The world shook. Lenna watched as the sky was torn asunder. The shockwave felt like her heart had beat off tempo. She felt the sound dampening metal plates in her helmet heat up to a level that most would've found uncomfortable. For a moment she was afraid that her lenses were going to break free of their binding agent.

Walter's hat fell off of his head and toppled onto the roof next to him.

Lenna looked around and saw that every single elf had their hands covering their ears and their mouths open. It took her a moment to realize that they had done that to keep the incredibly loud thundercrack from damaging their ears too horribly. She also didn't doubt that the guardsmen directly under the line of fire were going to have to deal with insistent ringing for quite some time. The bullet had moved far too quickly for Lenna to track, far too quickly for the air to get out of the way as well. In Lenna's mind, it was like an invisible lightning bolt had split the sky from Walter to his target.

—

Isaac was almost knocked out of his meditation when his entire body shook. For the briefest of seconds everything seemed to stand still before it went back to normal. If he had been even slightly conscious, then he would've wondered why his ears were so warm all of a sudden.

—

Walter watched the bullet fly. Two and a half times the sound barrier was quick but not nearly quick enough. Just under three seconds until impact was far, far too long. No matter what Walter had done to his guns, getting an adamantine cored steel bullet to break the third sound barrier just wasn't feasible with a portable weapon. As it was, his entire barrel, the firing chamber, and every single part that was under any stress from firing were absolutely covered in strengthening enchantments and the gun still weighed seventy pounds due to all of the solid steel involved.

"One," Walter began whispering to himself. "Two," He willed the bullet to make contact as the creature just stood frozen in place watching with curiosity and confusion. Walter could hardly see the monster, in fact, if his scope didn't have three different kinds of vision enhancement and alteration enchantments then he wouldn't have seen it at all. It started to move as it finally noticed the small dot inside of the conical cloud that was getting larger and larger in its vision. It realized that it was about to be hit by the cloud too late. Its response was to try to make the tree that it was standing on grow and shove off of it. All that its efforts managed to do was to make the bullet go through the tree first.

The tree grew nearly a quarter of its size, in just as long of a second, but because of the growth of the tree, the lindwyrm hadn't actually gotten any lower than its starting position after it had shoved off, at least not before Walter's bullet arrived. The tree exploded as a nineteen millimeter steel projectile moving at forty five times the speed of a runaway horse impacted it like a hammer strike of a vengeful god. Steel was torn, crunched, warped, bent, and heated as the projectile blasted through the tree. The adamantine core was entirely untouched until the projectile hit the lindwyrm.

The deformation of the steel caused it to punch rather than penetrate through the shoulder of the draconic armed snake. The natural resistance of the scales put up a valiant effort but it simply wasn't enough for how much lethal intent the projectile carried with it. The steel blasted apart both against and inside of the creature's shoulder but the adamantine had other ideas. The dart made of a nearly indestructible metal pierced and shattered everything in its way before it left a ragged exit hole out the back of the lindwyrm's shoulder. It had turned slightly from each of the impacts with the shoulder's rounded bones. By the time it had left, it had turned almost sideways yet hadn't deformed more than a slightly blunted tip.

Blood, bone chips, fleshy bits, steel shrapnel, and prismatic scales blasted apart in all directions out from behind the tree. Walter hadn't been able to see the impact directly, as the tree had been in the way. The tree was now the same size as it had been before he had shot it as all of the height that it had just gained fell free of the rest of it. The lindwyrm had vanished from sight amid the explosions of shrapnel and toppling top half of the tree that it had tried to use as a shield.

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"Walter!" Philia called up to him, even though his spell was still active that connected sound from two points. The spell had a volume limit, because it took too much power to transmit sounds beyond a certain decibel limit. "Status!"

"Battleship hit." Walter replied back. "No confirmation on status or injury level. There was a lot of red and pink so I know it hit it directly."

Philia took a deep breath and then let it out as her mind raced. "Reconnect me to every scout team. I need teams Ketivven and Furona to switch from returning to tracking the target." She finished explaining what she needed Walter for. "Ven! Kaden! Get your teams together and go after it!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Both elite Errantee Guard Scout Team Leaders called out from their positions on the walls. The walls exploded into motion as her orders were followed as if the entire world was on the line.

