In the past couple of years, while Auren struggled with his mana limitations caused by the slumbering phoenix egg inside his mental space, he had been forced to adapt.
He could not rely on magic like others, not when every attempt drained him too quickly. That struggle had led him down a path of invention, of forging a way to fight without leaning on the very power that chained him.
His first designs had been failures. They were too mana-dependent, essentially extensions of his own flaw.
The bullets he imagined relied entirely on concentrated mana, and while the idea looked brilliant on paper, reality had slapped him with bitter disappointment.
Those weapons were unusable. So, with stubborn determination, Auren turned toward earthly designs, weapons that fired real bullets.
But settling for ordinary was never in his nature.
