13
Mistress Vizzingbelle was a tall woman. Beautiful. Elegant. Curved with diligent attention to presenting herself as the ultimate seductress of weak-willed young men.
Her long flowing black hair was tied back to really show off the angular curves of her cheeks and bright blue eyes rimmed by smokey shadows.
Half the male class was already obsessed with her.
The other half were clever enough to see through this outer shell and into the cruel and sadistic interior that reveled in the pain and suffering of her students.
The first thing she did was make everyone run laps around a large oval.
Milo ran until he threw up.
Then she made him run some more.
He threw up some more.
She called him useless and made him run another lap.
It might have humiliated him, but he wasn’t the only one leaving his breakfast on the grass.
Even some who looked more athletic than the rest struggled with the challenge and were left panting and exhausted while their teacher scolded them vehemently for being so weak they couldn’t run a few itty bitty laps.
As Milo crashed to the ground on his final lap, he was pleased to note there were three others behind him so he wasn’t absolutely last.
“Ah, kids these days.” Mistress Vizzingbelle sighed. “Spoiled little brats, the lot of you. This was nothing. Nothing! If you can’t run fifty laps every morning by next week, you might as well go sweep the lower levels.”
“Milo already does,” Fergus managed to groan.
It earned a few titters, but everyone was still mostly wrecked. Even Milo couldn’t gather the strength to be irritated.
Besides, Fergus wasn’t wrong.
As soon as the last struggling runner arrived, Mistress Vizzingbelle harried everyone to their feet and pushed them back up the hill to the shooting range.
There were two kinds of mana weapons.
Mana Rifles and Mana Pistols.
Mana Pistols could fire up to six shots and a Mana Rifle was usually only single-shot, but some might have two.
A Mana Pistol was useless in dungeons. In order to fire six shots, the amount of mana used was smaller compared to a rifle. Very few monsters would be hurt by such a small amount of mana.
As such, Mana Pistols weren’t going to be a focus of her classes.
The two kinds of rifles were the single and double-shot. The single, called a Sniper Rifle, was always preferred as the amount of mana it used could punch a decent hole through most monsters.
The double-shot used less mana, however it had the advantage of being able to fire at a faster rate. Helpful when dealing with hordes.
“But,” Mistress Vizzingbelle said with cheerful smirk. “If you’re relying on a rifle when facing a horde, you’ve messed up and deserve to die the horrible death you’re about to earn.”
Her first lesson with the rifle was mostly safety and loading.
Milo followed along easily, finding much of what she spoke about to be simple to understand. The loading was a bit fiddly.
The Mana Collection Unit, which was essentially a large crystal similar to a mana light, was set into a cartridge which needed to be pushed firmly and accurately into its seat before clipping it off.
Then the bolt needed to be worked.
If the safety hadn’t been slid forward, it was possible to blow off your leg while loading.
“Two stupids do this every year,” she told them as she watched Fergus struggle. “You look like you’ll be one of them. Maybe you should get used to hopping around. Tomorrow, you will do two laps while hopping.”
“What?”
“Three.”
“But-”
“Four.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Milo studied his own weapon. It was a simple device. A Mana Collection fed mana into a Mana Ejection Unit, which expelled raw mana with varying force depending on the settings of the rifle. These could be adjusted with dials just above the trigger.
The long barrel had a thick muzzle at the end to handle the explosive force of each shot while ensuring better aim than a pistol.
On top, it had a heavy scope with glass to magnify the target and sliders to help compensate his aim for range and wind.
It was both simple and complex at the same time.
A thing which required skill to use.
And Milo felt an immediate sense of comfort with it.
Not long later, he was laying in the dirt with the rifle on a stand aiming at a distant target dummy. The other students were lined up on either side of him.
Fergus was directly to his left, which made Milo a little uncomfortable but he did his best to ignore the other young man’s presence. And the occasional sneers which were aimed at him.
“You will each fire at the dummy when I give you the order,” Mistress Vizzingbelle said, stalking up and down behind them.
Her robes swished and snapped as she moved.
“It is at a range of only 50 meters. This is not a difficult shot. But you will notice there is a circle on the dummy’s chest. You will hit in the middle of that circle or you will run additional laps after this class. ”
Milo peered through the scope at the dummy.
