Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

CH723 Anakor City Treasure Hunt I

***

The party cautiously approached the city proper, their gazes lifting towards the tall, imposing walls surrounding Anakor City.

Standing nearly twenty metres high in many places, the ancient walls still remained remarkably intact, continuing to shield much of the ruined city even after all these years.

"We should leave the horses here and scale the walls, Young Master Alex," Saul suggested.

Alex nodded in agreement.

There were undoubtedly broken sections and open passages scattered along the walls. However, after centuries of abandonment, those gaps and ruined gates would naturally have become the primary routes used by the city’s beastly inhabitants to move in and out of the ruins.

There was a high likelihood that apex predators—or troublesome critter beasts—would be lurking around these entry points, waiting to ambush prey foolish enough to enter through them.

’Then again, it is not as though we can make our way through the entire city without eventually fighting something,’ Alex thought inwardly.

’Still, it is best to minimise unnecessary risks. Besides, we still need the horses for the return trip. We cannot afford to endanger them recklessly either.’

While Dread himself could most likely handle most of the dangers within the city, the other horses accompanying the expedition were comparatively weak. Any one of them could easily be killed by a random attack from an apex Berserk Beast.

"Keep them safe," Alex said while patting Dread gently on the head after dismounting.

Snort~!

Dread nudged Alex’s hand away with his head, seemingly expressing dissatisfaction at being left behind.

Still, his gaze communicated his assurance that nothing would happen to the other horses.

Neigh!

With a loud cry, Dread led the other horses away towards a safer location.

Thanks to Senu’s eyes in the skies above, the expedition quickly identified a relatively shorter section of the wall that showed no obvious signs of beast activity nearby.

Sergeant Lopota stepped forward first to inspect the selected section carefully before signalling towards a couple Rune Knights, who had converted their standard-issue Bolt-rifle crossbows to fire grappling hooks.

The soldiers fired the grappling hooks towards the roughly ten-metre-high section of the wall.

Once the hooks secured themselves properly, Sergeant Lopota climbed up alongside another Rune Soldier to secure the area above, while the first two soldiers calmly reverted their crossbows back into standard bolt-firing configuration.

The swapping process itself was relatively quick. According to Sugud’s records, the conversion time ranged anywhere between ten seconds to half a minute depending on the user, and situation.

At the time, Alex had not thought too much into these numbers.

However, now that he was witnessing the conversion process in actual combat conditions, his eyebrows furrowed slightly.

He made a mental comment on it in the moment, planning to address it later with Sugud when he returned.

The group swiftly scaled the wall and entered the city, likely becoming the first non-beast group to set foot within Anakor in well over a century.

"That is House Skywalker’s main castle," Saul said, pointing towards the distant structure.

Anakor had been built along a gradual incline, with the Skywalker Castle positioned at the city’s highest point. As a result, the towering fortress remained visible from virtually anywhere within the ruined city.

"Let us head there," Alex decided.

Udara immediately nodded towards Havel and Silver.

The two swiftly vanished into the shadows, moving ahead of the main group as an advance scouting party.

Meanwhile, the Rune Knights calmly prepared additional crossbow magazines, securing them within specialised straps worn across their chest armour for easier and faster reloading during combat.

The group had barely travelled three hundred metres from the wall before they encountered the first signs of danger.

The corpses of several one-metre-tall rats littered the ground ahead of them.

The sword wounds and bolts embedded within the carcasses clearly indicated that Silver and Havel had already eliminated them moments earlier.

Alex’s expression hardened slightly.

’Good thing we left the horses behind. If even the scavenger rats here are this large, the horses would have struggled to escape alive.’

Rumble—!

Squeak!!

Without warning, three massive figures burst out from a collapsed alleyway nearby before charging directly towards the expedition group.

The Rune Knights, led by Sergeant Lopota, immediately stepped forward to intercept them.

Bang!

Drawing the round shield from his back, Sergeant Lopota charged forward and slammed directly into the incoming giant rats, knocking all three backwards while momentarily stunning them.

The remaining Rune Knights instantly opened fire.

Thwack!

Several bolts tore through the air before piercing the creatures and killing them almost immediately.

However, Alex’s attention barely lingered on the rats themselves.

Instead, his gaze remained fixed upon the Rune Knights’ crossbows.

