Gun In Another World

There are two kinds of bounties in the Kingdom of Blades—the ones with names, and the ones with legends, the first gets posted on tavern boards, passed around in mercenary guilds, read aloud by bounty callers with loud voices and bigger egos, the second kind doesn't come with a face, it comes with whispers, red wax seals, and blood-marked contracts that never pass through official hands, only the desperate or the damned take those jobs, and even they know to write their own will first, today, Kaito Sumeragi officially graduated from the first list to the second, and he didn't even flinch.

The bounty came in the form of a sealed prayer box, dropped into a noble's shrine by a courier who didn't ask questions, then intercepted by one of Rook's street kids dressed as a blind choirboy, the box was plain wood, unmarked, and lined with inner-script glyphs that made it impossible to trace with magic, only when Kaito cracked the seal did the glyphs die, revealing a single scroll bound in black thread and wrapped around a strip of saint-cloth.

Lilyeth read it over his shoulder as he unrolled it slowly.

"This is high-ranking," she said, "Whoever sent this didn't just want you dead—they wanted it to look like a divine accident."

Kaito read the words in silence.

There was no name listed.

Only the bounty level.

"Red Level: Sanctified Elimination."

That meant permission to use any means necessary, no trial, no mercy, no clean-up.

Worse, the reward wasn't listed in gold.

It was listed in favor.

Anyone who brought in Kaito's body would receive three blessings from the Grand Cathedral, a full pardon of any sins up to mass murder, and immunity from future excommunication for life.

Rook leaned back in his chair, kicking his boots onto the table.

"Well. That's dramatic."

"It's reckless," Lilyeth muttered, "The Church never grants favors like this unless they're losing grip."

"They are," Kaito said, rolling the scroll back up, "We didn't just humiliate them—we rewrote their records. They're bleeding credibility in the streets. This bounty isn't meant to catch me. It's meant to send a message to anyone thinking about helping me."

He dropped the scroll into the forge's smoldering pit, watching the flames chew through it like it was made of dry leaves.

"They want people to fear proximity to me more than they crave profit."

Lilyeth crossed her arms.

"Will it work?"

He didn't answer.

Not directly.

Instead, he stepped into the Vault's war chamber—once a shrine storage room, now covered in maps, rumor webs, coded ledgers, and forged bounty sheets—he grabbed a stack of false relic documents and started sorting them into crates already packed for distribution, every single item inside was an enchanted object disguised as a divine trinket—bullets hidden in charms, mana capsules shaped like prayer beads, curse-thread disguised as healing string, the Vault had stopped selling just ammo.

It was now selling belief distortion at scale.

"I want these distributed in three rings," Kaito said, voice calm but sharp, "First to the outer vendors, small-time black market dealers. Let the relic smugglers move them. Don't attach my name—just the Vault."

Rook nodded and started calling in contacts through a burner charm.

"Second ring?" Lilyeth asked.

Kaito tapped a mark on the board—an upcoming sermon festival near the Merchant's Spire, where five high-ranking clergy would be holding public blessings for noble families.

"I'm going to deliver a prayer of my own."

"You're going to attack the clergy again?" she asked, eyes narrowing.

"No," Kaito replied, holding up a capsule loaded with a Hollow Curse Round layered over a rewritten Echo rune, "I'm going to bless them."

She frowned.

"With what?"

"Visions," he said, "Let's see what happens when their next sermon is hijacked by memories they don't want the crowd to hear."

Lilyeth shook her head slowly.

"You're going to turn their mouths into mirrors."

"No," he said, "I'm going to turn them into speakers. But the voice won't be theirs."

The plan was simple, elegant, and impossible to trace—by loading the capsules with rerouted memory threads bound to old Church crimes, each Echo Hollow would force the target to speak a false prophecy, one that sounded divine but exposed real sins from the past, the crowd wouldn't know if it was truth, madness, or divine punishment.

But they'd believe it.

And that belief was the real bullet.

That night, as the Vault prepared its first mass shipment, the city above boiled with rumors, bounty hunters scrambled for leads, rogue informants named every tall man in a coat "the Gun Saint," and two different churches were burned to the ground by mobs who claimed to have seen angels weeping blood.

Kaito stood in the upper chamber, watching it all unfold from the enchanted glass window that showed the city skyline like a bleeding fresco.

