A Real Robin Hood
Win the archery contest
Success: Experience gained based on placement
Failure: N/A
Expires: 21 minutes, 32 seconds
I immediately accepted the quest while the instructor went over the rules.
“You will have ten arrows to shoot. The targets are marked with different color bands. The center part of the yellow is worth 10. The outer yellow is 8. Each band of color drops by two—red is 6, blue is 4, black is 2. If you hit the white, you get no points.”
One of the boys raised his hand.
“Yes?” the instructor said.
“What if the arrow hits on the line?” the boy asked.
“If it’s touching two colors, it will count for the higher value. So if you almost miss but nick the black just a little, that would still count for two points.”
The boy nodded and thanked the instructor. I thought the points system was fair—and hopefully there wouldn’t be any arguments or cheating. I didn’t expect to win, but I figured I had a decent chance at it.
“The five of you who just shot, stay at your stations. You’ll go first.”
I watched the five campers take careful aim at their target. Mac and Juan were among them. I wished Mac luck under my breath and watched. These five had only shot their bows for one bundle of arrows. I didn’t expect much from them, but the distance was close enough that Mac and another of the boys—Luke—were doing pretty well. All of their shots hit the target, though not all of them counted for points.
When the last of the five finished shooting their arrows, the instructor went out and counted the points for each of them while collecting the arrows for the rest of us. Luke scored 26 while Mac topped the group with 32.
“That was a good round,” the instructor said. “It’s time for the next five to step up and give their best shot.”
The instructor laughed at his own joke, which only made me roll my eyes even harder. I walked forward into my assigned lane and picked up my bow. With me were Alex and Micah. Alex looked nervous. He was one of the two in our group that hadn’t shot a bow before. Micah, on the other hand, was one of the three that had. He had his trademark smug grin plastered on his face.
“I’m going to win!” he exclaimed. “You don’t stand a chance!”
I glared at him but didn’t respond. There was no point. The best I could do was to answer with my bow and score more points than he did. A couple of the others tried talking shit back to him, but their efforts fell flat. That only made him grin more.
“Begin!” the instructor bellowed once we were all ready.
I nocked my first arrow and aimed. My arms were steady. My breathing was steady. I caught my breath and loosed. The arrow impacted in the red to the left of the middle and close to the blue. Six points wasn’t bad for a first shot. I picked up the next arrow and shot it. To the right this time—four points. The next eight arrows went much the same as the first two. I did scrape the inner yellow with one of them—I was very proud of that one—but otherwise had a decently inconsistent spread all over the target.
Like the first time, the instructor waited until everyone was done shooting before he went to check the targets. With each target, he counted the points and pulled the arrows before announcing the point totals.
“38 points,” he called out for the first person—one of the veterans.
“18 points,” came the call out for Alex’s target.
Mine was next at 52 points. The second to last scored closer to Alex with 20 points. Finally, it was Micah’s turn. His grouping looked—from my vantage point, at least—to be very similar to my own. With my own arrows gone, it was much harder to compare like for like. I looked at Micah. The smile on his face was faltering but still there. I could see that he knew it was going to be close between us.
“54 points,” the instructor called out after what felt like forever.
“Yeah!” Micah yelled, raising his arms in the air. “I told you so!”
His friends—Luke and another boy—went up to him and congratulated him. He turned to me and stuck his tongue out.
“Micah,” Adam said sternly, “You’ve got to be a gracious winner.”
That only got a token concession from the boy. His smug face was oh so very punchable. It took all my strength to take a deep breath. Then another. And one more for good measure. After all of that, I brought my anger to the point where I only wanted to figuratively punch him in the face.
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A Real Robin Hood Complete
Reward: 50 Exp
The thing that really calmed me down was the experience I gained from the competition. Although I hadn’t won, I’d done well enough. 50 experience for maybe twenty minutes of effort was a great rate. I certainly wouldn’t complain!
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It was two weeks later—on another rainy-interrupted day—when Mac discovered that his console had been stolen! We—Mac, Alex, and I—had played with it while waiting for a thunderstorm to pass. After that, we’d gone to swim and then to dodge ball. While waiting for the game to start, Mac went to play a game, only to find the console wasn’t in his pack.
“Adam!” Mac called to the head counselor.
“What’s up, Mac?”
“My console’s gone!”
“When did you last have it?” the counselor asked.
Mac and Adam discussed the missing item.
“Brian,” I heard Adam say, “I’m going to take Mac to look around the locker room for a missing item. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Can you handle the game while I’m gone?”
“Yeah, I got this,” he said.
For dodge ball, we were paired up against the other boys group of our age range. They had one extra person—as Mac was out with Adam—so one of their number was chosen to sit on the sidelines at the start of the game. I lined up on the left side with my right hand against the wall. When everyone was ready, the other group’s counselor blew a whistle.
