Shooting Practice

Leaving Blackthorn Security Company, Angel followed the familiar Klein Moretti to 3 Zoteland Street, a low building with a plaque reading "Zoteland Shooting Club" hanging on its weathered wall.

The shooting range belonging to the Tingen City Police was underground, covering an area twice as large as the building above. It was used not only for the police's daily practice, but was also open to the public for a fee to subsidize public expenses.

Angel took out the Police Badge she had just received from Old Neil and identified herself to the attendant at the front desk.

The attendant led them into the spacious basement. Directly opposite the Stairs was a lounge, lavishly fitted with several Gas Lamps and offering free tea. A passage at the other end led to the shooting range, which was divided into several small rooms. Some already had "In Use" signs hanging outside, and sharp gunshots rang out from within from time to time.

They chose the empty room farthest inside. After the attendant set up the target, he left, and they each placed their boxes of bullets on the table beside the firing position.

"Ladies first?"

Klein loaded the bullets one by one and snapped the cylinder shut, but instead of beginning to shoot, he looked over at Angel.

"You go first. I need to get used to the new gun."

Angel politely declined. She had just received a new Revolver and intended to first familiarize herself with its weight and feel rather than waste bullets right away.

Klein nodded. He held the gun in both hands, spread his legs slightly, bent forward a little, straightened his arms, and raised the gun to aim at the target fifteen meters away.

A very standard aiming stance—methodical, but lacking any flair, Angel silently assessed.

Bang—

As the shot rang out, Angel looked toward the target. Her Beyonder-enhanced vision easily let her see the bullet hole in the target: eight rings.

After landing his first shot on target, Klein did not immediately fire a second. Instead, he holstered the gun again, stood still for several seconds, then suddenly reached beneath his arm, drew the pistol, aimed one-handed, and fired quickly.

After the gunshot, Angel focused her eyes on the target. It was still eight rings.

Wait... that was where the previous shot had landed...

Had he missed?

Klein seemed a little embarrassed as well. He glanced at Angel, resumed his two-handed aiming stance, and continued firing shot after shot until every bullet in the gun was spent.

The remaining bullets had not missed, maintaining scores of seven to eight rings. This seemed to be his usual shooting stance—technically correct, but somewhat stiff.

Angel also took out the new Revolver she had received from Old Neil. She first held the gun in each hand separately, trying various poses to feel its weight. She dry-fired it once to test the trigger's pull and travel before finally loading it.

After Klein had fired two rounds and sat to the side massaging his arm muscles, she stepped up to the firing position with her gun. Standing sideways, she began aiming and firing with both hands on the weapon.

Unlike Klein's earlier stance, where he faced the target directly with his legs apart and arms extended to maximize stability and accuracy, Angel used a shooting stance designed for close-range combat.

Her right elbow was bent, the gun tilted at chest height. Her left elbow rose and pressed forward, her palm clasping her right hand. Both hands secured the weapon near the centerline of her body. Rather than use a three-point sight alignment, she simply pointed the gun roughly toward the target by feel and fired.

Bang, bang, bang—

She fired five shots in succession, making minute adjustments to her grip based on where the bullets landed, emptying the cylinder in one go.

She swung the cylinder open, pressed the ejector rod to pop out the still-smoking casings, and only then looked at the target ahead to evaluate her results.

Only the final shot of the five hit the ten ring. The rest were clustered around the center at roughly the eight ring. For a new gun she had only just received and was unfamiliar with, it was already an excellent result.

After loading five more bullets, she held the gun one-handed in her right hand, raised it to waist level, and repeatedly pulled the trigger at the target without aiming at all.

The recoil of the large-caliber rounds made the one-handed Revolver sway back and forth. Even Angel's Potion-enhanced physique could not keep it steady. Her accuracy was therefore far worse than before. After emptying all the bullets, the holes were scattered randomly across the target. Compared with her previous round, she could only be said to have barely hit the target at all, with scores too ugly to look at.

Klein, who had been sitting nearby resting, saw her unusual shooting stance and curiously came over. When he saw the bullet holes in the target, his eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Miss Granger, was that shooting stance just now some special technique? I thought pistol shooting required..." He held his own gun in an aiming stance. "...using a three-point alignment like this."

"That is indeed how you aim under normal circumstances."

Angel nodded. She reloaded the gun, copied Klein's earlier stance by facing the target squarely with her legs apart, raised the gun before her with both hands, lined up her right eye, rear sight, and target, then pulled the trigger after only a brief aim.

The gunshot rang out, and another bullet hole appeared in the target's ten ring.

Klein did not reply. He knew a "but" was coming.

"But I think the essence of a pistol is that it's a close-combat weapon. In close-quarters combat, this kind of broad, exaggerated aiming stance wastes time and makes it easy for an enemy to exploit your weakness. It's highly impractical. You don't need to aim in close combat. You just need to put a bullet in the other person before they can put one in you."

"That's just my personal opinion. It might not be right."

Angel added.