Lilyeth stepped beside him.

"We're starting a war."

He didn't smile.

Didn't blink.

"Good," he said, "Because I'm done fighting like a soldier."

She looked at him sideways.

"And now?"

He turned toward the window, gaze steady.

"Now I fight like a myth."

By morning, Kaito's name had vanished from public bounty boards, replaced with phrases like "The Faceless Heretic," "The Vaultborne," and the now-infamous "Voice of the Gun," the Church's attempt to erase his identity backfired spectacularly—because in trying to reduce him to a myth, they gave him a dozen names, and every whispered title only made people more curious, more fearful, more eager to find him or follow him, bounty hunters flooded the streets in groups of five or more, unable to agree on a description, chasing shadows and rumors and getting paid in false leads and bruises, Kaito didn't hide, he walked among them.

Not in disguise.

Just forgettable.

A half-mask here, a borrowed accent there, posture lowered like a beggar with nowhere to go—not invisible, just unimportant, and in a world obsessed with saints and devils, no one noticed the man who looked like he'd lost both.

He spent the day passing Vault relics into the hands of petty smugglers and desperate hawkers, disguised as trade trinkets, hex-neutral charms, and "unidentified merchant runes," none of the dealers knew what they held, only that the product was hot and blessed in whispers, just exotic enough to attract buyers too curious for their own good, Kaito knew how to build weapons, but now he was learning something more dangerous—how to build economy.

Rook handled the eastern ring, planting false bounties of rival targets to muddy the Church's focus.

Lilyeth led the southern shipments, making sure the Vault's charms passed through rebel markets without detection.

And Kaito?

He was headed to the sermon festival.

Not to kill anyone.

But to deliver propaganda disguised as miracles.

He entered the festival through the northern garden gate, dressed as a disabled scholar with a false cane and a slow limp, the guards didn't even glance at him, they were too busy watching for cloaks, masks, or weapons, but Kaito didn't need any of those to deliver a bullet—not when it was wrapped in prayer script and laced into an offering charm.

He waited until the third sermon began.

High Archpriest Grelvos stood at the altar platform, a grandstage of floating scripture and glass pulpit illusions, his voice boomed across the crowd with rehearsed grace, a mixture of old prophecy and new taxes disguised as charity, nobles applauded, commoners bowed, and Kaito moved quietly to the left side of the offering platform, where a dozen worshippers lined up to present their "gifts" for the Church's divine records.

His turn came.

He bowed, extended the charm.

"For your visions, Holy One."

Grelvos accepted it with a nod.

The charm activated the moment it touched his palm.

Not an explosion, not a shock—just a whisper, a ripple of mana so subtle no one noticed until the Archpriest opened his mouth again.

And everything changed.

"I... burned the monastery at Mirth Hollow to silence the children," he said.

The crowd blinked.

The Archpriest blinked.

Then spoke again, louder.

"I sold relics made from plague bones to fund my estate."

Someone gasped.

The choir faltered.

And Grelvos kept going.

"I replaced saints' bones with carved wood and pocketed the difference."

His hands trembled.

His knees buckled.

And in front of five hundred witnesses, Archpriest Grelvos wept blood.

Kaito didn't stay to watch the collapse.

He was already gone by the time the first scream started, moving through the crowd like wind slipping between cracks, unnoticed, untouched, unstoppable, the charm had done more than trigger memory—it had unlocked shame, the kind no spell could heal.

Back in the Vault, the forge was glowing brighter than usual, as if it had sensed the shift in the air, the chained figure in the lowest chamber whispered without words, a ripple of approval that echoed through the stone like heartbeats from something ancient and pleased.

Lilyeth was waiting near the war table, maps scattered, reports flooding in.

"Another confession," she said, tossing down a new bounty note, "But this time, the target's not you."

Kaito picked up the parchment.

It was addressed to The Voice of the Vault.

And it wasn't a threat.

It was a request.

A woman whose son had been executed by the Church two years ago wanted to know the truth.

She offered gold, land, even her family's ancestral relic.

In exchange?

One bullet.

Kaito folded the note slowly.

"People don't want vengeance anymore," he said.

Lilyeth nodded.

"They want justice."

He looked at the sealed ammo crate beside the forge.

"No," he said, "They want belief that bites back."

