In the safe house, everyone was busy with their own tasks. Mira, for instance, was engrossed in reprogramming the facsimiles using… psionic energy. Yes, you heard that right. I'll never understand how she managed to manipulate mechanical beings with sigils and rituals. She had drawn intricate symbols on the garage floor with chalk, somehow connecting them to a laptop via a USB cable.

  Just picture my face when I walked in and saw that—an elaborate chalk sigil on the floor hooked up to a laptop like it was the most normal thing in the world. Honestly, it looked like a bizarre fusion of witchcraft and tech support.

  Elene was gone, getting the thermal drill for us alongside with the Fulton balloons for us to use. She also said that she would be looking for a contractor who would be on-board with her crazy plan, which I was sure she would eventually find.

  The most interesting part of our preparation that we did in the front yard of the safe house, hands down, was what Alice and I were working on. Specifically, testing painkillers and blood-clotting drugs. I needed to figure out what worked and what didn’t, and the only viable test subject was... me. It wasn’t the dumbest idea I’d ever had—though admittedly, it wasn’t far off.

  Of course, I didn’t do this without consulting our logistics officer, who also happened to be the team’s former healer. However, the role had since fallen to me, as my spells were better suited to their needs. Mira’s magic, while powerful, was more specialized for mechanical beings like facsimiles and golems—not exactly useful when dealing with flesh and blood.

  “Alright, your turn,” I said to Alice, placing a hand over the gunshot wound I’d just inflicted on myself. Yes, shooting each other had become a strangely routine practice among contractors like us, especially in healer-and-paladin duos. Unfortunately, our beloved paladin was out on a grocery run, leaving the healing duties to me—the medic—and Alice, the team’s engineer.

  Surprisingly, this trial-by-bullet approach wasn’t all for nothing. Through it, I began to understand how wounds worked in this world. Bullets inflicted the most damage to the torso and head. A rifle headshot could bleed out a quarter of your health with just a single 7.62 FMJ round. A body shot? That would drain about an eighth. Extremities were more forgiving, costing only a sixteenth of your health.

  I grabbed my G36 and shot Alice in the torso. She flinched as blood sprayed away from her torso, then, I put my hand pointed at her direction. The wound slowly closed as my psionic energy was drained from my body to heal her wound rapidly.

  “How much did that drain?” I asked.

  “A sixteenth, like extremities,” Alice answered.

  Alice put me through hell testing her new weapons. From the coil-based bullet accelerator mounted on the H&K 416 to psionic-enhanced rounds designed to mess with psionic regeneration—it was as brutal as it sounds. Was it pleasant? Absolutely not. Especially when my psionic energy drained away and the raw, unfiltered pain started to kick in. It turned out that draining your psionic energy would also mean that you’d feel the raw unfiltered pain until the psionic energy returned to its bare minimum.

  In return, I tested drugs on Alice. Through trial and error, I discovered that painkillers could reduce the damage we took, while blood-clotting agents, regeneration creams, and bandages accelerated the healing process. Better yet, applying them also restored a chunk of health every time they were used.

  So far, ketamine was our top pick. It was the cheapest option and reduced incoming damage by half. However, it didn’t stop bleeding, which could only be addressed with bandages or blood-clotting drugs like Tranexamic Acid or something like that.

  To put it bluntly, it was a mutually painful relationship. But it worked. Sort of.

  Painful? Yes. Practical? Also yes. Is it stupid? Kinda, but yes.

  “So, this is why the automata is a pain in the arse for the Feds,” Alice commented, lifting up the 416 that she held.

  “Why?” I asked her, observing the wound slowly closing down.

  “The barrel alone boosts a bullet’s performance by 35%—that’s a massive improvement, especially in terms of velocity,” Alice explained. “Kinetic energy-wise, this upgrade increases the force by around 80%. That’s nearly double the power. No wonder we stopped issuing alumina oxide plates to our troops and switched to silicon carbide as the minimum standard.”

  “I see,” I only nodded.

  “Should we use this thing during the heist?” Alice asked.

  I gave it some thought—it would be a great idea to use these weapons, especially the upgraded 416. The increased velocity and power would make it much easier to pierce the body armor worn by SWAT teams. A faster bullet meant better penetration, and that could make all the difference in a fight, especially against waves of enemies.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “I think we should,” I said.

  “I think so,” Alice also nodded. “We should have all the advantages that we could get.”

  As we discussed the advantages of using better weapons, and a facsimile emerged from the garage—the big one, armed with the M134 minigun. Mira followed closely behind, giggling and clutching her tablet like a proud inventor showcasing her creation.

  The sight of the facsimile was as uncanny as ever. Its heavily armored frame moved with surprising ease, the miniguns firmly gripped in its hands and a massive ammo backpack secured on its back. Despite its intimidating appearance, it seemed friendly this time, approaching us slowly.

  “BEHOLD, B!” Mira declared dramatically, presenting the facsimile with a flourish. She had named it a mere B, of all things.

  “B?” Alice raised an eyebrow, her ears twitching in disbelief. “That’s what you call your masterpiece?”

