I strapped the first quiver to my waist, pulling the string back as far as I could and firing off shot after shot, trying to gradually adjust my aim. My target was a tree standing about twenty meters ahead of me, and I had carved out a small circle on it with my scimitar.
Every arrow I fired, I made sure to pull the string back as far as I could, simultaneously training my Strongman skill. I would need to level this skill considerably if I were to use the bow in a normal fight. This meant that it took me roughly five seconds to fire a single shot, taking roughly a minute to gather the arrows every time I emptied the quiver.
Whenever I fired off an arrow, I would also fire off a Mana Bolt, effectively training three skills at once. Four, if I were to count Resilience. Though… as I trained, I decided to try to add more into the mix.
First, I activated stealth, nocking an arrow on the bowstring and aiming at the tree, my finger pointing towards it while grabbing the bow. Then, I activated Sneak Attack, feeling the familiar energy of the skill activation. When I fired off the Mana Bolt, this feeling dissipated, immediately followed by the arrow releasing.
Glancing at my skills window, I saw that Sneak Attack had gained a small amount of experience. This was good, because I had been lacking a way to properly train it. Immediately afterwards, I reactivated Stealth again, entering it and Sneak Attack into my regular rotation.
Throughout my experimenting, I got an idea of how durable these arrows were. If I missed the tree entirely and struck the arrow into the ground, they almost never broke. However, the arrows seemed to break about one tenth of the time whenever they actually struck the tree. Either the shaft snapped on impact, or the arrowhead got stuck in the tree when I tried to pull it out.
As my accuracy improved, I managed to hit the tree more often than not, even managing to land a few lucky shots on the small circle that I had drawn. It wasn’t easy to keep track of how long I was going for, but after a while, I managed to get a prompt alerting me that I had received Bow Proficiency.
At that point, I had to have broken a full quiver of arrows, and I was now landing most of my shots on the tree. Following this skill gain, I noticed that the proficiency only went up whenever I struck the tree, and missed arrows did not increase it at all.
Since I still had the arrows to spare, I continued using them while training, rather than dropping the bow to focus on the others. Only when I completely ran out of usable arrows did I discard the empty quivers. After that, it was back to what I had done in the mines… simply pointing at the tree and firing off a Mana Bolt every second. Of course, I still constantly reactivated my Stealth and Sneak Attack skills.
What felt like another hour later, and I heard rustling in the bushes around me. Turning, I made sure that Stealth was activated, seeing a pair of players entering the clearing where I had been training. I didn’t recognize either of them, but they didn’t seem to immediately notice me. One of them were dark purple robes, and the other was a warrior in black armor.
“Looks like they’re gone.” The wizard said, looking at all of the scattered, broken arrows and discarded quivers. “It must have just been someone trying to grind their skills.”
The warrior chuckled. “Using this many supplies just to train skills? They’d be better off looking for monsters to hunt.”
However, the wizard shook his head. “The NPCs in town said that skills can evolve, right? While we’re waiting for monsters to respawn, maybe training skills isn’t such a bad idea. It’s better than those people forming groups to hunt bosses, only for most of them to die and lose gear.”
The warrior gave a small tsk. “Maybe. That mean you’re going to look for a training room somewhere, then?”
However, the wizard simply chuckled. “I can only use one fireball every twenty seconds. The efficiency is a lot lower for magic than martial types like you, even if we have more magic.” It surprised me to learn that this wizard already had the Fireball skill. Though, judging from their conversation, it seemed that he didn’t get it through evolution, but from a skill book or quest.
“Yeah, well, you’re not going to catch me just swinging my sword around at a target dummy for hours.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on. Since he’s not here anyways, let’s get moving. The boss is waiting for us at the dungeon.”
The wizard gave a pensive nod, the two turning to walk past me while I remained motionless. A sense of accomplishment filled me, as this was the first time that I had properly managed to not be spotted when using my Stealth skill. It was starting to feel like every player I met had trained their Perception.
Still, it surprised me to learn that there was a dungeon nearby. I hadn’t read any information on this area like I did in Brita, so the territory nearby was completely unfamiliar to me. Of course, I could make an educated guess that it was a dungeon specializing in magic, given the local monsters.
Unfortunately, if players were already finding it, then the likelihood of me being able to get anything out of it was rather slim. Instead, I waited a few minutes for the sound of their conversation to disappear, before returning to my training. The idea of a training room did interest me, as I had never heard about anything like that before. However, I was fairly certain that I knew what it was.
