Lord: My Shop Connects to Modern Times

The familiar whistle pulled Gail out of bed.

Today is the third day since he joined the temporary army, and he has already gotten somewhat used to the whistle.

After quickly getting dressed, Gail hurriedly followed the crowd to the training ground.

Today seems a little different; inside the arena, the knight named Leon is already waiting.

As the lord's personal knight, he rarely came to the training grounds to train soldiers after the number of soldiers in Grayrock Town increased.

Most of the time, the training is conducted by the team's captain, while Leon is responsible for managing those captains, who in turn manage the squad leaders, and so on, with each level of the team doing the work.

This was a reform Lynn made after the population base had increased.

After all, with more people, if Leon were to personally handle all matters of the army, it would probably exhaust Lynn, his personal knight.

As the team assembled in an orderly fashion, Leon walked over from the side.

He stood at the front of the line, staring intently at Gale and his group of new recruits.

The group of people in front of me, apart from the veterans, are all people who have been "trained" by the system.

"We will not do basic training today."

Leon spoke, his voice not loud, but firm and resonant.

The group of captured recruits looked puzzled, but no one dared to move or ask a question.

Leon waved to the side, and an old soldier, holding a flintlock pistol in both hands, ran up to him and stood down.

It's one of those iron pipes that can breathe fire!

Gail's gaze immediately fixed on it, instantly drawn to it.

He had already heard countless rumors about this thing back in Frostfire City.

The veterans in the dormitory also each had one, but perhaps due to military requirements, or to guard against these "captured soldiers," he never had much opportunity to learn about this weapon.

Only now has he had the opportunity to see it up close for the first time.

It reached about waist-length, with a thin iron pipe at the front and a complex wooden structure at the back. Its shape was bizarre, yet it possessed a unique aesthetic appeal. It was covered with parts he couldn't name. The whole thing looked… very strange.

In short, this thing was unlike any weapon he knew.

"This is a flintlock musket," Leon's voice rang out. "The standard weapon of the Grayrock Town Musketeers."

flintlock musket.

Gail silently repeated the name in her mind.

“I know many of you haven’t seen it,” Leon continued, “but you’ve heard of it to some extent, and some of you have even…experienced its power.”

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the line.

"Today, you have the opportunity to fully understand it. Not as an enemy, but as a user."

Gail's heart skipped a beat.

user?

Are these captured recruits also capable of using this kind of weapon?

Leon didn't say much. He walked over to the veteran, took the gun, and skillfully demonstrated its movements.

"Loading procedure. First, take out the loaded ammunition from the ammunition pouch—the paper-wrapped gunpowder and lead pellets."

He tore open a paper packet, poured gunpowder into the muzzle, and then stuffed in the lead pellet.

"The second step is to use a scouring pad to tamp the ammunition in place."

He pulled out the thin iron rod from under the gun barrel and poked it a few times.

"The third step is to pry open the hammer and pour some ignition powder into the ignition pool."

He made a gesture that Gail couldn't see clearly, but she roughly understood the meaning.

"Fourth step, aim, pull the trigger."

Leon held the gun level and aimed it at a target in the distance.

With a loud "bang," Gale saw only a flash of muzzle flash followed by a cloud of white smoke. The target a hundred paces away suddenly trembled violently before falling silent.

This……

Gail was a little confused. He saw the target in the distance move, but he didn't know what was going on.

The bullet was traveling too fast for his naked eye to detect.

"This is how a flintlock musket is used," Leon said calmly. "In terms of power, it's enough to destroy most standard armor within fifty paces."

He spoke casually, as if this were the natural course of events, but the prisoners below were anything but calm.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to describe it as utterly astonished.

Penetrate most armor within fifty paces? You're kidding!

Within fifty paces, the power of arrows, and even crossbows, could only make soldiers wearing steel armor retreat a few steps.

Can this thing penetrate directly?

Moreover, Leon's reload time for this flintlock musket is about ten breaths, not much slower than that of a bow and arrow.

Gail wasn't entirely convinced, but he had witnessed the obvious swaying of the target from a hundred paces away.

He fell silent for a moment. He had only heard that this thing was very powerful before, but he didn't expect it to be this powerful.

He recalled that at Dark Raven Pass, some soldiers in the Southern Allied Forces had tried to charge up the hillsides on either side, only to be driven back by inexplicable attacks.

Most of the soldiers who were attacked had their armor shattered and their bodies torn open. Could this be it...?

Gail shuddered; he dared not think any further.

"Next."

Leon tossed the flintlock pistol back to the veteran, then waved behind him again. The two soldiers understood and jogged away. A short while later, something Gale had never seen before appeared in his sight.

Two soldiers slowly pushed a huge object towards them.

The object consisted of two large wheels and a thick, long iron pipe, which rested on a wooden frame above the wheels. It had a complex mechanism at the rear. The entire object was painted a dark gray, giving it a cold, hard sheen in the sunlight.

