Chapter 19: Chapter 19: Underwater World (III)
"Come on everyone, maintain the formation!" A man in armor shouted, while blocking an attack from one of the beast with his spear in front of the party and launching his spear to the back of the beast, causing a bleeding hole to appear. The spear managed to slash through the thick hide of the beast, allowing the venom inside it to slow down the beast.
The spear that was separated from the man shook a bit from the back of the beast before returning to the hand of the warrior, the blood gone from the tip of the spear.
At this point, the beast was howling, commanding the other beasts fighting the team to focus its attention towards the man in armor. Seeing this, the man smiled grimly.
"Long-range blasters, activate!" The man shouted, before hurriedly jumping back to the side allowing those in the party to open fire with their small-range portable cannons.
The problem with their weapon was that it needed to be charged before being activated, at the same time, the distance from the target shouldn't exceed 15 meters or else the damage would be greatly reduced.
The launch of the portable cannon was quite strong, pushing back the ones holding the cannons. The launched projectiles immediately hit the beasts, causing smaller fragments to launch within the beasts, instantly decimating their life force as their organs were ripped to bits by the smaller fragments.
It was shrapnel portable cannon, one of the stronger cannons available in the Kingdom of Oz.
Paolo, upon seeing the power of the shot, was surprised to see something that can damage wild beasts in this area, instantly killing the beasts. This made him reevaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the kingdom.
He had thought it was still in the medieval age when he saw the man in armor throwing the spear. He was surprised to see them having portable cannons that even in the modern world does not have.
"It seems this world had a different branch of technological revolutions," Paolo muttered to himself.
He continued to observe the small group who had just finished off the last of the wild beasts in the forest. They immediately dissected these beasts and removed something from within. Paolo was intrigued to see this; whenever he killed wild beasts aboveground, the cores present in their bodies weren't as big as the ones here.
Furthermore, the star rank of these beasts were less than 0-star, and only 2-star and above beasts would have beast cores, and even then, these cores weren't equal in quality, according to the system description of the items.
From Paolo's understanding of the beast core, it had multiple purposes, such as for cultivation, for crafting, and as an energy source. After all, the beasts had their life force and energy concentrated into one, compressed core in their bodies; the amount of energy and life force useable was based on the rating of the core.
Cores had 10 basic rankings: Below Basic, Basic, Below average, Average, Good, Quite Good, Great, Excellent, Near perfect and Perfect, all of which had their respective indicators.
So far, he had only obtained 2 cores, one basic, and one average. Of course, for him, the system inventory could easily identify the cores once they were placed into the inventory space, categorizing and separating them into different stacks based on their quality and the element.
That was another important aspect: Elemental affinity of the cores. Usually, the beast's core was pure white if it indicated neutral element affinity. Such cores were commonly used as energy sources of newly theorized weapons and machineries from different countries since the day the Event occurred, as people as early as that time had begun to hunt for beasts and their cores.
Only after the apocalypse did the first breakthrough occur, which utilized a high-frequency gun that used up one basic-quality core and above with no restrictions on the element affinity. The damage was staggering, as it was able to vaporize a hole in a 2-meter wall without much disturbance in the surrounding walls, making it a clean shot.
This gave normal people, especially those in the military tasked to protect cities, a fighting chance against the mutated beasts.
The group of scientists and espers behind the weapon theorized that the higher the quality of the core used, the stronger the energy output. However, they only managed to test it up to below average core, which wasn't sufficient to prove this theory.
Going back to Paolo, what he saw was way more advanced than the high frequency gun. He couldn't even explain what happened to those monsters as they only looked like they fell, dead, with only 1 point of entry and no exit wounds.
He was genuinely curious about the production and action method of the weapon. After all, as a businessman, he could start to push his control to the firearms sector, a sector that is rapidly developing.
He decided to wait a bit for them to finish clearing up their spoils before appearing in front of the group using [Blink], to add flair to his entrance.
Upon seeing him, rather than surprise, they instantly pointed their weapons at him, staring daggers at him. Paolo was a bit surprised that they weren't surprised of his entry, causing him to come to a conclusion: They already know that he was nearby.
The leader of the group looked at Paolo grimly and asked, "Stranger, who are you?" in his native tongue.
This put Paolo in a dilemma. He neither has any skill nor system points available to use to level up [Translation] skill under Air supportive skill tree.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Silent_Dawn
Silent_Dawn Changed the release schedule to 1 chapter a day from Monday to Friday.
MWF = every 12 nn GMT+8
TTH = every 8 am GMT+8
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