The next morning they all woke up with a bit of a hangover from the Mana potion. They had a heavy meal and loaded up with all their equipment before they portkeyed into the mine right into the big room where the war camp was. The room was empty just like they left it. However there was a group of twenty kobolds trying the break through Harry's barrier spell. Harry swung his M4 up, dropped the selector to full auto and hosed the group down with a spray of full auto. Neville was a second behind him and he added to the mess. In three seconds they dropped them all. He summoned the gold weapons off the bodies, shrank them and handed them to Hermione before clearing a path.
Harry shouldered his M4 and headed down the tunnel with the group following his lead. Like the other tunnels they seemed follow the blue stone veins in the rock. They followed the tunnel for a few steps and saw a sharp curve left and down ahead. Harry jogged ahead and looked around the bend. He saw about two dozen king sized kobolds in full gold war plate armor with swords, shields, spears, and daggers approaching up the tunnel. Harry pulled a flashbang off his vest, held it up for his group to see, before he pulled the pin, and tossed it at the group that was about thirty foot down the hall. The grenade bounced once right in front of the group before it popped.
Harry and Neville rolled around the corner and sprayed the group with copper jacketed lead. The sound of the flash bang and the bullets pinging off the armor alerted another detachment of 25 kobold troops further down the tunnel. They came charging into the bullet storm and fell before they knew it was too late. Harry and Neville both changed mags and ran up to the pile of dead lizard men littering the ten foot wide tunnel. They check to make sure they were dead as the girls started collecting the loot.
"We're going to scout ahead a bit to see if any more troops are headed our way thanks to the flashbang. We'll have an open line to you over the magical comms. We're not headed too deep we just want to get ahead of this if more are coming." Harry said as the jogged up the tunnel, they saw it curved to the right again and leveled off more into a gentler slope.
"How many do you think are down here Harry?" Neville asked.
"I think a fuck ton. The raiding party that was gathered at the war camp was almost 300 strong. I have a feeling these 60 troops were coming to join the party. I bet that tunnel was about a day and a half from being complete. Besides the plate armor and weapons were forged by a trained hand." Harry said with a hint of regret.
"What's with the tone of voice? What's a trained hand mean?" Neville asked looking confused.
"A trained hand means skilled craftsmen and intelligence. That means blacksmiths. That means a trade guild. That means a society. That means a town, hell it might be a city full of these things. That means brother that there might be as many as thousands of them underground. It also means that they are not just mindless beasts. They are a people. A town with women and children. You get it?" Harry said looking at Neville.
"I don't kill inocent women and children." Neville said.
"Right, that's what I've been thinking about since last night. Trying to rationalize what we're doing down here. The only thing I can think about is what Abby and Hermione said. They eat their young or the weaker kobolds. And they were going to eat us. In that case they are like the goblins. Smart enough to be a danger to us but still feral. So when I find a nest of eggs I'm going to cook it with a fire spell and toss the contents out like the kobolds themselves." Harry said.
"We agree Harry, it's a dirty job to exterminate a species but it has to be done. Just like we take out king snakes and big spiders. And besides, we don't know this is all the kobolds in the world. There could be pockets of them all over the world." Hermione said over the ear buds in their ears.
"Fuck I forgot we were on comms. But I'm glad we got that out in the open." Harry said.
"We understand. We're jogging to catch up." Abby said.
"Copy, we're clear so far." Harry said as they slowed way down.
"Which is starting to unnerve me a bit. The patrols and mining teams were always a few hundred feet apart from each other." Neville said.
"In active dig sites. These tunnels feel older. More lived in and most of the blue stone is mined out. They just left enough in the walls and floor to see and we're only seeing this well because of the night vision charm. I have a feeling we're going to run into a few more groups of troops headed for the war camp." Harry said as the girls came jogging up to them.
"So no other groups?" Abby asked.
