After spending the day doing absolutely nothing, I went to sleep, and was surprised to wake up without a dream. Or, more specifically, without regaining any memories. If I was being honest, I really wanted to know what happened next in the whole ordeal with Acelina. She seemed strong. Stronger than I was at that time, at least. I couldn’t help but wonder if she had killed me, and it was all because of her that I was even given a second chance.

I’d expected to see Victor first thing in the morning, but it wasn’t until midday that he decided to show his ugly face. “Ah, Luna, there you are!” His cheerful grandfather act didn’t improve my mood at all. The last thing I wanted was to see him happy. “I’ve completed all the preparations for your training! By the time we set out, you should be ready.”

He’d never elaborated on how exactly this training was going to go. I didn’t really think he could help me become a better archer. Unless he somehow knew how to increase my archery Skill in a significant amount of levels, I doubted this was even going to be worth anyone’s time. And that was only if he could figure out a way for me to use a bow again.

I walked with Victor as he led me out of the camp, careful to keep my distance. I didn’t think he’d attack me for any reason, considering how eager he was to make me his perfect soldier, but I didn’t think being careful would hurt too much here. Plus, if some miracle were to happen that might allow my escape, I’d want as much space between the two of us as possible.

We walked until the forest was dense enough that walking normally was impossible. I had to use branches, bushes, and any other footing I could find just to get through. Victor, meanwhile, didn’t seem disturbed by the foliage. I had tried following directly behind him early on, but found myself wrestling with a bush instead. It was weird, but he just ignored me whenever I asked him about it. I was tempted to use the opportunity to make a run for it, but I’d never get away in these conditions. Not when he could ignore all the plants, while I had to hop and climb and jump over everything.

After an hour, we came to a clearing. It was a circle of trees, about fifty feet across. Aside from that though, I didn’t see anything of note. At first, I assumed we still had some moving to do, but Victor didn’t continue on.

“So… why are we here?” I eventually asked.

Victor smiled. “Because, no matter how loud someone may scream, none will hear it.”

“You don’t scare me.” I looked him straight in the eyes. He could kill me. I knew that much. But he wouldn’t make me fear him. Not if he really did what I thought he did to Cyril. Not if he was going to force me to stay here against my will.

“It’s not your screaming that I’m worried about.” Victor’s smile widened. “Bring him in!” He called out. Three people entered the clearing. Two of them were keeping one man restrained. I didn’t recognize any of them, but I did know the uniforms they were wearing. They were each soldiers of Victor’s legion.

Victor walked over to the soldier that was being kept restrained. “This man attempted to leave in the middle of the night, a few weeks ago. I’d planned on sending him to the capital, to be properly judged, but I think, instead, I’ll have you carry out his punishment.”

“I’m not going to kill him. He hasn’t done anything to me.” I crossed my arms, hoping my stance was clear. Even if my own life was in danger, I wasn’t going to harm an innocent person. If it was me or them, then I’d choose them. This was already technically my second life, anyway.

“I thought you might say that.” Victor clapped once, and another soldier came into the clearing. Just how many people were around here? In any case, the soldier had two bows, and two full quivers. I could see where this was going. One set was tossed to me, and the other in front of the captive.

Victor nodded to the two soldiers, who let go of the one they were restraining. “Well then, Taz. This is your final chance. Kill Luna, and you’ll go free.” There was a note of amusement in his voice, as if this was all for entertainment. Like he wasn’t going to try and make us kill each other. I didn’t bother picking up my bow. I wouldn’t fight Taz. And I hoped he would be sensible enough to not attack me either.

Taz brought up his bow, and immediately took aim. Before I could fully react, an arrow was already darting toward me. It took every ounce of dexterity and speed available to me to dodge it. And even then, the side of the arrowhead managed to slice through my arm, leaving a deep cut.

Alright then. Taz was no longer innocent, now that he was trying to kill me… Or was he? It was all Victor’s doing, really. Was I going to blame him, when Victor was the one in control here? The one orchestrating all of this? Well, it wasn’t like it really mattered. I couldn’t even shoot a bow with a single hand, so this was a bit of a one-sided match, in more ways than one.

“Stop this! I don’t want to fight you!” I yelled out.

Taz hesitated for a moment. Just a moment. “I’m sorry… I don’t want to die.” He spoke quietly. Even with the stats I had in perception, it was hard to hear him. Taz resumed fire soon after. I dodged what I could, but he had more arrows than I had luck. An arrow pierced the skin of my leg, only stopping one it reached my bone. As I was running, I fell forward, and screamed as the wound in my calf was torn open more.

