Owen walked down to the long range with Pike and two of the instructors.
It had been built to take punishment. There was a plainly marked firing line, and the targets at the far end were heavily reinforced. Beyond them rose a great wall of earth and stone.
While the instructors went down to check the target area, Pike turned to Owen.
"Explain it," he said. "The basics. Before you fire."
"It’s a rifle," Owen said. "It fires bullets. It can hit things a long way off. And when it fires, it’s loud."
Pike nodded. When the instructors came back, they pushed the watching cadets farther behind the line, well away from where Owen would be firing.
Owen summoned the rifle.
It formed in his hands, long and heavy, the scope mounted along the top.
Behind the safety line, he saw several of the cadets lean forward.
"That’s it," he heard Elias say to Marianne. "That’s the one. The one he wouldn’t let me look at."
Marianne was staring at the barrel. "Look how long it is. And what’s that glass thing on top?"
Off to one side, Mira was studying the rifle with a slight frown, her eyes moving from the barrel to the stock to the scope.
"When you’re ready," Pike said.
Owen settled into position and brought the rifle up.
The basics came back to him the same way they had on the slope. But this was different. The rifle sat differently in this body. Its balance against his shoulder. The length of his arms. And here there was no creature to chase, nothing pulling him forward. Just a target sitting still at the end of a range, waiting for him to be precise.
He breathed out.
He fired at a stationary target first.
BOOM!
The sound cracked across the training ground and slammed back off the stone walls.
Even well back behind the line, cadets flinched. Owen heard someone yelp.
Down the range, the shot had hit. He could see it from here, a hole punched into the target, the reinforced face around it cracked.
Behind the line, Elias let out a whoop. Marianne was staring at the target, open-mouthed. Mira’s eyes had narrowed. She was looking at the impact, and then back at the rifle, and then at the impact again.
Pike looked through a spyglass at the target for a long moment. Then he lowered it.
"Again," he said. "Moving target this time."
One of the instructors set a target moving along the track.
Owen watched it through the scope. Tracked it. Fired.
BOOM!
He knew as soon as the rifle kicked that it wasn’t quite right.
It hit. But well away from the centre.
He had been late. He had followed the target instead of getting in front of it. On the slope, the creature had stumbled, and he had only needed to wait for the moment. This was different.
He didn’t let it bother him. He thought about what he had done wrong.
"May I go again, sir?"
Pike nodded.
The target slid back along its track. This time, Owen didn’t chase it. He picked a spot a little ahead of it, let it come to him, and fired.
BOOM!
Closer. Much closer.
Still not perfect.
Pike was watching him, not the target.
"It’s got a long reach," he said. "And it hits harder than most armaments I’ve seen." He paused. "Can you control how much damage it does? And does it need mana to work at all?"
Owen thought about how to answer.
"Firing it, on its own, doesn’t need anything," he said. "It fires the way it is. But I can channel Fire through it, the same way I do with my sword. That’s when it does more."
He said nothing about the Infinite Arsenal. Nothing about classes, or mastery, or how he had come to have the rifle at all.
Pike wrote in his notebook.
"Any more testing with this," he said, "happens under supervision. Proper supervision. We’re going to have to work out how something like this fits into ordinary armament training without anyone losing their hearing. Or worse."
"Understood, sir."
Owen dismissed the rifle.
He was pleased. The rifle had done what he wanted, mostly. But he had seen how far he still had to go. He thought about Mira on that range a little earlier, moving from one target to the next as though it were nothing.
Owning a good ranged weapon and mastering one were two very different things. He had the weapon now. The mastery would take a lot longer.
* * *
The assessment went on through the rest of the morning. By the time the instructors began gathering up their notes, the mood among the cadets had shifted. Earlier, most of them had looked uncertain. Now, some of them looked pleased with themselves, and others had their heads together, talking over whatever they had been told they needed to fix.
Elias came over with Marianne and Eveline.
"That noise," he said. "And that hole in the target. Did you see it? It went straight through!"
"I understand now," Marianne said, "why you wouldn’t pull that out in the corridor."
Eveline was looking toward the long range. "I wonder how they’ll train you with it," she said. "There’s no one here who knows how it works. Except you."
"They’ll work it out," Owen said. "Eventually. I’ll keep training with the sword in the meantime."
"Ferrers."
Mira had come over.
She stopped in front of him, her bow slung across her back, and looked at him directly.
"That weapon," she said. "How far can it reach and still hit what you aim at?"
"Farther than that range," Owen said. "If I’m good enough with it. Which I’m not, yet."
"You hit it."
"Not the moving one. Not where I wanted." He paused. "Your shooting was good. On the moving target, especially. You didn’t waste anything."
Mira looked at him for a moment, as though she hadn’t expected that.
"I’ve been shooting since I could hold a bow," she said.
"It shows."
"You two should shoot against each other one day," Elias said immediately. "Same range. I want to see that."
Mira looked at Elias. Then she looked at Owen.
"Maybe one day," she said. And that was all.
Owen didn’t commit to anything either.
Mira gave a short nod and walked back toward the other cadets.
Captain Pike called them all together.
"That’s what we wanted from today," he said. "We have a starting point for each of you. That’s all it is. What happens to you from here depends on what you learn over the next few months."
He looked along the lines.
"Some of you showed real strength in particular areas. Some of you showed promise that’s going to need a lot of work. Your instructors will use what they saw today to shape your training, and to find where you need more help." He paused. "And remember. Being strong is only one part of being a good officer. You’ll need discipline. Knowledge. You’ll need to be able to work with others, and to use what you’ve learned when the conditions change. Don’t forget that."
He confirmed the afternoon’s schedule and dismissed them.
As they walked away from the training ground, Elias pulled out his timetable and ran his finger down it.
"Oh," he said. "Look at this. Monster Biology and Behaviour. Professor Melisende de Montfort."
"Biology?" Marianne leaned over to look. "Do you think we’ll be cutting monsters open?"
"I hope not before breakfast," Elias said.
"It could be useful, though," Eveline said. "Knowing how they’re built. After what happened in the examination."
Owen thought about the old book in the Ferrers library. A single drawing, a few lines of text. That had been enough to show him where to look for the creature’s core. Without it, he might never have found it.
And that had only been a book.
A real specialist would know things no book had ever written down, things no hunter learned just from killing them.
He found that he was looking forward to it.
They made their way back toward the main buildings together, still talking about the assessment, about the classes to come.
Owen walked with them, and thought about the morning.
His sword was still one of his greatest strengths. And the rifle had shown him that the Infinite Arsenal could give him things nobody else here could even imagine.
But he had also watched Mira on that range. He had watched Lucien with his axe. People who had become that good through years of work.
He knew what he wanted from this place now. Not just to rely on what the system had given him. To take everything the Academy could teach, and turn it into real skill.
And his first lesson in that was going to be Monster Biology and Behaviour.
He was eager to see what it would teach him.