Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

"This really wasn't me!" Winters felt that he had been wronged beyond measure, trudging through the darkness with uneven steps, "Damn! I really only burned the thief's hair!"

"I know, I know, this definitely wasn't your doing. The fire started far from here," said Bard, who was carrying two long halberds and leading the way, calmly deflecting the blame for Winters.

"This is cursed luck!" Winters's entire day had been nothing but misfortune, struck by a bolt from the blue by Aike during the day and targeted by a female thief at night, leaving him with injuries on his left shoulder, right arm, and feet.

The two hurried back to their duty post at the north gate, where the junior students on guard duty had already heard the whistle and seen the strange occurrence in the sky. They thought it was the patrolling guards blowing the whistle after spotting a fire, and the instructor on night duty had been awakened and was anxiously waiting at the entrance.

So when they saw Winters return with a bloody arm, they were all shocked.

"What happened here? Why are you covered in blood?" the duty instructor asked in confusion.

"There was a thief. Caught her coming out from the school direction. A knife was involved, and she escaped," recounted Winters, having arranged his words on the way back.

He decided it was wiser to keep quiet about anything related to "fire" and not to mention a woman. To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, and the need for further explanations.

"Who dares to wreak havoc on our Military Academy's ground?" The instructor, upon hearing about a thief daring to infiltrate the military academy, was furious.

Winters thought to himself: Indeed, she has a death wish, and my life was almost lost too.

However, the thief was long gone, and for the moment, no one could do anything about her. The priority was clearly to treat the wound on Winters's arm and figure out exactly where the fire was.

The night-duty instructor immediately took Winters to the faculty duty office. The instructor tried to light a match with flint and steel, but failed several times. Winters sighed inwardly, then used an Ignition Spell to light the oil lamp, and the instructor realized that Winters was a Spellcaster.

Even with the oil lamp, the light was too dim, so the instructor asked Winters's juniors to bring a few more oil lamps. At this moment, Winters remembered the dagger from the female thief; as long as it wasn't rusty, the dagger could be used as a casting material for the Luminosity Spell.

So Winters pulled out the dagger, using the same casting gesture for the Ignition Spell, he used Tesla's Luminosity Spell. Magic poured into the surface of the dagger, the metal, infused with magical power, released it in the form of visible light, and the room was immediately illuminated.

The instructor took advantage of the light to find a pair of small scissors, and swiftly cut the sleeve off Winters's summer uniform. The blood on Winters's arm had coagulated, sticking the fabric tightly to the wound.

"You'll need to grit your teeth and bear it," the instructor said in a low voice. "This must be torn off, it can't stay on the wound. Otherwise, your wound will get infected, and you'll die of a fever."

Over a decade of Sovereignty Wars had provided the military with extensive experience in dealing with sharp weapon injuries, eventually becoming part of the curriculum in health classes. Instructors at the military school certainly came from a military background, and everyone in the room knew that the fabric must not stick to the wound.

Winters nodded. The instructor didn't waste words and, with a stern heart and a forceful pull, tore the fabric stuck to the wound. The pain made Winters gasp for air, and the wound that had stopped bleeding began to bleed anew.

At that moment, the sound of hooves approached from afar, quickly stopping outside the faculty duty office. A student pushed open the door: "Report! The horses have been brought."

The students on guard at the entrance had spotted the anomaly in the sky earlier and immediately woke the instructor sleeping in the duty office. The instructor immediately judged that it was a fire at the port and, accompanied by a student, ran along the main road toward the fire to ascertain the situation.

As he ran, the instructor realized he had made a foolish mistake, the burning location was clearly a good distance from the school, how soon could he get there just by running? So the two of them ran back and dispatched a cavalry student from the school to lead two horses from the stables.

As the instructor paced back and forth like an ant on a hot pan at the school gate, waiting for the horses to be brought over, Winters and Bard returned to the north gate.

The instructor paid no attention to the student bringing the horses, he first carefully examined the piece of cloth ripped from Winters's body under the glow of the Luminosity Spell, and then scrutinized Winters's wounds. At that moment, Winters no longer had the strength to maintain the Luminosity Spell, and the dagger dimmed, leaving only the oil lamp as the room's source of light.

"It's alright, it hasn't hit the bone. The weapon that caused the wound is very sharp, no shredded fabric has been embedded in the wound. The cut is also very clean; it will heal quickly. If there were a Divine Arts user here, he wouldn't even scar," the instructor confidently deduced, immediately instructing the other students, "Find some clean water, dissolve some salt in it, and wash his wound, don't wrap it up."

The instructor then tore off a long strip of cloth from the bedsheet, wrapped it around Winters's neck and right hand, tied a knot to form a sling similar to what one would use for a broken arm, and advised Winters, "Don't move your right arm at random, minimize disturbing the wound so it can heal quickly."

After treating Winters's knife wound, the instructor hurried off with a student on horseback to investigate the fire at the port area.

After the instructor left, Bard quickly arranged for saltwater to clean Winters's wound, but he also ran into trouble, where to find clean water and salt at this late hour? It seemed only the kitchen would have both these things, so he hurriedly ran out to the canteen to get the saltwater.

In the room, only Winters and three junior students remained, Winters didn't recognize these three, and they didn't know Winters, all gaping at one another.

"Go to the student duty room," Winters decided to move to another room, they couldn't stay in the staff duty room.

"Squad leader, who would be so vicious?" A lower-grade officer cadet carefully examined Winters's wound and said in horror, "Need to use a knife for stealing something? Besides, what is there to steal in the school?"

"I thought it was someone running from bed duty," Winters said with a bitter smile, "I didn't expect them to come at me with a knife."

"Did you see what she looked like?"

"She was masked, I didn't see, but I'm certain it was a woman."

"A woman?!" The three juniors were dumbstruck, in their military academy life they rarely encountered other females apart from the kitchen maids and laundry women, let alone a female thief.

The three juniors exchanged glances and unanimously thought to themselves that this senior must be so desperately hungry for the opposite sex that he imagines every person to be a woman.

"It really was a female thief, [expletive]!" Winters spotted what these little brats were thinking immediately; a female thief indeed sounded like some kind of fantasy, but he was certain that the person who had charged at him with a dagger was definitely a woman.

He now regretted mentioning to these three brats that the thief was a woman, their attention had been utterly diverted by the word "female."

"Didn't you notice anything unusual just now?" Winters asked the juniors what they knew.

"No, I was on my post the whole time. Same as always, didn't hear any strange sounds or see anything odd," one lower-grade officer cadet shook his head.

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