Chapter 15 : Chapter 15
Chapter 15: Another Profit Share, Exchanging for a New Gun
Time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, another month had gone by.
And today was the day Mark would once again bring over the perfume sales profit share.
Ryan had been looking forward to this day for a long time.
After all, whether or not he could exchange for a new submachine gun from the System depended entirely on how much profit Mark brought him.
Mark did not keep Ryan waiting for long before arriving at the Orphanage.
“Ryan, Kaya, I’m here to pay you your share.”
Mark strode into Kaya’s office and called out excitedly.
Ryan and Kaya had already been waiting there.
“Mark, how much is the profit share this time?”
Kaya asked.
“Hehehe, Kaya, take a guess.”
Mark did not answer directly, instead telling Kaya to guess first.
Ryan immediately understood that the profit share this time was probably going to be huge.
“You want me to guess? Last time, the total profit was 520 Gold Coins, so this time... has it doubled? 1,040 Gold Coins?”
Kaya ventured.
“Too small. Your thinking is too small.”
Mark shook his head and put on a mysterious expression.
“How about this? I’ll give you a hint. Over the past three months, I’ve already used my family’s influence to put the perfume on shelves in shops across the entire kingdom.”
“Across the entire kingdom...”
Kaya was momentarily stunned when she heard that.
Ryan, on the other hand, was not too surprised. He knew this was exactly what a competent merchant family ought to do.
The first two months had only been a period of observation.
Once they realized just how profitable the perfume was, they would naturally start selling it on a large scale throughout the kingdom.
Ryan guessed that this profit share was definitely going to be enormous.
“Ryan, what about you? Do you want to take a guess?”
“10,000 Gold Coins?”
Ryan gave a tentative guess.
“Ah!?”
The moment Mark heard Ryan’s guess, he was startled.
“What? Did I guess right?”
Ryan asked with a smile.
“Uh... as expected of you. Yes, you guessed right.”
Mark smiled bitterly and shook his head.
He had originally wanted to see a shocked expression on Ryan’s face.
He had not expected Ryan to guess the total profit in advance.
“The total profit over these three months came to 10,630 Gold Coins.”
Ryan calculated silently. His share would be 2,126 Gold Coins.
An overnight fortune.
Kaya would also receive more than a thousand Gold Coins.
“Not bad.”
Ryan nodded in satisfaction.
“You child, honestly...”
Kaya felt rather helpless when she saw that Ryan remained so calm in the face of such a huge sum of Gold Coins.
Even after working for so many years, she had never seen this much money.
And yet in only three months, Ryan had earned so many Gold Coins.
In the past, Kaya would not even have dared to imagine such a thing.
Ryan did not comment.
It was only perfume.
If he wanted to, he could create even more wildly popular products.
It was just that his ambitions did not lie in that direction.
He still had 50 Gold Coins left over from last time. Adding this new share of 2,126 Gold Coins, his savings had now reached 2,176 Gold Coins.
The price of exchanging for a P90 submachine gun in the System was 1,800 Gold Coins, which was more than enough.
Ryan wanted to hurry off and practice with the new firearm, so after greeting them, he left first.
Mark also departed shortly afterward.
The perfume’s explosive sales had left him with far too much work to do.
It was only because Ryan was the creator of the perfume that Mark had come personally to deliver the money.
...
Ryan arrived at the outskirts of the town and took out the target he had prepared in advance.
Right afterward, he spent 1,800 Gold Coins in the System to exchange for the P90 submachine gun he had been thinking about for so long.
Ryan carefully examined the metallic firearm in his hands.
Its appearance could only be called an oddity among gun designs. The futuristic lines broke away completely from the conventional image of a traditional submachine gun.
The entire weapon used a bullpup layout. The body was only 500 millimeters long, yet within that compact frame lay astonishing firepower.
The matte-black receiver looked like a carefully polished piece of obsidian. At the front, the slightly narrowed barrel was covered by a metal shroud with cooling vents. Three oval-shaped vents were arranged in a triangular pattern, allowing the barrel’s heat to dissipate quickly during firing.
Embedded along the top of the receiver was a long polymer rail. Beneath the rail sat a semi-transparent fifty-round magazine, set at a forty-five-degree angle.
The grip was positioned at the middle of the gun’s body and made of anti-slip rubber, its surface covered with dense diamond-shaped textures. Near the web of the hand was a shallow groove that perfectly matched the natural curve of the fingers.
Now that he had obtained a new firearm, Ryan could not wait to start practicing.
He spent 70 Gold Coins in the System and exchanged for 10,000 rounds of ammunition.
Under normal pricing, 10,000 rounds should have cost only 50 Gold Coins.
But Ryan had made an additional request to the System: the ammunition it provided had to already be loaded into magazines.
That way, all he had to do was swap magazines.
So on top of the original 50 Gold Coins, the System charged him an extra 20.
Ryan felt that those 20 Gold Coins were nothing to him, and in return they solved his biggest problem when it came to reloading.
