"Prince? You mentioned having an issue with enclosed space. How good do you think you can fly here?" Sophia taunted, feeling like teaching the proud flying cat a lesson in humility.

"What?" The Tressym exclaimed, turning his head toward her, only to realize she already had palm five arrows and was already aiming at his general direction with the sixth.

However, Sophia had been merely aiming at the base of his tail, shooting right before he took flight. The arrows had harmlessly fallen to the ground a moment prior, a bit too close for comfort for the poor winged cat that already two other arrows were flying, almost chasing after him, as if the archer could predict the exact trajectory of his panicked, erratic flight. Narrowly escaping the two that a third was already on his tail, then a fourth, and finally, the fifth and last one before he was finally safe.

"What was that for? You nearly..." And then he stopped in his tracks, analyzing what just happened "You nearly missed on purpose, did you?"

Before he could blink, his life flashed before his eyes as he saw an arrow come right at his head, only for the pen to graze the top of his head's furs. She had palm, aim, and shoot that arrow before his mind could even register.

"You think?" She said cheekily.

"How? You don't have an archery boon. She checked before offering that contract." The Tressym said, disbelieving.

"Your guess is as good as mine." She responded, "I tried everything. Not a single boon. No nothing."

The winged cat was left pacing a good moment while Sophia kept shooting, at normal targets, this time.

Until he finally asked Paolo:

"Did she spend all her energy trying to unlock magic instead?"

"I guess..." Pedro responded. "Not all of it but a significant portion at least. She is constantly all over the place."

And the tressym nodded before turning to Sophia, requiring her attention.

"May I make a suggestion for today's training?" He asked.

It was their last training session. Nothing had bore fruits. So at this point, she was ready for anything.

"I'm all ears." She responded.

"What's the most difficult thing you ever tried?" Prince asked.

"On speed archery? Six arrows, bullhead, I must shoot the last arrow before the first hits its target while moving."

That was fast beyond belief and should have been enough. But it wasn't.

"Make it eight." The tressym dared. "And I don't care how you do it. Try until you drop. Put your head and soul into it. I want you to think of nothing but archery. Until you succeed, this is your end goal. Nothing matters but archery. This is the mindset I want from you. Can you do it?"

She started at the damn winged cat. As if she had not tried this approach already. But still:

"Okay. I will do it."

"You sure?"

"Yep."

She had never done eight. Or even seven. Even for her, it was too fast. Her hands were too clumsy. She did not have enough room for all the arrows. It was simply not working. But she considered the exercise.

She could do five in her hand top or she could preload multiple arrows on her bow. She had tried to do both and failed. Her optimal combination so far had been five in hands, and one preloaded. Her best alternative had been four preloaded, two in hand but she always botched one.

If her goal was eight, she needed any combination of five in hand, three preloaded, four to four, or three to five.

Realistically, she was more comfortable with arrows in her hands than preloaded, so five to three was her supposed optimal solution. But she already had tried and failed. Even five to two seems insurmountable.

So she decided to change her angle and try four to four. But she needed to master four to two and four to three first.

So she went on, challenging herself, not satisfied with one occasional success, but only after she could replicate the feat narrowly nine times out of ten. It took her hours for even the first step. The entire afternoon for the second.

And she was well on her way burning the midnight oil trying to complete that last step.

Meanwhile, Prince had been watching her very attentively the whole time, occasionally giving her pointers and encouragement. But most of the time, he was just like her, concentrated, and utterly silent.

As for Paolo, she forgot he even existed. She was too far in the zone to even care.

Her inner monologue consisted of her talking to her arrows, judging her mistakes, slightly modifying her hands' movements, and trying to increase her efficiency just enough to shoot that eighth arrow right on time.

She had been used to trials and errors her whole life. Practically from the moment she tried walking.

She was not exceptional. She had just been hard-working. Trying again and again beyond the point of exhaustion, reflecting on her past mistakes, and adjusting her behavior accordingly.

Until it finally paid off.

You have gained a new boon [Advanced Speed Archery].

It is currently disabled and can be enabled at any time.

"I did it." She finally said and collapsed, crying. "I did it. How did you know? How did you know it would work?"

"I didn't" The Tressym replied. "I pushed you hard, so you would give your all. You are a hard nut to crack. I did not expect you to go through it until the bitter end."

"I don't understand." She replied.

"I know. You're too tired. You just needed to give everything to archery. So long there was anything more to give, you were not quite at 100% yet. Rule number one of getting a boon without the system help: You need to give your all. You just had more to give than most people. Good work Miirik."

"I'm so tired." She whined.

"I know. It's okay. You can let go. We are going to take good care of you."

And then, she lost it.

★☆★

Advanced Speed Archery

You specialized in low-poundage shortbows, favoring speed and mobility over strength, and developed your technique to an absurd degree. Advanced Speed Archery will help alleviate the cost-opportunity of your specialization.

