Life Hunter

"Free City, huh?" Arima mumbled and looked at Elia. He and Lifa had already returned to the elves' royal mansion.

"I assume Niria can find me a smithy, right?"

"Yes, of course. She already left though…"

"That's not a problem," Arima interrupted her. He sat on a couch and closed his eyes. "Don't disturb me for a moment. [Revelare Caelum et Terram - Index Mundo]."

He cast World index. His spirit and mana spread across the whole continent. Lifa and Elia who were in the same room as him staggered and almost lost their balance. The amount of spirit Arima had released in that short moment was monstrous.

One more time, everyone felt a magnitude of strength they had never seen before scan them. All of those who felt the previous clash between Jorga and Arima were wondering what the hell was going on today.

Especially the Elven King. This time he realized that it came from his own mansion and was stupefied. Jorga also felt it. He glanced on the direction of the city and returned to rest soon after.

Then, the wave of spirit stopped as quickly as it arose and Arima opened his eyes. He rubbed his temples a bit. "Found her."

When Elia heard him, she felt extremely incredulous. She then realized that no one on this continent could ever be able to hide from him even if they wanted to.

"I'll go right away. There's a magic I want to test," Arima beckoned Night and the latter stood up and came to his side.

"You're going to try that?" He asked and Arima nodded.

"What is it?"

"Displacement magic," Night replied to Lifa in Arima's stead because he was already focused on his magic formation. An azure circle formed at his feet and surrounded both him and Night.

"[Atlantis]," he chanted and the circle produced a vortex of azure water that shrouded the two of them. "Later," he waved his hand then the circle and the vortex shrank until it disappeared along with him and Night.

At this exact moment, a tall and good-looking elf barged into the room. When he saw that there was only Elia and Lifa, he panicked a bit.

"Elia! Was the human you welcomed the man who had a conflict with Master Jorga?"

"Father. Yes, it was him."

Although he had already expected it, his eyes narrowed. When he realized such a powerhouse visited his daughters in his own mansion, he felt frustrated. "Where is he now?"

"He went to Free City," Lifa responded calmly. Her father turned toward her.

"Why did he clash with Master Jorga?"

Lifa shook her head. "I'm not sure myself. They faced each other for a few minutes and after that, they looked as if they were best friends."

The King lowered his head and acquiesced. "I see, if he ever comes back, tell me," he instructed and turned around to leave.

"Father, wait," Elia stopped him before he could.

"What is it?"

"There's something I need to discuss with you; something that human brought to the table."

The Elven King frowned. "Say it."

***

Inside a carriage, outside of the forest, Niria was heading toward Free City. She was talking with her guard about the spirit wave they had just sensed.

"Alex, who do you think it was? That old snake?"

"No," Alex shook his head.

"Then, who? I don't think anyone else could do-" She stopped because she sensed a strange magic fluctuation. She looked outside through the window of the carriage, which was pulled by strange creatures that looked like mapinguaries. She spotted a weird azure whirlpool in the path of her carriage and saw Arima and Night walk out from it.

Niria was still trying to comprehend what just happened when Alex spoke up, "He is the one who did it."

Alex's sudden words shocked her but she didn't even dare denying them. After all, he was one of the strongest individuals in the Alliance. The irony was that he had decided to become a mere bodyguard for Niria.

"Hey there," Arima smiled, he was happy to have succeeded on his first try. That magic had no risk when well controlled but the problem was the destination that one needs to be familiar with. But his detection magic was enough to compensate for it.

On the other side, Niria realized that she had underestimated this human unfairly and was a bit angry with herself. She was indeed ready to help Elia with her peace strategy but she didn't believe that Arima was actually resourceful enough to play a huge part.

"…Do you need something by any chance?" She asked.

"Yeah, just a small favor."

"It's all right. You can ask whatever as long it's not exaggerated. You can get in to talk while we head to the city."

Arima entered the carriage and sat down next to Alex, with Niria in front of him. There wasn't space for Night so the he jumped on the top of the cart and sat down.

"So, what is this favor you're referring to?"

"Keeping things short; I need a private smithy for a week if possible."

"Smithy? Right, you said you wanted mithril and adamantite from the elves. Does that mean you got them?"

"Yes. So, can you do it?"

"Of course, it's a small thing. I can do it for you in half an hour after arriving," Niria said and paused. "But I want you to do something in return."

"Hm? What is it?"

"I want you to give me the Pope alive," she responded and Alex sighed.

Arima widened his eyes a bit, it was unexpected. "That shouldn't be a problem… if that's all you want; I can do it."

"Thank you. Then I'll prepare what you want when we arrive."

"Ok, but I'm in a hurry. So, we'll do it this way," when Arima said that, a magic circle had already covered the carriage and an azure vortex surrounded it. "[Atlantis]."

"This..." Niria was curious and observed it through the window. From inside the vortex, you could only see an azure whirlpool where you looked at. "Impressive. Is this teleportation magic?"

"No, it's more like space distortion; a wormhole. Well, you probably don't know about it so you can think what you want," Arima smiled. "By the way, we arrived."

"What?" Elia was caught off guard. She didn't feel any change in her environment but when the azure wall disappeared, she was shocked to see the city in the distance. Even Alex reacted and his eyes narrowed.

