Standing in front of the trench to confirm the battlefield, Baron Bona held a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other as his assistant measured the length of this segment of the trench.
"All seven survivors of the Seventeenth Regiment of the Seventeenth Division of the Seventeenth Brigade said that it was Lord Malin who protected this stretch of trench for two full days and nights," another assistant said, flipping through the pages of the testimony report. "This is unrealistic, Your Excellency, even for a mortal, even if he is a child of Silverblood, a fifth-ring Mage, he could not possibly guard this line of defense without rest for two days."
Baron Bona did not respond but looked on as the workers responsible for picking up bullet casings hoisted bucket after bucket filled with casings up from the trench.
The Baron walked up to the buckets, crouched down, and picked a 12-gauge casing from a wooden bucket, with a slightly offset firing pin indent at the brass base.
He picked up several more casings and found that the firing pin indentations had very standardized cross markings—a cross-shaped firing pin, which represented the standard firing pin of the southern coastal region, with Carterburg as its representative.
He put the shotgun and hollow point bullet casings back into the bucket.
The Baron picked up some 9mm casings, which were rifle rounds, standard for the new bolt-action rifles.
The assistants also believed it was impossible for a person to continuously use a bolt-action rifle for two days and nights—in fact, the Baron thought so too until he saw the semi-automatic firearm.
With an all-metal stock shaped like a hammer, the Baron thought that if giants held it, they would surely use it as a hammer rather than a firearm. He watched as the chief commissar of the Seventeenth Division awkwardly opened the magazine cover and carefully inserted the double-row magazine, then carefully released his hold.
He had heard that being careless with this device could break fingers. Although somewhat skeptical, when the magazine snapped back into place swiftly, he had to consider whether it really could break his fingers.
Then... he had to admit, it was indeed so.
If he was not careful, he could indeed catch or even break his fingers.
However, in the subsequent shooting, he felt the advantage of the new semi-automatic firearm in terms of firepower.
A rifle could suppress a squad’s charge and kill them at least two hundred yards away.
The only problem was... it was too expensive. The Baron had asked the traveling repairmen how much it cost to make such a firearm, and although they were not too sure of the exact figure, they all said that it would take at least several hundred hours of manual labor to make one by hand.
And in terms of maintenance, it was probably the most headache-inducing aspect; without molds, each firearm was more like a piece of art than a weapon mass-produced. The parts made by the craftsmen had such a match rate that it could drive any logistic department’s nerve-wracked patients to despair.
And they could fire at least five magazines per minute.
This was the result under the premise of ensuring shooting accuracy within a hundred yards, including reloading time.
If an archer skilled in its use were to operate it, they could add another eight magazine clips.
And for suppressive fire within fifty yards, an archer could empty a magazine in three seconds—of course, this required a strongman to suppress the recoil and also a sufficiently robust physique.
Anyhow, the chief commissar couldn’t achieve that, and the giant archers couldn’t get their fingers through the trigger guard to pull the trigger—it was too small. Normal humans could use it, but to giants, the device seemed more like a toy.
"There are still many casings here, Your Excellency. I think it is beyond doubt that those survivors’ testimonies about Lord Malin firing enough bullets over the two days and nights are true, because aside from that, we have no news of any reinforcements. Almost all the firing pin marks found in the casings we have discovered are cross-shaped, and the very few needle-shaped firing pin marks are also the standard of the Seventeenth Division," said the assistant, raising his head from the sea of casings to the Baron.
"But looking at the scene, it seems that Lord Malin would need four arms to fire so many casings in two days and nights. His shoulders show no signs of comminuted fractures, which is a very tempting question indeed," the adjacent assistant maintained his skepticism.
"I’ve heard that Lord Malin possesses World Tree Saplings. In my usual investigations, I have also confirmed that Transcendents who are Botanical Manipulators allow their Vitalized Twigs to use firearms," said the assistant, who had finished measuring the trench, walking over: "World Tree Saplings have full consciousness and are many times stronger than Vitalized Twigs. Not to mention rifles, even shotguns they should be able to operate. Believe me, in a corridor, you definitely wouldn’t want to encounter a World Tree Sapling and the shotgun it controls."
"But even with World Tree Saplings, it’s not enough," said the assistant handling the casings as he stood up and patted his back. "By the way, I heard that Lord Malin has two World Tree Saplings. I think that would be about right."
"Two?" The assistant holding the testimony flipped through the papers in his hand, then raised his head to his colleagues: "According to all survivor testimonies, they all say Lord Malin possesses three World Tree Saplings."