Luna decided that ranged weapons would most likely be her best starting point. Only for Michelle to raise an eyebrow and question her observation skills, asking where she had seen a ranged weapon down here and how on anyone would try one out underground, in an enclosed room.
That left her with only a few options, she had been using buckler and hatchet so far, more or less because it was convenient to use an axe as a weapon, which could also dub as a tool while outside. Michelle advised her to pick at least one sword-like weapon to train with. She chose what Michelle called a ‘Kukri-Machete’. Apparently the form came from a dagger and was simply copied to the larger blade. Just like her hatchet, it could be used as both a tool and weapon.
Next came another form of axe to replace the hatchet. The traditional hatchet, Michelle explained, had either a simple flat area opposite of the axe-bit or a hammer-head like protrusion, so that the hatchet could also double as a hammer. This was all well and good if you were just outside fighting the elements, but when it came to fighting monsters or humans, you needed something better. The new axe she was going to train with was a bit bigger and heavier, but most importantly the hammer option was replaced by a wicked spike. The blade was also a lot bigger and longer in a crescent shape, sitting only a little bit away from the shaft. Michelle called it a Battle Axe, much better for fighting, but no to unwieldy and still useful as a tool.
Looking at all the other weapons around, Luna could easily imagine that some of those two handed axes were awesome to swing around, but if you weren’t a hulking beast of a human with strength to spare, you would not swing it for long. Especially if it came to clearing some brush or chopping a bit of firewood.
After picking the weapons, Michelle led her through the training rooms, selecting some books that contained training instructions for her. At that point Luna thought of a relevant question. “One quick question. If I am only allowed to train here while supervised and nobody else but you and Peter are here, will one of you come here with me every day?”
For at least the third time this day Michelle slapped his forehead. “Now this question is so obvious, I wonder how I did not think about it myself. Of course it makes no sense under the current conditions that you can only train down here. After seeing you go at the obstacles yesterday I know that you will be here every day. I will work something out with Peter, most likely you will have to use the garden for early weapons training as well. Normally the trainees are only allowed weapons in the garden when they are deemed ready and need them for the later obstacles. Might as well save us the walk, go back and check the shelves on the leftmost wall and pick an underarm sheath for throwing knives that fits and does not annoy you too much.”
Luna followed his directions and found herself a neat black leather sheath with three knives. It even fit under her current shirt. Turning around she asked Michelle, who was following her with a stack of books. “You said ranged weapons are somewhere else, why the knives here?”
“Don’t ask me, someone organized it like that. But when you see the weapons we have upstairs, you will realize that all of them play in a different league when compared to throwing weapons of any type. Those knives simply come in handy when you run out of options and they are easy to carry.”
Luna was not wearing any armor right now, so she just carried the weapons in her arms. Before she would even try using them she would have to get her armor and then study the training manuals. Michelle locked the doors behind them as they left, her old clothes had mysteriously vanished from the bench, but Luna wasn’t even phased by it anymore. They made their way back up and Luna recognized the way towards the garden. Instead of exiting through the outside door, they turned left and Michelle unlocked another heavy metal door.
“Welcome to the shooting range. As you can see, this room has a direct connection to the outside. Right now all windows are closed, shuttered and secured with heavy iron grates. But when I unlock this lock here and pull down this lever …”
Luna had only a second to glance at all the different kinds of weapons lined up near the wall before her vision was drawn to Michelle. As he explained one of the windows opened up, and another part of the garden became visible.
“I apologize, but you will have to set up your own targets on the range when you train. There simply is nobody around to do it for you, but I am sure you will manage. Just make sure you hang up a red flag at your lane, it tells anyone coming in that someone is on the range and to not fire any weapons. Now I have been waiting for this since yesterday.”
He stepped towards the wall and picked up an item, with deft hands he attached a string and then handed the whole thing to Luna. “Ever used one before?” he asked her.
Luna was gingerly holding the first crossbow she had ever seen. “I have no idea how to even hold this thing. What is it and how does it work?”