Seeing Klein's face full of confusion and doubt, she thought for a moment and decided to use practical training to prove her point.

"Now let's assume we're enemies. We'll stand facing each other three meters apart. If you can draw your gun and aim it at me, you win. I need to stop you."

She instructed Klein to face her and backed up to the table against the wall.

This small shooting range was only about five meters wide. With tables along both sides, the usable standing space was only around three meters wide. The two of them stood almost back-to-back with the tables, facing one another.

Klein stood upright with his legs slightly apart, flexed his right hand, and stared intently at Angel, who stood motionless before him. His expression was grave.

Whoosh—

Taking advantage of her inattention, he pulled open his jacket with his left hand and swiftly reached with his right toward the holster under his left arm, gripping the handle and drawing the pistol. This was precisely the shooting motion he had practiced earlier but failed to hit the target with.

Naturally, there was no need to pull the trigger this time. After all, the other person was his colleague. He only needed to aim the gun at her—

At the instant Klein drew his gun, Angel sprang from stillness into motion, driving off with her legs and charging forward.

For an Assassin, covering three meters took almost no time at all. Before Klein's gun-holding right arm could straighten, he felt a force press his hand back toward his chest. He exerted strength through his elbow, even bringing his left hand down onto his right wrist to resist, while stepping backward. But before he could make another move, his abdomen tightened as a pistol pressed against his coat.

Angel's tall figure, even among women, had already pressed completely against Klein. Her left hand pinned the wrist holding his gun, while her right had drawn a pistol from her waist and pressed it against his lower abdomen. With a light pull of the trigger, she could send a large-caliber bullet into Klein's body.

Less than two seconds had passed from beginning to end. The winner had already been decided.

"Cough, cough—Miss Granger, please move aside a little. There's nowhere to stand behind me."

Klein's face had turned bright red beneath Angel's restraint. He tried to lean backward, but there was nowhere left to retreat in the cramped range. His waist was pressed against the table, his upper body tilted back, leaving him no choice but to remind her aloud.

Even if Angel lacked the self-awareness of a Female, she now realized that their posture was somewhat strange. She hurriedly released her left hand and took several steps back.

"Sorry."

She turned her face aside to avoid an awkward exchange of glances and changed the subject.

"That's what I mean. In close-range combat, you simply won't have time to raise your gun and aim. If the gun is too far from your body, there's also a risk of it being taken away. In a fight to the death, I wouldn't even need to rush in front of you. Before you could point the muzzle at me, I could fire three shots."

Klein nodded in agreement. Though he felt that if they were another four or five meters apart, he would have a chance to aim and fire, in such a cramped room, drawing from an underarm holster and raising the gun to aim really was too slow.

"Next, we'll switch roles. Since you aren't an Assassin, two meters apart will do."

The two adjusted their distance and faced each other again. At the shortened range, they could nearly touch one another just by reaching out their hands.

The moment they stopped, Klein charged straight at her. He knew that the Diviner Potion did not enhance the body. If he wanted to win this restricted close-combat contest against an Assassin, he could only catch her off guard.

He did not draw his gun as he sprinted. From his earlier failure, Klein understood that he could never draw from his underarm holster faster than Angel. Only by getting close and pinning the hand she used to draw her gun, as Angel had done, would he have a chance—

Seeing Klein attempt to seize her gun, Angel remained unhurried. She took half a step back with her right foot, drew the pistol from the holster at her waist, thrust her left elbow forward to block Klein's path, and raised her right hand slightly to chest level, the muzzle pointed directly at the charging Klein.

Only then did Klein's outstretched right hand reach Angel, but he no longer had any chance of getting around her elbow and touching her weapon.

"You see, if I hold my gun like this, you have almost no chance of touching my weapon. Instead, you've voluntarily closed the distance, letting me fire without needing to aim."

Angel waved the muzzle lightly as she explained.

Seeing himself already under the gun's aim, Klein voluntarily raised both hands in surrender.

"It seems your way of drawing the gun really is more practical, but can accuracy be guaranteed if you fire without aiming?" Klein asked. He drew his own pistol again, copied Angel's grip, and fired a shot at the target fifteen meters away. As expected, he missed.

"This is a fifteen-meter target. For pistol shooting, that's already medium range. It's normal not to hit accurately."

As Angel explained, she walked to Klein's side, held her gun one-handed at waist level, and fired three shots in succession. Three bullet holes appeared on the target at varying distances from the center.

"But with only a little practice, ordinary people can do this, and that's enough for close-range combat at three to five meters."

"Only a little practice..."

Angel seemed to hear Klein muttering something.

"Hm?"

She tilted her head in question.

"Nothing. I mean... what if the target is dozens of meters away? For example, an enemy fifty meters away holding a High-Pressure Steam Rifle?"

"Then of course you run as far away as possible. Are you planning to trade shots with him using a pistol?"

Angel looked at Klein in confusion, as though he had asked an utterly unbelievable question.

"...You're right."

After a long silence, Klein agreed.