"Not yet. But soon I think." Harry said. But he was wrong. They walked at a good fast pace for over an hour before they encountered anything.
"You hear that?" Harry asked stopping and holding up his hand.
"Sounds like grinding." Neville said.
"It's coming from the wall I think." Abby said turning to the left side wall only for the ground to shift beneath her feet.
The ground buckled up as a big rhino like creature with thick silver plate like armored hide came bursting out of the ground. Harry hit it with a short burst from his M4 but the creature just turned and looked at him. In fact it turned it's whole body towards Harry and it started to charge at him before Neville blasted the silver rhino with his 1885 high wall rifle. The long brass and steel spike hit the rhino in the shoulder and tore a big hole through the creatures whole body coming out the other end and embedded itself in the cave wall. The creature screamed and reared up exposing it's softer belly. Harry sprayed the underbelly with a short burst to the chest area killing it. The creature landed on the floor of the tunnel and let out it's dying breath.
"What the fuck kind of pokemon is that!?" Harry half asked and half yelled.
"I'm not sure but we're taking it with us. Did you see how the plates on it's back took those 5.56 rounds?" Hermione asked turning the silver rhino into a small silver figurine of the creature and put it in her bag.
"Well between the sounds that thing made and the sound of the spike embedding into the wall I think there is a good chance…" Neville never got to finish that sentence as Abby who was looking down the tunnel turned and shot at a group of six smaller kobolds that came charging out of the darkness with their spears up. Harry and Neville turned and took out the last three.
"Hunting party?" Harry asked looking at the smaller unarmored kobolds.
"Maybe." Neville said as Hermione stripped the spears and daggers off their belts.
"Either way look alive." Harry said leading them deeper into the mine.
They traveled for six hours and took out 48 more smaller sized kobolds and 6 white spiders. At this point they were so far underground that they had to test to see if their portkeys would work this far down. They did but the feeling was uncomfortable. Harry landed in the Marshal's office feeling dizzy, disoriented, short of breath, and his ears popped so hard he thought they might be bleeding.
"Everything going okay?" John asked from his desk.
"Yeah, we had to test the portkey to make sure they work. And now that I think about it, if it didn't work that could have killed me. I really have to be more careful about shit like that." Harry said healing his ears.
"You plan on going back the same way? Seems a might bit dangerous." John asked.
"Yeah, I think two portkeys on the return trip and all subsequent trips. This is going to suck." Harry said looking through his portkey buttons and taking the one to the war camp room. That trip was easy and smooth. He set up a few more paired portkeys and then took the portkey to get back to the group.
"How did it go?" Hermione asked.
"It sucked. Unless we're going to die we need to take this portkey back to the war camp room and then take our portkey to the surface." Harry said handing out buttons to each of them.
"Well on the upside if we are being chased down by hundreds of kobolds portkeying to the war room will put about five or six miles between us and the hoard." Neville said.
"You know, I've been thinking about the hoard that might be down here. So far all we've seen is swords and spears. They have no ranged weapons. Our best bet might be to draw them into the tunnel and hose them down. We can even throw up a bunch of one way barriers to keep them back and still allow us to take them out." Harry said leading them deeper.
"It's a good idea." Neville agreed. They headed even deeper under ground before they came to a fork in the road.
"This was what I was worried about." Harry said as Hermione scanned the two tunnels.
"Getting lost?" Neville asked.
"That and having to go one way and double back to go the other way." Harry said.
"Can't we just set up a portkey to this juncture and pop back?" Abby asked.
"We might if this is the only fork in the road. If there are dozens more then we're fucked." Harry said scratching his chin.
"Just so you know, I've been drawing a crude map as we've gone along." Hermione said pulling out a small notebook and showing Harry the diagram of the mine. It was essentially a simple point and line diagram with titles for the points and estimations of distance for the line segments.
"And we could berroir off the tunnels to stop lizard men from following us down this side or from heading up the tunnel we just came from." Neville said.
