Soze sat down, hoping to take his mind off of the situation with Loran. "So Yin, you're still working on that new archery Skill, right? How's that going?"

The small smile on Yin's face quickly dissolved with a depressed sigh. She said nothing as she spooned another helping of stew into her mouth.

Soze winced. "That bad, huh?"

"Yep," Rika said. "Old habits die hard, and she just can't figure out how to fire arrows that fast."

"I fully comprehend what I need to do!" Yin said, pointing an accusatory finger at Rika. "I just-"

"I know, I know, your hands just won't listen. That's what I meant."

"Maybe you should just learn it from that guy."

Yin shook her head. "Archery is an art that I have spent years learning. I have too much respect for it to take the easy way out."

Soze's face scrunched up.

"Do you have a problem with my decision?"

He shrugged. "I mean, aside from the fact that pride in a survival scenario is just a good way to get killed?"

Yin nodded. "I fully understand such sentiments, but it isn't as though I'm preoccupied with anything else at the moment."

"Yeah, but this also isn't really what you trained for."

Yin's brow furrowed. "How so? I've spent years-"

"Learning traditional forms and such, none of which involves this kind of technique." Soze thought silently for a moment. "Think of it like this. A boxer shouldn't be upset over not knowing how to use karate, right?"

Yin closed her eyes and nodded after a brief pause. "Yes, I think I understand your meaning."

Kyudo's techniques were deliberately slow and methodical, focusing less on practicality and more on the self-discipline of practicing a martial art. Even hitting the target was sometimes considered secondary to clearing one's mind and fully immersing themselves in the forms.

A rapid-firing technique wasn't just different from what Yin had learned, it was antithetical, deliberately going against all of her training.

In some ways, Yin had already disrespected the art just by using it for the sake of hunting, but she ignored it for the sake of survival.

'I talk about respecting the art, but the more I consider it the more I'm certain my instructors would say learning such techniques would be almost sacrilegious.'

