'That only leaves one possibility. The gang leader must have died the same exact moment that Norn did, but this is just- the probability is extremely low unless Norn met Silver Thread.' he thought as he recalled a secretive character from the novel managed to stay alive until the end of the novel.
'It's better to not get involved with Silver for now. He's a scary psycho.' he mentally reminded himself.
The two of them continued to walk, but Keith began to pant even though it was very slight panting. Amelia on the other hand, seemed completely fine as she cheerfully walked forward.
It took them a total of one hour to reach the church and Amelia confidently strode over to the right and entered the building through a "staff only" door while Keith silently followed behind her.
The two of them walked along the corridors until they reached a staircase which went down.
As he climbed down, he voices out his thoughts, "Underground... is this some kind of secretive thing?"
While he did know about the churches, the novel never talked about the internal structure of the churches as most of the conflicts and fights happened in the outside world.
"It's not exactly secretive, but only official members of the church can enter." she said and pointed at the ring she was wearing, "This one is only given to official members and if you don't have one, you won't be able to open the door that we walked in from"
"Interesting and impressive." he commented as he got off the stairs and entered another corridor. Unlike the one above, this corridor was three times as wide. At both ends of the corridor, were two doors each and in front of him, where the corridor ended, was another door.
In total, there were only five doors, but the corridor itself was about five hundred meters long. As they walked, Amelia began to explain.
She pointed at the first two doors that were parallel to each other while on the opposite sides, "The left one here is the library, so if you're free and wish to read stuff, then you can come here. The one on the right is a training room. Brandon and Edward use this one a lot."
Then she continued walking forward until she reached the other set of parallel doors, "This one is the artefact storage area, but it's mostly empty. Even staffs like us are not allowed to enter but Brandon can as he's the head detective." she said as she pointed at the left door.
And she walked towards the door on the right and opened it before walking in, "And welcome to the shooting range, woooo! Now give me five bullets, or five braks."
Keith nodded as he inwardly sighed and took out the small wooden box that his sister had given him. He opened the lid and saw the bullets neatly stacked. In total, there were 30 bullets with five rows and six columns.
He took five bullets out and gave them to Amelia before grabbing five for himself. He then grabbed his revolver from inside his trench coat and pushed the ammo barrel out so he could load it.
The revolver he had was smaller than regular revolvers issued by the empire or the other churches. It had a slightly shorter barrel and could only hold five bullets in it's cylinder, but this was enough for Keith.
The shooting range was pretty large, but there were a lot of things missing such as ear muffs and gloves. Luckily, the most necessary item was available, which was the target boards.
He quickly loaded his gun and took aim as Amelia watched. After aligning the front and rear sights, he pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the target board, but it wasn't on the bullseye.
"Wow, you're a natural at this. Did the guy who sold you this weapon teach you how to use it?"
Even though this was not the case, Keith nodded, "I guess."
After saying that, he gave his pistol to Amelia, "Let's swap for a bit. I want to try out a manual one."
"Wait what? Manual? No wait wait wait! Don't tell me... this revolver is the famed double action revolver?!" she yelped as she excitedly asked him and seeing her like this, made him smile a little.
"Yeah. So, do you want to swap or not?"
"Of course!" she said without any hesitation and took his gun before giving her own weapon to him.
While she excitedly skipped over to the right end of the room, Keith popped open the bullet barrel and saw five chambers filled while one was kept empty. He then popped the cylinder back in and got into position.
He aimed at the target and used his thumb to pull the hammer that was at the back of the gun. He had expected it to be easy, but reality hit him hard as he was unable to pull it back completely with just his thumb.
'.... just how weak am I? Fucking hell...'
Feeling slightly depressed, he stared at the gun for a few seconds before using his left hand's entire strength to pull back the hammer instead of just his thumb. This time he didn't feel too much resistance.
'Yeah, maybe I just need some getting used to.' he thought and aimed at his target one more time before shooting.
BANG!
The bullet left the barrel while his hand flew diagonally backwards due to the recoil.
"Oh god..." he muttered as he popped open the cylinder once again and noticed that the thickness of these bullets was slightly more than the ones he had brought with him.
'Ah, makes sense now.'
A second ago, he felt a bit too much recoil compared to his own gun and the difference in the size of bullet made sense.
'If I learn how to use this, then using mine will be way easier. Just like dad said when I was young, learn how to drive an old squeaky car and you'll be able to drive almost every normal car in the future.