Bai Mu recognized it at a glance as an old-fashioned pump-action shotgun. Modern shotguns no longer used external hammers and rarely used wood for their construction.
He took down the hunting gun closest to him. The wooden stock touched his palm, feeling heavy and cold.
This antique gun's gauge was the classic 12-gauge. In the era when this gun was produced, craftsmen calculated the gauge based on how many perfectly spherical lead balls of the same diameter as the barrel could be made from one pound of pure lead. This number became the gauge.
The so-called "12-gauge" meant that one pound of pure lead could be forged into twelve lead balls that perfectly fit inside the barrel.
Simply put, the smaller the gauge, the larger the barrel diameter. The nominal inner diameter of a 12-gauge barrel was approximately 18.5 millimeters. Among the weapons Bai Mu had collected in the past, there was a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun.
Bai Mu supported the gun with his left hand, while his right hand gently stroked the barrel like a lover's caress.
In the ten years following the apocalypse, he had carried a gun on him almost every second of every day. The submachine guns, rifles, shotguns, and pistols he had acquired through various means had become a part of his body.
At the moment he detonated the combat vehicle, intending to perish alongside the Zombie horde, his only companions had been those silent, inanimate partners.
Without a gun by his side, he always felt as if a part of himself was missing. Now, that missing piece had finally returned.
Standing inside Dave's secret arsenal, that sense of inner peace—the feeling of being home—flooded back into his body.
As Bai Mu stroked the hunting gun, its information materialized before his eyes.
[Name: Dave's Hunting Gun]
[Type: Shotgun]
[Quality: Rare]
[Note: Dave's grandfather once participated in the 1976 Zombie War, and this shotgun was one of his weapons. The first time Dave saw this hunting gun was on the day he turned one month old. His grandfather placed a flower pot, the hunting gun, and a fountain pen in front of him. Dave unhesitatingly buried his face in the flower pot and dug out a sprouted pea seed. He claimed to everyone that his research on garden plants began on that day. However, the actual truth of that day was that he peed all over his grandfather's face.]
Judging from the hunting gun's background description, it was a seasoned veteran.
"Neighbor, do you need me to help you remember how to shoot?" Dave asked.
"No need, Dave." Bai Mu's gaze locked onto the ammunition scattered across the long table.
The Zombie tide was about to begin. He had at most less than a minute left to prepare and needed to arm himself immediately.
For the next half hour, he would have to defend this backyard all by himself, battling hundreds of Zombies.
The price of failure was death. Yet, his heart was as tranquil as still water. He remained completely unfazed, having experienced life-and-death wagers like this countless times before.
He quickly located the 12-gauge shells on the table and began loading the gun.
This old-fashioned shotgun was primarily loaded through a tubular magazine at the bottom of the receiver. He stabilized the weapon with his left hand, using his right thumb to push the magazine latch forward, opening the loading port.
The 12-gauge shells were fed into the loading port from the bottom, one by one. The shell lifter compressed, emitting a crisp, pleasing click with each round.
With six shells loaded into the magazine of this lethal weapon, Bai Mu racked the pump backwards.
Clack. The loading port closed, and the antique gun entered combat readiness.
His movements were a feast for the eyes, completing this somewhat complex operation in a matter of seconds. It was so fluid that it looked less like he was loading a gun and more like he was performing an intricate magic trick.
"Good heavens, neighbor! Your loading posture is exactly like my grandfather's!" Dave exclaimed. "It looks like you don't need any help from me at all."
"The Zombies are coming soon! I have to go to the front yard to hold them off. I'm leaving the backyard to you, neighbor. Use those bullets to blow their heads wide open!"
Dave issued his final ultimatum. For Players, his departure signaled the start of the Zombie assault.
"I'll do my best to hold the line here, Dave," Bai Mu replied, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder.
Dave didn't reply. He left the basement, the clatter of his footsteps fading into the distance.
While Dave made his way to the front yard, Bai Mu continued scavenging for weapons in the basement. The shotgun packed a heavy punch, but its sustained fire was abysmal. He couldn't possibly fight continuously for thirty minutes with just one shotgun.
He fastened a yellowed military utility belt around his waist, stuffing it with four stick grenades and two fully loaded revolvers.
At the same time, he grabbed a semi-automatic rifle in his left hand and tucked a submachine gun with a massive drum magazine under his right arm.
These were all outdated, antique pieces of equipment, which was entirely normal. How could a mad genius obsessively devoted to studying garden plants have the time to collect modern firearms?
Judging from their background descriptions, almost all of this gear was the legacy left behind by Dave's grandfather. They were either weapons his grandfather had brought home from the Zombie War, or collectibles he had scavenged from antique markets.
They were old, even older than Bai Mu himself, but they had been meticulously maintained. There were no signs of rust or moisture damage. Judging by the sheen on the components, their most recent oiling had been just a few days ago.
This meant they were in perfect working order, alleviating any worries about jams or barrel explosions.
From the condition of these firearms, Bai Mu could sense the deep affection their owner held for them.
Perhaps this was merely a repetitive Adventure Script, but the details and the profound realism of the Script left Bai Mu unable to find even a single flaw.
He could tell that the guns' owner truly loved them. He could even picture the scene: an old man sitting at the long table under a warm lamp, putting on his reading glasses, dismantling the parts, and carefully, meticulously oiling each one.
Ultimately, it took Bai Mu less than a minute to become fully armed, loading ammunition into every single weapon on his person.
More than that, he filled extra magazines, strapped on the military backpack, and stuffed it full of spare bullets.
Truthfully, he wished he could just pack up the entire table and take it with him. For a very long time, he had lived a destitute life where every bullet fired was one bullet lost. That impoverished existence of constantly pinching pennies hadn't eased up until the very moment he blew himself up along with the Zombie horde.
Because of this, seeing the mountains of ammunition piled high on the table made him feel like a starving refugee laying eyes on disaster relief rations. He was truly traumatized by poverty.
At a conservative estimate, he was carrying around three hundred rounds of ammunition on his person, pushing his loadout to roughly twenty kilograms. Of course, this was nothing to him; he didn't feel the weight at all. If he weren't pressed for time, he would have loaded up at least six hundred rounds before stopping.
But time was up. Laden with his gear, he jogged back out to the lawn in the backyard.
A humanoid creature with green skin, dressed in a suit and tie, staggered into his line of sight. He understood instantly: this was a "Zombie" of the Script, and it was his enemy.