Chapter 3: The Hunt for Giant Toads!

Author's note: For readers who are familiar with how the Gunslinger from DnD works you would notice that I had to alter the skills and levels for the unlock a little in order to fit in with the world better.

{ Dust's POV }

These heroes with strange names are very weird. No, I do not mean the Crimson Demons who are well known for their magic and weird names. First Kyouya, despite how I feel about him, he is not that bad at fighting monsters with that cursed sword of his. Next there was Kazuma, who despite being in the Adventurer class and having a problematic trio as his party, managed to deal with Generals of the Demon King rather well. Now this Fujiwara has a never-before-seen Gunslinger class, well there seemed to be a trend here huh. I had asked Fujiwara what he did before coming to Axel to strike a conversation, but he gave a vague answer about a farm somewhere. Well, if he wants to hide his past that's fine by me, no point being a hypocrite. He gave me a brief explanation on what a 'gun' was when I asked him, showing me one of those metal things he kept in the bags strapped to his belt. Apparently, it shot out pieces of metal from the hole in front of it and this was powered by some magic powder. He didn't seem like a mage though and he confirmed that he didn't know any spells.

"So, are you going to get more of these bullets from a magic item shop?" Well if he wanted to get more of these magic items that only he could use maybe Wiz's shop might have them, after all it would fit the theme of Wiz getting items that were amazing but mostly useless.

"Maybe I will, I don't know…" Fujiwara seemed to be quite quiet. Still, he was confident in his ability, telling me not to intervene in his fight with the toads unless it was necessary. Maybe he just wanted to level up faster, but still it was kind of risky. Well, even if giant toads are troublesome and not worth fighting for the pay-out, I should have no trouble dealing with them myself. Well, there were some straight ahead now, I should prepare…

"Dust-san! Don't move any further, I don't want to hit you! Also, you may want to cover your ears!" Fujiwara took out a gun from one of the bags, flicked something on it and held it steady in front of him.

How bad could it be? I had experienced an Explosion spell set off by the Explosion maniac in Kazuma's party, no magic dust could be as powerful…

A large bang resounded as a flash of light erupted from his gun. Ouch, my ears…

{ Fujiwara's POV }

Dust seems like an alright guy, despite how Luna seems to treat him. Sure, he seems to be a talkative, fun-loving guy for someone that is older, but his character seems to be quite good. Sure, he only joined my quest because his other part members were preoccupied and he had debts but he didn't ask more about my past even though I am sure he did not buy my farm boy story, saving me an explanation which would have been hard to believe. He also nodded after I explained how a gun works to him though I was certain there was no way he really understood what I was saying, though to be fair a gun really was an alien concept to the people of this world. He gave quite a few pointers on the various monsters in this area such as the Unicorn Bunny and Rookie Killer, but he just wouldn't be as good of a mentor as I expect Kazuma to be. Not that he was terrible, but he just didn't have the common perspective of being from Japan.

Woah, those are giant toads? The brightly coloured toads could have sold well in a pet shop back home, if not for their humongous size! Well, best not to get too close, I don't think I want to experience what Dust said about being coated with slime from a giant toad.

"Dust-san! Don't move any further, I don't want to hit you! Also, you may want to cover your ears!" I shouted a warning to Dust, taking a M9 out of my right holster. Cocking the safety, I held It with both hands and took aim. Huh, it was hard to hold a gun steady compared to games, who knew?

Take deep breaths, keep your hands steady. Closing my left eye, the head of a giant toad was in the centre of the gun sights. I pulled the trigger.

Nothing could have prepared me for firing a gun for the first time. The sound was loud, and the recoil wasn't too bad when I had braced for it. Maybe it was my skill helping me handle the gun? The giant toad went down as the bullet hit it square on the head. That was easy.

Wait why were there other toads leaping towards us already? No time to think about it, I took aim at the closest one. Another shot found its mark. Then another and another until I lost count of how many I had fired. Five? Six? Seven? There were two more toads leaping out of the ground. Well, time to pull back and continue firing. Dust must have an archer type in his party as he moved to cover my retreat.

Bang, bang, bang. Pulling the trigger seemed so familiar now. The acrid smell of gunpowder didn't seem so bad anymore. I watched as a toad fall out of the way of my shot as it tripped over the corpse of another toad. A tongue lashed out towards me and I moved to dodge, just as Dust slashed into the monster with his sword. He gave me a grin and moved towards another toad, not seeing the threat of yet another toad behind him.

Bang! That toad fell over dead. Surely, we had killed more than ten toads, already right? I could feel the gun already getting quite hot from the constant shooting. I kept firing, since there wasn't much of a choice as the toads were still coming for us.

Click! What? I pulled the trigger again, only hearing that click. I had run out of rounds. What do I do?

"Hey kiddo, snap out of it! I've killed the last toad you can relax now." In my moment of shock, Dust had quickly dispatched of the few remaining toads.