Another arrow was nocked, and Taz was ready to finish me off. I closed my eyes as it soared through the air, aimed right at my heart.

Victor appeared in front of me, and caught the arrow. “You see, Luna. He will kill you once he gets the chance. And your enemies on the battlefield will be the same. You may hesitate, but they will not.”

I could see the value in his lesson, but it was lost on me. I still had no intentions of fighting for him.

“Here, take this.” Victor lifted my handless arm, and placed something on it. It was like a glove, but it was kept close to my skin, so that the small hook on the end wouldn’t move around. “With this, you’ll be able to shoot again. It’ll take you a bit of practice to get used to, but we have the perfect target right here!” He gestured to Taz.

“I’m still not going to kill him.”

Victor seemed genuinely confused. “But you killed Silas, remember? What’s so different this time? In fact, Silas didn’t even attack you to begin with. You shouldn’t have any problems doing the same thing here.”

“Taz didn’t try to kill me!” I yelled from the ground. “It’s all because of you! You’re the one forcing him to attack me!”

Victor sighed. “I see your point.” He ripped the arrow out my leg, and launched it at Taz. The projectile flew so fast, it barely met any resistance as it entered and exited the soldier’s neck. “Instead, I’ll have you try to kill me.”

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Victor attacked me for the rest of the day. At first, I didn’t do anything to fight back, out of defiance. But he hadn’t held back. It only took three shattered limbs for me to try and resist. Victor apparently had brought quite a few expensive potions. And instead of using them to save his soldiers in the upcoming battle in a month, he was using them to restore the bones and organs of mine that he personally pulverized.

I was thankful that the pain instantly went away the moment I drank one of the potions, but I still felt it initially. I felt the countless times that he crippled me, only to give me a potion to build my body back up.

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At first, I only ran, trying to save myself. But Victor only redoubled his own efforts. More pain, more injuries. Then, I picked up a bow, and started firing arrows at him. Not a single one hit, and once again, he kept hurting me. Causing near-lethal damage just for it to go back to normal a moment later.

By the end of the night, I was truly trying to kill him. It was the only I would have been set free from the endless cycle of torture. Free from the constant pain. At first, I’d decided that I wouldn’t kill anyone just to get away. But that idea had quickly been turned on its head.

Someone like Victor? Someone bereft of morals, who used the lives of innocent people as training tools? Maybe someone like that didn’t deserve to live after all. I doubted I’d even be able to hurt Victor, nevermind kill him. But still. If I had the chance to choose, would I decide Victor deserved to die? The answer was probably yes, but I still wasn’t completely sure yet. On one hand, who knew how many innocents had been hurt because of him. On the other hand, who even was I to decide the fate of someone else’s life? I was still trying to figure out who I was going to be. It wouldn’t be fair for someone like me to decide someone’s fate.

Only when the moon was high in the sky did Victor decide to finally call things off. I was mentally and physically exhausted. I could perfectly remember the pain of each injury given to me, but that was almost a good thing. Hopefully, things would get tolerable after a while. I seriously doubted this “training session” would be the last.

I returned to my tent, and fell onto my cot. It was as uncomfortable as ever, but I was asleep within seconds.

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A week went by, and my days were much the same. I slept as much as Victor would allow, before I was dragged off to the clearing and torture-trained for hours on end. As much as I hated to admit it though, there were some results to all of it.

System Notification: You have leveled up Skill Recall! (Level 16 → 20)

System Notification: You have leveled up Heightened Learning! (Level 15 → 19)

Victor had seemed delighted about the news of Skill Recall reaching level 20. Apparently, once it got one more level, it would reach its second stage, and would receive an upgrade. He didn’t tell me exactly what the upgrade would be, probably because he didn’t know, but I at least had something to look forward to between all the days of near-constant pain.

The entire time, Victor had specifically told me not to spend any of the free stats that I had. With the 11 levels I had gotten from killing Silas, I’d accumulated 165. But each of them was just sitting around and not being put to use.

This morning, when Victor came for training, I was expected to be taken back to the clearing. Instead, I was surprised to find myself at an archery range, which the soldiers used for target practice. There were a multitude of targets placed out in the field, which all varied in distance. Some were as close as ten feet, while others were hundreds away. And while I couldn’t see them, I was sure that there were targets that were just too far away for me to actually see.

“Today, we’ll be doing something a bit different. Now that one of your Skills is on the cusp of reaching its second stage, we’ll be focusing everything on getting it there as soon as possible.”