"If it's okay I would like start working as soon as possible," Arima uttered to haste them.

"Yes, of course," Elia rushed the mapinguari-like creatures and entered the city. Free City was even bigger than the capital of Terses. The streets and the buildings also looked more modern and refined. Maybe because there were a lot of people with different skill sets. On the streets, there were elves, therianthropes, dwarves, pixies, and a few members of the demon race as well.

The carriage passed by in the streets with Night on its roof, which caused a comical situation where people would point at him whilst laughing and whispering. Many of them found Night cute though. When they reached the city's castle, Niria invited Arima inside and gave him access to its smithy in no time.

He briefly inspected the smithy, with all of its the tools, the stove, the anvil and thanked Alex for bringing him here.

"No problem," Alex said shortly and left as fast.

Arima cracked all of joints and took off his coat. "Let's begin. Night, for mithril I won't need your help, but for adamantite, your flame will be helpful."

"Sure."

***

The next day, Arima sat cross-legged and a silver glowing sphere hovered in front of him. Inside of the latter were varied mithril components such as a slide, a trigger, a magazine, and the frame of a big caliber handgun which looked a bit like a 44. magnum.

Arima exhaled and the sphere descended on the floor, with all of what was inside. Mithril could only be influenced by magic and to effectively use it, one needs to have great control.

"I got the hang of it," Arima said and looked at the parts on the floor. He was, evidently, trying to recreate firearms. If in this world with magic even swords could be powerful, there was no way that the deadliest weapon ever made by humans couldn't became a fearsome weapon.

In Arima's world, guns were greatly advanced. Although the overall frame wasn't very optimized and the bullets were still physical for the most part, there wasn't any casing or propeller with a primer. It only needed a certain type of energy that one charged the gun with. Additionally, the accuracy and recoil control were incredibly perfected.

The only reason Arima decided to craft guns was for the possibility to fabricate a rail gun which could also be called a plasma gun. With his lightning, it could become an extremely handy weapon.

So, he chose to create the frame of the gun with mithril and make the barrel with adamantite to be able to use a strong detonation to fire the bullets which were also made of adamantite, a heavy and tough metal. He had planned to make a handgun and a heavy rifle. Obviously, he had started with the handgun.

He took out more mithril and this time began to make the main components of the rifle.

"By the way, I wanted to ask you, why do you want to help this country that much?" Night asked while he was working.

Arima didn't look away from big glowing sphere in front of him as he answered, "Because I want to."

"Well, I kind of expected that," Night said helplessly.

The next day, Arima finalized the frame of the rifle and asked Night to help him in the melting of the adamantite, to start forging the barrels. This time he needed to work on it with a hammer to temper it and turn it into a cylinder.

Afterward, he created a drill in mithril and reamed the newly created cylinder and rifled it too. He used the remaining melted metal to create bullets of which he already had made the molds for.

He finished that in two days.

The fifth day, Arima assembled the guns and ended up with a big sniper rifle that had a large cylinder barrel fixed inside a rectangular casing and a handgun that looked more like a hand cannon.

The sixth day, he enchanted those weapons with detonation magic which would activate when the trigger was pressed. He also created a scope and enchanted it to improve it.

The seventh day, Arima was staring at the two finished guns in front of him.

"What are you looking at so intently?"

"I was wondering if could bind these to my soul," he touched the weapon and answered Night's question.

"Bind? Like your sword?"

"Yeah. Well, for now, I'll just try."

Arima grabbed the handgun and closed his eyes. He already had a soul weapon and a soul beast so it would be strange if he didn't understand a thing or two about souls. Ten minutes later, a fourth of the gun had become translucid. Only after another thirty minutes did the gun vanish and became bound to his soul.

Arima sighed. "Forty minutes. That god did it in a second with Karma," he looked at the rifle this time and did the same thing; it took him two hours for this one. Once he was done with that, he looked at the gun magazine in his hand; loaded with adamantite bullets.

He blankly stared at it for a while then started binding it to his soul as well and finished after twenty minutes.

"It worked…" Arima muttered. If binding the magazine along with the bullets worked then that meant he could get retrieve the bullets he fires and repair them in his soul indefinitely, and of course, they will also become stronger. In the end, he bound every magazine he had made.

"[Ira]," Arima called, and his handgun appeared in his hand. The two guns were called 'Ira' and 'Superbia', meaning 'Anger' and 'Pride' respectively.

He loaded Ira and aimed at a one-meter thick adamantite plate before firing without using any additional magic. A deafening sound resounded in the room and the bullet pierced through the plate and dug into the wall of the smithy. The noise jolted Night awake at the same time.

"Huh!? What's going on?! Where am I?!"

Arima rolled his eyes at him and looked at the hole in the plate. "This is stronger than I thought it would be…"

It had to be said that adamantite was one of the toughest metals in this world and he had used the lowest force his handgun could deliver.

"It's over?" Night asked and yawned.

"Yeah, let's go. I'll test Superbia later," Arima said. He grabbed his coat and opened the door. He groaned when the light of the sun reached his eyes.

Night followed him drowsily. "Let's go where? I forgot what we were supposed to do…"