Uninvited Guest

At 21 Winchester Road in Southampton City, there was a strange hardware store.

Mr. Robert Wilson was the owner here, a Northern Irishman in his sixties. He was tall and powerfully built; though advanced in years, he remained full of vigor.

In Mr. Wilson's store, you could easily buy many things, such as faucets, screws, door locks... and even handguns!

England's gun-control laws appeared extremely strict, making it seem as though Muggles had no legal way to acquire firearms of any kind.

But laws always had loopholes...

For example, the law prohibited modern firearms. Old-style shotguns, revolvers, as well as antique firearms with collectible or commemorative value, could all be purchased easily without any special documentation.

There was another loophole: Mr. Wilson was from Northern Ireland.

Unlike England, Northern Irish law allowed citizens to own any handgun, with no restrictions whatsoever on the magazine capacities of handguns or shotguns.

Therefore, before the Thomas Hamilton shooting incident erupted in 1996, Mr. Wilson could legally sell dozens of handguns or shotguns every year, without requiring any documentation, to his Northern Irish "friends" in Southampton City.

This was also the hardware store's greatest annual source of income.

On December 30, 1992, Mr. Robert Wilson was tending his shop as usual.

At dusk, his hardware store received an uninvited guest: a massive, burly man covered in muscle walked in.

The man was at least 1.9 meters tall, with slightly dark skin and a face that looked fierce and coarse.

"Mr. Robert Wilson?" the burly man asked in a low voice.

Mr. Wilson looked up and asked softly,

"Yes, sir. And who might you be?"

"Warian Urien."

"Hello, Mr. Urien. How may I help you?" Hearing the somewhat strange name, the hardware store owner asked in return.

"That's right." The man's voice was calm, with barely a ripple in it. "Mr. Wilson, I heard that one can buy handguns here?"

"Handguns? Of course..." Robert Wilson's eyes narrowed into slits as he smiled. "But my guns are only sold to my fellow Northern Irishmen."

"Of course. I'm from Northern Ireland myself. I was born in Belfast..." the burly man replied with a smile.

That pure Southern English accent had already given him away! Clearly, he could not have been Northern Irish.

Yet as he spoke, the uninvited guest secretly slipped several banknotes into the hardware store owner's hand.

Several fifty-Pound Sterling notes.

Clearly, this customer was not as brainless as his muscles made him look, Wilson thought to himself.

"It would be my honor, Mr. Urien. Please follow me!"

It took Jon quite some time to adapt to this new body.

It was like suddenly stretching and thickening your body by a whole size. It was actually a very uncomfortable process.

This 1.9-meter-tall burly man was actually a security guard at Eric's agency... someone who looked fierce but was in fact quite timid. Jon had secretly cut a few strands of his hair while he was taking a nap.

As a promising young man who had been steeped in scientific culture for decades, he naturally had a blind faith in technological weapons... especially after four or five months of exposure to magic, when he still could not readily cast certain damaging spells.

He desperately needed the ability to protect himself.

The burly Urien followed Mr. Wilson behind the hardware store counter.

His right hand remained in his pocket, tightly gripping something as he warily watched his surroundings for anything unusual.

The hardware store owner had already hauled a large box from a cabinet and bent down.

"I wonder what sort of preferences you have when it comes to firearms!" he said as he took out the topmost handgun. "Mr. Urien... this is a Colt M1911 pistol. It began production in 1911 and was still widely used by the U.S. Army until ten years ago. It fires .45 Colt pistol cartridges and has an effective range of fifty meters!"

The burly man frowned. It seemed he had long heard of this classic handgun.

"Mr. Wilson," he said, "I think I need something more advanced."

A weapon that had begun production eighty years ago was indeed somewhat outdated.

"All right... a picky customer!" Mr. Wilson smiled, bent down, and continued searching.

"I found it. This is a fine gun!" This time, the handgun he took out was much smaller than the previous one. "A PSM pistol, a 1980 model. It's only as big as a palm and weighs less than a pound. It uses 5.45mm pistol cartridges and has an effective range of thirty meters... This is Soviet merchandise, very cheap. It's a weapon used exclusively by the KGB—very light, and very quiet too!"

"Is that so?" The other man took the compact handgun and examined it carefully.

"And what about the recoil? How is the recoil?" he asked at the same time.

"I'd wager it has the lowest recoil of any handgun in the world. Even a twelve-year-old child could fire it with ease!" the hardware store owner said without hesitation.

"Even a twelve-year-old can use it?" The burly man's eyes lit up, and then he nodded. "I'll take this one!"

Seeing the handgun, which was utterly mismatched with the burly man's size, Mr. Wilson could not help chuckling to himself.

But he certainly would not take the initiative to ruin a sale.

"I also need a more powerful handgun. The more powerful, the better..." the other man continued.

"A powerful handgun? Then you may want to look at this..." Mr. Wilson took a handgun from the very bottom of the box. "This is some serious merchandise, a Desert Eagle Mark I released in the United States only in 1985... It can fire .357 Magnum revolver cartridges, weighs nearly four pounds, and has an effective range of up to two hundred meters. At close range, it can even easily kill a Brown Bear or a wild boar!"

"Is that so?" The other man began examining the handgun seriously. "Could it kill a python?"

"I swear, even the largest snake in the world would have its head blown apart by a single shot from this gun."

"I'll take both of these guns!" The burly man seemed to have made up his mind. "You'll also need to give me some ammunition."

Mr. Wilson liked straightforward customers like this best. Without hesitation, he packaged the two guns and the ammunition, then put faucet labels on the outside.

"That will be three thousand Pound Sterling, sir!"

The other man did not haggle. He directly pulled a thick stack of Pound Sterling from his pocket and said, "I have one more question, Mr. Wilson."

The hardware store owner withdrew his greedy gaze.

"Please ask, sir!"

"I need you to help me find someone!"