"Good call, let's do this. Maybe this is a small offshoot tunnel connected to something." Harry said putting up a one way barrier at the mouth of the two forks and leading the group down the right tunnel.
They followed the tunnel for about ten minutes before they started hearing something. It sounded like banging and scraping. They slowed down as the approached a bigger room and saw that this was a mine. There were about 60 smaller kobolds mining bluestone as well as gold, silver, copper, and steel out of the walls of this bigger 300 foot room with 60 foot ceilings. They had a few of the silver plated rhinos pulling carts made of the same gold metal they used for everything full of gold crates of blue stone. Harry pointed out the six sliver creatures and had them all pull out their 1885 high wall rifles as he threw up a barrier spell over the mouth of the tunnel.
"Each of you pick a cart and take out the silver rhinos. Try to get a broadside shot to get them both. Don't worry about drawing attention to yourself. I'll take care of the kobolds." Harry said sticking with his M4.
"Right. Line up a shot. We go on Harry's count." Neville said.
"3,2,1, Go." Harry said. All three of them fired. They all got good hits and 2 of the 6 died from head shots.
The three reloaded as the creatures all panicked and started thrashing about making the lizard men look in their direction. Harry calmly started dropping them with head shots as they figured out what was going on and grabbed daggers off their belts or the pick axes they were using and charged the group. Harry took out 18 of them in the ten seconds it took for them to all charge the barrier. Once they all stacked up like that Harry hit them all with a full auto spray and took the rest of them down in seconds as the other three finished the rhinos off with a second shot from their high wall rifles.
Harry moved through the barrier and searched the big cave for more threats be there were no more threats. It took them a few minutes to loot the mine and the miners but soon they popped back to the fork in the tunnel and as an added bonus there was a small detachment of 30 armored kobold troops trying to bring down the barrier. Harry emptied his mag into the troops as the rest of the group got their guns up. By the time they had a chance to shot there were only a few of them left. It took them a minute to loot the troops before they moved into the left tunnel.
Harry loaded a new mag into his M4 and took point. At this point he was tired of killing these things. Not even the thought of all this good blue stone and metal they were going to get from this deep mine helped to cheer him up. Thankfully the end was near. The tunnel leveled off and started to head up on a steep angle. In just a couple of miles the tunnel must have gone up to almost the surface. They saw the tunnel get wider until it opened up into a huge cavern bigger then the war camp room. Harry donned his cloak and took his broom out and went to check it out. What he found was a small city in the huge domed cave that was about a half mile across and five hundred feet tall. Half the room was taken up by a small lake that must have been an underground well before they excavated the room.
The whole room was covered in blue stone. Almost as if this was once one big blue stone and they hollowed it out. The city was made up of about a hundred gold cubes of varying sizes surrounding a bigger gold cube in the middle. In the back of the cave was a big football field mushroom patch of glowing blue mushrooms. There were cages in the town full of big gurb looking bugs and white spiders.
"What do you see Harry?" Hermione asked.
"A fucking city of these things. There are about a hundred 10x10 foot box style houses made of gold metal and covered in blue stone surrounding a bigger building made of gold and blue stone. I can see about 400 smaller kobolds walking around the city tended to things like the big mushroom patches and cages full of big bugs. I can also see an area off to the side with coal forges and anvils like a work area. The smoke coming off the foges is traveling up to a hole in the top of the dome. I think we might be under something like a cave or mine shaft. I think we might have gotten lucky. It seems like all the bigger kobolds have left the city. I'm tempted to light a few dozen sticks of dynamite and just drop them on the city and just come in to clean up." Harry said.
"That's not a bad idea but I like your first idea better. Let's provoke an attack and hose them down as they attack the tunnel." Neville said.
"Sounds good. I'll start the fight and bring them to you. Be ready but don't shoot me." Harry said.