And for the first time since the bounty was declared, Kaito smiled.

Because now, the Vault wasn't just selling weapons.

It was selling hope.

The next Vault shipment wasn't smuggled by criminals or mercenaries—it was escorted by believers, not the kind who wore robes and kissed relics, but the kind who lit candles for brothers falsely accused, who buried sisters branded heretic for hearing voices the Church didn't approve of, who worked in kitchens by day and sewed curse-resistant thread into hidden linings by night, the Vault had become more than a hideout, more than a business, more than a secret—it had become a movement, and no bounty, no decree, no sermon from a trembling pulpit could stop it anymore.

Kaito stood in the lower armory of the Vault, running his hand across the newest shelf of charm capsules, each one hand-labeled, each one coded with a custom memory trigger, each one shaped like a simple holy token, no different from the ones nobles gave their mistresses and warriors wore into battle hoping for protection, but unlike those, these charms didn't beg for miracles—they forced truth into the light.

"These are ready for the next network drop," Lilyeth said, her gloves stained with ink from forging the latest shipment tags, "Twelve cities. Thirty merchants. All unaffiliated. All scared."

"Good," Kaito replied without looking up, "Scared people listen harder."

She hesitated.

"Do you really think this is sustainable?"

He turned to her slowly.

"We don't need forever. Just long enough."

"Long enough for what?"

"For the Church to make a mistake we don't have to clean up."

He turned back to the shelf and picked up a small, silver-edged capsule engraved with the symbol of the First Flame—the Church's oldest and most revered doctrine, this charm wasn't for confession or hallucination or sabotage, it was for bait.

"This one goes to the palace," he said.

Lilyeth raised an eyebrow.

"Do we have a buyer?"

"No," he said, sliding the charm into a velvet-lined case, "We have a listener."

She didn't press.

She'd learned not to.

Rook arrived ten minutes later, slipping through the Vault's side entrance with his usual swagger, but his face was tight and his coat had blood near the sleeve, not his—but fresh.

"I saw a red-sigil bounty team tonight," he said, tossing a folded paper onto the table, "Didn't bother sneaking. They were showing badges like they owned the street."

Kaito opened the page.

The bounty wasn't just his symbol anymore.

It had evolved.

The Church was now branding anyone associated with the Vault—anyone—as "heretics of silence," and worse, they weren't asking for proof anymore, only proximity.

"They're losing grip," Kaito said.

"They're panicking," Lilyeth added.

"No," Rook said, voice low, "They're setting the city on fire just to see who screams."

Kaito didn't flinch.

He reached for a crate labeled in dark ink—V-Shadow Batch Three—and opened it to reveal a row of glass bullets suspended in gel, each one humming softly, almost imperceptibly, like a heartbeat hiding behind fog.

"We change the plan," he said.

Lilyeth stiffened.

"How?"

"No more drops through merchants," he said, lifting two bullets from the rack, "We go street-level. One target at a time. One round per confession. No warning. No build-up. They speak, or they shatter."

Rook whistled low.

"That's not subtle."

"That's not the point," Kaito replied, loading one of the bullets into a silenced charm launcher shaped like a scripture wand, "We don't need subtle. We need unavoidable."

Lilyeth stepped forward.

"That means more eyes. More heat. You'll burn your face into every holy mirror in the capital."

Kaito met her gaze.

"Then let them see me."

That night, under a sky too quiet for prophecy, Kaito walked the alleyways of the noble ring, dressed not in disguise but in truth—black coat, low brim hat, Vault sigil at his collar, not hidden, not masked, not invisible, and when the first Church loyalist spotted him from across the fountain plaza, mouth wide to scream—

A bullet of Echo Hollow Silence pierced the man's aura before he could blink.

He didn't die.

He didn't collapse.

He testified.

Not of Kaito's sins.

But of his own.

"I bribed three inquisitors to fake relic purity."

"I framed a healer for treason to steal her shop."

"I condemned a child prophet because he scared me."

Then he fell.

And the silence was louder than thunder.

Kaito stood there, surrounded by gasps, by stunned nobles, by wide-eyed witnesses.

And then he walked away.

No chase.

No blood.

No gunfire.

Just one bullet.

One story.

One new believer in the Vault.

And by sunrise, dozens more would follow.