I charged the center where the balls were, as did almost everyone else. There were a few who hung back. I didn’t know if that was fear or maybe they didn’t trust their ability to get to a ball before the other team did. It didn’t bother me. All it meant was less competition to get a ball.
I picked up a ball and kicked one behind me, hoping someone would pick it up. I backed up and readied the ball to block or to throw. The arena wasn’t very big, so even the smallest kids would be able to chuck it hard enough to hit the back from the middle. Just as I found my target and prepared to throw, a ball whizzed my direction. I bounced it up and threw my ball as hard as I could at someone who was turned the other direction.
The ball I’d thrown drilled the person I’d aimed for. The person I hit began to walk to the side. I immediately turned to catch the ball I’d popped up, but it hit the ground right as I looked for it. Instead, I picked it up and threw another laser at a different boy, knocking him out of the game as well. That was when a ball hit me in the back right after.
I jogged to the side. The game went on as I watched. The campers on both sides seemed reluctant to risk going for a catch—content to throw at each other. Attrition mounted as time wore on. Michael had been dodging and not really throwing much for most of the match. It was no surprise, then, that he was the last one left on our side. Facing him were three boys.
As I was watching the four of them playing a game of cat-and-mouse, I saw Mac return with Adam. There were tears in his eyes. He sat next to me and I put an arm around him.
“It’s gone,” he muttered. “It was in my bag. It was in my bag. It’s gone. I can’t believe it’s gone.”
He kept repeating some variation of those words for a while. Adam came over to sit with us.
“Mac,” Adam said. “I’ll keep looking for it. If you see anything, let me or Brian know. We’ll be passing the news along to the other counselors. Someone will find it.”
Adam smiled and put his hand on Mac’s shoulder.
“Sorry, kid,” he added before he stepped away.
By the time Adam left, the dodge ball game was over. Michael had been peppered by two balls at the same time. With the game over, there was enough time for another. I didn’t have a choice to play—neither did Mac—but my heart wasn’t in it. I got knocked out early on purpose.
While seated on the sidelines, I wondered if the system had anything that would help me track down where the console had ended up. I had my suspicions—of course—but I couldn’t do anything with those. I’d need hard evidence. The only way I found that I might be able to help involved getting the Skills feature first. That was the only way to unlock any skills for tracking or similar functions.
My mind flicked back to the promise I’d made myself several months in the past. I didn’t want to unnecessarily waste experience. At the same time, was this not the perfect opportunity to give the system a test run? Experiencing how the system might work would give me valuable feedback for what features I’d want to add—especially those that modified how other features operated.
I didn’t rush forward into purchasing anything. I wanted to be absolutely sure that it was the right course of action before I took that path. There wasn’t a way to undo and get back the experience I would be spending. A reset would take away the choices I’d made that weren’t locked in stone, but that experience would be gone forever—spent to fuel my curiosity and the monsters.
During the wait for Grandpa Joe after dodge ball, I thought I’d gotten over the itch—I really didn’t want to waste experience, even if the test run data would be invaluable. However, I saw the glint of something in Micah’s bag that looked suspiciously like Mac’s console. I figured it had been stolen—which is why bringing the console to camp was a bad idea in my opinion—however, it being stolen by one of the boys in the same group was rather depressing. At the same time, it being right there would make it easier to recover. I was pissed and wanted to do something about it.
In the car ride home, I decided to see what Grandpa Joe thought about it.
“So one of the kids stole my friend’s gaming console,” I said.
“Oh really? Why didn’t you take it back?” Grandpa asked.
“I only found out who had taken it right when you got me… otherwise I would have.”
“So why not talk to one of the counselors?”
“I might,” I hedged. “I’ll need to confirm it’s still there, first. But after that, definitely. But once that’s dealt with, I still need to stick up for my friend, you know?”'
“I did tell you to give ‘im the what-for, didn’t I?” he laughed. “I don’t know if fighting is the best way to settle it, but he probably wouldn’t do it again with you around.”
“Probably not,” I laughed, before corralling my expression into a more serious one. “I was considering using this as an opportunity for a dry run of the leveling part of the system.”
“Wouldn’t that cost a lot?”
“I don’t really know,” I shrugged. “That’s part of why I want to do it. I want to see what the system is capable of… maybe prove to myself that all of this… is real. The system, magic. All of that.”
I waved my hands around expressively.
“Hmm. What about the monsters?” Grandpa Joe asked.
“Should be fine. The costs for this aren’t great. I might be able to get some more experience by doing it this way. I won’t know until I try, you know?”
“I see. I don’t really think it’s a good idea. There are just too many unknowns. And, because there are so many unknowns… that’s a good idea for giving it a try. Maybe squish a few of them along the way.”