Tao Mei rubbed her hands together. She stepped forward with a bounce in her steps, cracking her neck from one side to the other.

When she reached behind her for her butcher knives the hall exploded in a loud boom. It shook the air and halted everything around them.

“As fun as it would be to watch you all go at it,” Jim said, interrupting everything as they recovered from the pain from their silver hearing. “That’s not why I brought him here.”

Drew recovered from the pain first and found Oden’s eyes merely frowning. He was treating Jim’s interruption as a nuisance. Was there no limit to his disrespect?

He ignored the boy’s arrogance for a more important endeavor. “We already told you we don’t want a new teammate.”

“And I already told you, you need one,” Jim replied. “Your team is incomplete as it is.”

“Then get us a healer,” William scowled. “That’s what we need.”

Jim turned to him. “And do you have a healer lying around somewhere I can go sponsor, by any chance? A mage leaning towards life aspect reia.”

William looked away, chastised but refusing to be cowed.

“My point exactly.”

“Damon’s team has a healer,” Jaola opined, casually. He hadn’t even bothered to look up from his book.

Jim nodded. “That’s true. Convince her to leave their team for yours and I’ll have no objection.”

Jaola raised his head from his book and was about to say something else when Jim added: “Just know whatever price she asks for; whatever cost she amounts to, is coming out of your cut of every expedition.”

That sufficed to shut the scout up.

“Good.” Jim returned his attention to Drew. “As I was saying, your team is incomplete, and you’ve never had a healer before because healers are rarer than pure reia…”

Drew’s brows narrowed. He wondered what the analogy with pure reia had to do with anything, even if pure reia in the atmosphere was too little to find it in any significant amount, according to gold magi.

“…So I’ve brought him,” Jim finished.

“We already have enough damage dealers, though,” Tao Mei said.

Jim nodded to her and smiled in emulation of her bubbly personality. “That you do, Mei. That you do. That’s why I did not bring you a damage dealer.”

“We already have enough close quarter magi,” Beth added.

“He’s not here for his close combat skills. It’s not even his specialty.”

“We don’t need a range damage dealer,” William said, a little too harshly.

“And yet,” Jim turned to him, “I have brought you one.”

Drew reached up to adjust his glasses and realized he wasn’t wearing one. He hadn’t been wearing one since he evolved to Iron and didn’t need one. He brought his hand down. “You’re saying he’s a ranged mage? He showed two skills during his test, none of them ranged. If I’m not mistaken, one was a movement skill and the other a close quarter attack skill.”

Jim shrugged. “He doesn’t have a ranged skill,” paused, then turned to Oden. “Do you have a ranged skill?”

Oden shook his head. The action was as slow as he walked.

Jim returned his attention to Drew. “Nope. No ranged skill.”

“Doesn’t matter,” William interrupted. “If we need a ranged attack I have more than enough for that.”

Jim laughed heartily and Drew caught Beth wince. “You have firepower,” he corrected William. “That is all. That it carries over a distance does not qualify you as capable of playing the part of a range support.”

Drew fought back the urge to nod. That much was true. William’s ranged skill was liable to get everyone in its path killed.

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“And from what I know,” Jim continued. “That specific skill is too dangerous, you lack proper control over it, and you can’t aim for shit. Using you as a ranged mage is tantamount to disbanding the team. So, no. A ranged mage you do not make. Stick to your role as the team’s tank and you’ll be fine. Now,” he turned his attention back to the rest of them, somehow encompassing the entire team. “You have a scout, which every team should have. You have a tactician in yourself, Drew. Three damage dealers who are really good at their job, but no ranged support. You need a ranged support.”

“And how is he supposed to?” Beth asked, testy. “Is he going to throw his sword like he did during the test?”

“I’ll grant you that was a stupid move. However,” Jim slid a hand inside his pocket, “he’ll be using this.”

In common fashion he produced an item too large to fit inside it. In his hand he held a gun. It was one of the new model guns. A simple handgun designed with a silver gleam for aesthetic effect. Besides that, there was nothing noteworthy about it. While everyone groaned and made sounds of disagreement, Drew remained focused on something else. Where exactly did Jim always hide his pocket marble? And how many did he have?

“No self-respecting mage would use a gun,” Beth spat.

“Then let’s be glad that Oden here isn’t as self-respecting as you are, Bethany.”

