"What's what?" Walter questioned and then his mind raced to try and place what Isaac was specifically mentioning. He opened his overcoat and pulled out his sheathed weapon. The wooden handle was similar to an extra-curved saber hilt except it got even wider at the end, than normal, to help it rest comfortably in his hand. Instead of a blade, there was a blocky piece of black iron and then a short metal pipe that extended out of it. "This?"

Isaac tried to nod. He wasn't sure how well he did it so he tried to squeak out an agreement with mild success.

"Uh, uh," Walter stammered. It looked like his mind was racing through an entire encyclopedia before he resolved to just start rambling until he got something comprehensible out. "Gun, firearm, boomstick, thunderstick, uh, magically assisted projectile launcher, ranged weapon, pistol, revolver," His mind continued to race but Isaac held up a hand as his headache stopped getting worse.

Isaac's head had been getting crushed in a giant's palm but now the hand had stopped squeezing even if the pressure didn't lessen. "Explain." Isaac whispered with eyes that couldn't even open due to the pain of daylight.

"Okay, uh, I don't know why it's helping but… I enchanted a heavily modified version of the Thunder Wave spell inside of the barrel, the pipe-looking part," He said and pointed even though Isaac wasn't looking. "when I pull the trigger the Thunder Wave goes off and hits a small steel bullet much like the tip of a target arrowhead only like five times as long. Because of the reinforced closed off barrel, uh, pipe, most of the force gets redirected back towards the back of the bullet to help launch it at incredibly high speed."

Isaac had tried to wave off Walter but his eyes weren't focused as he tried to explain the entirety of his weapon in as little time as possible. "No." Isaac squeaked out. "Not right."

Walter's eyes widened as a realization set in. "You're like me." With his mouth slightly agape.

"Walter." Lenna snapped as quietly as she could. "It was helping."

"Oh, right, yeah, um," He swallowed to help buy him some time to switch mental tracks. "The original ones used chemical propellant that would explode via a spark caused by a kinetic reaction. When I first came here I tried to use blasting jelly but they like to just explode sometimes so I switched gears and started using magic for more than just barrel strengthening so the steel bullets wouldn't ruin my rifling."

"Walter." It was Isaac's turn to try and get him back on track.

"Right, uh, the chemical explosion does exactly what I use the Thunder Wave spell for. I don't know what else you want from me if I'm being honest." Walter replied with a tinge of helplessness. "What is happening to you?"

"More information." Isaac groaned. His headache had actually lessened a bit but the pistol in Walter's hand kept trying to call forth memories that Isaac just simply didn't have. It was almost like Walter's guns were not something that Rei or Zei had accounted for. Though, maybe they had left any knowledge of advanced weaponry out of Isaac's mind for a reason.

Walter spent that next hour going over everything that he knew about guns. Most of what actually seemed to help Isaac revolved around the specific weapon in Walter's hands and ones that were similar to it from wherever they had come from. Speaking of where they had come from, whenever Walter had mentioned it, no sound escaped his lips. It wasn't that Isaac couldn't hear it, the sound just wouldn't leave Walter's mouth as if Primatia forbade its mentioning.

Isaac was sitting on the side of the worn natural stone that had become a road over millennia. He was still messaging his head as a mild but survivable headache refused to leave him whenever he looked at either of Walter's guns. The 'Revolver' strapped to his breast or his 'Lever-Action' nestled half under his saddle.

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"I have so many questions." Isaac said and tried to just power through his existing headache.

"Same." Walter replied. "Are you so powerful because of your reincarnation? Did you ask for 'godly power' or something else ridiculous?"

"Something like that." Isaac told him. "I asked what I could get if I traded almost all of my memories for power. This is what I got."

Walter nodded and rubbed his chin. "Not my first choice, but an understandable one, if you really hated your past or something." He commented.

"What about you?" Isaac asked in return.

"I traded all my memories of every romantic relationship I'd ever been in, every embarrassing memory, and my vi- my skills in a sort of sport," Walter caught himself before he triggered another mental attack on Isaac's sectioned off and semi-fractured mind. "for an elvish body, complete with its lifespan, and customized to my preferences, the ability to learn and feel magic at an average level, unreasonably steady hands, perfect senses that wouldn't degrade with time, a really good memory, and one divine intervention if I died again to just teleport me back to where I started with all of my gear and companions fixed and healed back to optimal strength and efficiency, basically a 'get out of jail free card'."

