105: Chapter 105 Modified Weapons

Duan Hong and Li Quanshuo had been taking turns using binoculars on the roof to observe the surroundings. However, after dinner, the expected attack did not occur, and everything remained calm. At the police station, General Dimogo had mentioned that they would soon be cracking down on the Angress Family's illegal activities, but God only knew when the police would actually act. Furthermore, even if the police caused heavy losses for the Angress Family, they wouldn't be able to shake their foundation; the core strength would remain. Only by eliminating all core members of the Angress Family could the threat be truly neutralized. Ideally, they needed to find evidence of their crimes so the police could completely eradicate this evil force of the Angress Family.

Safety matters were naturally for Duan Hong and the others to worry about. Cao Xiao returned to his bedroom and called He Yueyou and Cheng Huaiyu to let them know he was safe, trying his best to sound optimistic. He was met with a long list of complaints from He Yueyou, and Cheng Huaiyu wanted nothing more than to appear before him immediately to teach him a lesson. It took a great deal of effort to finally calm Chen Huaiyu's anger.

He rubbed his aching temples with a conflicted expression. He wondered who he had offended. He had just arrived in Africa and encountered such things; it would be one thing if he had caused it himself, but this was all brought to his doorstep. He couldn't be blamed for this, yet in the eyes of Cheng Huaiyu and the others, he had become a total magnet for disaster.

He shook his head to stop dwelling on it. With a thought, a silver handgun appeared in his hand, looking remarkably similar to the silver desert eagle used by the deceased butler of the Angress Family. This was a pistol Cao Xiao had magic-modified using the desert eagle as a template, though aside from the very similar appearance, the internal structure was now completely different. This gun wasn't as large as a desert eagle; its length was only twenty-four centimeters, the body was slightly smaller, and the empty weight was less than one kilogram at just nine hundred and fifty grams. Although the weight had been reduced by nearly half, its performance had increased rather than decreased, with an effective range reaching three hundred and twenty meters. Don't underestimate the fact that it's only one hundred and twenty meters more than the original; this is already very close to the effective range of a rifle.

The effective range of the desert eagle was already a standout among pistols. Generally, a pistol's effective range is about fifty meters, a submachine gun's is about one hundred and fifty to two hundred meters, an assault rifle's is about four hundred meters, a medium-caliber sniper rifle's is about eight hundred meters, and large-caliber sniper rifles can reach over two thousand meters. This magic-modified pistol could rival an assault rifle; in terms of effective range alone, no pistol could compare. Moreover, it could achieve precise shooting within a hundred-meter range. In a vacuum, it could hit a target a hundred meters away with a deviation of no more than one micron; in a light breeze, the error would not exceed five millimeters, and in strong winds, no more than two centimeters. This level of precision is something even high-precision sniper rifles cannot achieve, allowing it to be used as a sniper rifle within two hundred meters.

The entire body of this pistol was made of X1 series and h1 series alloys. If it were built with a standard pistol structure, the empty volume might have been reduced to one-third of its original size. However, this pistol was only slightly reduced because the extra space inside the frame was designed as a suppressed structure. It could achieve suppressed firing without needing an external silencer; if equipped with a dedicated silencer, the sound of the shot would be so small it would be difficult to hear even from a few meters away.

Not only was the weight low, but the corresponding recoil was also much smaller. The vibration of the gun body during firing was minimal, having very little impact on accuracy. The magazine capacity was also increased to twelve rounds. While it couldn't match the seventeen-round capacity of a glock 17, it was still better than the original, at least reaching the capacity of a normal pistol. Any further increase in capacity would have compromised the aesthetic of its external form.

A good gun also needs high-performance ammunition to exert its maximum power. Cao Xiao also redesigned dedicated bullets for this gun. Another shortcoming of the desert eagle was its large muzzle flash; although this was mainly a barrel issue, the bullets also played a part. Therefore, he not only engraved eight right-hand twist rifling grooves inside the barrel but also improved the primer and propellant formula structure of the bullets. The bullet caliber remained the same, but the performance of the propellant was increased by at least thirty percent, producing greater thrust while significantly reducing the flash. Although it wasn't completely flashless, it was much better than a regular pistol. The casing material was also changed to a tungsten steel alloy currently available in the world, and the external design was made into an armor-piercing structure. With the increased barrel rifling and enhanced bullet performance, the muzzle velocity reached one thousand meters per second. Within a hundred meters, it could penetrate one to five layers of 1.5mm thick titanium steel plates or body armor made of fifty layers of Kevlar. At a distance of fifty meters, it could penetrate the side panels of a regular car and body armor below level five protection. Even for an armor-piercing round, this level of penetration is remarkable, rivaling a sniper rifle.

