms perfectly suited his needs. They were ideal weapons for rapidly increasing his combat power.

First, firearms were easy to use. Even [Enhanced Mage Hand], with only simple intelligence, could quickly master them.

Furthermore, bullets fired by firearms had excellent ballistic performance, greatly reducing the difficulty of aiming and allowing [Enhanced Mage Hand] to raise its hit rate by a level when operating a firearm.

Most importantly, although Smokepowder contained magical ingredients, it was not a magical item. Like Fire Glue, though it was an alchemical creation, it did not even count as an ordinary magical item and could be placed inside the "Packhorse Sack."

If he chose bows or crossbows as weapons, magical arrows and bolts of various types could not be carried so conveniently.

At that thought, Marvin had already formed a combat system in his mind that would use [Enhanced Mage Hand] to operate firearms and increase his damage output.

He bid farewell to the dwarf weapon-shop owner, crossed the street, and entered the Lantanese shop.

"Boss, how much is a firearm?"

"Three hundred gold coins each."

"What?" Even though he had been mentally prepared, Marvin was still startled by the firearm's exorbitant price.

After buying the storage ring, he only had 472 gold coins left to use.

He couldn't possibly spend all that money on firearms, could he?

How was he supposed to live after that?