“That, my dear girl, is a crossbow.” He took it from her hands and started showing her the different pieces. “The bow is fixed horizontally to the wooden tiller and you cannot simply shoot it like a bow. See, I cannot pull the string back more than a fraction of the way. It is much stronger than your hunting bow and you cannot draw it like a normal bow. Instead you hold it downwards like this and put the stirrup on the ground, then you put a foot in there so your weight holds it down and then you use both hands to pull back the string. You fix it behind this nut, where it is held in place until you pull the trigger, which is this paddle underneath the tiller.”
Luna just looked at him. “Ahem, yes. Better give me a book and let me read up on how it works before I hurt myself. But I left all my armor and equipment in my room, as much as I would like to try out different bows right now, I simply cannot, at least not without my wrist guards.”
Michelle just pointed to the side of the door, where Luna spotted all her gear. Weapons, armor, wrist guards and most importantly, it all seemed to be freshly cleaned. She looked at Michelle and joked, “How does one get their own personal Shadow Steward?”
Luna proceeded to put on her armor and wrist guards, switching the knife sheath to the other arm in the process. The crossbow was a huge surprise. She had to try several times before she finally understood the system and started pulling up the crossbow string using her legs. Her upper body strength simply wasn’t enough to arm it. According to Michelle it was considered to be on the smaller side of things, but the biggest ones in the collection were only used while mounted on solid wooden constructions or even anchored on stone walls. Those monstrosities were armed using a ratchet system and apparently more than just one person was needed to operate them.
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Despite being warned, her first shot was wide of the target. The process of aiming was entirely different and the perspective weird. The crossbow bolts also had a completely different trajectory than her normal arrows. When Luna finally figured out how it worked Michelle decided that she would not hurt herself and could be left alone for a while. He told her to not fiddle around with the other weapons, but picked two more bows for her to try out.
But first Luna had some identifying to do. In typical Luna fashion she had, once again, forgotten that she had a Skill to identify items and had not used it on a single one all day.
[Light Crossbow]
Type: Recurve
Material: Ash, Hardened Iron
Quality: Improved
[Battle Axe]
Type: , Spike, Crescent Axe Blade
Material: Ash, Hardened Iron
Quality: Improved
[Machete]
Type: Kukri-Machete
Material: Ash, Hardened Iron
Quality: Improved
[Throwing Knife]
Type: Double Edge, Blade-Heavy
Material: Iron
Quality: Simple
[Longbow]
Type: Selfbow
Material: Ash
Quality: Improved
[Longbow]
Type: Recurve
Material: Yew
Quality: Improved
All items were a notch above what she had gotten in the village, but the items combining two materials were a lot better made than what she was used to. The hardened edge on the axe was especially interesting. It meant the weapon was not only of better quality than her old axe, but its edge would be much more durable and would cut harder materials without chipping.
Luna decided that the crossbow was a curio for now. Sure, she could see the appeal of the weapon. If you got the first shot it would be deadly, even Silent Shot worked with it. But the rate of fire was much lower than her bow and she gave up the chance of a second free shot. Both longbows were considerably bigger than her hunting bow, just getting the strings attached required her to exert some serious strength. The draw weight was manageable on the selfbow, but the recurve bow was a real problem. She did manage to draw it, but her control over it was non-existent and she had to release the arrow right away, which missed her target by at least ten meters.
The selfbow worked quite well, the arrows hitting the targets with tremendous force. Still, Luna wasn’t really happy with the weapon. It was magnificent to shoot and her accuracy with it was alright too, but the bow was unwieldy, nearly impossible to carry comfortably and got in the way while moving. She removed the strings from the bows and the crossbow, put them on a table near the racks and sat down on a bench. Since she was not supposed to touch any of the other weapons, she picked one of the training manuals and decided to get some reading done.
When Michelle returned two hours later he found Luna sprawled on the bench with a stack of books next to her. She skimmed through most of them and decided to focus on one dealing with light bladed weapons, like her machete and throwing knives. She looked towards Michelle as he came in, raising an eyebrow at his questioning look. “What? I decided to read. The bows are way too big and unwieldy for me. I cannot run with them and carrying them on the road would be an absolute nightmare. The crossbow just isn’t a good fit, low rate of fire and cumbersome reloading, no thanks!”
