第34章 教练,我也想写装逼打脸

Around the middle-aged man, a group of young-looking recruits turned their heads in unison to stare at Benjamin. Their gazes could hardly be described as friendly.

Benjamin immediately realized things were taking a turn for the worse.

Could the tropes from those novels really be happening to him?

Taking a deep breath, Benjamin had no choice but to bite the bullet and walk over.

"What's your name?" the middle-aged man asked.

Benjamin thought for a moment, deliberately omitting his surname, and replied:

"My name is Benjamin."

The middle-aged man, however, lacked tact. He curled his lip and said, "You're the brat from the Riser Family, the useless one, right?"

A burst of laughter erupted from the crowd.

Benjamin could feel the way the people around him looked at him change the moment the word "Riser" was spoken. Their eyes shifted into a mix of envy and utter disdain.

He could only sigh inwardly.

The military held a rather unique position in the Hori Kingdom. They didn't fear the nobility, nor did they even fear the royal family. While they claimed to be loyal to the country, in reality, The Church was the only entity they truly served.

They were absolutely unafraid of offending nobles—the nobility had little to do with their lives, found it difficult to make things hard for them, and the military had even greater backers.

Furthermore, based on their values, the nobility were the people they looked down upon the most, even more so than commoners. In their eyes, commoners at least worked every day to support themselves, while nobles were just a bunch of parasites who did nothing and were good for nothing.

Therefore, a noble scion who accidentally ended up in the military was bound to have a rough time.

As Benjamin thought this to himself, he began to observe his surroundings. This wasn't an ordinary camp; he had noticed that the moment he walked in. A standard training camp wouldn't be this long and narrow, the soldiers wouldn't be wearing such strangely thick uniforms, and they certainly wouldn't have a row of targets set up at one end of the grounds...

He quickly reached a conclusion:

This was a Gunfire Camp.

Claude sent him here to learn how to shoot?

Benjamin was completely baffled. Claude would never do such a thing; the trouble at the manor had been caused by a gun in the first place. Claude's intention was to make Benjamin suffer a little to toughen him up so he would stop causing trouble. But having Benjamin learn to shoot? Was that because he thought Benjamin's ability to cause trouble wasn't strong enough yet?

It didn't make sense!

"Alright, 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 didn't care what Benjamin was thinking and said this indifferently, adding a few words at the end, "Have you ever touched a gun, kid? By the way, you do know what a gun is, right?"

Another round of laughter broke out in the crowd.

Benjamin didn't mind. Honestly, this level of mockery was far too weak compared to the system; he had long since become immune to it.

However, the phrase "order from above" made Benjamin suddenly realize that sending him to the Gunfire Camp probably wasn't Claude's idea.

It was the idea of that "friend in the military" of Claude's.

Benjamin had been sickly since childhood, a fact that had spread throughout noble circles, and people in the military must have heard of it. That General Gray had likely misunderstood Claude's intentions, thinking Claude wanted his son to learn something, and after racking his brain, he had arranged for Benjamin to be in the Gunfire Camp. It wouldn't involve overly strenuous physical training that would exhaust him, and shooting was something someone with poor stamina could still do, allowing Benjamin to learn a thing or two.

He really should thank this General Gray for his "misunderstanding."

Learning to shoot was exactly what Benjamin wanted—it counted as a combat capability, and one he could display openly. He still had to operate in the Royal Capital, so he had to be cautious about using magic. Learning a combat skill that could be used in plain sight wasn't a waste of time.

Besides, he actually wanted to learn how to shoot.

Was there really anyone who didn't want to learn how to shoot?

Therefore, Benjamin decided to stay here for a while. Anyway, Claude only said he had to train every morning; he could use the rest of the time to study magic.

Having thought everything through, Benjamin faced the laughter of the crowd and replied calmly:

"Guns? Of course I've touched one."

He had indeed touched a gun during his scuffle with Dick. That couldn't be considered bragging.

What's more, he hadn't just touched one; he had been held at gunpoint! Although everyone here had fired a gun, apart from this middle-aged man who was likely the instructor, the others might not have been held at gunpoint themselves. Judging by their appearance, they were clearly recruits who had never been to the battlefield.

A Gunfire Camp for training recruits. General Gray had really put a lot of thought into arranging training for Benjamin. Next time he saw him, Benjamin would definitely give him some brain-boosting supplements.