"That gun is really powerful, to take down a giant toad in one hit even when you are so low-levelled. But it drew in the other toads because it is very loud, so maybe don't use it unless you have to?"

Certainly, I wouldn't be using my gun anytime soon. Not only did it draw in enemies like Dust said, but I was already running low on ammunition. Ugh, why would anyone want to be a gunslinger in this world? You can kill monsters rather easily yes, but you draw more in and when you run out of bullets there is nothing you can do.

"Hey you there? Honestly you did great for your first quest. Most of the time Giant Toad quests like this take way longer because we have to drive them out of their hiding spots or wait for a group of them to appear. Let's go back to the guild and notify them on the quest."

All I could do was nod as I pondered on what I could do to fix this horrible situation I was in.

{ Dust's POV }

These cheat heroes were insanely overpowered. In the end we had a total of eighteen giant toads killed and I only killed four toads! He lost focus near the end and was lucky that I was there to kill the remaining toads, but he really had a lot of potential. For a party with a Level one adventurer hunting Giant Toads, it would be expected that some of the party would be unfortunately caught by the Giant Toads tongue before being rescued. I mean I sure as hell wasn't going to get slimed. Still, he had pretty good reflexes and movement and wasn't really in any danger from the tongues until he froze up, which can be attributed to his young age and inexperience. He was still quiet even after we aced the quest though… Maybe I should teach him to relax and have fun a little, it is not too healthy for a boy his age to worry so much. Hmm maybe I should introduce him to my part members. After all, the story of the hero defeating the previous Demon King and becoming the new one because he had no friends is a tragedy that should never be repeated.

Back at the guild

{ Fujiwara's POV }

The journey back to the guild was uneventful. Dust explained that we did not need to carry the corpses back, we just had to turn in a request, and they'd provide a delivery service. In fact, they could verify the number of kills based on the adventurer's card so even if the corpses were blown up, as long as the quest was fulfilled, we would qualify for the bounty. Still, as Giant Toad meat was apparently quite tasty, the guild would provide money per toad.

" All right, after checking both your cards, I have confirmed your team finished the quest of defeating 10 Giant Toads in 4 days. You also killed an additional 8 toads so great work!" Luna smiled as she handed us back our cards.

Receiving rewards from the guild was quick, just like Dust told me. They would take an adventurer's card and place it in another machine to confirm the kills. Seemed like this world was based more on magic than science but it was quite advanced. Looking at my card, I saw that for defeating 14 toads I had levelled up six levels to level 7. I had heard that levelling up was easier at lower levels but still that was rather fast. There was a part on the card that had text flashing in gold.

'Choose your archetype.' Reading the description below, it seemed that certain classes had something like a split upgrade tree. For the Gunslinger class, one could choose Firearm Proficiency, Gunsmith or Adept Marksman at level 6. Hmm, Gunsmith seemed interesting.

'Upon choosing this archetype, you gain a proficiency with Tinker's Forge. You may use tools to craft ammunition, repair firearms or even create new ones with limitations.'

Craft ammunition? I definitely needed that! While the other two archetypes were useful as they boosted my attack or my hit chance and gave some really cool sounding abilities, they would be useless if I ran out of bullets. This was an easy choice. Selecting the Gunsmith archetype, I looked at the Learnable Skills column, searching for the skill to make bullets.

'Create Ammo: A spell exclusive to the Gunsmith, transform and combine suitable materials into ammunition' The skill seemed quite vague though, what were considered suitable materials?

The metal for the bullets should not be too much of an issue, I had collected as many bullet casings and had searched through the toads with obvious bullet holes for the remains of the bullets and collected them. The remaining deficit of material could be locally sourced is supposed. Still, I should test this skill out later.

For our efforts, we got 200000 eris for the bounty, in addition to 5000 per toad we killed so we had a total of 290000 eris. Dust helped me out a lot especially at the end as the Giant Toads would keep coming after us if not for Dust's (relatively) silent kills on the remaining toads. A quarter of the bounty was a good split even if I had technically fulfilled the bounty by myself. Counting out the money, I handed Dust's portion over to him.

"In celebration of clearing my debts and Fujiwara's successful first quest, the first round of drinks is on me!" Dust exclaimed to the cheers of everyone. Well, he did make a large amount of money for a day, perhaps he is more of the happy-go-lucky type? Well it couldn't hurt to join in and know more people, I guess…

Later that night

This really was another world huh. The laws of this country were so different that they considered me a fourteen-year-old as an adult, allowing me to buy alcohol. I bought a round for everyone after Dust did and tried one myself, it was just as bitter and gross as alcohol from Earth, I remember the taste from when Dad let me try a little of what he was drinking in secret. The angels, the goddesses, the magic, the monsters it all still seemed quite unreal to me. Yet here I was, laying on a bunch of hay in a stable, making money from killing monsters. Wait, was I forgetting something? Nah, it could wait till tomorrow, I am so tired…