Impossible Volley: You shoot as many arrows as you can to as many targets as you can as fast as you possibly can, wreaking havoc, threatening all the enemies you hit, and empowering your allies. Be warned, however: the enemy will now see you for the absolute menace you are and retaliate accordingly.

Faster reload: You are shooting so many arrows that reloading has become a major concern. You can now handle the preparation in between two salvos a lot quicker. Make sure to make each arrow count! Your supply isn't infinite.

[Rogue Archetype]

Multiple Sneak Attacks (Ranged): Why hit a single weak point of a single target when you can do so much more? You can choose to target the weaknesses of several enemies at once or to target the same enemy multiple times where it hurts the most. Your enemies won't know what hit them. Literally.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Sophia woke up to her new boon window. She had not even realized she had enabled it. And while the system did not give her any hard figures to know what she had gained, precisely, the effects descriptions of her boon were showing that the boon was paying dividends for all her efforts. It even helped with the very thing she was struggling with: time prep.

However, it was true that all those weeks of training had done a number of her arrows, especially the arrowheads, and that her supply was already far too limited to her liking. She had only three arrows, purposefully left in pristine condition. Twice as much that she deemed good enough. The rest was too overused for anything but training.

She wished she could just pray to the system, put her quiver back into her safe, and retrieve it full of arrows in pristine condition. But it wasn't to be. She had tried. Her equipment would only regenerate after waking up in the respawn room. Which so far she knew meant: each time she would die.

All in all, that third boon was a big step forward toward her chosen fighting style: a ranged specialist with melee and magical capabilities for utility and versatility. This first archery boon was promising and she looked forward to acquiring more. And while her melee and magic left much to be desired, at least, she was one step in the right direction.

Satisfied with her progress, she willed the system to let her go.

She woke up in her bed, feeling better than ever. The Song of the Weave was still a persistent background noise she could not completely tune down. And her recently awakened wild magic begged to be released. But she otherwise felt better than she had been in a long time. More rested, energetic, and alert and immediately knew why:

After carrying her to her bed, they had let her sleep for far longer than was reasonable given the circumstances.

She was not usually like this: neglecting or denying her body's needs and all that. But her time had suddenly become a much more finite resource - until she survived the tutorial at the very least - and wasting it sleeping felt... unreasonable.

So her first question leaving the bathroom after her morning routine had been very straightforward:

"For how long have I been out?" She asked.

Silent communication passed through Paolo and Prince before the former finally replied:

"About a day and a half. You woke up at one point but you were not really 'there' and went back to sleep shortly after."

She did not remember any of that, but that explained waking up to her boon window.

"Anything 'peculiar' I did while 'sleepwalking'?" She inquired.

Another look between the two was all she needed to know the answer was a definitive yes.

"Aside from raiding the kitchen and mumbling incomprehensible things, not really," Paolo reassured her.

He was lying. But she dropped the matter: "Okay."

She took her late brunch in silence before stating:

"We have been wasting enough time already. Time to leave."

"That's it?" Paolo asked.

"Anything the matter?" She asked back.

And Paolo just slightly too eagerly shook his head without saying anything.

"Assuming you are ready, that's it?" She finally asked, not wanting to presume anything.

"I will be ready to go in twenty minutes." The boy replied before leaving to carry on his own business.

She stared at the winged cat, who stared back, his poker face not giving away a thing.

"May I assume this is okay with you as well?" She asked anyway.

"I'm at your service." The Tressym replied politely.

"You know that should the need arise, you have every right to verbalize any concern, opinion, or disagreement you might have, don't you?" She stressed out with the same polite tone.

"That's very open-minded of you" He replied with equanimity. "I will take your words into consideration, should the need ever arise, that's it."

Whatever the issue was would remain unspoken, or so it seems.

★☆★

Sophia had been the first to cross the invisible one-way portal, immediately assessing her surroundings before signing Paolo and Prince the all-clear in the general direction she came from. And truly, it was impossible to tell the Rest Area had ever been there.

And after joining her, it appears as if the boy and tressym had popped out of thin air.

"So. Which way?" Paolo asked.

And she pointed right in the direction the rest area had been.

"What?" The battlemage exclaimed. "You can't be serious."

"Deadly." She replied with a much more definitive tone. "That's the exact opposite direction the rest of our 'team' went. And if we are to ever meet them again, I would like it to be as late as possible."

"The whole invisible building thing isn't even remotely freaking you out?" He asked, uncertain.

"There is no point. It was never really there. And no point in making a detour to specifically avoid it."

And as to prove her point, she walked right through the area, all the way to what she assumed would be the other end of the room they just left.

"See?" She gestured him forward. "Nothing there."

Without hesitation, the Tressym followed her long before the boy made up his mind. And she let him catch up after her as she kept going. There were of course a lot more reasons behind her peculiar choice, which she had given a lot of thought.

