After Megan demonstrated her skills inside the MET room, it was Zac's turn to enter. However, Paige expressed her concerns about not giving the redhead a weapon to use.
"Uhh, well… I've never shot a gun in my life, so I doubt it would help me," Zac nervously said.
"Huh? Who said anything about a gun?" Paige asked.
"Weren't you a warrior? Why would a warrior use a gun?" the scientist continued, pressing a button in the console and opening the wall inside the MET room to showcase a small armory room.
Contrary to the sleek, modern design of the room with white tiles and blue glowing trails, the weapons inside were old and dusty.
There were a few axes, javelins, swords, katanas, glaives, and other variations of these models. Nevertheless, the redhead fixed his sight on a metal bat in the corner of the room.
"What's this doing here?" Zac asked as he picked up the baseball bat, which seemed to be in better condition than all the other weapons.
"Oooh, good eye!" Paige exclaimed.
"That's an old invention of mine—It's made of an alloy that combines chromium and titanium, making it the hardest and lightest baseball bat in the world!" the scientist proudly explained.
"Although, are you sure that's what you want to pick?" Paige asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, I've never used any of those weapons before, so I wouldn't know what to do with them, but I've swung a bat before… My mom took me to the batting cages a few times when I was a kid," Zac replied with a nostalgic tone.
Respecting his decision, Paige closed the armory and pressed another button to start Zac's training, opening the tiles on the floor from where a dozen dummies came out.
They were the same ballistic dummies that Dante used to test his spells, but Paige made them slide across the room at high speeds.
While getting hit by one of the dummies would feel like a car was hitting Zac, the scientist wasn't done and pressed another button, making a couple of guns extrude from the ceiling with their crosshairs on the redhead.
Zac got nervous and gripped his bat tightly as a drop of sweat dripped down his temple, focusing on the dummies' movements, which started to feel slower the more he stared.
The moment the guns fired their shots at Zac, he took a quick step forward and swung his bat laterally with all his strength, striking one of the dummies in the head and ripping it clean off the rest of the body.
The guns shot again, and the redhead took a step to the side to evade them, swinging his bat with one hand backward and hitting another dummy in the stomach area, entirely halting its frantic movements.
Paige noticed that Zac only moved whenever the guns shot at him, which was clever of him, but it also showed a pattern.
'If he were fighting against real people, they would have already noticed what he is doing…' Paige thought.
Not wanting the redhead to learn bad habits in combat, the scientist pressed another button to switch it up in the middle of the test run, making the guns shoot at different time intervals.
Zac's movements got more frantic as he evaded the bullets flying at him but kept his focus on the dummies, which he kept destroying with a single blow.
Right as he struck the last dummy, a final bullet was shot from the wall nearest to him, and for a brief moment, time seemed to slow down for the redhead.
'I don't have time to move…!' Zac thought, raising his arms forward horizontally with his bat, which caused the bullet to hit and rebound off it.
"Nice job!" Paige exclaimed into the microphone, startling Zac inside the MET room.
*Phew* "How am I still alive…?" Zac pondered out loud, making Dante chuckle slightly.
When the redhead turned around and saw the state of the room, he stood in shock for a few seconds, wondering if it was truly him who destroyed the ballistic dummies with such ease.
The dummies were meant to imitate a human's body, and seeing that some of their heads had flown off made him scared of his own strength.
The floor and walls were painted with the fake blood that sprayed from the dummies, but it still gave Zac an ominous feeling about it, scared that the scene could become real in the future.
When Paige and Dante entered the MET room to inspect the destroyed dummies closer, they noticed that the ones who kept their heads had most of their bones shattered.
"It's safe to say that if you ever need to hit someone in the head with a bat… Umm, maybe hold yourself back a little, eh?" Paige jokingly said.
Zac handed the chromium bat to the scientist, who raised an eyebrow and looked at him with slight confusion.
"This is your weapon now. Keep it," Paige said.
"Th-the bat is my weapon!?" Zac asked.
"Why not? You handled it well…" Dante interjected as he kept inspecting the damage on the ballistic dummies.
"Not every warrior wields blades and axes. My friend used to wield clubs all the time," the warlock continued.
Not able to refute any of Dante's claims, Zac accepted the chromium bat and took it with him back to their home, placing it next to his bed.
____________________
Later that night, Dante, Zac, and Krom were playing video games in the living room, with Megan indifferently watching their match from the couch while Sophia cooked dinner for everyone.
Getting enchanted by the smell of her cooking, the trio paused the game and approached the blonde, who was working on a set of pastries in a half-moon shape.
"What's this called?" Dante asked, standing beside Sophia, who got slightly flushed at his sudden approach.
"Th-these are called empanadas. They are dough pastries that can be fried or baked, and they have different fillings…" the blonde said.
"These have ground beef, these have melted cheese, those have curry potatoes…" Sophie continued, passionately pointing at the different pastries on the kitchen board.
By the time the group sat down to eat, the blonde remembered that she had invited Victoria to their home the next day as they needed to study for their upcoming tests.
*Cough, cough* Zac choked on his empanada, grabbing his glass of water and chugging it down.