This gun also had a feature the original desert eagle lacked: the rate of fire could be adjusted via a knob on the grip. When turned to the maximum, one only needed to chamber a round once and pull the trigger once to fire all twelve rounds in the magazine in the shortest time possible. It could be considered a fully automatic pistol. If swapped with a special extended thirty-six-round magazine, it became a machine pistol with a rate of fire as high as two thousand rounds per minute, suitable for breakthroughs and fire suppression.

It wasn't just pistols. When he went to the police station, he intentionally circled around several buildings and actually found the station's armory. Inside, he discovered various police firearms used by the South African police and some purchased from abroad, including grenades, assault rifles, and sniper rifles—and more than one type of each. Grenades didn't have much technical complexity for him, and there wasn't much room for improvement in their structure or explosive formulas; anything he made would at most be slightly more powerful than what currently existed.

There were several types of assault rifles here. Besides the R5 used by the South African military and police, there were also German G36 assault rifles, Chinese Type 95 assault rifles, and the famous AK47. After thinking for a moment, he ultimately chose the German G36 assault rifle as the external template. It wasn't that the industrial mother machine couldn't design a completely new appearance, but the emergence of a new, excellent assault rifle would attract too much attention. Since he didn't have his own arms company, he wouldn't be able to explain where the gun came from. Therefore, he chose an existing gun with a good appearance as a template for his design. Consequently, the designed firearm would certainly not be as good as a completely original design, because the external shape would limit the internal structure of the firearm, keeping the room for improvement fixed within a framework and preventing the maximum effect from being achieved.

Fortunately, the G36 was also a very excellent assault rifle with a very logical structure. As long as the materials were replaced with better ones and some beneficial improvements were made using the extra space, a better effect could be achieved. The G36 assault rifle completely abandoned mechanical sights, replacing them with a dual optical system consisting of a reflex sight and a telescope sight, integrating the optics and the gun seamlessly. Particularly noteworthy was that a night vision device could be added to the G36 to form a periscope system, providing high aiming accuracy and effectively lowering the line of sight, giving it an unparalleled advantage over other small-caliber rifles in terms of aiming.

There are a total of seven variants of the G36. What he scanned at the police station was the standard G36 assault rifle. With a folding stock, the total length was 758/1000 mm, the empty weight was 3.63 kg, the barrel length was 480 mm, and the barrel was engraved with six right-hand 178 mm twist rifling grooves. The ammunition caliber was 5.56×45 mm, the muzzle velocity was about 920 meters per second, the theoretical rate of fire was 750 rounds per minute, the effective range was 400–450 meters, and it was equipped with a 3x telescope sight. The reliability and serviceability of the G36 were also good, requiring maintenance only once every twenty thousand rounds. The G36 left very little powder residue after firing and was rarely affected by external factors like sand, mud, and ice. Its maintenance was extremely simple, requiring no frequent upkeep other than wiping it with a cloth soaked in gun oil every once in a while. Because the G36's stock, receiver, and handguard were relatively light, the center of gravity was slightly forward, providing good balance and decent shooting accuracy.

There's no need to elaborate further on the G36's shortcomings; no weapon can be perfect. Every weapon has a different design direction and different performance priorities. Weapons are made for people to use; as long as the performance isn't bad and meets the user's requirements, it's the best weapon. The assault rifle in Cao Xiao's hands was specifically made for his bodyguards, who were retired special forces soldiers, so the requirements for weapon usage were quite high. The fixed external shape severely restricted performance improvements; otherwise, with the industrial mother machine's R&D capabilities and super alloys, he could have designed a revolutionary individual weapon. However, it was enough for the bodyguards for now. He believed that if this assault rifle were given to the bodyguards, they would surely be able to utilize it perfectly. This wasn't an assault rifle in the ordinary sense; it placed extremely high demands on the user's shooting skills. Not to mention ordinary people, even regular police and soldiers wouldn't be able to master it perfectly or utilize its full potential. Only a marksman in the military would be qualified to use it; otherwise, in their hands, it wouldn't be much different from an ordinary assault rifle.

