A group of young-looking recruits surrounding the middle-aged man also turned around and stared at Benjamin in unison. Their eyes were anything but friendly.
Benjamin immediately realized something was wrong.
Surely the kind of scene you read about in novels wasn't really about to happen?
He took a deep breath and steeled himself before walking over.
"What's your name?" the middle-aged man asked.
Benjamin thought for a moment, deliberately leaving out his surname, then replied,
"My name's Benjamin."
But the middle-aged man showed no tact. He curled his lip and said, "You're the useless little brat from the Riser Family, right?"
Laughter immediately broke out among the crowd.
Benjamin could feel the way people looked at him change when they heard the word "Riser." Their eyes were now filled with envy and disdain.
All he could do was sigh inwardly.
The military held a rather special position in the Hori Kingdom. They weren't afraid of nobles, or even the royal family. Though they claimed to serve their country, in reality, the Church was the only one they served.
They certainly weren't afraid of offending nobles. The nobility had little bearing on their lives and could hardly make things difficult for them, while the people backing them were even more powerful.
On top of that, according to their values, nobles were the people they despised most—beneath even commoners. In their eyes, at least commoners worked every day to support themselves. Nobles were a bunch of parasites who did nothing and were good for nothing.
So a noble's son who accidentally ended up in the military was bound to have a rough time.
As he thought this, Benjamin began observing his surroundings. This wasn't an ordinary camp; he'd noticed that as soon as he walked in. A regular training camp wouldn't be so long and narrow, the soldiers wouldn't be wearing such strangely heavy uniforms, and there wouldn't be a row of targets at one end of the camp...
He quickly reached a conclusion:
This was a gunfire camp.
Had Claude sent him here to learn how to shoot?
Benjamin was utterly confused. Claude would never do that. The trouble in the castle had been caused by guns, and Claude's intention was to make Benjamin suffer a little and toughen him up so he'd stop causing trouble. But if Benjamin learned to shoot, wouldn't that just make him even better at causing trouble?
It made no sense!
"Fine. Since it's an order from above, there's nothing I can do. From now on, you'll train with us," the middle-aged man said indifferently, without a care for what Benjamin might be thinking. Then he added, "Have you ever even touched a gun, kid? Wait, do you know what a gun is?"
Laughter rang out among the crowd again.
Benjamin didn't mind. Honestly, compared to the system, this level of mockery was nothing. He was already immune to it.
But that line about an "order from above" suddenly made him realize that Claude probably wasn't the one who'd sent him to the gunfire camp.
It must have been Claude's "friend in the military."
Benjamin had been sickly since childhood, and the news had spread through noble circles. The people in the camp had probably heard about it too. General Gray must have misunderstood Claude's intentions, thinking he wanted his son to learn something. After racking his brains, he'd arranged for Benjamin to join the gunfire camp. There'd be no exhausting physical training to wear him out, and even someone in poor health could shoot. Benjamin would still learn a thing or two.
He really ought to thank General Gray for "misunderstanding" Claude.
Benjamin was quite pleased at the thought of learning to shoot. It counted as a combat skill, and one he could use openly, too. He still had to get around the Royal Capital, and using magic would certainly require caution. Learning a combat skill he could use in the open wouldn't be a waste of time.
Besides, he'd wanted to learn how to shoot anyway.
Who wouldn't want to learn how to shoot?
So Benjamin decided to stay here and make the most of it. Claude had said training was only in the mornings, after all, so he could use the rest of his time to study magic.
Having thought everything through, Benjamin calmly replied to the laughter,
"Guns? Of course I've touched one."
He really had touched a gun while wrestling with Dick. That wasn't bragging.
And he hadn't just touched one—he'd had one pointed at him! Everyone here had probably fired a gun, but apart from the middle-aged man who seemed to be the instructor, the others might never have had one pointed at them. From the looks of them, they were all new recruits who'd never seen a battlefield.
A gunfire camp for training recruits. General Gray had really gone to a lot of trouble to arrange Benjamin's training. If he ran into him someday, Benjamin would definitely send him some ginseng supplements.
