Alexei had never seen a gun with barrels arranged side by side, pointing in the same direction.
But even so, how useful could it really be?
Just pulling it required a horse, a small squad of soldiers, or even a banshee.
Reloading and aiming on the battlefield would take up a lot of manpower.
If those people were using rifled muskets instead, they would probably achieve better results, right?
Alexei frowned in secret.
He couldn’t quite understand why his lord was developing this thing.
The rifled musket was an extremely powerful weapon.
According to Hughes, it had a "generational gap" over the flintlock.
Alexei cast a doubtful glance at the so-called Gatling gun.
Could this thing really be more useful than a rifled musket?
Hughes suddenly paused for a few seconds.
Then, his expression brightened, and he clapped his hands.
"Perfect timing. There are murlocs gathering in the south. Apparently, there are quite a few Arm Monsters among them."
Arm Monsters had always been a headache for Alexei.
They moved too fast, negating much of the range advantage of rifled muskets.
Mines could deal with them, but—
The mines Hughes had developed were still semi-finished products.
If Nini made the fuses, they would indeed explode reliably.
But Nini could just as easily cut down the monsters with her sword.
The efficiency might not be much lower than using mines.
And if they didn’t use Nini’s modified sea serpent spell as a fuse, the detonation success rate was too low.
Mines would become an unreliable, luck-based weapon.
The real problem was that if a mine failed to detonate, someone had to retrieve it.
This was Castel, after all.
They couldn’t just leave mines lying around.
A Holy Guard squad had once suffered an accidental detonation while recovering a mine.
Several soldiers had been injured.
Luckily, they had been standing on the opposite side of the explosive charge, so they only suffered from the blast shockwave.
Now, the soldiers were very reluctant to use mines.
Until they could find a reliable fuse, Alexei had no intention of deploying mines on a large scale.
This left them without a good solution for dealing with Arm Monsters.
If more than three of them appeared on the battlefield at once, the Holy Guard wouldn’t be able to concentrate their fire quickly enough.
As a result, their current battle tactics relied on long-range shooting from the Holy Guard.
The banshees held long swords and acted as the last line of defense.
If the Arm Monsters broke through, Alexei would order the soldiers to cease fire.
Then, the banshees would cut down the Arm Monsters in close combat.
It was impressive if they even managed to reach the battlefield.
Without delay, the group entered the network tunnels from the underground core furnace of the church.
Before long, they emerged near the beach.
There were three patrol squads here.
The rest of the Holy Guard were still on their way.
More than ten banshees had already arrived.
Based on past experience, banshees could quickly kill three times their number in Arm Monsters during close combat.
If their numbers reached half that of the monsters, they could completely halt an Arm Monster charge.
Not a single one would break through.
Hughes squinted into the distance.
He could make out over fifty Arm Monsters.
They formed a dense, writhing mass, completely covering the beach.
"They can gather this many at once now!?"
"No, this time there are way more than usual."
Alexei’s expression turned serious.
With this many Arm Monsters, the Holy Guard would be almost useless.
Even if they gathered a hundred soldiers and started shooting from their maximum range of a thousand meters, they’d be lucky to kill ten Arm Monsters.
These creatures were strange.
Sometimes, a single shot could kill one.
Other times, an entire squad’s concentrated fire wouldn’t bring one down.
The reason was simple—
The core of an Arm Monster was the disgusting flesh ball in its center.
Shooting the surrounding arms at most slowed it down.
As long as the central core wasn’t hit, the creature wouldn’t stop.
The banshees had discovered this firsthand.
They once tried cutting off every single arm, but the creature kept writhing forward.
Only when they stabbed their long swords into its core did it finally die.
But these things moved incredibly fast.
At several hundred meters, soldiers relied on massed fire rather than precise aiming.
That was why Alexei, upon seeing so many Arm Monsters, immediately turned to Ash.
In his opinion, this battle belonged to the banshees.
The Holy Guard would probably just be cleaning up afterward.
Hughes didn’t concern himself with all that.
He directed the banshees to mount the Gatling gun on a tripod.
Then, he had them bring over several wooden crates and took out a strange-looking object.
It resembled a metal pastry box.
Hughes secured it above the Gatling gun’s barrel.
This was the ammunition hopper.
Since this prototype still required a hand crank to load and fire bullets, its rate of fire was limited.
So Hughes hadn’t designed it for belt-fed ammunition.
Belt-fed systems greatly increased the feeding speed, but clearing malfunctions was troublesome.
With the current level of mechanical manufacturing, firearm malfunctions were still relatively common.
After loading the bullets, Hughes didn’t wait for the rest of the Holy Guard to gather.
He immediately turned the gun towards the Sea Urchin Monster.
Alexei was startled but, after glancing around, said nothing.
Ash, Chloe, and the others were all here.
There were also plenty of banshees.
Even if all the Arm Monsters charged at once, they could retreat safely.
But the real issue was—
Wasn’t this position way too far from the Arm Monsters?
Even though they covered the beach in a dense swarm, they were over 1,500 meters away.
Alexei had graduated from a formal military academy.
He wouldn’t misjudge that distance.
Even rifled muskets couldn’t deal effective damage at this range.
Their effective range was only a few hundred meters.
Their maximum range didn’t even reach 1,000 meters.
Beyond that, it was difficult to inflict lethal damage.
And even within range, aiming was almost impossible.
The only option was massed volley fire in the general direction of the enemy.
The hit rate was terrible.
These weapons were most effective within 200 meters.
1,500 meters was an unimaginable distance.
Hughes roughly aligned his aim.
This Gatling gun was just a prototype.
It hadn’t been sighted properly.
It also had no tracer rounds.
But Hughes had another method.
Dressed in her fitted outfit, Chloe blinked and pointed at herself.
"Me? Do you want me to kill the monsters?"
"No, activate your X-ray vision. I need to see the bullet impacts."
Chloe was momentarily stunned.
Then, she put her hands on her hips and raised both eyebrows.
"You mean ‘Self-Binding’? I can do that, but for what?"
"Look—those murlocs are within your ability’s range, right?"
"More or less. My ability covers from here to the shoreline."
"Then you’re my spotter.
Activate your ability, and use your mental communication to tell me where the bullets land."
Hughes grinned with anticipation as he looked ahead.
"Get ready for some beyond-visual-range shooting."