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Azucur wrote:

Lymine’s books had relatively little information on the Azucurian weapons themselves, but it was possible to piece together their chief weapons’ capabilities through information from multiple books. The infantry used mostly crossbows that absorbed the mana from the user and fired it as a projectile. The power of the projectile was determined by the amount of power the mage poured into the weapon.

Otherwise, the Azucurian ships used mana cannons, firing beams of pure magical force. To the elves, magic was the primary source of everything in their arsenal. With Lymine’s abundance of books about magic, the Azucurian mana cannon was well-described, but was quite complex to someone who couldn’t feel magic.

The basis of technology in Azucur was by the use of a rare crystal known as Alore, pronounced with a pause between the l and the o. This crystal was found in the coldest regions of Iiqaath and hoarded by creatures called titans. The Alore used by Azucur came from a large crystal structure that the King had, floating above his throne room. They occasionally cut small fragments from it to power technologies. The origins of this crystal were most likely from the titans, but it didn’t specify by what means they got their hands on it, only that it was quite rare, possibly as rare as diamonds would be on Earth.

"Allure? Al-oor? Al-ore. There we go." James was thrown off by the word for a moment but eventually figured out its pronunciation.

While intriguing, it didn't fully answer his question. He already knew that magic excluded, a bullet far exceeds a bolt or an arrow. Bullets, especially rifle rounds, typically move at higher velocities and carry far more joules of energy behind them, and typically were far more impactful in terms of how they damaged the target. If this was a normal world without magic, this would be the case, however with the inclusion of magic, there was the possibility that such a thing could be flipped on his head; he didn't want to underestimate the Elves' ability to damage a target, but neither did he want to completely overestimate the Elves' abilities and assume that nothing short of a tank shell would take down the monsters he wants to target and kill.

After writing down the weight, joules, and muzzle velocity of a usual arrow or bolt versus that of the rifle and bullet he used. Initially, he feared that if Elves use magic, it could warp everything he knows about bows and arrows and how they're traditionally used, thus throwing everything on its head. However, how did human civilization, which was presumably less magical, survive for so many years on its own if magic was required to win? The firearms he had would have to be mildly useful at the very least, however, it wouldn't hurt to know just how effective. The problem was his lack of means to test and compare the average magically charged crossbow to his 7.62 NATO bolt-action rifle.

This led him full circle back to what he initially wanted to learn: different hunting techniques for these monsters. He figured if there was a certain technique used by the Elves' magically-charged bows, it would tell in their monster hunting guides or information, which was exactly going to be the next book he'd look for. This time, he'd explore huntsmen guides, and even look for monster-specific books. He'd start by reading any sort of huntsmen guides before reading about specific monsters however, as he wanted to get a base for their techniques to determine whether Elven Huntsmen do anything in particular with their magic to take down some of the creatures he may face.