Arcane Sniper [Matan’s Shooter]

To Leeha, this seemed rather fortunate.

Wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to gather new information, given that their traces were abundantly left behind?

The moment Leeha set foot forward, creak… the wooden door of the house opened.

As the hinges creaked, Leeha immediately cocked his Black Bass.

With a click, the muzzle of the Black Bass instantly aimed at the door.

However, Leeha couldn’t pull the trigger. The shadow cast by the door was also pointing a lengthy barrel at Leeha.

“Luger??”

Leeha’s eyes widened in shock upon recognizing it. Ironically, the person more startled was Luger.

“How are you here? No, how on earth did you-“

It seemed Luger, who had started his journey much earlier than Leeha, had just arrived.

“What? A day? It seemed like you left almost two days before me. Only got here now?”

“It’s me who should be saying that. Damn it, did that bastard Fernand give you a crystal ball or something?”

“What are you on about? I thought I was going to die getting up here. Fernand isn’t the kind to hand out something like a crystal ball lightly, you know.”

“What? You came up here?”

Luger frowned, his reaction a mix of surprise and bewilderment. From this, Leeha could tell.

The route chosen by Leeha and the one selected by Fernand were the same.

That is, Leeha had followed the path Fernand had shared without deviation! But what had there been along the way? Impossibly high cliffs and the nuisance of Gryphonia swarms had blocked the “Fernand route”. Right. That’s why he was late. Took a detour, did you?

“You mean to tell me you climbed those cliffs? Impossible. How could you?”

“Phahaha! That’s a secret, a secret. Oh dear, poor Luger-ssi. Doesn’t the name [Pierce] mean you should blast through cliffs like those, no?”

Seeing Luger’s face twist even more, Leeha burst into laughter. Solo acts of bravado were merely amusing in Leeha’s view.

Luger wasn’t the one to question what penetration had to do with rock climbing. In his mind, the fact that “he was later than Leeha” was the only thing that remained.

“Damn, I was supposed to shoot upon sight.”

“Giggle, no way. If you had tried to shoot me, I would have pulled the trigger too, don’t you think? Could you have dodged it?”

“Do you think you could beat me in reaction speed?”

“Hmm, feel free to test it if you wish.”

Leeha slung his Black Bass over his shoulder, wearing a smile.

To anyone watching, this might have seemed like a tense confrontation, but for the Musketeers, it was just business as usual.

Luger searched the interior of the house with a loud ‘hmpf,’ showing his annoyance.

Leeha did not indulge in any further pranks.

Instead, the fact that he had run into Luger was reassuring.

“If you already checked the place, I doubt there’s any information left, might as well be rat droppings.”

Along with a premonition that there still might be useful information left in the house, and the confidence that if an enemy did intrude, they could handle it together, Leeha felt reassured.

“Jellypong, let me know if you find anything that looks like a book.”

[Swoosh]

After the quiet reply from Jellypong, Leeha too began to search around.

Most of what they found were articles of clothing. For a moment, Leeha wondered if these were part of “equipment items” but, as it turned out, they were just “clothes”. They could be worn or put in a bag, but there seemed to be no need to bother picking up ordinary to superior grade clothes without any special options.

Wearing clothes that Elizabeth or Brown wore wouldn’t necessarily teach him anything.

“A few utensils… that side seems like just a bin. Given the flies buzzing around, there might be food waste. Well, people who moved in a rush wouldn’t have bothered cleaning up their trash.”

Even after checking the master bedroom, kitchen, and living room, nothing particularly caught Leeha’s interest. It seemed that Luger also failed to find anything of note, as only the steady sound of his boots echoed continually in Leeha’s ears.

“There’s no hint-“

“Hm!?”

“-Oh, there isn’t? What did you find, Luger!”

It was then that Luger’s voice reached Leeha, who had been moving quietly. Dropping the clothes he was holding, Leeha immediately dashed towards Luger. However, if Luger had a weakness, it was in moments like this. He clumsily scrambled, making a racket as he quickly headed outside the house.

“Pff, do you think I’d actually tell you!”

“What is it! Show me!”

“Haha, this time I’ll take the lead!”

What Luger pulled out from his bag was a short-range teleport scroll. Seeing him take out a scroll closer to a ‘Blink,’

Leeha was flustered.

“Wh-What?! You’re going to play dirty?”

Even as he spoke, Leeha was thinking of using a scroll himself. But it was already too late! Knowing that Leeha couldn’t kill him, Luger turned his back and tossed the scroll.

“No! Wait!”

Whoosh—!

The ripping sound of the paper resonated triumphantly. He had thrown it with all his might, yet nothing had changed. Huh?

“What? Th-this damn- Defective goods from the scroll shop-“

“Haha! Defective? Is that even possible- Wait, how many do you have!? Don’t go! I warned you!”

Leeha, seeing Luger’s panic, regretted laughing even for a moment. In that time, Luger had pulled out another scroll, ready to use it again. Whoosh—!

Again, a robust tearing sound echoed, but still, there was no change in Luger.

“Why… Why doesn’t the teleport scroll work?”

