Chapter 290: Lock and Load

Sage brought out a few targets. They were very simple, just cut down tree trunks about five feet tall, split in half vertically. A bullseye was painted on the flat side and they had two legs on the back to stand it up. He motioned for the two Hoplites he’d brought to set up the targets. They picked them up and carried them out into Wu Chang’s courtyard. While they got to work, Sage started his sales pitch for the gear Wu Chang was looking at.

“This is the standard equipment of the Jade Horde. The Elite unit that is. The infantry aren’t equipped with Stumblebows, and the Archers don’t have the Horde Halberd.”

Wu Chang hadn’t heard the names of those weapons before, “Did you say stumble bow?”

Sage nodded, “Pardon me, let me introduce them to you. These weapons are all my own original designs. They are designed to be highly functional, but cheap to produce. I wanted every member to have the same weapons to streamline training and reduce logistics issues.”

He picked up a large crossbow with a large box on top of it, “This is the Stumblebow. It can automatically cock and load a bolt from this magazine,” Sage tapped the box, “but it makes the bow extremely heavy for a moment when it does. That’s where the name comes from. If you try to load it while on the move it will likely knock you down.”

The Hoplites had just finished moving the targets into position and Sage waved them out of the way. He walked over to the side of the chamber. The room they were in had its side open to the courtyard. The only thing blocking the view were large columns. Sage walked over to the edge of the room and lifted the Stumblebow to his shoulder, pulling the trigger and firing a bolt off. He wasn’t the greatest marksman, but one of the targets was only a dozen yards away and it was an easy shot. The bolt stabbed deep into the thick wood with a loud thunk. Then he moved the crossbow to his waist and demonstrated to Wu Chang the loading process. He activated the mechanism and visibly strained from the weight. The string was pulled back and a bolt fell into place.

Sage handed the weapon to Wu Chang and let him take over. Wu Chang fired off a bolt at the target placed at about 50 yards away, striking it within a foot of the bullseye. Sage whistled in appreciation and then watched Wu Chang nearly topple over from the loading process.

“It’s quick, but a bit rough. The price you pay for reducing cost. You can also handle the issue by leaning it onto the ground or a strong object,” Sage politely took the Stumblebow back from Wu Chang and walked into the courtyard. He kneeled down behind a waist high boulder and set the Stumblebow atop it. To prove his point he started rapidly firing. Braced against the rock he could fire two shots per second, quickly emptying the rest of the magazine. Then he popped it off and clicked in another one he pulled out from his ring. Then he rose back to his feet and fired a bolt. To reload this time he lowered the Stumblebow downwards, leaning the front hook against the ground. Then he picked it back up to his shoulder and fired again. He shot a few more bolts this way, firing about one per second, and getting quite the workout from lifting and dropping the heavy crossbow.

Then he swapped out the magazine again, this time with a metallic box covered in array symbols, “This is the upgraded magazine that holds two hundred bolts instead of only twelve.”

Wu Chang thought Sage was crude for kneeling on the ground, but after seeing the flurry of bolts he changed his mind. He also got into the same position and started firing at the furthest target placed a hundred yards away. Most of the bolts struck on the painted target area, but a few missed entirely. Even so, it was pretty impressive to have such a high hit rate at such range with a new weapon. When the bolts finally ran out, Wu Chang was laughing like a maniac and he looked over at Sage with a smile.

“You say, all of your Archers use these? How many of them get the bigger bolt case?”

“Every archer gets one, though right now only one in ten of our troops are archers. The new weapons are still in production and we’ve been recruiting faster than we’ve been producing. The Storage Case is nearly the same cost to produce as the Stumblebow itself. Eventually all the Elites will have them while normal archers will be equipped with the wooden bolt cases.”

Wu Chang nodded his head, seeming pleased with the arrangement. Wu Chang was about to set the Stumblebow down, but Sage shook his head and instead threw Wu Chang another Storage Case. Wu Chang tested out the reloading process, and found it simple enough. During which, Sage picked up the Arrow Wall Shield and faced it towards Wu Chang.

“Wu Chang. Fire at me!”

“What?”

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“Fire the Stumblebow at me. Aim here,” Sage held the shield with his left arm and tapped the front of the shield with his right hand, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

Wu Chang looked dubiously at Sage for a moment before he complied and fired a bolt. There was no loud thud of a bolt hitting wood, or the clang of it bouncing off metal. Wu Chang was worried it penetrated too deep and carefully studied the shield. There wasn’t a mark on it.

“Again!”

Wu Chang was a bit confused, but then he fired again. And again. After about a dozen bolts he finally stopped. He had watched closely, but every bolt seemed to simply disappear. Sage laughed and then he turned towards the courtyard. He sent in some Qi and the shield lit up, releasing the dozen bolts out into the yard. They had all the remaining momentum from when they were about to strike Sage, and their firing angles were far from concentrated. They blasted out in a large cone of fire, striking all around the closest target with only a few hitting home.

Sage held out the shield to Wu Chang, “Arrow Wall. This shield can capture projectiles and then release them all again. As you can see it is like they are captured in time and when released they have the same power as when they were caught. So, long distance arrows at the end of their flight are not so great for returning. On the other hand…”

Sage had Wu Chang hold up the shield, after teaching him how to use it of course, and then used the Stumblebow to carefully fire a dozen arrows from close range directly into the center. Then he let Wu Chang use the shield. This time, the arrows came out with a tight grouping, each of them thumping loudly into the target and nearly tearing it to shreds from the huge volley.

“Does it only work on arrows?”

“It will work on anything smaller than the face of the shield. As you noticed you have to ‘catch’ the attack with the shield. So if it can’t fit, it can’t be caught. Also, there is something of a limit on the power it can withstand. I’ve only tested it on Core Formation Cultivators so far, I imagine a Nascent Soul Expert could shatter it pretty easily.”

Then Sage picked up the last weapon, it was the same height as the shield. It had a short haft with a foot long spear tip. There was also a small axe and a pick mounted just below the spear tip. The axe head was sort of an ‘L’ shape, the lower half of it hollowed out so it could be used like a hook. The pick on the opposite side of the axe was basically a slightly curved spike, but it angled towards the spear tip. Sage grabbed it just below the head and the haft started to retract. In just a few moments it shrank from three feet down to only a few inches.

Wu Chang was very taken aback. It now looked like Sage was holding a short sword with a leaf shaped blade and a curved blade basket hilt. Then the shaft grew again and Sage grabbed hold of it, the spear kept growing longer until finally Sage was holding it with two hands and bracing it on the ground with his foot.

“This is the Horde Halberd, as you can see, it can be worn on the waist for travel, and then extended to length for battle. It also has another feature.”

Sage showed off the full twenty foot length of the Halberd and then the other feature. The weight increasing function that had been his inspiration for the weapon. Now with an axe head it could perform devastating downward cuts, which Sage demonstrated by splitting one of the wooden targets clean in half. He tossed the weapon over to Wu Chang and let him play around with it for a while.

“Oh, and there’s also the greatest weapon of them all. The armor.”

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