Isaac clutched his head in pain again. "Ow." He groaned. "Can you, not do that?"

"Oh, oops." Walter apologized.

Isaac sighed. "Walter, I think it'd be best if we just stayed away from old world topics, conversations, words, and other such things that would result in my head getting crushed between the bottom of a mountain and the ground." He told his fellow being from another world.

Walter nodded. "I can try, but, like, I make references all the time that no one understands. I don't even think about it." He explained. "An infinite amount of inside jokes that only I get is one of life's greatest jewels. There are six of them." He smirked slightly to himself.

Isaac narrowed his eyes at Walter. "I should be glad that whatever old world reference you just made went over my head, shouldn't I?"

Walter's smirk turned into a grin. "Yeah. Probably. I have no idea where I'd even start explaining that one." His grin dropped as he focused in on Isaac. The sudden shift in his presence was enough to get Isaac and Lenna's immediate attention. "We should either get moving or wait here until dawn. The" His eye twitched. "Celestial Kingdom, is dangerous at night. Not because of visibility, we all can see in the dark and Lua'll help light our path, but because of the predators that come out and the trees can sometimes get… restless. There are designated resting spots where the predators won't go because there are magics in place to prevent them. We need to make sure that we make it to each one before dusk. The reason we could leave as late as we did was because climbing up the mountain with a wagon takes around five times as long as it'll take us to descend it. We need to get halfway down the mountain in…" He eyed the sun in the sky and started counting finger widths from the horizon to the sun. "Three and a half hours. Some of the predators don't wait until the sun has fully set."

Isaac nodded and got to his feet with a groan. "Okay, let's get going." He told Walter.

Walter nodded and reached into his saddlebags. He pulled out two pairs of strange ear ornaments. They looped around the back of the wearer's ears and had a metal plate that was held in place just outside of the ear itself. The metal plate was covered in enchanting runes. "Put these on." He told Isaac. "Lenna, I don't know how you're gonna get these on under your helmet, but you need to. My weapons'll deafen you momentarily when I shoot them, even from a few yards away. Even after the fact, you'll have mild hearing damage."

Isaac grabbed two of them and put them on. "I take it these dampen loud sounds?"

Walter nodded. "Any sounds over a certain decibel threshold will be reduced to annoying loud instead of ear shatteringly loud." He explained.

Lenna stared at them for a moment before she took them. "How close do they have to be to my ears?" She wondered.

"Two inches." Walter replied. "The original design was only an inch but, things happened and I've made them all two inches from now on. You can bend everything except the metal plate itself."

Lenna nodded and started taking her helmet off. She bent the part that looped behind the ear so it would rest between the crown and the padding inside of her helmet. It wouldn't be very comfortable if she got hit in the head too hard but at least Walter's loud weapons wouldn't destroy her eardrums every time he shot them.

While Lenna was fiddling with the ear protection and her helmet, Isaac started asking questions about where they were going, all of his other questions could wait until they were on the road. Walter explained some of the different things that the high elves had done to the flora. There was a plant that was notoriously poisonous with bright red stems, leaves, flowers, and berries. Everything about it screamed out the fact that it was poisonous. Most, but not all, of them that the group would see on their travels were safe to eat. Two flower petals and one berry, put in a ten ounce cup, would turn into a perfectly sweetened cup of peach-adjacent tea. There were also raspberries that were so completely poisonous that even one would kill an unleveled person and it would only take around three to kill someone like Walter or Isaac. Most of what Isaac got out of it was; 'Don't touch anything, don't eat anything, and especially don't trust the flora not to try and eat you'.

With Lenna's ear protection in her helmet, and Isaac's equipped, Walter put his own on and even attached a set of larger ones to Copper's bridle to protect his horse's ears. It was clear from the act that Walter cared for his horse as much as most would another member in their adventuring party. The duo did find it a bit strange that Gypsy didn't show up to get a pair herself but seeing as the fox hadn't been around at all, neither of them mentioned it. With everyone ready to continue on their journey, it was finally time to crest the last edge of the human side of the mountain range.

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