He took off his cloak as he hovered up a few hundred feet off the floor of the cave. He pulled the three flashbangs off his vest, pulled the pins and tossed them down onto the town. The sound and bright flash caused all the kobolds to scream and panic. They all pulled out knives and swords and looked for the threat. Harry lobbed a grenade into the center of town and when it blew up taking seven kobolds with it they all looked up. Harry dropped the other three grenades he had on to the town before he shouldered his M4 and started raining down bullets at the lizards. They slung rocks and chucked spears at him but he was too far up. When his mag ran dry after killed about a hundred of them he dove for the tunnel. He flew in a few dozen feet and threw up the barrier spell.
He dropped down next to his group who were all waiting with their rifles up. Harry slammed home a fresh mag as the kobolds came rushing into the tunnel like a swarm. He waited until they hit the barrier before he opened fire signaling the group to start shooting as well. They all fired short bursts into the hoard dropping the little monsters by the dozens every second. It was genocide. Plain and simple. No matter how many of them went down they still kept coming. It was a sick comfort in a way. A confirmation that no matter how advanced they might seem they were still mindless beasts when they were provoked.
Four minutes. That's what it took to kill more than 500 kobolds. Harry stopped counting at this point. Harry summoned all the dead bodies into a big expanded crate before they headed into the city to finish this off. They split up and scanned the town looking for any survivors. That was when the mages attacked with fireball spells from the top of the bigger building in the center of town. Harry rolled out of the way in time. So did Neville and Abby but Hermione's hair got a little singends.
"Fall back!" Harry called out as he hopped on his broom to get above them and started shooting at them. He dropped one as they shot spells at him. He dodged out of the way but at this point they were fucked because the other three were on booms and they shot the shit out of them. As the last one died he groaned out.
"Must protect master…" That stopped Harry in his tracks.
"Master? What the fuck is he talking about? who's their master?" Harry asked.
"I am!" Came a voice booming from the big building. Two big doors blew open and a huge 50 foot long ten foot wide blue serpent with six pairs of legs slithered out of the building where they could see a hoard of treasure including a ton of crushed blue stone and gold coins.
"Right. Thank's for letting us know." Harry said spraying the huge serpent with a burst of assault rifle rounds. All of them bounced off its hide. "Right." Harry said as the blue serpent laughed at him in a hissing deep chuckle.
"Now it's my turn." It said before it opened it's big mouth full of teeth and blasted a lightning bolt at Harry. He rolled out of the way but he still felt a few hundred volts of electricity course through his body causing him to lock up and fall off his broom. He managed to land with a roll but his broom went flying off. He had just enough time to shake the stars out of his eyes before the blue serpent was on him. It raked him with it's six claws on it's left side. None of them went through his coat but the force spun him around. That's when he felt the jaws lock on the right side of his body. The teeth punctured his coat and stopped at his outer vest, but the force of the bite crushed his ribs. At this point the other three flew over and started to attack.
Neville, having seen the rifle rounds do nothing to the serpent pulled out his high wall and shot it through the back making sure the spike didn't hit Harry who was still clutched in the creature's jaws. He reloaded and hit it again. This time the round penetrated deep and the creature dropped Harry as it roared.
"THat's right fuck face! Come at me!" Neville called out as Abby hit it in the side with her high wall rifle. She reloaded and hit it again as it headed for Neville.
Hermione hit it with her rifle and it roared up and shot a lighting bolt out of it's mouth at her she got away and hit it again opening a big hole in the side of it's head and making it thrash about. At this point Harry was sitting up on the floor and conscious enough to to pull out his high wall and hit it in the back as it lunged for Neville. It turned to look at Harry with murder in it's eyes. It was obviously not prepared for the power of their guns and if it was going down it was taking Harry with it. As Harry loaded in the next round and brought the gun up the serpent lunged at him. He blasted it in the head but it wasn't enough to stop the serpent. It took a bite at him but Harry rolled out of the way from the big mouth but in his roll the beast biting down on his legs with enough force to rip through the dragon hide pants he was wearing and practically sever his legs right off. It thrashed about and slammed Harry to the floor knocking him out.