More than likely, an NPC or Fallen had decided to open up an area where they could charge players to let them train their skills. All that they would need for that was enough space, such as an empty warehouse, and some crudely made training dummies. Depending on the price that they were asking, it would be an easy way for the NPC to make money.
Something like that wouldn’t be good for me, as I needed to constantly be training my skills. As opposed to players that could abandon get stronger through leveling up, seeing skills as purely a secondary strength.
I went back to training my Sneak Attack and Mana Bolt combination, eventually just sitting on the ground to get a bit more comfortable. The process must have taken several more hours, as the sky was starting to dim when I received the first notification.
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Mana Bolt has reached level 20! Would you like to evolve the skill? |
Naturally, I chose yes. I hadn’t been sitting out here for hours just for fun.
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Arcane Arrow (Magic – 7☆): Evolved from Mana Bolt. Generates an arrow of condensed arcane energy, firing it towards the target at high speeds. Mana Burden: 0. Level: 1(0%) |
Surprisingly, I hadn’t received an arcane magic proficiency after all of this time, which likely meant that there was no such proficiency. That, or it was harder to obtain because it applied to a wider range of skills.
Still, this was exactly what I had been waiting for. I almost stood up and went back to town to get some basic materials for enchanting, but paused. After all of that training, Sneak Attack had almost evolved. Gritting my teeth, I put aside my anticipation for the new skill, returning to my training routine. To be honest… I was glad that I did, when I saw the skill I obtained from the evolution. This was a skill that I hadn’t heard about in any lessons.
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Assassinate (Martial – 10☆): Evolved from Sneak Attack. Increases critical damage while attacking from stealth. If the target is immediately killed while under the effects of a stealth skill, the stealth will not be broken. Mana Burden: 0. Level: 1(0%) |
My eyes went wide when I saw this skill. I immediately thought of my enchanted sword, before shaking my head. The splash damage on that weapon meant that I would damage secondary targets, still breaking my stealth. However… if I combined it with my bow, I might be able to create a stealth archer combat style. I just… well… had to get better with my bow.
Without hesitation, I opened up my skill list. It was getting late, so I wasn’t sure if Diane would still be on. She seemed to spend a lot of time logged in compared to other players, considering that she didn’t have to log out at all during our previous dungeon dive. As expected, she appeared to be logged in when I sent the message. Haven’t found healing skill. She said, as if thinking that’s what I was calling for.
However, I didn’t say anything about that. Instead, I took a screenshot of my new skill’s information to send to her. She responded almost immediately with a series of exclamation marks. Sneak Attack is hard to level up. What type of quest do I need to do for that?
That was… tricky. While I wanted to give her something easy, the quest system required a difficulty comparable to the reward. I’ll make the quest for you, so meet me at the western gate of Arcanhide.
I knew that the Assassinate she was going to get from me wouldn’t be as strong as what she trained herself by mastering Sneak Attack. However, as long as she still continued to train Sneak Attack to meet the evolution condition, it should be able to merge with her Assassinate skill, granting it the evolution effects.
I made sure to share all of this information with Diane as I was walking, making sure that she knew not to give up on her Sneak Attack. She seemed thankful for the information, and was already waiting at the gate for me when I arrived. Unlike her normal demeanor, she seemed incredibly excited, her stern expression replaced with a hopeful smile.
When she noticed my approach, despite the Stealth skill I still had on, she ran over towards me, holding one hand out. “Quest.”
I gave a small chuckle, nodding my head and issuing the quest that I had created. “Hunt the nearby monsters, and bring me twenty of their magic stones. Each monster must be killed in a single strike.”
Diane blinked, confused as she accepted the quest. “Magic stones? Never seen a drop like that.”
“It’s not a normal drop, but a quest item.” I explained patiently. “Quest givers can ask for items that aren’t normally on a monster’s drop list, but could only be obtained by dissecting the monster. This forcibly places the drop on the list of what you can obtain from looting. The more strict the conditions to obtain it in the quest, the more likely it is to drop.”
Magic stones were just bundles of mana that could theoretically be found in any monster. However, they couldn’t be properly shaped by a jewelcutter, and the mana inside couldn’t be extracted to power magic items or refill one’s mana. Instead, they only really had one use, and that was as a consumable when enchanting.to increase the success rate.
Since I was needing something to increase my success rate when enchanting my bow, I thought that this would be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone. The quest was successfully created, and Diane rushed off, telling me to wait there for her.
