“They may be useless right now, but that’s only temporary… Ugh, it’s just that I hate Enchanting and Inscription. Even though I have all these amazing designs in my head, I can’t actually do anything with them! It’s so frustrating!” Cultivation of the physical body was tedious enough on its own. Needing to study and practice two incredibly complicated Professions, while also finding time to make a fuckton of guns… Honestly, that kid was pretty damn impressive.

Mei wandered over to a table in the middle of the room and asked “What are these things? They look kind of like pufferfish…”

Azra immediately ran over and pulled the cute little statuette out of her hands, yelling “Be careful! You almost killed us all!” It really did look like a small inflated yellow and white pufferfish, with lots of tiny horns sticking out of its body. The eyes seemed to be made out of glowing crimson Qi Stones and there was a small silver ring dangling from its mouth.

It only took a moment for me to guess “Oh sweet, are those grenades? Hmmm, so you needed to make it all elaborate and magical in order to meet the parameters, huh? Neat.”

He complained “It’s such a pain in the ass though. If I wanted to build a nuclear missile, I would probably need to have a Rank-S or higher Inscription and Enchantment just to allow it to function normally.”

Aside from the southern wall with the staircase, there was a door to the north, east, and west walls. They weren’t particularly fancy, merely wooden and painted white. Actually, the whole damn room was white, including the tiles on the floor. It was hard to tell at first though, since there were so many shelves and containers all over the place.

Mei pouted, crossed her arms in front of her chest and whined “Levi, what’s the point in staying here any longer? He’s obviously not going to sell us anything decent, so let’s get out of here… Besides, I’m starving to death! We need to hurry up and get some food before we get on the boat.”

I sighed dramatically, then asked “Hey Azra, would you possibly be willing to sell me one of those revolvers and a bunch of ammo for a reasonable price?” There were plenty of guns, but only a few of them were actually covered in runes. Aside from the pistol on his waist, there were only two others. One was a small silver snubnose with intricate symbols engraved onto the barrel, trigger and handle. It was probably only a thirty-eight; it would be fine for short distances, but the long range capabilities were negligible. The other was a forty-four magnum; the metal was black, while the runes were golden.

Although the forty-four was definitely more powerful, had a much longer range and far greater accuracy, there would obviously be downsides as well. I would need to hold it with both hands, the recoil would make firing repeatedly rather difficult and the price would also be a lot higher. Not just the gun, but even the bullets were definitely harder to make and more expensive.

“Sure…” Azra smirked, he was a foot and a half taller than me, so he had to look down quite a bit in order to meet my eyes. “But I want something other than Contribution Tokens. I’m actually pretty rich… At least I’m not lacking in CP. I might not be the only cannon-maker in the country, but I am definately the best! That’s why the store is called ‘The Dao of Artillery’ and not, ‘Shitty Ancient Firearms Are Us’!”

I frowned, grumbling “Okay fine, I’ll give you my anal virginity, but I’m not sucking your dick. If you weren’t so feminine I wouldn’t even consider it-”

“No you won’t!” Xiaotong, Mei and Azra all shouted at the same exact time.

“I’m not gay and I’m definitely not a pedofile! What the hell is wrong with you?! Even if you are reincarnated, you’re a little kid, you shouldn’t be prostituting yourself for firearms!” As he said that, the beautiful woman to my left was blushing and averted her eyes away from me.

After letting out another sigh, I asked “Well then, what do you want from me? I’m a Shaman, so I can like, help you get rid of Spirits… or catch Spirits? It kinda sounds like an STD when I say it that way though. Ah, I mean, I’ve seen quite a few people who did get ghosts from having sex with someone who was being haunted. There was this one guy who fucked a girl’s corpse and his dick was infested with thousands of Spectral Fire-Ants. He thought he had gonorrhea, but-”

“Shut up! Just stop talking right now! I don’t want to hear about any of that supernatural bullshit!” Azra took a deep breath and calmed himself down a bit, before continuing “No, I don’t need a Shaman or Exorcist… What I want is a competent assistant. You’re like me, to a certain extent… A much dumber version, obviously, but you’re certainly similar in many aspects. The most important factor is that you seem to understand enough about guns to help me. Honestly, I don’t need or want you to make the actual firearms. That part is easy and it’s literally the only thing that I live for. I like Alchemy, it’s kind of like chemistry, but dealing with Enchantments and Inscriptions is exhausting. It’s too much like art and there isn’t enough science behind it. Become my ‘disciple’! If you can manage to deal with the Enchanting and Inscription side of things, then I’ll be able to focus on Alchemy.”

Basically, everywhere I go, random people I just met want me to be their disciple. Totally not suspicious at all… I’m not saying that the world was revolving around me, but I was definitely the main character in someone’s ‘game’. While I didn’t know for certain that the mysterious Goddess of Nudity had visited Azra, it was more than likely. She did tell me “I am sending you to a universe that I control.” so it wasn’t a stretch to guess that everything around me was being manipulated to help me ‘entertain’ her. Maybe there was a deeper meaning, but I really didn’t need to know or care.

Without even worrying about the consequences, I casually accepted the teenager’s apprenticeship offer. Then he ran into the other room and brought out a few books. The first one was huge and thick, “Arcane Inscriptions”. When I held the damn thing in my hands, I could feel a weirdly familiar Qi seeping into my body. The cover was hard and white, seemingly made out of white jade. As for the title, it was pitch-black. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed that there weren’t any ‘words’. It was all pictures and diagrams, abstract drawings and geometric shapes. Lots of random shit that made very little sense to me. Oh, and stars, loads of fucking stars.

“Yeah, I thought I was getting ripped off when I bought this stupid thing, but it really is a good book. When you focus on one of the pages for long enough, you can enter a type of meditation and figure out how to perform Inscriptions for various items and effects. Everyone has a different affinity towards Inscription and Elements, so you might be unlucky and never be able to accomplish anything. That’s pretty unlikely though…”

After that was a small pamphlet titled “Simple Enchantments”. The outside was made from black snake-skin leather and the words were glowing in white. When I opened it up, there was a brief description of how to channel elementally charged Qi into an Inscription pattern, in order to make it work properly. Then there were like eight other Inscription books. Each of them covered a different Element.

I couldn’t help but ask “Why are you so sure that I’ll be able to learn this shit and actually be good at it? Wait, why the hell would you want to have some random kid you just met as an apprentice anyway?”

Azra smirked, glancing over at the distracted blue-robed woman, then whispered into my left ear “Haven’t I always made weapons for you, ‘Leviathan’?”

Next!

The Diary of Destiny King!

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The Dao of Eros

Immortal Soul!

Hardcore OP-ness

The Vanilla God!

Questing!

Stories That I Follow!

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