At this point, he could practically be said to have unlimited ammunition—at least in a lesser sense.
Ryan pressed the magazine release catch at the base of the magazine with the thumb of his left hand, then used his right hand to grip the front end of the magazine and push the fifty-round magazine along the guide rail on top of the receiver, until he heard a light click.
Only then did he confirm that the magazine was securely in place.
After that, he pressed the palm of his right hand against the rear end of the grip. His index finger rested lightly on the trigger, while his middle, ring, and little fingers clenched the grip tightly. The web of his hand was pressed close to the junction between the grip and the receiver, forming a stable hold.
His left hand gripped the forward handle, with his palm pressed firmly against the bottom of it.
Then Ryan leaned forward slightly, shifting his center of gravity onto the balls of his feet and bending his knees a little to absorb the recoil.
His shoulders sank naturally as he braced the buttstock firmly against the deltoid area just below his right collarbone. The axis of the gun remained perfectly aligned with his shoulder.
His eyes looked straight ahead at the target. With his right eye, he sighted through the weapon’s mechanical sights—the front post and the rear aperture aligned into a straight line. His gaze flickered rapidly between the bullseye and the sights, confirming his aim.
The next instant,
Ryan pulled the trigger.
Da-da-da-da-da!
The gunfire ripped through the air with a sharp, tearing sound, and the vibration of the weapon intensified.
The target in front of Ryan was directly destroyed by that burst of fire.
The only flaw was that this gun’s recoil was fairly strong, and Ryan was not used to it yet.
But that did not matter. He only needed time to practice.
He had almost unlimited ammunition here.
Da-da-da-da-da-da!
The empty, silent edge of the forest rang with a constant stream of gunfire.
The birds in the forest were frightened into flight and quickly fled this troubled place.
Twenty minutes passed, and the 10,000 rounds Ryan had just bought were already gone.
In truth, burning through 10,000 rounds only required a little over ten minutes. The reason it had taken twenty was that Ryan was still unfamiliar with changing magazines.
But when he thought about how quickly the ammunition was being consumed, Ryan could not help feeling alarmed.
This submachine gun burned through ammunition much faster than the handgun did.
With the Gold Coins he had left, he could only afford to buy another 30,000 rounds at most.
Those would all be gone within an hour.
Still, the P90’s recoil was far stronger than the handgun’s.
He could not practice with it all day the way he did with the pistol.
After finishing his practice with the P90, Ryan felt as though his whole body had been hollowed out. Every part of him ached terribly.
“Ryan!”
Fina came looking for him, calling out from a distance.
“Fina, you’re here.”
Ryan looked at her with a smile.
“Hehe, Ryan, I’m here to practice my shooting.”
“All right, go ahead.”
Ryan handed the handgun to Fina and watched her practice.
This had already become part of their routine.
After finishing her magic lessons, Fina would come here to practice shooting.
If she performed well and her accuracy exceeded ninety percent, Ryan would praise her.
And every time she heard Ryan praise her, Fina’s face would light up with a smile.
Ryan also liked watching Fina smile.
Fina was the same age as Ryan.
So she was working to earn money as well.
Whether for daily life or for finding her parents in the future, money was essential.
But for Fina, making money was far easier than it was for other people.
Among the children in the Orphanage, aside from Ryan, who was an exception,
the others only earned around 10 to 30 Copper Coins a day.
But Fina was different.
Or rather, Mages earned money far more easily than ordinary people.
That was because Mages could create something called a Magic Crystal.
A Magic Crystal was a device into which a Mage stored all of their own magic power.
Magic Crystals had many uses.
One of the most common was as a Mage’s “power bank.”
It was similar to the portable chargers used for phones on Blue Star in Ryan’s previous life.
When a Mage had exhausted their own magic power, they could absorb the stored magic in a Magic Crystal to recover.
Aside from that, Magic Crystals could also be used as energy sources.
For example, if a fire-attribute Magic Crystal were placed in a pool, the pool would turn into a hot spring.
Fina’s job was to store all of her magic power into Magic Crystals, then sell those Magic Crystals in exchange for money.
Afterward, she would absorb magic power from the air and store it back into her body, repeating the cycle over and over.
The only drawback was that if Fina wanted to refill herself completely by absorbing magic power from the air, it would take several hours.
In truth, though, this was also beneficial to Fina. It strengthened her control over magic power, and over time, it could even increase her maximum capacity.
At the beginning, when Fina used up all the magic power in her body, she could only create a single Magic Crystal.
But now, all the magic power in her body was enough to create three Magic Crystals.
Those three Magic Crystals could be sold for around 1 Gold Coin.
So in the entire Orphanage, aside from Ryan, Fina was the richest. She was truly a little rich girl in name and in fact.
Even so, she handed half of that money over to the Orphanage in gratitude for raising her.
Kaya had once tried to refuse, but Fina kept insisting, so Kaya had no choice but to accept it.