She knew that Zed wasn't trying to say she was being disrespectful, just that she shouldn't be confused about where her skills lie, but his words were enough to make her reconsider the situation.

~~~~~

Yin was silent but composed as she finished eating, excusing herself before quickly returning to the Training Field. While her conversation with Soze had changed her perspective on her training, she still wanted to learn the Skill on her own, even if it was only for the sake of pride.

'Besides, Alexx and Zed have already demonstrated that becoming too powerful too rapidly can be detrimental, or at the very least unsatisfying. I still have time to learn the Skill my own way.'

The target she had been using was still unoccupied, the undamaged leather mocking her, but after having eaten the sight of it didn't frustrate her like it did only an hour before. Taking her position and pulling her bow from the inventory, Yin started to draw back a pair of arrows before she suddenly paused.

'Perhaps I should attempt a different approach?'

Until now, Yin's training method had been to break the rapid-firing technique into several steps to focus her efforts. So far she was still stumbling on the first step, firing the arrow with the bow at an odd angle while holding the second arrow. It was a method of study that had helped her in her archery training as well as her academic pursuits, but after her conversation with Soze...

'...No. My method isn't wrong, and a simple paradigm shift is no reason to discard it, but maybe I could apply it differently.'

The trigger for learning the [DAMAGE BURST] Skill was to simply hit the same target with two arrows in under one second, it didn't actually require Yin to learn the same technique that the other player used.

'Would nocking two arrows be effective?'

Changing her grip on the arrows in her hand, she practiced the drawing motion a few times and decided that it felt better. If nothing else she wouldn't need to worry about releasing one arrow while still holding the other. The only question now was if the two arrows would manage to fly straight.

'Only one way to find out,' she thought as the drew back the arrow. Taking a breath and a moment to aim, Yin released the arrows.

The two drifted apart slightly, but they remained on course enough for her [INCREASED ACCURACY] passive to correct their course, allowing both arrows to strike the target, only an inch away from each other.

*DING*

Yin smiled tightly as she heard the system notification. A part of her felt that finding such an easy solution after struggling for the last few days was such a waste, but she quickly pushed that feeling down. It was a small mistake that resulted in a poor training regimen, and that was all it amounted to.

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'A learning experience, that's all this was,' she thought as she opened the menu. 'Now it's over, and I can just...' Yin paused as she read the words on the floating screen before her.

[ACTIVITY {Fire Multiple Arrows Simultaneously} PERFORMED]

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO GENERATE A NEW SKILL?]

[YES] / [NO]

'...Unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome,' Yin thought as she selected 'Yes.' 'I suppose the arrows struck at about the same time, but could that not have counted as being in rapid succession as well?'

It seemed Yin would need to try something else if she wanted to learn [DAMAGE BURST]. That would have to come later, as she now had to name the new Skill.

[ _ _ _ ] Lv.1

(Active Cost: 10X SP) Allows the user to fire X additional arrows. A maximum of 1 additional arrow may be fired.

'That second sentence seems rather redundant, but I suppose it will make more sense once the Skill levels up a few times. Hm, now what to call it.'

Not many players in the village had much flare for naming things, as evidenced by names like Green Rabbit or Energy Berry. She understood that not everything needed a fancy name, but if this Skill could really conjure up additional arrows then she certainly felt it deserved something nice.

'Perhaps Arrow Rain? No, it doesn't seem likely that the Skill will ever make that many arrows. Maybe Phantom Arrows? But I don't know what the extra arrows would look like.'

Yin continued staring at her menu for several minutes as she struggled to come up with a satisfying name. She didn't want the name to be bland, but she also wanted to avoid making it too extravagant. A good name was elegant, that told you exactly what something was, never underselling or overhyping it.

But this was incredibly difficult to do without being able to see the Skill in action.

'Creating arrows...cloning arrows...summoning arrows? Isn't that something frequently done in anime?'

Yin was never a fan of those types of media or even television in general, but she had more than a few classmates that were and had overhead many of their discussions during lunch breaks, and Yang also watched similar shows when she was younger. Eventually, she had an idea for the name, and while it felt a bit nerdy it felt the most appropriate based on the information she had to work with.

'Alright. Arrow Summoning Technique it is.'

She quickly learned the Skill, letting out a sigh of relief as the unpleasant sensation that used to accompany the process was absent. Once she finished learning the Skill, she leveled it up as much as possible, which turned out to only reach level 7 since each level cost 500 EXP.

[ARROW SUMMONING TECHNIQUE] Lv.7

(Active Cost: 7X SP) Allows the user to fire X additional arrows. A maximum of 4 additional arrows may be fired.

'Interesting, so leveling it up both reduces the cost and increases the maximum arrows.'

Very few Skills changed their cost as they leveled up, only Soze's [SNEAK] came to mind as getting a reduced cost, but this was also the first time she had seen a Skill with a variable cost.

'It looks a little odd, but it's certainly preferable to not being able to modify how many arrows you can create. Now, time to test it.'

Pulling another arrow from her inventory, Yin activated the Skill and fired. A split second after the arrow left her bow, four more arrows appeared in a tight formation around the original flying together toward the target and striking the center.

More importantly, the arrows didn't seem to be disappearing after they had hit. Moving over to the target, Yin pulled out one of the summoned arrows, and still, it remained solid.

'Can the Skill really just create arrows from nothing?

Her thoughts almost ran away from her as she imagined the possibilities before she realized that the summoned arrows were not duplicates of the one she fired. Each of them had subtle differences, with the most obvious being the fletching(1).

'Isn't that...' It was different, but she still recognized it.

Opening her inventory Yin counted her arrows and, sure enough, there were four missing.

'So it doesn't make duplicates, it simply uses any arrows you already have on hand.'

It was a little less impressive than what she imagined, but she knew it would still be an effective way to increase her damage output.

'Although it still won't help against those iron-clad insects... and I still haven't learned Damage Burst!'

Yin was glad after having created a new Skill, but having her original goal evade her again was a slight annoyance. Still, experimentation was proving to be useful, even if it wasn't producing the expected results, so she quietly gathered her arrows while thinking of a new strategy for learning [DAMAGE BURST].

'Firing the arrows simultaneously was apparently too fast for the game, or perhaps it was because it wasn't the speed but the game deciding that 'rapid-succession' and 'simultaneous' warrant different Skills?'

Yin wasn't going to put that much effort into figuring out the thought process of an AI. Regardless, she needed to find a different method if she wanted to learn this Skill. As she walked back to her original position, she decided the part that needed to remain unchanged was her having to draw the bowstring twice.

'Simple to say, but where can I hold the second...wait.'

Her thoughts returned to the Skill she had just created, and a new idea began to form in her mind.

'If the game will hold my arrows for me, perhaps I can work with that.'

Pulling the second arrow out of the inventory should be faster than getting it from her quiver, the question now was just how she was going to do it.

At first she tried to position the inventory to the side, so that once she fired she could quickly grab the arrow from the inventory by either pulling it out directly or by dragging an arrow to the open equipment slot for her right hand. Unfortunately, neither of these methods was as fast as she needed, as each option still needed her to get the arrow properly nocked.

Her next idea involved moving the inventory in front of the bow so that after firing, and assuming the arrow would go through the inventory screen, she could reach forward to grab the arrow in the same motion as drawing the bowstring. After testing to see if the arrow would go through the inventory or not (it did) she then ran into the same problem as before, but quickly came up with a solution.

This time, she positioned the inventory on the opposite side of the bow, allowing her to reach between the string and the shaft of the bow as she withdrew the arrow. The whole process was still a bit clumsy, but the arrow was in roughly the correct position, she just needed to practice a little more.

Almost two hours passed without Yin firing even a single arrow, just repeating the motion of drawing the bow, releasing, and quickly nocking the arrow. Eventually, she reached a point where she could pull it off semi-reliably, and she decided to try firing the arrows for real.

With a little bit of luck, she managed to successfully hit the target with both arrows on her first attempt.

*DING*

"Finally!" Yin said out loud, her voice thick with relief. Sweat poured down her face, and her back muscles ached with an intensity that she hadn't felt since she first picked up a bow. The fingers on her right hand were sensitive from the friction from thousands of releases, and her left forearm was similarly irritated from when the bowstring would hit it on occasion.

It was a familiar soreness that filled her, tempered by the satisfaction of a successful training session.

'It's still not a pleasant feeling,' she thought as she opened her menu. 'But at the end of the day, it was worth every sec-'

[ACTIVITY {Draw Arrows Directly From The Inventory} PERFORMED]

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO GENERATE A NEW SKILL?]

[YES] / [NO]

"...."

~~~~~

It was about mid-afternoon when players near the Training Field heard the shouting start. They were worried something was wrong, but many calmed down once they recognized the voice and the language being used. However, a few of them shared a confused thought.

'When did Yang get back to the village?'