Shooting Practice

Leaving Blackthorn Security Company, Angel followed the familiar Klein Moretti to 3 Zouteland Street. It was a low building, and a plaque that read "Zouteland Shooting Club" hung on its mottled wall.

The shooting range belonging to the Tingen City Police was located underground and was more than twice as large as the building above. Besides serving the police's daily training needs, it was also open to ordinary citizens for target practice, with admission fees collected 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 waiter guided the two of them to a spacious basement. Directly opposite the stairs was a lounge, extravagantly lit by multiple gas lamps and offering complimentary tea, while a passage at the other end led to the shooting range, which was divided into several small rooms. Some already had "in use" signs hung on them, and loud gunshots echoed from within from time to time.

They chose the empty room farthest inside. The attendant helped set up the target before leaving, and the two of them placed their ammunition boxes 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 this new gun."

Angel politely declined, as she had just acquired her new revolver and intended to first get used to the weight and feel of the gun rather than waste bullets right off the bat.

Klein nodded. Holding the gun with both hands, he spread his legs slightly, kept a slight forward bend at the waist, straightened his arms, and raised the weapon to aim at the target fifteen meters away.

A very standard aiming stance, rigidly by the book, but without any finesse, Angel assessed inwardly.

Bang—

The gunshot rang out. Angel looked toward the target, and her Beyonder-enhanced vision easily let her make out the bullet hole: eight rings.

After his first shot hit the target, Klein did not immediately fire a second. Instead, he returned the gun to its holster, 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 gaze. It was still eight rings.

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

Had he missed the target?

Klein also felt a little embarrassed. He glanced at Angel, resumed his two-handed aiming stance, and continued firing shot after shot until every bullet in the gun had been spent.

The remaining bullets had not missed, maintaining scores of seven to eight rings. This seemed to be the stance he usually practiced with—his movements were standard, but somewhat stiff.

Angel also took out the new revolver she had received from Old Neil. First, she held it in each hand separately and tried various poses to feel its weight. She dry-fired the empty chamber once to test the trigger pull and travel before finally loading it.

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

Unlike Klein's earlier stance—facing the target directly, legs spread, arms extended to maximize stability and accuracy—Angel used a stance designed for close-range combat.

Her right elbow was bent, holding the gun at an angle at chest height. Her left elbow was raised and pressed forward, her palm gripping the back of her right hand. Both hands secured the gun close to her body's centerline. Rather than using a three-point sight alignment, she roughly pointed at the target by feel and fired.

Bang, bang, bang—

She fired five shots in succession, making subtle adjustments to her grip angle based on where the bullets landed, and emptied the gun in one go.

She swung out the cylinder, pressed the ejector rod, and pushed out the still-smoking casings before looking at the target ahead to assess her results.

Only the last of the five bullets had hit the ten-ring. The rest were scattered around the center at roughly eight rings. For a new gun she was not yet familiar with, it was already an excellent result.

After loading another five bullets, she held the gun in her right hand this time, raised it to waist height, and repeatedly pulled the trigger at the target without aiming at all.

The recoil of the large-caliber rounds made the single-handed revolver rock back and forth, and even with Angel's physical fitness enhanced by the Potion, she could not keep it steady. The shooting accuracy was much worse than before; after firing all the bullets, the bullet holes were randomly distributed across various parts of the target. Compared to the results of the previous round, it could only be described as barely hitting the target, with a dismal score of rings.

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

"Miss Granger, was that shooting stance some kind of special technique? I thought pistol shooting required..." He held his own pistol in an aiming stance. "...aligning the three points like this."

"That is indeed how you aim when shooting normally."

Angel nodded. She reloaded, copied Klein's earlier stance, faced the target squarely with her legs spread, held the gun before her with both hands, aligned her right eye, rear sight, and target in a straight line, and pulled the trigger after only a brief aim.

The gunshot rang out, and another bullet hole appeared in the ten-ring.

Klein did not respond. He knew there would be a "but."

"But I believe the essence of a pistol is that it is a close-combat weapon. In close combat, this broad, exaggerated aiming method both wastes time and makes it easy for the enemy to exploit your weakness. It is extremely impractical. You do not need to aim in close combat. You just need to put a bullet into the other person before they do the same to you."

"That is only my personal opinion. I might not be right."

Angel added.

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

"Now, let's assume we are enemies. We stand face-to-face three meters apart. If you draw your gun and aim at me, you win. I need to stop you."

She instructed Klein to face her, then backed up beside a table against the wall.

This small shooting range was only about five meters wide. With tables on both sides, the available standing width was only around three meters. The two of them stood facing each other, practically with their backs against the tables.

Klein stood upright with his legs slightly apart, flexed his right hand, and stared intently at the motionless Angel ahead of him with a solemn expression.

Swish—

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

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

The instant Klein drew his weapon, Angel shifted from stillness to motion and pushed off into a charge.

A distance of three meters was almost nothing to an Assassin. Before Klein's gun-holding right hand had even straightened, he felt a force press it back toward his chest. He exerted strength through his elbow, even pressing his left hand against his right wrist in an attempt to resist as he stepped backward. But before he could continue, his abdomen tightened, and a pistol was already pressed against his coat.

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

Less than two seconds had passed, and the victor had already been decided.

"Cough, cough—Miss Granger, could you move aside? There's nowhere left to stand behind me."

Klein's face was flushed as he was restrained. 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 speak up.

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

"Sorry."

She turned her face away to avoid an awkward exchange of looks and changed the subject.

"That is the point. In close-range combat, you simply do not have time to raise your gun and aim. If the gun is too far from your body, it also risks being taken away. In a fight to the death, I would not even need to rush in front of you. Before you could point your muzzle at me, I could fire three shots."

Klein nodded in agreement. Although he felt that if there were another four or five meters between them, he would have a chance to aim and fire, in such a cramped room, drawing from an underarm holster and then raising the gun to aim was indeed too slow.

"Next, we will switch roles. Since you are not an Assassin, two meters will do."

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

The moment they settled into position, Klein charged straight at her. He knew that the Seer Potion did not enhance the body. Against an Assassin, if he wanted to win this restricted close-combat contest, he could only catch her off guard.

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

Seeing Klein attempt to seize her weapon, Angel remained calm. She stepped back half a pace with her right foot, drew the pistol from her waist holster, thrust her left elbow forward to block Klein's path of attack, and raised her right hand slightly to chest level, the muzzle aimed directly at the charging Klein.

Only then did Klein's outstretched right hand reach Angel, but it was already too late to get around her elbow and touch her gun.

"You see, if I hold the gun this way, you have almost no chance of touching my weapon. Instead, you have voluntarily closed the distance, allowing me to fire without aiming."

Angel waved the muzzle slightly as she explained.

Seeing that he was already being aimed at, Klein voluntarily raised both hands in surrender.

"It seems your way of drawing a gun is indeed more practical, but can you ensure shooting accuracy if you fire without aiming?" Klein asked. He drew his own pistol again, copied Angel's stance, and fired once at the target fifteen meters away. Sure enough, he missed.

"That is a fifteen-meter target. For pistol shooting, that is already mid-range. It is perfectly normal not to hit accurately."

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

"But with just a little practice, ordinary people can do it. That is enough for close-range combat at three to five meters."

"Just 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 you run as far away as you can. 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 are right."

After a moment of silence, Klein agreed.