Chapter 88 - Seventy-Nine: Fight to the Death (Part Two)
The elf struggled to control his impulse to rush forward, knowing he had to keep distant from the front line—with the firearm in his hand causing disruption to his opponent.
It could also attract the enemy’s pursuit.
When humans first invented firearms, elves looked down on these iron tubes, because initially, firearms could only shoot a few dozen yards. Past that range, even the best sharpshooters could only manage to hit the ground at their feet.
But as time passed, the history of human firearms began to stride forward. In just a hundred years, humans had shared the newest firearms with the dwarves, those that could shoot two hundred yards or even farther. Some rangers in the elf kingdom had even seen humans and dwarves with firearms that could shoot four hundred yards.
Such firearms were extremely rare—it seemed you could count them on the fingers of one hand—just four of them.
One belonged to the dwarven hunter Karl Mithril-Ingot, who was said to have been named by his foster father—a legendary dwarven hunter with an unfortunate childhood. His village was slaughtered by Chaos, and a legendary craftsman of unknown identity raised him until adulthood and crafted a firearm for him. Now he leads a dwarven patrol team in the Central Mountains, vowing to kill all unwelcome Chaos intruders.
One was in the hands of the legendary punisher of the Church of Justice, the human Jean Faber Reynaud. Like Karl, he was a foster son of that legendary craftsman. Unlike Karl, he had a happy childhood; as the third son of Earl Reynaud, he had a small fiefdom, but upon reaching adulthood, he declined it and became a punisher. He also had a firearm, and it was rumored that a shot from over five hundred yards away was related to him, but he never admitted it.
One was held by the legendary wood elf shepherding the Sea of Trees, Rosa Green-Sea, an abandoned half-elf with the appearance of a wood elf but a human father. The craftsman lord took her back home, taught her hunting and killing, and after reaching adulthood, the wood elf returned to the Sea of Trees to become a shepherdess. Her devotion moved the Goddess of Nature, and the firearm in her hands was the biggest nightmare for all desecrators of the Sea of Trees.