This assault rifle's exterior was identical to the G36, but the materials were replaced and the internal structure was reorganized. It not only inherited the original's advantages but also performed much better. First, the empty gun weighed only 2.5 kg. The barrel was engraved with eight right-hand 208 mm twist rifling grooves. After the bullets were redesigned, the muzzle velocity reached 1,500 meters per second, the theoretical rate of fire was 1,200 rounds per minute, and the effective range was increased to 750 meters. It could penetrate military body armor within a hundred meters. Equipped with a 6x telescope sight and having extremely high shooting accuracy, it could serve as a sniper rifle when set to semi-automatic. It was suited for all-weather combat, had a small muzzle flash, dissipated heat quickly, and had an extremely low failure rate. It could also be fitted with an under-barrel 40mm grenade launcher, bayonet, thermal imaging sight, and other attachments. Simultaneously, the 40mm anti-personnel rifle grenade designed for it weighed 500 grams; upon explosion, the shell would shatter into about eighty fragments, and the two hundred 1mm diameter steel balls inside could cause lethal damage to enemy personnel targets, with a kill radius of fifty meters, a maximum range of eight hundred meters, and an effective range of three hundred meters. It was also equipped with an 800-gram anti-armor rifle grenade with a direct fire distance of 150 meters, capable of penetrating 500mm of vertical armor and 1,500mm thick concrete fortifications. With close-quarters combat, medium-range precision shooting, fire suppression, large-scale lethality, and the ability to deal with armored targets and fixed fortifications, this single gun could handle most situations. It was an all-purpose assault rifle that surpassed all existing excellent assault rifles.

A sniper rifle refers to a dedicated rifle selected from regular rifles or specifically designed and manufactured for high shooting accuracy, long range, and good reliability. Militarily, they are primarily used to shoot important enemy targets, such as commanders, vehicle drivers, and machine gunners. The structure of a sniper rifle is basically the same as a regular rifle, with the difference being that sniper rifles are usually equipped with a scope for precise aiming; the barrel undergoes special processing for very high precision; and they are mostly fired in semi-automatic or manual bolt-action modes.

At the police station, Cao Xiao had scanned five world-famous guns: the Barrett M82A1 anti-materiel sniper rifle, the McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle, the Type 85 sniper rifle, and the Steyr SSG sniper rifle. When designing firearms, he only chose an external template, as the internal design would be worlds apart from the original. Therefore, he chose the aesthetically pleasing McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle as his template, while using the others as design references to extract their advantages for use in the TAC-50's design.

The TAC-50 is known as the anti-materiel rifle with the longest range, having once set the world record for the longest sniper kill at a distance of 3,450 meters. The total weight of the gun is 11.8 kg, with a total length of 1,448 mm. The barrel length is 736 mm, the caliber is 12.7 mm, the muzzle velocity is about 850 meters per second, the effective range is 2,000 meters, it is fed by a detachable magazine with a 5-round capacity, and it uses a 16x scope.

The TAC-50 uses a manual bolt-action system and is equipped with a match-grade floating barrel. The barrel surface is fluted to reduce weight, and the muzzle is fitted with a high-efficiency brake to buffer the bullet's powerful recoil. It is fed by a five-round detachable magazine and uses a McMillan fiberglass-reinforced plastic stock. The front of the stock is equipped with a bipod, and the rear has a special rubber recoil pad; the entire rear of the stock can be removed for easy transport. The TAC-50 sniper rifle uses 12.7*99 mm caliber ammunition, which is the same height as a canned cola and has devastating destructive power; snipers can use it against armored vehicles and helicopters.

The TAC-50 was already excellent, and with the external shape limitations, there wasn't much room for modification. However, after the entire gun body was replaced with super alloy and underwent design adjustments, its performance parameters still changed significantly. The muzzle velocity reached 2,200 meters per second, and the effective range was 3,100 meters. Furthermore, after optimizing the bullet's propellant structure and formula, its armor-piercing capability became even more outstanding. Using 25mm bullets, it could penetrate 50mm of armor steel plate within a thousand meters, giving it the ability to destroy light armored vehicles and even penetrate the front armor of light tanks at close range. It could also fire various special-purpose bullets, such as regular rounds, armor-piercing incendiary rounds, tracer rounds, armor-piercing rounds, long-range sniper rounds, and sabot rounds, for striking specific targets.