It was easy to see the circle and difficult to see how anyone could miss. The scope’s cross was perfectly aligned to the middle of the target.
He checked the settings on his scope, adjusting for 50 meters.
A slight wind, so he adjusted for that. Mostly a guess. He didn’t have the experience to know how much he should move it. But given the breeze was light, he didn’t add too much.
Besides, how much would the mana move in the wind?
Mistress Vizzingbelle had said it could be very sensitive to a strong wind.
Some of the other students who used Arcane Magic seemed to understand that concept. Most mages converted mana into another form. Like, fire mages converted mana into fire.
But Arcane mages, called arcanomancers, used blasts of raw mana instead.
Each blast was explosive. But also inefficient. An arcanomancer would blitz through their mana at a faster rate than other mages. It was a trade of raw unfiltered power over extended use.
These rifles, Milo reasoned, were similar in that they shot explosive rounds of raw mana.
With that in mind, he second-guessed himself and nudged the wind adjustment a little more.
“Mister Stimpleton, if you rest the butt of your rifle against your cheek like that, you will have no cheek.”
Milo glanced to his left where Jin Stimpleton was pressed to the ground beside Fergus.
Stimpleton was one of Fergus’ goons. A big bulky behemoth of a man more suited to close combat than the finesse of a rifle, Milo thought. In fact, the other man’s finger seemed a little too big for the trigger guard.
Wincing, Milo watched as Stimpleton struggled to get himself into a better position.
Which made Milo check his own.
It felt comfortable. But would the butt smash into his shoulder? It felt right where it was, in the pocket of his shoulder.
“You all look terrible,” their teacher grunted heavily. “Well. There’s only so much words will teach you. Set your aim. Ready. Fire!”
Milo took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger while exhaling, actively remembering to squeeze and not jerk on it.
It was the first time he’d ever fired a weapon.
The first time he could feel the violent energy in the Mana Collection Unit as it howled through the Mana Ejection Unit before blasting down the barrel.
He felt the butt of the rifle recoil into his shoulder but it felt natural enough and he had control of it.
There was a bright flash as the blue bolt of mana exploded from the barrel and speared into the dummy at the end of the range. His eyes widened as the bolt hit its target almost perfectly. It was about an inch off centre.
But the hole it put through the straw dummy was wide enough for him to put his arm through.
“Woah,” he breathed.
Then he looked up as someone started screaming.
One of the other students hadn’t pressed the butt into their shoulder. The recoil had smashed into their bone and shattered it.
Mistress Vizzingbelle rolled her eyes as a medic appeared from the office. They weren’t hurrying.
“Another stupid breaks their collar bone,” she announced. “Only four more of you will do it this year. Who will it be? It is hard to tell. You all look stupid. Now, who hit their target. Please raise your hand.”
Milo put his hand up.
A few others did the same. He was mildly pleased to note Fergus and Stimpleton both kept their hands down.
“Perhaps you are all not completely trash,” she said. “The rest of you have a lap to run. Chop chop!”
“This is such bullshit,” Fergus growled. “There’s something wrong with my scope. I aimed at the target properly!”
Mistress Vizzingbelle appeared behind him in an instant, making him jump.
“Did you adjust for wind? Let us check together. No. You did not.” She slapped the top of his head.
“How do you expect to shoot raw mana without adjusting for wind? You need to run two laps. It will get blood flowing to your brain.”
Milo let out a soft snort, which drew a scowl from Fergus.
“I don’t see what’s so funny, you normie freak,” Fergus spat.
“Normie?” Mistress Vizzingbelle glanced down at Milo. “You have too little mana?”
Milo shrugged. “I shouldn’t be here. Everyone knows it.”
“Yet, you are here,” she said, reaching down to slap his head. “So you must do your best or you will fertilize a dungeon.”
“Like the shit he is,” Fergus spat.
She slapped his head again. “You are both making my hand hurt. You will do an additional lap for it.” Then she pursed her lips before grinning widely at him. “Actually, you should do two additional laps for being unable to shoot better than a normie. Run along, stupid. Chop chop!”