I nodded. Anything to take a break from the usual.

“Since it happens to be your Skill, Skill Recall, I believe the best course of action would be to imitate ways that you may have trained your skill as an archer previous to losing to memories. And if it’s true that you were a soldier, then our archery range may prove beneficial. I’ll allow you to spend some time here, but we’ll move on if you don’t make any progress soon enough.” And with that, Victor turned and left, leaving me on my own. I didn’t have to guess what would happen if we “moved on,” so I got to work.

No one else was around at the moment, so the entire range was pretty much mine for the time being. There was a case of practice arrows which didn’t have sharpened heads, and weren’t meant to cause any real damage. I assumed they were used in place of actual arrows so that the targets set up in the field wouldn’t need to be replaced as often.

Victor had gotten me a bow that was perfect for my size, so I used that rather than one of the bows that was made available for practice.

At first, I shot at the closest targets. As soon as one was hit by an arrow, the sound of a bell rang. I aimed at further targets, and only started having difficulties once I was aiming at the ones that were just barely in vision. They were far, and hard to see and hit, but not impossible. It took a few tries, but I was able to hit most of them.

No level, though. Not that I had expected it to come that easy, but I’d been at it for a while already. There was no telling exactly when Victor would come back. I needed a level by then, or else I’d be right back to getting beat up constantly again.

Rather than continuing, I took the time to think. At the level it was at, Skill Recall wouldn’t level up for nothing. I needed to accomplish something impressive, or just put in a lot of hard work to increase the Skill’s level. But was there anything impressive I could even do here? The only thing I could think of was hitting something really far away.

But… Though that wasn’t as bad of an idea as I immediately thought it was. If I located a target that was just barely visible, and still hit it anyway, I was sure it would be worth at least something for Skill Recall. Hopefully worth enough to level it one more time.

It took a bit of searching, but I eventually found the right target. I could only just see it if I squinted and focused. Raising my bow, I took aim… and missed. It hadn’t even been close. At a certain point, the wind took over, veered my shot much more off course than it would have been otherwise. The fact that I was drawing the string with a hook rather than a hand didn’t help very much either. Victor said I’d get used to it eventually, but that had yet to happen. No matter how hard I tried, it just didn’t feel natural.

I took aim again, and missed. That shot hadn’t been much better, but I was mostly testing the waters for now. A few more shots, and I had a good idea about what I needed to do. It was hard to account for the wind the further out my arrow went. That meant I needed to trade accuracy for power, and draw the bowstring as hard as I possibly could. At that point, I’d just be hoping it was good enough to hit, but there just wasn’t any other way my arrow was going to connect with the target otherwise.

Not to mention, I was getting desperate. It was well into the afternoon, and I just knew Victor would be back soon enough. I needed to finish up quickly.

I nocked an arrow, and pulled back as hard as I could manage. It was harder to aim this way, but I knew I’d be able to do it eventually.

I shot, and missed. Another shot, another miss.

Miss… Miss… Miss… Miss… Ding

I let myself fall to the ground, as I just barely made out the sound of the bell.

System Notification: You have leveled up Skill Recall! (Level 20 → 2nd Stage, Level 1)

System Notification: Skill Upgrade!

Skill Recall - Certain actions feel familiar to you. Find out what skills you had in the past, and relearn them.

2nd Stage - You no longer have significant use for this Skill. Skill Recall will reset its level and evolve into a new Skill soon.

System Notification: Skill Recall will evolve in 3 days.

That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I was mostly expecting something to help with recovering more memories of my past, but it seemed like I’d be getting a new Skill entirely. And honestly, I was fine with that. The past me didn’t seem to have any talents, aside from archery. And the better I got with a bow today, the less useful Skill Recall was.

Now, I just needed to wait and see. And hope. This would be a Skill I was stuck with for quite some time. If it was terrible, then I’d have to consider finding a way to level up quickly and choose a different Class. It didn’t matter if Calamity Amnesiac was rare if both of the Skills were becoming useless for me. Heightened Leaning still had its uses, but its value was waning over time as well. I just wasn’t getting as much help from it anymore. And if I was lucky, it would evolve as well, preferably into something good.

I managed to spot Victor walking over, and met up with him halfway. I quickly told him of everything that had happened. And, after a few questions, he allowed me the next few days to myself. Just until Skill Recall would evolve.

More importantly, that meant no more training. These next three days couldn’t possibly move slow enough. I was not looking forward to whatever demented plans Victor had next.