Hearing Benjamin's answer, the laughter in the crowd slowly died down. The recruits looked at Benjamin with interest, as if they had found a new toy, their expressions filled with surprise.

The middle-aged instructor didn't say anything either. He chuckled a few times, then suddenly pulled a pistol from his waist and tossed it toward Benjamin.

"Since you've touched one, fire a shot and show me," he said, still looking lazy.

The instructor's movement was very sudden. Benjamin didn't react immediately, and his attempt to catch the gun wasn't exactly graceful, which drew another burst of laughter from the crowd.

As the gun hit his hand, a cold sensation traveled from his palm through his entire body.

Benjamin listened to the laughter, shrugged, and said, "This gun is a bit heavy. It's not quite like the ones I've touched before."

The crowd erupted into even louder laughter.

"This kid is pretty funny. He's not like those other nobles."

"Is he really a noble?"

"Didn't you hear what others said? This guy is a bit slow; he's been like that since he was born."

"..."

The whispers, relevant or not, reached Benjamin's ears.

Benjamin ignored them.

He simply gripped the gun tightly, raised his hand, and aimed the muzzle at the target thirty meters away.

He had intended to engage the safety or something similar, only to discover that the gun didn't even have the safety on. His assessment of the middle-aged man was refreshed once again. To dare to tuck a pistol into his waistband without the safety on, this guy really didn't value his life.

The danger of this was far worse than leaving an unlocked phone in your pocket. If a phone went off, at most you'd pull it out to find you'd sent your mother a text message reading: "Eat shit, I saw you sending fast, you idiot." If a pistol accidentally discharged, you'd be bleeding out in your rear end!

"Shoot, stop stalling!" someone in the crowd suddenly shouted.

"Sorry, I was distracted," Benjamin replied, raising an eyebrow.

He wasn't stalling because he was worried about the safety catch, nor was he afraid of missing. It was because, as he raised the gun, some strange things suddenly appeared before his eyes.

An interface resembling a shooting game suddenly appeared in front of him: distance, crosshairs, wind speed, pistol information, remaining ammunition, enemy health bars... It felt as if he were wearing a VR headset and playing a shooting game—he was looking at a standard shooting game interface.

Was it the system?

"Don't look at me," the system popped up before Benjamin could even ask, explaining, "I don't know where this stuff came from. If you want to blame someone, blame yourself for downloading random things in the past, which resulted in a bunch of web games being force-installed that you can't even delete. This is their doing; it has nothing to do with me."

"...I wasn't planning on blaming you," Benjamin thought to himself. "I actually thought you were finally useful for once, but it turns out this has nothing to do with you."

The system was silent for a moment before suddenly changing its tune: "Who said it has nothing to do with me? It's all my credit. If my hard drive wasn't big enough, where would you have stored all this stuff?"

Benjamin chuckled inwardly.

He knew the system would say that.

Just like that, distracted by the shooting interface and the system, Benjamin's hand remained steady without firing. That led to the earlier urging and Benjamin's casual reply.

"Shoot, stop stalling!"

"Sorry, I was distracted."

As soon as Benjamin finished speaking, laughter erupted from the crowd again. Some people couldn't help but start clapping, as if they were in a theater watching a comedian deliver a punchline.

"This guy is hilarious. Have the nobles in the Royal Capital all become like this..."

Bang!

A gunshot rang out.

The laughter stopped abruptly, like a quacking duck suddenly being strangled.

On the target thirty meters away, right in the center of the red-painted bullseye, there was now a highly conspicuous little hole. Although it looked a bit blurry due to the distance, that hole was as clear as a torch in the dark to everyone present.

Dead silence.

Benjamin lowered the gun, wiped it off, turned around, and glanced at the stunned expressions on everyone's faces. Suddenly, he mimicked the Old Madam, put on an innocent look, and said in a very naive tone:

"Um... I didn't hit the wrong target, did I?"

No one could laugh anymore.

Everyone looked at him as if they were looking at a monster; the mockery in their eyes had long since vanished.

At this moment, Benjamin finally understood why these plots always appeared in web novels: the protagonists always acted weak, were looked down upon by everyone, and then suddenly displayed their might at a critical moment.

The feeling of showing off was actually quite satisfying.