"Get off my brother!" Neville yelled blasting the serpent in the back as Hermione and Abby got it from the sides. Neville reloaded and took it out with one last round to it's back. The serpent spit Harry out, who at this point, was barely alive. Hermione rushed up to him and started casting healing spells at him as Abby poured a few healing tonics down his throat.
"Fuck! Stop with the potions please! I'm drowning here!" Harry said choking and sputtering.
"Sorry for saving your dumb life!" Abby said looking hurt.
"No I'm sorry I yelled. But I literally have healing tonic in my lungs." Harry said choking and hacking.
"I thought you were dead!" She said hugging him.
"So did I. Did we get him?" Harry asked getting his coughing under control. He pulled out his canteen and took a deep drink as he hecked up the last bit of potion.
"Yeah, we got him. You good?" Neville asked from his position by the head of the beast.
"Yeah, let's finish clearing this fucking town out and get the hell out of here." Harry said summoning his broom and M4 to him as he looked at his legs. "FUck! I just got these pants broken in." Harry said looking at the holes in his leather pants and the red bite marks on his legs.
"Your pants Harry? Your pissed about the fucking pants?" Abby asked looking at him with an incredulous look.
"No but I can't be pissed I got my ass handed to me by a big fuck off snake lizard thing. Now let's get back to work." Harry said making them all laugh.
Harry sent them off to check the city as he went into the big building through the big doors the serpent came out of. The building was 60x40 and about 60 foot high. It was, like all the buildings in the town a single room on the inside. The room was covered in piles of smelted gold slugs and chunks of blue stone piled ten feet high around the whole room. In the center of the room was a hole in the ground about 15 foot across at the mouth and it expanded as it went down. It looked like it was twenty foot deep and forty foot wide at the bottom. Inside the hole was more blue stone. And sitting in the blue stone were hundreds of ostrich sized eggs.
Harry pulled out a few expanded trunks and summoned the big piles of bluestone out of the hole. He hit the big hole full of eggs with a fire spells hot enough to turn the eggs and shells into ash. He summoned all the blue stone in the building into the trunks and he cast the goblin charm at the big building and turned it into a big stack of gold, silver, brass, and steel bars. In fact he started doing it to all the buildings.
As if hiding his guilt over wiping out a species of lizard men Harry turned the small city into a huge pile of metal bars. The rest of the group, feeling the same uneasy feeling Harry was started shrinking the bars and boxing them up in trunks. Harry felt the drain on his core but he just drank a mana potion and kept going. It took him a half hour of flying around on his broom and 5 mana potions to clean out the town. He started melting two or three buildings at a time to melt the whole city down to bars.
Between the city and all the weapons, tools, and things in the town they ended up with 25,500 one hundred ounce gold bars. 25,500 one hundred ounce silver bars. 65,500 lead bars. 61,700 brass bars, and 67,900 steel bars. Harry also summoned up all the brass shell casings and as well as the lead and copper jacketed slugs out of the dead lizard men. He turned them into a few bricks and Harry was so dead by the time he finished he landed and almost fell over.
"I think we need to call it a night. We'll set up some port keys and come back tomorrow to see where that hole in the ceiling goes to. For now let's get home. You think we can portkey from here?" Neville asked.
"We have to be close enough to the surface. I'll go first and tell you if it's safe." Harry said taking the portkey to the marshal's office for the second time that day but this time the trip was fine.
"It's fine, come on up." Harry said looking outside at the dark skies. He checked his watch and saw it was just after eight. They were down in the mine for twelve hours today. Harry sat through dinner at the boarding house before headed off to the cube. He stayed up just long enough to take a hot shower before he hit the bed and slept like the dead.
