“Remember, if you let them pull up a full protective shield. You’re gonna be toast. ” on their training ground, Glenda Grimes told Aimee and Thomas: “Now, I know that you two used to be police officers, and pretty good police officers as well. That means you have way better battle reflexes and intuitions than these students, even students of Dorothea Clarkson.”

“Okay. But our magical powers are still very weak.” Aimee tried her best to conjure up a small light blue spiked ice ball from her right palm to make her point: “They’re wizards right? So I guess by video game logic, we need to get close and beat them physically?”

“Not necessarily, we can use guns.” Thomas was playing with a small ball of light blue fire on his fingers: “I mean, I can use guns - perhaps.”

“That’s exactly what I’m gonna suggest. Did you bring your guns? ” Glenda Grimes asked.

“Well, Jason gave us these.” Thomas took out two silver handguns from his pocket: “He can explain when he gets here - but basically, these are his ‘constructs’ he constructed using his ‘Shrine - Lee’.”

“It’s Xuanli. It’s Mandarin.” Aimee rolled her eyes and said.

“These are very well constructed.” Glenda Grimes nodded in approval when she took the two silver guns from Thomas: “Is he familiar with the internal mechanics? Does it work?”

“Well, no. But he said it doesn’t matter.” Thomas chuckled: “He just told me ‘Thomas, Caroline, tell me how a gun is supposed to work from the outside. No need for the internal details.’”

“Wow. Who taught him that?” Glenda Grimes pointed the silver guns at the ground and pulled the trigger a few times, feeling that the hammer indeed struck the back end of the barrel where the bullets would be placed: “That’s a lesson we actually teach in our advanced courses on magical constructs.”

“They asked us not to disclose, maybe you can ask them when they get here.” Aimee shook her head: “I wonder how long they’ve been training.”

“Don’t worry. ” Glenda Grimes handed the silver guns back: “This is actually perfect - the rules of student duel, especially those of a group duel, specifically allow and even encourage the use of magical constructs instead of magical or enchanted weapons. Now that they can make high quality weapons for you, it’d be your advantage.”

“Okay. But as far as I know, the power of attack still depends on my power, right?” Thomas scratched his head.

“Yes, but there’s a catch.” Glenda Grimes smiled: “From what I know about guns, the actual part that hurts the opponent is the bullet, right? Given your natural affinity to fire magic...”

“I can just use my power as the gunpowder.”

------------------------------------------

“Pleasure to be the one to teach you a lesson, please bear in mind, that what you are doing today, is a clear sign of your boldness and...”

“Bang! Bang!” “Boom!”

Two small explosions and a big one later, two sphere-shaped energy shields appeared around Thomas and Taylor Jensen, not only protecting them from the heavy attacks they just received, but also sending them to the outside of the ring. After that, the sphere-shaped shields returned to their necklace form and flew back to the hands of the professor in dark blue armor.

Aside from the professor in the ring and the two who got sent out, it appeared that almost no one present really knew exactly what happened.

“The first round, two definitive blows at a close succession. It’s a draw!” the professor in a dark blue armor announced.

This was no doubt an explosively surprising result, all of the audience that were either on Thomas’s side or at least not on Taylor Jensen’s side burst into cheers, even though all of them were at least a little confused. But at the moment, none of them cared anyway: all this time, though they were rooting for Thomas, they knew full well that it’d take great luck for Thomas, someone who came from a civilian background and had only been training for a few months, to even have a chance against Taylor Jensen, who was born into a family of wizards, sorcerers and conjurers and had been receiving training his whole life.

“What happened? Are you okay?” Caroline rushed to Thomas’ side as he walked over to the side of the ring.

“Two fast shots to his face and chest.” Thomas handed two silver guns to Jason, one of which looked like a high caliber long barrel handgun, while the other looked like a short dual-barrel shotgun: “Thanks for the guns Jason, these are pretty awesome.”

“So it really worked.” Aimee exhaled in relief and patted Jason and Thomas on the shoulder: “Too bad he was still able to fight back...”

“Hey, at least I didn’t lose.” Thomas laughed out loud.

On the other side, Robert Hendricks came at Taylor Jensen and asked with a sour face: “What the fuck!? What happened?”

“He used some kind of weapon.” Taylor Jensen seemed like he was still in shock: “Two strikes… he used two strikes - I - I really didn’t know what happened … I ...”

“He used a kind of civilian weapons called ‘guns’.” Laura Jensen impatiently cut Taylor Jensen off: “I told you to treat this seriously but you just wouldn’t listen. His first attack was some kind of splash attack with a lot of projectiles, which triggered your passive shield. Then almost at the same time he unleashed another attack with high speed and high penetrative power. If not for the necklace Nana gave you that reflected the projectile back, you’d have lost this fight.”

“Nana’s necklace? ” Taylor Jensen came to his senses: “Right! The necklace! That means I didn’t get hit! The protection spell was triggered by mistake! I didn’t get hit! I need to tell Professor Barnes!”

“Hey, hey! Calm the hell down!” Laura Jensen elbowed Taylor Jensen on the chest: “What do you think you’re doing? Have you no honor? You got hit and Nana bailed you out of an embarrassing loss! Deal with it!”

“The next face-off … Laura Jensen, versus Jason Lin!” Professor Barnes didn’t take time to wait for them to finish their conversation.