“Special delivery for you.” at lunch time, when Aimee and Thomas were having lunch together with the friends they made at the academy, a staff from the academy dropped an envelope at the table, right in front of Aimee and Thomas.

“What? Special delivery? How is that a thing?” a young bald man by the name of Ash in a suit of training leather armor took the envelope away from Thomas’s hands and tried to open it: “How could you? The entire academy’s on lockdown, how can you even get delivery?”

“It’s vetted and inspected by the academy’s customs.” the staff said: “And it’s a designation envelope. Only the designated recipient could open it.”

“Open it, unless it’s super secret, I would like to take a look at it.” a young woman by the name Dora with a pair of goggles with markings on the lenses and most notably had a holster with a gun inside patted Aimee on her shoulder.

“Okay, okay.” Aimee chuckled and ripped the envelope open.

“Artifact Appraisal 101.” what Thomas had in his envelope was an old text book, and when he opened the book, he could see a lot of old notes written on the sides of the pages: “These notes look really… how do I say...”

“Familiar?” inside of Aimee’s envelope, was another old book: “Energy Signature 101”.

“I think someone’s tryna help you find that artifact from Martin House.” Dora said with a slightly coarse laugh: “You better read up on it before you head to their vault!”

“But who could it be? Who could’ve sent these to you?” Ash tried to look at the back of Thomas’s book.

“Yeah, no need to think, it’s gotta be Ms. Josephine Wong.” Aimee flipped to the end of her book and tried to see if there was a signature somewhere: “She’s the one who introduced us here, and she told Jason that she would have something sent to us. So it all makes sense, it could only be her.”

“And she sent you her old introductory textbooks. So she wouldn’t be giving you any direct or extra help.” Ash nodded and looked at Thomas right in the eyes: “Nice, this is nice. I’m telling you, Thomas, Aimee, choose wisely and nicely. Tier 2 artifacts are not super exclusive or expensive, but it’s not like something you can find in a shop by the side of the road. Look at this - ” then he showed his pair of metal knuckles to Thomas and Aimee: “This is a pretty good pair of knuckles, but they’re still just barely over the bar of tier 2.”

“My gun’s also tier 2, almost at the bar of tier 3. It cost me quite a fortune to get it.” Dora shook her head and said with a wry smile: “I’d tell you all about the hoops I had to jump through, the trades I had to make. But that will take hours. So don’t underestimate how much a good artifact would help you on your path to power.”

“Okay. I’ll add these to my nightly reading list.” Aimee let out a long exhale and chuckled: “I was kinda worried that we won’t have much time.”

“Yeah, well, you’re the bookworm of the family. I’ll wait for your notes and digest.” Thomas laughed out loud and put the book back into the envelope, and what he said just earned him a backhand smack from Aimee.

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“Welcome to the Martin House Artifact warehouse.” a week after their special delivery, Aimee and Thomas came to two tall gates inside of the floating castle while accompanied by Jason and Caroline, and were greeted by a male student receptionist.

“Hello, we’re the winning team from the last student duel.” Thomas said: “We’re here to redeem our spoils - we are each entitled to one tier 2, I mean second tier enchanted artifact.”

“Understood, welcome, please wait here for a brief moment.” the student nodded and walked down the hallway into an office.

Shortly, a male staffer from the Martin House wearing a light blue robe walked up to the team of four her to claim their spoils with the the male student receptionist: “Hi, Detectives, Mr. Lin and Ms. Baker, my name is Cristian, this is Michael, I am a student counselor of the Martin House, and we are tasked with aiding Headmistress Clarkson fulfilling her promise to you and the student duel.”

“Thank you, Cristian.” Thomas nodded: “Can we go in there now?”

“Just a minute. It’s been a while since anyone’s visited the second tier artifact warehouse.” Cristian took out a small wooden stick and tapped the lock on the gates with it.

With a squeak from the stone gates, a spacious warehouse appeared right in front of everyone’s eyes. There were many shelves just like a normal civilian warehouse, and they could see all kinds of different items placed on them. And without even stepping in, they could see items like small curved daggers, crystal balls and even decorative metal helms.

“Are these it?” Aimee asked.

“No, it’s on another floor.” Cristian chuckled: “This is the warehouse for the artifacts that are first or second tier. We store higher tier artifacts somewhere else with higher levels of security and tracking measures. The artifacts of the first tier are placed here. We have many of them thus we place them kinda messily. The second tier artifacts are upstairs. Please follow Michael to the second floor.”

All of them did as they were told. The second floor had a different layout than the first, where each individual item had its own layer on the shelf instead of sharing layers with other items. The positions of the items also seemed more organized, where items with similar looks and shapes were placed close to each other. Caroline and Jason took a short moment to sense the energy waves and fields emitted from the items, they were indeed slightly stronger than that from the items on the first floor.

“Now, these are all the second tier artifacts.” Cristian said: “Headmistress Clarkson tasked us to answer basic questions regarding them, so please feel free to ask if you have any questions. We cannot tell you what to choose or what kind of magic was used to enchant them, but we can tell you very basic information, like their usage and simple summaries of their history.”