After hearing Benjamin's reply, the laughter slowly died down. The recruits looked as though they'd found a new toy. Their faces lit up with surprise as they watched Benjamin with interest.
The middle-aged instructor said nothing. He laughed a few times, then suddenly pulled a pistol from his waist and tossed it to Benjamin.
"If you've touched one before, let's see you fire a shot." He spoke in the same lazy manner as before.
The instructor tossed it so suddenly that Benjamin didn't react in time. He caught it less gracefully than he might have liked, drawing another burst of laughter from the crowd.
The moment the gun settled in his hand, a chill spread from his palm through his body.
Hearing the laughter, Benjamin shrugged and said, "This gun's a little heavy. It's not like the one I touched before."
The crowd laughed even harder.
"This kid's pretty funny. He's not like those other nobles."
"Is he really a noble?"
"Didn't you hear? He's a bit dim. He's been like that since birth."
"..."
Bits and pieces of their whispers reached Benjamin's ears.
He paid them no mind.
He simply tightened his grip on the gun, raised it, and aimed at the target thirty meters away.
He'd meant to flick the safety on or something, but then he noticed the gun didn't even have one. His opinion of the middle-aged man was revised once again. Anyone who wore a pistol at his waist without a safety was really asking for trouble.
That was far more dangerous than carrying a phone without a screen lock. If something happened to the phone, the worst that could happen was pulling it out and finding you'd sent your mom a text that read, "Eating shit see you send fast stupid." But if a pistol went off by accident, your nether regions would be bleeding badly!
"Shoot already! Quit dragging your feet!" someone in the crowd suddenly shouted.
"Sorry, I got distracted," Benjamin replied, raising an eyebrow.
He wasn't delaying because he was worried about the safety, or afraid of missing. The moment he raised the gun, something strange had appeared before his eyes.
An interface like something from a shooting game had suddenly appeared in front of him: distance, sights, wind speed, pistol information, remaining ammunition, enemy health bars... It felt as if he'd put on a VR headset and started playing a shooting game. The display before him was a standard shooting-game interface.
Was it the system?
"It's got nothing to do with me." Before Benjamin could even ask, the system popped up and explained, "I don't know how this thing appeared either. Blame yourself for downloading all that junk before and getting a bunch of browser games forcibly installed that you couldn't even delete. They're causing this. It has nothing to do with me."
"...I wasn't going to blame you," Benjamin thought. "I thought you'd finally been useful for once, but it turns out this has nothing to do with you."
The system was silent for a moment, then suddenly changed its tune. "Who says it has nothing to do with me? It's all thanks to me. If my hard drive weren't big enough, where would you have put all that stuff?"
Benjamin chuckled to himself.
He'd known the system would say that.
Between the shooting interface and the system, Benjamin had kept holding the gun without firing. That was why someone had called out just now, and why Benjamin had casually replied.
"Shoot already! Quit dragging your feet!"
"Sorry, I got distracted."
As soon as Benjamin finished speaking, laughter erupted from the crowd once again. Some people even started clapping, as though they were in a theater watching a comedian deliver a punchline.
"This guy's hilarious. Are nobles in the Royal Capital all like this now..."
Bang!
A gunshot rang out.
The laughter cut off abruptly, like a gaggle of squawking ducks suddenly silenced by a hand around their necks.
On the target thirty meters away, a tiny, conspicuous hole now sat dead center in the red bull's-eye. The distance made it a little blurry, but to everyone watching, that hole stood out as clearly as a torch in the dark.
Not a sound could be heard.
Benjamin lowered the hand holding the gun, wiped it down, then turned and looked at the stunned expressions on everyone's faces. Suddenly, he imitated Old Madam and put on an innocent expression. In a thoroughly clueless tone, he said,
"Um... I didn't hit the wrong target, did I?"
No one could laugh anymore.
Everyone looked at him as if he were a monster. The mockery in their eyes had vanished without a trace.
At that moment, Benjamin suddenly understood why scenes like this appeared so often in online novels: the protagonists acted all weak and got looked down on by everyone, only to suddenly show off at a crucial moment.
Showing off like that really did feel great.
Second update. Thanks to Gua Hao Yue Yuan and Shui Fan for the tips~
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