NOVEL NEXT Chapter 43: Girls’ Meeting at Night
The morning after I shared a bedroom with Snow.
The Centaur Karen Bishop left the Meiya Estate to go back to the Demon Continent.
We did recommend that she take it easy and stay for a little while, but she herself wanted to inform the other two friends of ojousama’s about her safety and to Merry-san and the gang about the plan, so she flew off like an arrow.
That’s a military girl for you.
Muscle for brains.
Snow stayed at the Meiya residence.
Moreover, she took over the responsibility of ojousama’s martial arts and swords training from me.
Meiya and I was to concentrate on the work on the M700P sniper rifle (although Meiya only did so far as help out).
In return for food and lodging and the magic liquid metal, I was supposed to teach her about guns, but since there was no time I had her accept that I will be concentrating on the sniper rifle.
As thanks I promised that I would do so right after Master and Madam had been rescued.
Our daily schedule nowadays is as follows.
Morning—Meiya and I working on the sniper rifle. Ojousama practicing magic power control.
Evening—Meiya and I working on the sniper rifle. Ojousama trains in unarmed combat and swordplay with Snow. Also, recently revolver and assault rifle firing practice had been added to her practice subjects.
This is one of those recent days.
By keeping up with practice without complaints, ojousama’s body had become stronger than average.
In unarmed and sword combat, she had reached a stage where she could defend herself.
On the other hand, her marksmanship was at a level where you can’t say it’s mere natural talent.
I can’t wait to have her hold the sniper rifle.
Then, about the fabrication progress…. Once I could make the core for carving the riflings, making the gun body won’t be that hard.
I dipped the core in the magic liquid metal and imagined the gun barrel around it, just like when using cold hammering.
To suppress jitter, I imagined a thick, heavy barrel.
The longer the barrel is, the front sight and rear sight became further apart, which makes it easier to sense [Aiming Errors], but long barrels make the muzzle end vibrate harder when the gun shakes. So I made the barrel thick.
For rifle barrels, a length of about 500 mm is enough, but for the M700 Police I’m making now the barrel was 660 mm long.
It is the barrel’s length that gives it the precision for accurate firing.
The weight also had the advantage of making it more stable. However, if it was too heavy it becomes difficult to carry, so I needed to cut grooves on the thick barrel as a method to make it lighter
Then again, the Vampire clan had more physical strength than humans. Ojousama was no exception, by using body strengthening she defeated me in arm wrestling.
The other thing I need to pay attention to about the barrel was cutting an angle on the muzzle—the so called [Crown].
The end of the barrel, the muzzle, was a part that is easy to damage
If the muzzle is damaged, the moment a bullet is fired through it, gases would cause the bullet’s trajectory to be offset, although only slightly
So the muzzle is not left just as a cross-section cut from the barrel, but instead an angle is cut into it. This way it becomes harder to damage. This part is called the [crown].
There is also the [bedding] where the gun receiver (the part connected to the barrel and the bolt) is glued to the gunstock.
Unless the receiver is glued to the gunstock, the contact point becomes a [point] instead of a stable [surface] and the aiming precision becomes bad.
On the other hand, the barrel and the stock shouldn’t be glued too strongly together.
When the gun is fired, the barrel would vibrate strongly, though not by far. If it were to hit the stock at that time, the vibration would only become stronger, and also the vibration would be different each time so aiming accuracy would decrease
For that reason the barrel and the stock are separated by over 1 mm. Separating the barrel and the stock like this is called floating (or floating barrel). This way, every time the gun is fired, the barrel would move the same way (given that the bullet and the powder are identical), and won’t interfere much with the aiming accuracy.
Another point where the sniper rifle is different than other guns is the trigger.
In normal rifles, the trigger weight (the power needed to pull the trigger, trigger pull) is around 3 kg, but for the sniper rifle it is lowered to less than half of that. This kind of lightened trigger is called [Feather Touch] triggers.
