It is the morning of the main archery tournament. This should be my best discipline. Good archery does not rely on one's level, my relatively low level is not going to be a disadvantage like in the spear tournaments. It is all about skill. There are about two dozen contestants. Just a fraction of the numbers who joined the preliminaries, but my analyze skill tells me that everyone is at least a competent archer.
About a handful stand out as genuinely skilled archers who I know will give me a challenge. Three of them have archery skill level at 10 just like myself. Though they are bound to have practiced archery longer than me, I am hoping that the intensity of my experience from surviving in the wild gives me enough of an edge to compete.
Heading towards the main archery field with the girls in tow I spot a strange contraption at the end of the field. It looks like a large wooden machine. The inner workings are covered by leather covers acting as panels. Even with my analyze skill I have no idea what it does. It seems to cover most of the width of the archery field which looks to be about the width of three fully sized football goals side by side. The height of the machine is about half my height, but due to the distance it is impossible to see exactly how far back the machine goes.
The girls head to the spectator stands and I head for the gathering area for the contestants. The loud voiced announcer interrupts my thoughts and informs the crowds that there will now be a demonstration. Appearing from behind barriers near the wooden machine people appear. They get to work on the machine, and in a couple of minutes they seem to be done with the final checks and preparations needed.
As the machinists disappear behind the protective barriers stationed in close proximity to the machine a middle aged female archer steps out onto the field. Apparently she is last year's winner. The announcer confirms that she will now demonstrate how the competition will work. Standing at about 50 paces from the machine, the huntress focuses on the machine as if she is looking for her prey.
With a crank, a pole jumps up at a seemingly random spot on the machine. Attached to the top is a circular target. An arrow finds the target before I even notice the archer shooting. As quickly as it has appeared the pole falls down hiding the target and the arrow stuck in it. Another target pops up somewhere else and the process is repeated. The speed at which the targets are appearing is gradually increasing.
The archer stops as the machine stops. As if to demonstrate that there is no pattern a second series of random target shooting carries on. The targets appear to be randomly popping up with seemingly no pattern. What a brilliant archery test. The archers, speed, accuracy and nerve is tested to the limit. Though the female archer made it all seem doable, many will find it challenging to hit the random targets in the very short space of time they appear.
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I notice that like myself the female archer does not carry a quiver. She must have summoned arrows from her soul storage like I do. I genuinely used to think it was a unique technique that I had developed, but it seems to be common with the most skilled archers. There really is nothing new under the sun.
Using Analyze on the huntress, I confirm her to be my most likely hardest opponent. One skill of hers that I didn't see before is particularly fascinating. Magical eye is an active skill that requires a small amount of mana, but grant some kind of visual insight. It must be her ace. There seems to be a loose ranking of the contestants. The first participants trying their skill at the contraption are all lower skilled. Looks like I have been rated rather highly in the preliminaries. I am the last contestants before the top five I singled out as my main rivals.
One archer after another suffer the strain the contraption puts on their skill. All do well considering the difficulty, but none come close to the skill shown by the huntress in the demonstration. As I head out onto the field all I hear are my own thoughts as the pressure starts to build. Pushing all thoughts aside I put an arrow to the string and send it flying at the first target, then another, and another. As I get into the flow all nerves go, and muscle memory does the job.
As the last arrow hits, I realize I have made a perfect score. The pressure just built up for the remaining contestants, as the best they can hope for is to tie with me. As I walk past the next contestant, I can see his nerves. He is bound to miss a few. Sure enough. The pressure gets to him and though he does better than any archers prior to me he is clearly not happy with his performance. The others do similarly, until it is the huntress' turn. Seemingly effortlessly she repeats my feat. She clearly has a lot more experience than I do. What now?
The announcer is clearly excited by the performance he has just seen. It seems she was the clear favorite and I am the dark horse. Looks like we will have a one on one competition using the same contraption. The engineers are visibly running around making adjustments to the contraption. Guess it will get harder from now on. The huntress goes first this time. She starts firing off arrows at targets popping up. The difficulty has clearly gone up, but she only misses one.
As I step up to repeat my perfect score I get the shock from the sheer speed and intensity of the exercise. My arrows are not hitting the targets as well as I am hoping. I don't think I have missed any yet. I push the thoughts aside as I realize how damaging they are to my concentration. At the end I am exhausted by the emotional pressure rather than the physical strain. How did I do? How many did I miss? Two or more and I have lost. To my surprise a roar drowns out my thoughts. Who won?
Within a minute I am surrounded by my girls who congratulate me on my victory. Guess I got myself a nice new set of armor. That will come in handy. Even more so are my new skills. By far my biggest win is the magical eye skill I got from the runner up. I only noticed afterwards, but I must have picked it up while watching her in the final round. I see Brute wandering over. He looks happy. "I am buying you a drink, you just won me a huge sum at the betting table. You won't believe the odds I got!"