“Why, you ask, you idiot!”

Leeha hurriedly ran and grabbed Luger’s arm.

Fernand hadn’t explained everything. However, he had mentioned the situation during his escape.

The reason they built a house in a place like this must be because of that! Even without space-locking magic, you can’t teleport in this area! It’s because it’s a highland, making it easier to spot enemies approaching.

Unless it was someone of Fernand’s caliber, no one would have approached the cliffs, and if Luger’s chosen route was the only way here, that made even more sense.

In addition to making fast escapes through teleportation impossible, any lifeforms that illegally entered this area would have ended up as ‘food’ for Brown and Elizabeth.

“Why? Why-“

“Quiet down, and let me see!”

“Wow.”

Leeha, still in the process of piecing his thoughts together, snatched a piece of paper from Luger’s hand. Luger also hurriedly focused on the paper along with Leeha. The paper had a drawing on it.

The drawing was so rushed and crudely made it was hard to make out. Yet, the two of them immediately knew what it was.

“A map!”

“Indeed, a map.”

Despite looking like it was drawn by an elementary student with their feet, the ‘honest house drawing’ had a pair of scissors marked on it.

It was clear to the two of them what the current location and this house meant. The issue was the arrows stretching out from the scissors, and the numbers written at the tips of these arrows.

“Hmm, they look like coordinates. What do you think, Luger?”

“That’s ridiculous. Do you really think the coordinates of Middle Earth would be marked as mere 250.270? Had your friend, the Sage, heard this, he would have laughed for hours.”

“I know, I know! It was just a toss in the air, no need to bite my head off.”

The numbers attached to each arrow were oddly different. There were six-digit numbers, easily readable numbers in the thousands, such as 2,000 or 3,000, and a mix of letters and numbers like 3001, 4001 on some arrows.

Luger burst into laughter after staring at the map for a while.

“Kekeke… Kahaha! Brown, you rascal, trying to belittle me.”

“What? What is it?”

“Heh, you don’t need to know. I’ll be on my way first. Feast your eyes till they fall out. It’s a gift for the dolt.”

“Tell me before you go!”

“Idiot, it’s the map left by Brown and Elizabeth. If you don’t know what it means, you might as well stay here forever.”

With those words, Luger left the house.

Leeha tilted his head for a moment but didn’t feel like blindly following Luger. Besides a matter of pride, both their quests had a condition of ‘come alone.’

He thought it might not be any different for the Three Musketeers.

“Damn. Would it kill him to share? Luger’s all right, but he’s too non-cooperative. Shouldn’t we help each other in times of need? 2,000 or 3,000 numbers—wait a minute.”

Something clicked in Leeha’s mind. On closer inspection, the styles of the numbers were different. The “3” in the number written as 3,000 and in 3001 were in different styles.

“Luger was sure. This map isn’t just for viewing; it was left behind by Brown and Elizabeth for us. And he could say so because?”

He could decipher the information on the map, and it was practically helpful to him. Considering the different handwriting styles and the intent of Brown and Elizabeth—

“Oh my god! That’s it! Yes, I’ve seen this before!”

Leeha immediately understood the meaning, “250.270 indicates levels! And 2,000 or 3,000 are distances! And—”

Had Leeha been an ordinary person, he wouldn’t have understood. What do 3001 and 4001 signify? Leeha recalled seeing such numbers once.

During a virtual union training, the information of the mechanized infantry division assined as Leeha’s opponent was marked with numbers!

“It’s the thickness! Used to indicate the thickness of armor on tanks or armored vehicles, probably in millimeters.”

There could be numerous units that ‘mm’ might represent if written by someone else. But, as Luger put it, isn’t this the map ‘Brown’ has left behind?

When considering information that the old generation’s [Piercing] might leave for the new generation’s [Piercing], this inference makes sense.

“In other words, the distance-related information was left by Elizabeth for me, and the thickness-related information was left by Brown for Luger. There was only one reason they left this information.

‘Find us, but come having grown stronger along the way… Wait, hold on. But does Luger even have that?”

Leeha vividly remembered the time Elizabeth had disregarded him. Elizabeth’s intent was “Clear more of Black Bass’s quests before coming!”

She could understand the concept of levels. Hence, leaving behind such information seemed most plausible. But what about Luger?

Luger’s Cobalt Blue Python was a different weapon from Leeha’s.

“That was something Bottleneck-ssi checked from the beginning. He said it was different from the Crimson Geckos or the Cobalt Blue Python… When was that? Could it have changed since then?”

The situation might have changed. After all, wasn’t Luger the first to discover a way to enhance the weapon?

“But that’s a different story. Enhancing it once doesn’t make a heroic weapon legendary, right?”

But he couldn’t be sure.

Above all, neither Luger nor Kidd had ever explicitly stated that the weapons were “end at the heroic class.”

In a place where information was closely guarded, taking their word at face value and believing it unchangeable was foolish.

“Really, not a single trustworthy person around,” Leeha thought. It was implausible that Luger, understanding Brown’s intent, would fail to grasp Elizabeth’s intent.

Yet, he asked no questions.