The whole night he kept thinking about the eggs. There were hundreds of them. His nightmares were two fold. The guilt of burning the unborn kobolds in their eggs haunted him but so did the idea that if they never would have came to this timeline those eggs would have hatched and everyone would have been fucked. Hundreds more of those lizard beasts would have swept through the land like a plage. No one would have stopped them.
They all slept in the next morning. Harry was the first one up at eleven. He threw on some flannel pants and a tshirt and headed off to the kitchen to make breakfast. That was where Hermione found him when she got up a half hour later. He was making waffles in the waffle iron on the counter, frying bacon in a big skillet, and mixing strips of steak, onions, and green peppers in a frying pan.
"Hey, you need a hand with that?" She asked grabbing a cup of coffee from the french press on the counter.
"From you, no. I'm good." Harry said.
"Fine, be like that. Jerk." She said. "I'm not that bad." She muttered.
"I've seen you brun water before." Harry said.
"How was I supposed to know water could just flash steam like that?" She shot back.
"I'm good. I got this." Harry said laughing at his sister.
"Alright smart ass. On a serious note how are you feeling today?" She asked running scans on him.
"Fine I guess. I'm not a young as I used to be. It takes longer to heal after almost dying." Harry said.
"You got dark circles under your eyes. Did you sleep last night?" She asked.
"I did, but not well." Harry admitted.
"Feeling guilty?" She asked.
"I found the nest yesterday. It was under the big building. There were hundreds of eggs. I burned them all." Harry said.
"Harry why is this bugging you so much? I've seen you shoot men in the face that were begging for their lives. Why is a nest of lizard eggs bugging you this much?" She asked.
"I don't know." Harry said.
"Is it because they were helpless eggs and they were not attacking you?" She asked.
"Maybe? All I know is, I've killed thousands of people. I've been active for almost 20 years as an operative and I averaged two or three kills a day, but yesterday, slaughtering those kobolds was the closest I've come to feeling dirty. I've tortured information out of guys. Cut and gut people, executed them at point blank range and the mass killing of a lesser species was, I think, the step too far for me." He said flipping his bacon.
"You've gone hunting, you've blasted deer heads clean off. You've snapped rabbit necks that you summoned out of the woods. You eat chicken eggs. What's the difference?" She asked.
"I don't know. Mia, I. Don't. Know. and it's not going to be fixed with a conversation. It's not something I'm going to just talk out. This is going to live with me for a while and some day I'll be able to tell you why I feel like this but for now I'm going to put it behind me. I'm choosing to think about all the people we saved by stopping them before they could tunnel out of their caves and slaughter all the humans in the state. Now I'm going to continue to make breakfast. Then I'm going to put on my gear, and guns, and go to fucking work because I'm a soldier and it's what do." Harry said turning away from his sister and going back to work on breakfast.
Hermione looked like she wanted to say something but Abby, who was standing in the doorway tapped her on the shoulder and shook her head. Hermione shrugged and walked away. Abby made a cup of coffee and took a set on the counter away from the work area.
"When are you going to have my breakfast ready?" She asked.
"Your breakfast?" Harry asked turning to look at her with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, my breakfast. As your wife I expect my breakfast to be waiting for me at the table. It's one of the rules of marriage. Just like you have to wear tight pants so I can look at your ass and you have to keep your face scruffy enough to look sexy but not enough to be scratchy." She said holding up her left hand to show off the rings which she never took off.
"SO let me get this straight, I am to have your meals on the table when you expect them, and wear tight revealing pants, and look sexy for you?" Harry asked with a smirk.
"Yes, you also have to take care of me, love me, and you know, obey me or some such." she said trying to keep a straight face.
"Right, so I have to do all that, and what do I get in return?" Harry asked.
"Well, there's sex with a woman that's this hot, also you know, you get to spend all your free time with me." Abby said with a big innocent smile.
"Right, I'm getting ripped off, I want a refund." Harry said going back to his work.
"Refund! How dare you!" She said looking indignant.