“Those are some excellent points you made there.” Michelle replied. “I did not expect you to be able to shoot the recurve bow at all, but I thought I should give you the option to try it. The whole idea of giving you those three ranged weapons was to see if you were able to use them and how well you were still able to move around. Only you can figure out those things, but I guess we can remove any kind of longbow from your training.”
He threw a big linen bag her way and said. “Put in the books so you can carry them to your room. You can just bring one with you in the future and read it in the garden or wherever you want. Now come along, time for you to play on the garden obstacles and in just a bit it will already be lunchtime.” On the way out he also grabbed a smaller recurve hunting bow from the rack, waving it at her cheerily.
Luna scrambled to put away all the books and then followed him to the gardens. The sun only occasionally visible between thick clouds and the air smelled of the coming winter. Falling into the water was not going to be fun.
Michelle led her away from yesterday's obstacle and instead to a section that was much larger and wider. “This is a shooting challenge that combines accuracy, swiftness and dexterity. There is no water here, no point getting wet before lunch, there will be enough time for that later in the day. That way you can go directly to a warm bath. Oh and before I forget it, you can simply drop your clothes, boots and armor in the basket in front of your room. Peter said he would have them ready the next morning.”
“What do I have to do to clear this course?” Luna asked him, eager to get started.
“First, you will use this new bow. Get used to it quickly and it will be your new best friend. It is yours for the keeping. It is made of the same materials as the recurve longbow and of the same quality, but it is simply a recurve hunting bow, nearly the same size as the one you brought with you. You can keep yours if you want, but I will happily put it in our stockpile in case we get a new trainee who needs a beginners weapon. You will only use special arrows around here. There is a box over there near the hedge that contains simple arrows of decent quality with a leather padded blunt head. They won’t stick in the target and not destroy them, otherwise you would have to replace them every few runs. The goal is to get through the course without missing a single shot, clear all targets and do so as quickly as possible. Nobody knows the exact time required for it to count as completed to gain extra Experience, but you will get there eventually.”
After that lengthy explanation Michelle took his leave and left Luna to her own devices, promising to return for lunch later. She grabbed a quiver with some arrows and walked forward to find out what awaited her.
As it turned out the course had many wooden walls to obstruct vision and the challenger had to walk into the obstacles to see the target. They varied in size, some full human shapes, some just small red rectangles mounted on poles. Some were mounted on poles stuck on a hinge, which would start moving other targets as soon as she hit one of them.
As Michelle had explained the day before, there was nobody around to tell her how good she did or when to turn back. It depended solely on her to take the challenge seriously and work through it. At first she had to get used to the heavier draw weight of the bow, but the power helped her a lot to reliably hit targets further away. The flat curve of the arrow made aiming a lot easier.
She did not know how long she had spent shooting, running, collecting arrows and starting over again, but at some point Michelle was back and was yelling from the patio for her to come and eat lunch. Looking at the sun she realized that it had been a lot longer than she had thought and quickly collected the arrows and walked over.
When she got there Michelle apologized. “I am very sorry, you must be famished by now. I had a rather insistent visitor just now. Your letter from Everwood was delivered by courier and the king really wanted to know where that message came from. I of course told them nothing, only that it had come to our address by way of a merchant on a river boat, who wanted to remain anonymous. With the number of people coming and going at the harbor I am certain they will never figure out the deception.”
“Thank you.” Luna replied. “I did not even realize how late it was, I had lost track of time anyway. The shooting challenge really showed me how much training I have left to do. I never really tried shooting the bow on the move and that is the only way I can finish that course in any reasonable time.”
Michelle nodded at her and clapped his hands. “Excellent. I am glad you are enjoying our training opportunities. Now let’s eat before it is colder than it already is and then I can show you some other obstacles on which you can train. We will also be sparring with your melee weapons, right now I will stand in as your instructor, but as soon as you have your concealment ring back I will find a trainer for you.”