Jim walked up to Oden and offered him the gun.

Oden’s attention hadn’t shifted from Tao Mei, even now. Still, he took the gun from their benefactor. He weighed the gun in his hand, pulled back the chamber and checked inside. Drew watched the boy’s systematic execution of every action and knew he was no stranger to guns.

While Beth had been right that no self-respecting mage used a gun, there were still magi out there who employed the use of the weapon. They were simply rare, almost as rare as pure core users. The gun, however, was a weapon believed to be used by military mages and the unsouled.

“Aren’t manasteel bullets expensive?” Beth asked. “Don’t you think it’s a waste of money?”

“There are no manasteel bullets here,” Oden said, without paying attention to her.

He cocked the gun simply, loaded the chamber.

Drew didn’t know much about guns but he knew it was live now. Ready to fire. At gold a gun was no more than a nuisance. But at silver a normal bullet would hurt. Enough of it would cause damage. He wasn’t the only one thinking it because Beth reached for her mallet slowly.

“Give me a target,” Oden said, looking at Tao Mei.

She obliged him. “How about—”

“He’s not asking you,” Jim interrupted her.

She opened her mouth to speak again, mirroring their collective confusion at his words when Oden spoke again.

“Five? Isn’t that too much to make a point?” He ran a finger down the length of the gun and waited a moment longer in silence as all eyes turned to him. After the space of about five seconds, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Any of you want to make a wager on this one too? No?” he chuckled. “Alright then.”

He looked away from Tao Mei, set his eyes on Beth and raised the gun with one hand.

“Always getting me in trouble,” he muttered.

He shifted his aim to the ground and pulled the trigger. The explosive sound of a gunshot filled the air before Beth could react and he shifted his aim again. Four times he shifted his aim, four times he fired the gun. At the end, a bullet embedded itself in the ground between the legs of Jim, Jaola, Beth, and Drew.

Apart from putting a bullet between the legs of a sitting Jaola, the remaining shots weren’t anything impressive. However, he made his point by making each consecutive shot without pause and with his eyes never leaving Beth’s. When he was done, he held the gun to his chest in both hands like a military man: one hand held it by the handle while the other cradled it lightly. He looked at ease in the position. Truly military.

“Is that it?” William asked. “So he can shoot the ground without looking. Anyone can—”

Oden raised the gun abruptly, silencing him as he aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger.

“[Bulwark]” William cried in shock, activating one of his skills on instinct.

Reia suffused his entire body and it hardened with streaks of lava red running through his skin. However, the expected sound of iron clashing with his skin was absent as the bullet soared past him to strike something in the distance behind them.

As William fumed, Drew turned his head, followed the trajectory of the bullet. A good distance from them, in a part of the hall cast in shadows from the shade provided by what was left of the ceiling above them, a picture of a man nobody knew still hanging askew on the wall bore a hole between his eyes. It was just within reach of his silver sight before the picture fell from the wall.

Pity, he thought. That picture has been there since I joined the guild.

When he returned his head to Oden, the gun had returned to his chest, cradled as it had once been. Silent eyes continued to watch Beth. They were like tempered steel, unflinching, unbending. He was a boy who had proved his point, and no more. Jim had told them he had amnesia, that he couldn’t remember anything of his life before six months ago.

Whatever life he had lived, Drew found himself wondering just how bad it had been to have put such a look in the boy’s eyes. The look in his eyes reminded Drew of a gold mage who had seen too many horrors at the hands of one too many world cracks but kept going because he had no other option.

Those eyes reminded him of someone who’d done his fair share of killing.

The boy had proved his point, though, and in doing so he had proved Jim’s point. If the boy shot as well in the heat of battle as he did just now, then they definitely needed a ranged support. All they had to do was outfit him with a good sniper rifle and he could sit back and cover them. It served two purposes well. One, he could distract beasts and give them enough openings to do some real damage. Two, he would not be in the heart of the battle. They would not be required to break their already established rhythm in combat, and they would not have to associate with him overly much.

It was a good plan, and he knew Jim would bear the cost of giving the boy a rifle so he didn’t even bother asking. Instead, he sighed deeply.

“At least he won’t get in our way.”

He felt his glasses sliding down his nose. He reached up to adjust them, remembered he wasn’t wearing any and frowned. Maybe he should start wearing glasses again.