Thanks to the runic modifications Sugud had commissioned from him, the crossbows’ firing mechanisms automatically slid backwards after each shot, locking themselves into firing position once again with minimal effort required from the Rune Soldiers.

In fact, it almost appeared as though the firing mechanism was resetting itself entirely without any direct action from the Rune Knights at all.

’This is probably the closest we will get to semi-automatic weaponry with these designs,’ Alex evaluated inwardly.

"This actually looks rather fun. Let me try," Dalton said.

He took out his own standard-issue crossbows, loaded a magazine into it, pulled back the firing mechanism, and aimed towards a lizard roughly the same size as the giant rats lurking nearly a hundred metres away.

Thwack!

The bolt shot forward instantly, piercing cleanly through the lizard’s skull.

"Interesting..." Dalton muttered thoughtfully.

The following hour gradually devolved into something of a slaughter.

Dalton, Sinia, and the Rune Soldiers effortlessly eliminated the weaker—though still abnormally large—beasts that crossed their path.

That was, of course, assuming the creatures had not already been dealt with by Havel and Silver operating ahead of the group.

Meanwhile, Mogal, Udara, and Saul remained beside Alex with very little to contribute.

"Those weapons are truly something else," Saul commented while watching the crossbow users recover spent bolts from the fallen beast carcasses.

"Indeed they are," Alex nodded with a faint smile. "Now imagine an entire company of soldiers equipped with weapons like these as standard issue."

Saul’s eyes widened slightly before he quickly regained his composure.

"That is a rather terrifying prospect," he admitted.

"That," Alex replied calmly, "is the future of warfare, my friend."

Saul fell silent for a moment before asking thoughtfully,

"Are you truly certain you wish to standardise such weapons? A tool this powerful makes killing far too easy.

"It would not temper the user properly. If anything, it might even hinder their growth and make it more difficult for them to advance further."

Alex glanced briefly towards Saul before shifting his gaze back towards the Rune Soldiers currently collecting their spent bolt—specifically towards the crossbows in their hands.

Perhaps one of the reasons firearms—or rather, ’hot’ weaponry in general—had never truly developed in the worlds of this current life, was because of concerns regarding the growth of the wielder.

The prevailing belief across the plane was that if a weapon became too easy to use, too overwhelmingly powerful relative to its purpose, and removed too much danger from battle, then the wielder—especially soldiers and warriors—would struggle to experience the tempering effect of the battlefield.

As the saying went:

The strongest soldiers and warriors are forged within the fires of battle, hammered upon the anvil of war into bodies of steel and wills of iron tempered in the furnace of battle.

The saying itself embodied the idea that hardship and danger were essential to a warrior’s growth.

However, if one’s weapon made combat too easy... then there would be no hardship left to temper the individual.

And without tempering, stagnation naturally followed.

At least, that was the commonly accepted belief.

It was also one of the reasons why even the heirs of powerful noble families were rarely handed overwhelmingly powerful weapons at the very beginning of their development, despite their families more than capable of affording such armaments.

Alex shook his head.

"The crossbows are indeed powerful weapons," he admitted. "However, they are more suited for clearing out lesser opponents than serving as true mainline weapons.

"At present, their threat level is roughly around Gold Rank—and even then, only barely. Against anything stronger, bringing down the target using the crossbows alone would become increasingly difficult."

Alex paused briefly before another thought surfaced in his mind.

"Still, I am not entirely convinced that these weapons would completely remove the tempering effect of the battlefield," he continued thoughtfully. "I see them as somewhat similar to bows.

"Bows are ranged weapons as well, yet countless archers throughout history have risen far along the path of power. And unlike traditional bows, crossbows possess a comparatively shorter effective range, meaning a crossbowman will still occasionally need to operate dangerously close to the enemy."

He glanced towards the Rune Soldiers once more.

"So even though the weapon itself is powerful, it still creates its own form of battlefield tempering."

"I see..." Saul nodded slowly.

He did not attempt to argue against Alex’s reasoning. That had never been his intention in the first place.

He had merely wanted to bring the subtle drawback of the weapon to Alex’s attention. Since the youth had clearly already considered the issue carefully, Saul’s purpose had been fulfilled.

As for whether Alex’s expectations regarding the crossbows would ultimately prove correct... that was something only the future could answer.

At the very least, the weapons had already succeeded perfectly in their immediate role as ’rabble swatters’, as Alex had described them.

***

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