Gail's gaze was immediately drawn to it.

This thing... he thinks he's seen it before...

Gale thought carefully, but before he could recall anything, Leon spoke up:

"This is a field gun," Leon's voice rang out. "You were mainly defeated by it in the Battle of Raven Pass."

As soon as he finished speaking, Gerald felt the previously unclear memories in his mind come alive!

Yes! That's it!

That day at Dark Raven Pass, the dark shadows that flew down from the hillside, those "Grim Reapers" that tore their teammates apart—they were shot out from this kind of thing!

A commotion arose in the ranks.

Gail's palms began to sweat.

He remembered that day. He remembered the explosions, the screams, the torn corpses. He remembered his lord, Earl Karl, with his leg severed, and Earl Willard lying in a pool of blood.

So that's what it is...

"Six cannons, 1,200 shells," Leon said calmly, without any deliberate boasting. "Of your 6,000 men, nearly half have been killed or wounded in half a day."

Six cannons.

Half a day.

Six thousand people.

Gail's heart sank.

He looked at the thing called a "field gun." It stood there quietly, its iron pipes slightly raised, like a silent behemoth.

"Now, I'll teach you how to use it."

Leon walked over to the cannon and began to explain.

"This is the gun barrel; the shells are loaded here. This is the gun carriage, used to adjust the angle. This is the ignition port; you ignite it from here."

He spoke and demonstrated at the same time.

Two soldiers worked with him, loading, adjusting, and aiming.

"Loading steps. First, clean the breech. Second, load the propellant charge. Third, load the shell—it can be a solid shot or a grapeshot. Fourth, tamp it down. Fifth, aim. Sixth, ignite."

His movements were quick, but each step was precise.

"Range. Solid shot, maximum range 1,000 paces. Grappling, effective range 300 paces."

One thousand steps.

Gail gasped.

Even the strongest archer can only advance two hundred paces. That requires a top-tier archer with an exceptional bow.

This thing... can it hit a target a thousand paces away?

"Prepare," Leon ordered.

The two soldiers lit the fuse and stepped aside.

Leon raised his hand, then swung it down sharply.

"put!"

The fuse touched the ignition hole.

boom--!

A deafening roar followed.

Gail's eardrums were ringing, and she was stunned for a moment, frozen in place.

He looked in the direction of the sound and saw a huge cloud of white smoke billowing from the cannon, followed by a cloud of dust exploding on a hillside a few hundred paces away.

When the smoke cleared, a huge crater appeared on the hillside.

The trees around the pit had all fallen down.

The line was completely silent.

Everyone stared at the crater, at the fallen trees, and at the still-smoking cannon muzzle.

Gail suddenly remembered Hank's words.

"I believe the lord will not let us die in vain."

He now understands a little better where this confidence comes from.

With such weapons, who could possibly win?

"These are solid shot," Leon's voice broke the silence. "Shotgun shells are too powerful and expensive to demonstrate. But some of you should have seen them before."

Indeed, some people have seen it.

Gail has not only seen it, but she still can't forget that scene—the sight of her teammates being riddled with bullets...

He stopped thinking about it.

"Besides flintlock muskets and field guns," Leon continued, "there's something called a 'thunderclap bomb.' It's a homemade bomb that can blow up a whole area when you throw it. But it's easy to operate, and you'll learn how to use it when you get to use firearms later."

He paused.

"I'm showing you these things today not to show off, but to tell you what kind of weapons you're about to use."

He walked to the front of the line and scanned each person with his eyes.

"From today onwards, you will begin to handle these weapons. Within a week, you must learn the basics of using a flintlock musket—loading, aiming, firing, and maintenance."

"You will be trained in groups for field artillery. Each group will be responsible for one gun, and you must master everything from loading to firing."

Leon did not explain why they had to learn it within a week.

Gail took a deep breath.

A week.

Learn how to use these weapons.

He looked at the still-smoking cannon muzzle and at the strangely shaped flintlock pistol in the old soldier's hand.

A strange feeling suddenly welled up in his heart.

It wasn't fear, it wasn't tension.

Rather, it's a kind of...confusion.

As a mid-level soldier, he was confident that he could take on ten opponents at once; he could even defeat ten fully armed ordinary soldiers with his bare hands.

But he was unsure about this.

Leaving aside the terrifyingly powerful field gun, he wasn't even confident he could withstand the flintlock musket.

The intermediate-level warrior rank granted him superhuman physique, combat skills, and reflexes.

But here, if someone were to take that flintlock pistol and shoot me from fifty paces away, I could die on the spot.

Even if the person wielding the flintlock pistol is an ordinary person with no fighting ability, it is no exception...

Gale couldn't help but sigh, wondering if his status as a mid-level warrior would be nothing but a joke in the face of such a weapon.

He remembered the lord of this place. That nobleman named Lynn.

He had a premonition that the Southern Territory... might really be about to undergo a major change...