The tutorial's first floor was made of a lot of similarly interconnected caves, with multiple access to the second floor. And there was another very important reason for her to take the path least travel, aside from avoiding possible conflict:

They were late. And most of the first-floor fauna, puzzles, and challenges must have been dealt with and cleared by now. So if they wanted to get any benefit from this floor at all, taking the path less traveled was their only reasonable option.

Maybe it was all in vain, if anything, from the sheer amount of teams who already roam the place. But if there was anything left at all, they had to at least search for it in the most likely direction.

"So, what about your boon?" Paolo finally asked.

"It looked like a good one. I can't wait to actually test it." Sophia replied honestly which made her companion chuckle.

"Of course, you would look forward to it. You've always been training crazy."

"Didn't hear you complain before." She pointed out. "Especially after you got your own boon to train with."

"That's different and you know it. I don't think Prince is gonna push you like this for quite some time." He retorted anxiously.

"And I promise I won't be trying anything until the next resting area." She promised, dismissively, putting an abrupt end to the conversation.

She wanted to consolidate her growth and test her new boon thoroughly before trying anything else anyway. But she did not like anyone trying to tell her what she could or could not do, no matter how truthful it was.

She could feel it too. A feeling of overexertion that had nothing to do with her body or magic. It was something deeper she could not grasp. But instincts told her to take it easy until the feeling had well and truly passed.

But still, she had a new boon she did not get to test yet and desperately wanted to. To the point, she almost hoped for some monsters to ambush them so she could stretch those 'metaphysical sore muscles'.

But the path was clear.

The cave had smoothly ended into a series of tunnels that kept intersecting, like entralaced hoses formation of unknown origin. If she had to guess, she would say that long-gone water at impossible heat and pressure might have made those. By why all in the same general direction?

At some point, they reached a smaller cave and Sophia could see in the distance that the same tunnels were awaiting them at the far end. That cave, however, was nothing like the one they had left.

Water was falling at regular intervals from stalactites at the ceiling, providing hydration for a bioluminescent underground forest, the trees extending their rough, spongy-looking leaves to capture the moisture and occasional droplets instead of the seeking sunlight.

"Wow," Paolo exclaimed.

Wow, indeed. Sophia would not admit it out loud but alien underground plant life was kinda cool, in their creepy, ominous way. She already had armed her bow just in case but now had it at the ready. Those woods looked as hostile as they were beautiful. And she could not begin to imagine what sort of wildlife could live within. Probably nothing too big, given the modest size of the cave. But still...

"Prince? We could use your wisdom here," She called the winged cat out.

"I honestly don't know. Underdark forests are primarily fungal. As plant life adapting to a magivore diet are few are far between. This is looking to be an exception to the rule. Therefore, whatever biome it is, it is safe to assume it to be incredibly rare or downright uncharted territory. If I had to, I would bet my money on primeval uncharted upperdark domain biome."

"Is that common practice to populate the tutorial with things like this?" She asked again.

"Even within the same floor, a large variety of environments are to be expected. Underdark biomes are actually rarer than artificially sustained surface ones. So no, that one is highly irregular, especially for the first floor."

"Well. I wished to seek the path less traveled. Sound like I found it." Sophia declared with a sigh. "Best be on our A-game while passing through. This place fauna is probably as nasty as it is exotic."

They proceeded prudently to the edge of the forest until the sound of clicking and chittering confirmed their worries. The place was inhabited and the fauna was reacting to their intrusion, although nothing had attacked them yet.

The roguish girl's survival mode was in overdrive, every shadow, a threat, every movement in the vegetation, an attack against them. Only her limited amount of ammunition prevented her from shooting first and checking later.

Then, rapid movement in her peripheral vision warned her of impending danger and she shot dead center at the incoming threat before she could identify it: a missile of tentacles with a round monstrous mouth full of teeth was aiming straight at her head. The three arrows she had shot went straight into the creature's wide open mouth as they connected mid-flight, a split second before the creature rammed into her skull, and then, spattered limp onto the floor, dead.

Had her response to the threat been ever so slightly delayed, the terrestrial squid-like creature ambush attack would have been successful, and she would most likely have died a gruesome death in a split second of sharp teeth of fury.

Instead, she only got covered in mucus and barely got a scratch.

This did not align with what she knew of the first floor, which should be more bark than bite critters: the perfect experience for green human representatives who were more likely NOT to have killed a thing in their entire life prior to this. That thing size was on the upper end of the spectrum for what she had expected that small biome to be able to sustain.

"That must have been Papa Squid." She warned the other. "Mama squid and babies squids might be around and out for blood."

While it was technically self-defense, she expected that thing mate or kids to want revenge and was already retrieving her arrows and preloading new ones for round two. One of her precious arrows had broken as the creature had fallen to the ground, which made the encounter even more dreadful. Losing resources that early into the forest crossing was bad, let alone on their further exploration of the caves network.

She only had eight good arrows remaining.