"Yeah, you think I could trade you in for a better model? One that's lower maintenance. Maybe I can trade you in for Alice. She's an older bird but she's nice to me, she can cook, she runs her shop, the town, and keeps her family together. Also she's my boss and I figure if I'm sleeping with my boss I'll get a raise out of the deal too." Harry said.
"I was going to argue but you do have a point. Alice is a much better catch. Too bad you're stuck with me. You should have read the fine print before you gave me the ring." She said. As he flipped a few things and came over to her.
"Then again I didn't do too bad. You're not Alice but I think you'll do for now. If you're nicer to me." Harry said stepping into her space and kissing her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him back. He broke the kiss and planted a few kisses along her cheek.
"Thank you for making me smile." Harry said softly.
"It's my job. It's part of my end of the deal. Just because you don't want to talk doesn't mean you have to live with a heavy mind. Now go finish breakfast. I'm hungry. After that we're going back to bed. Maybe I can heal some of those dark spots." She said smacking him on the ass as she walked out of the kitchen.
Harry smiled at her back as she walked out of the room. He went back to his work and for the first time since yesterday afternoon he felt lighter. Normal, and more human. Harry brought platters of waffles, bacon, fresh orange juice, coffee, thick toast with butter and jam, and big steak and cheese omelets out to the table. They stuffed themselves and went back to bed.
When they emerged after the sun went down they got dressed and headed out into the town to check in with Smith about the firearms company, marshall John about the town, and generally just to talk to folks. It felt like a long time since they just walked through town. They dropped off the seven silver rhinos and the big blue serpent at Kate's farm to be skinned and butchered. It turned out the rhinos were bulettes, and the big serpent was a behir. Both hides would make for good armor and the meat was edible. They had diner at the border house and headed back home to relax. The boys stripped and cleaned the guns for the second time in as many days. The girls and Alice worked on the red and blue stone they had trying to find more uses for it.
"We went through about 5,000 rounds of 556 ammo. We're lucky we have so much of it." Neville said loading mags using the speed loader to ram 30 rounds at a time into the expanded 300 round mags.
"I collected most of the spent brass we fired down there. We need to start reloading it." Harry said pulling out the trunk with the spent brass shell casings.
"You know, I was thinking maybe we stop using 5.56 guns. We hardly use our 556 ARs for humans any more. We use our B&S guns for marshal work. We use 9mm for house clearing stealth wet work. The 556 we used in the tunnels because of the over penetration. We were shooting through the little fuckers and hitting the guys behind them. We were getting double and triple kills but just barely. If we were using a stronger rifle round we would have cleared that hoard faster. Now we could use the 300 win mag rifles but with the long barrels they are too big and unwieldy to use in the same capacity for close quarters suppressive fire. But we need them for long range work. With magical optics I've made kills with that 300 win mag rifle at 3,000 yards. The 458 socom rifles are good for big things, but overkill for human sized targets and you can't rapid fire that gun. We need to upgrade our op guns to fit the job we have." Neville said.
"Ak47?" Harry asked.
"7.62x39 is a bigger bullet but slower. We need 308. We have to see what we have in the trunks for 7.62x51. We also need to look at maybe upgrading the MP5 to a UMP .45 or a p90. Maybe a short barreled 556 AR. We don't need the 500 nitro rifles any more. We have the winchester high walls for big things and the 4 bore rifles for if we run into huge things like dragons. We don't need to carry back up 9mm handguns because we all have the guns you gave us and we hardly ever draw them. Basically we need to test the effectiveness of all our gear. As it stands all our modern wet work gear is either under or overkill." Neville said.
"We should also try to streamline our gear down to a few calibers so we don't have to reload so much once we run out of bulk ammo we brought back. I like 9mm. Especially the 147 grain enchanted red brass hollow points. They hit harder then the 556 but don't over penetrate. I don't want to add .45 to our gear. It's too powerful for close range wet work and to slow for long range kills over 100 feet. If we're using 7.62x51 rifles we don't need the 300 win mag rifles. We can use Smith's barrel enchantment on a 16 inch rifle barrel to give us long range accuracy. So right there we just cut two calibers and eliminated the need for a third." Harry said.