  I shrugged, giving the machine a critical once-over. “Looks functional enough, as long as it doesn’t try to kill us. Still, I’d name it the Terminator, or something like that.”

  “C’mon, it’s functional. It also has voice command. B, I want that sky gone,” Mira said.

  The facsimile didn’t reply, it immediately aimed the minigun up into the air and began shooting. A stream of bullets flew toward the air. The facsimile hold the minigun steadily, as if the heavy weapon didn’t have any recoil whatsoever. However, Mira stopped the combat routine immediately by a press of a button, stopping the facsimile from moving a single joint.

  “See? Emergency protocol—just the way Elene likes it,” Mira said with a satisfied grin.

  “How much ammo does B carry?” I asked, eyeing the massive facsimile.

  “3,000 rounds. That should be enough,” Mira replied. “And if we ever run low, we can just pour more bullets into the backpack.”

  “That sounds... simple,” I said, still processing how straightforward it all seemed.

  “C’mon, look at his massive backpack. It’s not just storage—it’s got an ammo-sorting capability too,” Mira added, tapping the side of the facsimile for emphasis.

  “Well, that means we’ll need a lot of ammo on hand,” Alice pointed out.

  “Of course! That’s why I’ve moved all the ammo backpacks from the heavy facsimiles into this safe house,” Mira explained. “I’ll make sure to bring a bunch of them. It should be more than enough to keep B loaded and ready for action.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I said.

  Mira then asked, “So, what did you find? Anything new from what I’ve told?”

  “Not really, it’s true that painkillers are good for reducing damage, but different painkillers had different efficacies. I was having an idea that maybe, a Fentanyl would null the pain completely, but the bloody darn thing really affects our consciousness, ketamine is still the best for it,” I explained.

  “That’s good to hear, well, I’m not wrong to choose you,” Mira said.

  Then, I addressed the elephant in the room—or rather, in my inventory. The undistributed skill points. What should I do with them? I could allocate them wherever I wanted, but right now, only two options seemed genuinely useful: vitality and aptitude.

  Vitality determined how much damage I could take before my health bar dwindled, while aptitude controlled the amount of psionic energy I had available to heal others. With the next heist likely to turn into a close-quarters combat scenario, boosting my health seemed like the obvious choice. I’d need every bit of extra durability to make it through in one piece.

  However, my role as a healer meant I’d likely be casting my healing spell obnoxiously often—especially when we’d be facing waves of SWAT teams determined to take us down by any means necessary. I then distributed all of the stat points to aptitude.

  Name: Ain

  Class: Restorationist

  Race: Fallen Angel

  Strength: 110

  Agility: 40

  Vitality: 100

  Aptitude: 204 [You Really Want To Get Your Red Bull, Don’t You?]

  What a snarky comment, I thought.

  “We should address one small detail,” Mira said, breaking the momentary silence.

  Both she and Alice turned their heads in my direction. What now?

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, feeling their gazes linger.

  “Yeah,” Mira replied. “We need to work on your shooting skills, girl. You’re skilled, sure, but we’re about to face waves of SWAT teams. You’d better be ready.”

  “Want me to build a kill house for her?” Alice chimed in, her tone almost too casual.

  “That’d be great,” Mira agreed with a nod.

  Alice wasted no time getting to work, quickly drafting plans for a kill house using my safe house as the layout. She repurposed the space, scattering bullet-absorbent targets throughout the rooms, hallways, and corners. Some were shaped like enemy combatants, while others resembled civilians—a detail that immediately made me uneasy.

  “Wait, why civilians?” I protested, watching her place a target in a corner near the makeshift kitchen.

  Alice barely glanced up, her hands busy setting up another target. “Because stakes matter. Shooting at civilians is forbidden, and having something valuable on the line will force you to focus. No room for sloppy aim.”

  “But it’s my safe house!” I argued, exasperated.

  “Exactly,” Alice said with a smirk. “It’s familiar territory, so you’ll feel the pressure to be precise. No reckless shots. Plus, I made sure the targets absorb bullets. No real damage.”

  Reluctantly, I nodded. If I was going to make this heist successful, I’d need all the practice I could get—even if it meant risking my favorite couch getting splattered with paint rounds in the process. I sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to win this argument. Mira leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching the exchange with an amused expression.

  “Think of it as practice under pressure,” Mira added. “Better to mess up here than out there against SWAT.”

  I stood at the entrance, gripping my G36 tightly. The dim lighting of the makeshift kill house cast eerie shadows across the bullet-absorbent targets scattered inside. Alice’s voice crackled over the headset she’d insisted I wear.

  “Alright, here’s the deal. Your ideal time to clear this is under two minutes. No skills allowed,” she said firmly, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. “You’ve got an overpowered ability in the grand scheme of things, so consider this a test of your raw marksmanship.”

  I exhaled slowly, steadying my nerves. No psionics, no tricks—just me, the rifle, and the targets.

  “Ready?” Alice asked.

  I gave a short nod.

  “Go!” she barked.