—

Lenna felt like a boat resting peacefully in the eye of a hurricane, even if she had never been on a boat or in the eye of a hurricane. The feeling just felt like it matched that specific situation which had happened in one of her books, though without any of the steamy parts below deck.

She was still reeling after witnessing a darkened line across the sky originating from Walter. She had seen his smaller weapons in action and none of them left the same impression. The others were all startling, strange, and mildly frightening because of her lack of understanding. This one was different. Lenna knew that no matter if she understood how the weapon worked or not, it would still be utterly terrifying. That singular shot could've killed her if it had hit her directly. She could feel it in her bones. She could still feel a tingle across her skin from just being semi-adjacent to the projectile's flight path.

Walter slid down the roof, grabbed his hat on the way down, and then dropped thirty feet to the ground. Some magic activated as he fell which kept him at a safe speed the entire way down until he landed with a bend of his knees and a grunt as his weapon attempted to take his arms with it to the ground. He glanced at Isaac and shook his head as he walked over to Lenna and Philia. He gave Isaac a decently wide berth, maybe to make sure that he didn't disturb him further or maybe because the absurd amount of mana pouring through the dark mage was unnerving.

"Two thousand." Walter told Philia as soon as he had gotten close.

"I know." Philia replied. "You put it on 'Fuck You'. I could tell."

Walter shook his head. "That's not what 'F' stands for." He corrected her in a way that made it known that he had done so countless times before.

"What?" Lenna couldn't help but ask. She was still a bit out of it after the whole situation.

"Phil-" Walter began as if he was going to explain it to Lenna but Philia cut him off.

"Not now Walter. Connect me to the scout teams." She directed him.

"I should really be charging you for this." Walter grumbled and placed his thumb on her forehead. "Of Sound Mind, from one to another, use mine Mind, send Sound to the other." He chanted and a soft green and indigo light started to emanate from his thumb before a small spell sigil appeared around it on Philia's forehead.

Lenna just waited, standing guard over her husband, as Walter and Philia sent multiple messages to multiple scout teams. The teams of rangers and rogues were in for the worst times, and potentially the last times, of their lives if they ran into the lindwyrm while it was injured. If Walter hadn't incapacitated it, then any weaker scout team that came across it would be found later as a collection of bloodstains.

Once the artificer and 'old ranger' were finished, Gypsy brought Walter's saddlebags over. "Thanks, Gyps." Walter told the fox and scratched her head. She looked up at him and then over at one specific corpse among the multiple that littered the courtyard. "Go ahead, but only a gallon. Your decomposer can't handle any more than that."

Gypsy nodded and turned to get her meal. Lenna kept an eye on her as she ate small chunks of flesh just like any normal fox would have. It was strange knowing that she was not flesh and blood but looked and acted as if she was.

"Oh, so, 'F' is for 'Fastest'." Walter began. "It has two other settings, well, three technically." He continued as he sat his weapon on the ground and started taking the barrel off of it. "It's 'S' for-" He continued but Philia cut him off.

"Safe from dragons." She explained.

Walter shook his head. "No. Just, 'Safe', which is when it can't fire." He corrected her. "Then there's 'N' for-"

Philia cut him off again: "Not a dragon."

Walter's face took on a flat look. "''Normal', it's for normal. The last one's 'D' for-"

Philia butted in once more: "Dragon hunting."

"'Doppler', because I have a special bullet that weaponizes the… Isaac would get it, well, maybe." He shook his head. He looked over at Isaac. "I'm surprised he didn't fall when I shot."

"He's pretty deep." Lenna confirmed. "If he was in any danger, he would've woken up."

"Walter, back to business, I need you to connect me to Grand Commander Thren Gl'doe." Philia told him. "I need to speak with him about requisitioning enough funds to pay for your assistance. I can handle everything you've done so far, but if you are going to go after it, I'll need to secure funds first."

"I have to escort those two to the capital first, then I can come back and hunt, but not for too long because I'll have to take them back, probably." Walter explained. "Just figure out where it lives and let me know."

Philia nodded. "I know. But it'll still take at least a season to requisition the funds. It's better to start as soon as possible."

Walter sighed. "Fine. Bureaucracy sucks everywhere." He agreed and got to work mentally connecting Philia to yet another person. He was starting to wish that he had just made her a device to do it herself.

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