Still, even though the trigger weight was so light, unless the trigger is pulled in the same direction as the bullet’s flight, it would affect the direction of said flight and the bullet will stray even if just a little bit (forward-backward movement have almost no effect on the bullet’s ballistic trajectory).
So to make sure that doesn’t happen, snipers do things like think of themselves not as people pulling a trigger, but become like stone and become one with the gun. Also, it is said that the former Japanese Army was taught to be [like frost descending on a dark night] when pulling the trigger.
For as long as they live, human bodies breathe and their hearts beat. It is impossible to be perfectly still.
Which is why various tricks become necessary.
There are still a lot of things that one needs to be careful of when making the sniper rifle body, but so long as care is taken during the manufacture, there will be no problems for the most part. The one that will be problematic is the bullet cartridge.
Even when making the revolver and the AK-47, the bullet cartridge had caused more problems than the gun body itself.
The cartridges we were making were 7.62 mm × 51.
The size is about 1.5 times a AAA battery.
This ammunition cartridge is to be used when aiming at targets 300 meters away.
I wonder how much time it’ll take to make this….
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At night, there was a knock on my bedroom door.
It was of course, my childhood friend and fiancée, Snow.
Every night since our reunion she would come sleep on the same bed with me.
Thanks to that I was finding it hard to keep my self-control….
Somehow, though, she’s being a bit strange tonight.
As she opened the door, the first thing out of Snow’s mouth is an apology.
“I’m sorry, Lute-kun, I’m not going to be sleeping with you tonight.”
“I don’t actually mind, but is something wrong?”
“Today Chrisse-chan invited me to a tea party tonight, and I promised to have a chat about lots of things.”
I see, so it was a pajama-party-like event.
“She said she’ll tell me all about Lute-kun as a butler, I’m looking forward to it. ….Also, there were some things on my mind so I thought I’d like to talk with her about it.”
“All right. It can’t be helped then. Don’t sleep so late, though. Tell that to ojousama, too.”
“Fufufufu, Lute-kun, you sound like Chrisse-chan’s mother”
“I’m not her mom, I’m her butler.”
“Ah that’s right isn’t it. Well, see you tomorrow then. Good night Lute-kun.”
“Yeah, ‘night.”
After exchanging pleasantries with Snow, I tucked in to bed early
Right this time, Snow is probably having a fun fun pajama party with ojousama.
For the first time since I reunited with Snow, I was sleeping alone. Feels a bit lonely.
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The next morning, I met up with Snow and ojousama in front of the dining room.
Of course, both of them looked a little sleepy.
They were both wearing dragon dresses.
They suited each of them all too well.
“Morning Snow, good morning ojousama.”
“Morning, Lute-kun.”
“*gasp*”
Snow greeted me as usual, but ojousama’s face turned red and she hid behind Snow’s back.
That reaction came as a shock to me.
Ojousama and I had known each other for over 2 years.
I didn’t think we were still so distant.
(Eh? Did I do something?)
Snow laughed in amusement. Seems like me making a confused face in the morning was funny.
“Lute-kun, you’re overreacting. She’s just embarrassed because we talked about lots of things about you last night.”
“Hold on there Snow. Just what about me were you talking about?”
[Y, you can’t, Snow-oneechan! That thing was a secret just between us!]
“It’s all right, I wasn’t going to tell Lute-kun.”
They ignored me and left for their room amicably, like a pair of sisters.
I was left behind all alone.
(What about me was it? Snow said [all sorts] of things, right… M, maybe she told her about how I shit my pants back at the orphanage!? Then it’s no wonder ojousama turned red in the face! Uooooo! Seriously!? Did my gentlemanly image suddenly crash and burn!?)
“Is anything the matter, Lute-sama?”
Meiya came and talked to me, who was writhing in agony alone in front of the room.
I ignored her call and continued writhing in agony.
Like this, several months passed since we arrived here.
—The time for the rescue is steadily approaching.