"All I'm saying is we have trunks full of guns. There might be better options out there. I think we each take a few options with us and test them out." Neville said.
"Let's go make a trunk full of guns we can test. We'll carry a bunch different guns on us and try them out as we go about our business. We've used guns like the MP5K, the Falkor 300 win mag, and the tricked out M4s for so long we know what they feel like. Maybe we'll stumble on to something good." Harry said leading his brother to the storage room.
It took an hour of looking at different options but they each ended up with two replacement guns for their M4s in 7.62x51 and two 9mm Mp5 replacements. Harry found a HK417 with a 16 inch barrel and a Galil Ace with a 20 inch barrel for his M4 replacements, and a Sig MPX with an 8 inch barrel and a B&T ACP9. Neville went with a SCAR-H with a 16 inch barrel and a FN FAL in the Para configuration with a folding stock and 16 inch barrel. For his MP5 replacements he found a Kriss Vector in 9mm and a Vityaz-SN which was a cut down AK74 in 9mm.
The boys spent another hour transferring magical sights, grips, and slings over to their new toys. Neville copied the mags and with Harry's help he enchanted them as Harry worked on the guns. By the time they headed off to bed they had really powerful guns that were better then the guns they were replacing. Not that they would stop carrying their old guns as back ups for now, but once they narrowed it down to a rifle and submachine gun then they would ditch their old guns in favor of this new streamlined package.
The next morning they popped back to the underground city cave and they flew up into the hole in the ceiling. It turned out to be a cave and it took Abby all of a few minutes looking around to figure out where they were.
"This is the Lehman caves." Abby said.
"How can you be so sure?" Harry asked looking around the dark caves full of stalagmites.
"I know because these caves are huge and I know where we were headed on the map. These caves are famous. In the future they are going to hold tours of these caves. They go on for a few miles. They should be empty but with the dark shit running around I think we should just seal the hole up and not dig too deep for now. As it is we have all the tunnel system totally sealed off from the outside world. I think we can hire some miners to start excavating the blue stone and metal veins that line the tunnel walls. We can sit on all the blue stone and sell it to ship building companies at a good price. We have a huge surplus." Abby said leading them all back down the hole.
"So we're done then? The tunnels and caves of this place are safe for miners?" Harry asked.
"I think so. We haven't seen anything down here since we cleared it out." Hermione said running scans over the big room.
"Still we want to be cautious. As we saw with the bulete shit can just come through the ground and kill you. I think we should start on the tunnel under Hamilton. We can split the profits with the town if the men work the mine. We'll also finish digging the hole to Ely's mine shaft and cut the same deal with Ely. both teams of miners can start making their way down the tunnel between the two places and when they meet in the middle we'll set up a mining camp in the war room and have the men start headed this way. All the while we'll keep checking for anything that might be in the walls. But I can tell you this now. It's going to take years to get all of this excavated. Even if we got a team of magicals down here to do it it's going to take a long time to get all of it." Neville said.
"That all sounds good to me. The less time I have to spend in these tunnels the better. That being said with some loose mined rock we could build a little town down here like the kobolds had. With a sunlight charm and the enchantment to make the ceiling look like the sky this big cave could be a safe place to live. We might even be able to house all the miners down here. This cave is close to the surface, has a water supply, and with some permanent portkeys it would be easy to get to and from the surface." Harry said looking around the huge room.
"More things we can look into later. For now we'll head back and tell the Hamilton miners it's safe to work the tunnels." Neville said.
"We also have to get the mail and fly a patrol of the county. It's been a few days." Abby said.
"Work, it never stops." Harry said holding out a portkey for the group.
