NOVEL WEB Chapter 380: 500 meters
"Are you sure you don't want to try on easier targets first, Grand Commander?" Dragonmaster asked.
Bloodimina just scowled at her, reloaded the rifle, aimed and fired. This time, the gnat fell down, definitely dead—the shot blasted half its head off.
Bloodimina was aiming for the chest, but still.
She just lowered her rifle and scowled at Dragonmaster some more.
"Did this question hold any value or just wasted my time? Dragonmaster, while you are here, you must behave appropriately! I don't know what hive you are from and how you are acting there, but this is a military operation. Discipline is a must!"
Under Bloodimina's rebuke, Dragonmaster hunched on herself almost pitifully (Bloodimina had no pity). The Grand Commander could only shake her head at this show from her sister.
The attitude of the latest generations of dragon riders was too frivolous! It was much better when only Beemarines could become beast masters. Beemarines had not a grain of nonsense in them.
And they would never interrupt a more high-ranked officer like that, even if she wasn't *their* commanding officer.
Bloodimina could've reminisced about good old times some more—it was a simpler time, in a way, with simpler enemies and way fewer people falling sick—but this was pointless.
Pointless things weren't worth wasting time and effort on.
Disciplining Dragonmaster further would've been pointless too, since she was about to leave Bloodimina's encampment tomorrow.
"Show us how to clean this rifle, Dragonmaster," Bloodimina said. "Then we will all practice until we can show our soldiers how to do it."
***
The practice proceeded smoothly. After a day of training and a few bags of cartridges spent, the officers learned how to reliably hit targets at 40 and even 100 meters away.
If the target wasn't moving or the bee had more time to aim, it was entirely possible to hit a target 500 meters away! After this, the bullet lost too much speed.
It was also entirely possible to shoot up to six times per minute now! Only bows could reload faster, and good bows were even harder to make than crossbows.
There were downsides to rapid firing, though. Repeated shots without cleaning the rifle made a weapon's aim worse; the entire rifle could even jam.
Still, it showed to be extremely effective against various small creatures like insects.
Even stinger-guns of Beemarines weren't as deadly, since they had worse aim and the stingers were much less damaging than bullets. Venom could kill small enough beasts with a single scratch of a stinger, but most beasts small enough were immune, or at least resistant to it.
Fire was incredibly effective against most creatures, but it had an even shorter range than stinger-guns, was even harder to aim, and could light up things that shouldn't have been lit up.
Meanwhile, with the breech-loaded rifles, Bloodimina and her officers cleared the training area of any insects so quickly that they had to fly away in search of more training targets!
When Bloodimina returned to her command center several hours later, she was in a great mood. She pulled out a sheet of clean paper from a box of it, a coal pencil and began planning the training schedule and which of her soldiers were best suited for wielding the 20 thousand rifles Father sent to them.
Compared to the heat of battle, this was an incredibly boring task, but being a Grand Commander was made from them by a half. Bloodimina didn't complain, though.
She just drafted a sketch of her plan and asked one of her field Archivists to make sure everything was well. The Archivists had all the most recent information about Bloodimina's army written down, and they were trained to use it.
Bloodimina just remembered whom she had and whom they all had to kill.
***
A week later, the hand-picked regiments were given rifles and ammunition for them, as well as trained to use them. All these bees were former crossbowmen who were already good at shooting.
As soon as the training of the rifle-bees was over, Bloodimina sent them into patrols to clear the surroundings of their encampment.
By then, Father sent her a message that more ammunition was being produced in the Naregan kingdom and sent their way. The rifles were harder and slower to make, but at least Bloodimina didn't have to worry about ammo.
The riflemen were extremely effective! Just like the officers cleared the training area from insects earlier, the riflemen easily shot down anything remotely hostile that tried to get near the united armies' encampment.
"Tell Gresch that his people won't have to worry about insects trying to eat all their food supplies anymore," Bloodimina said to her signaler when she got the reports from proud riflemen. "It will be at least one problem down."
Out of many.
Not only was something constantly trying to get into supplies of both armies (bees suffered just as much, although they had an easier time stopping the intrusions), not only insects and beasts attacked anyone who walked alone in the wild…
The war just wasn't going too well.
For the last couple of weeks, Bloodimina's and Gresch's armies were stuck in their current location. They limited themselves only to small raids to surrounding territories but couldn't move farther and attack the harbor cities that were their original target.
The area ahead was just too maze-like, with lots of valleys and living mountain forests where Vardish people could set up ambushes, which they did. A lot.
Bees could escape them, but a lot of Naregan soldiers died in these ambushes already. And without human support, the wildlife would attack bees so incessantly that even an army would get too fatigued to fight, eventually.
So Bloodimina and Gresch were trying to find a safe way past these territories or to force the Vardish armies to come out into the open so they could die.
"Gresch also should know that with our new rifles, I think…" Bloodimina said to her signaller, "Yes, I think we should be able to fight our way even through this cursed place and toward the Vardish camp. More assassinations are needed."