The moment he spawned in, Max was immediately divorced from his previous thoughts and shocked into silence.

‘Wh-Why... It looks so good?!’

Max had materialised into a town square that looked just like any other town square you would see in real life. The shocking part was that it looked just like any other town square you would see in real life!

‘WTF?! It’s so realistic!’

Max looked around at the people, the trees, the finely detailed stone structures with faint imperfections and varied contours. Was this his new silver game capsule, or was the game just this good-looking? It looked almost indistinguishable from real life!

The opening cutscene must have been made in the old graphics as an intentional prank by the developers. Crouching down, he felt the stone ground with his hands and, as expected, a layer of dusty dirt covered his fingers, with small, tangible grains.

‘HOLY SH*T!!’

Max was freaking out.

Many other people had also spawned in nearby and were making a fuss, albeit for varied reasons.

“Wow! Everything is so pretty!”

“Why does this feel more real than real life. I’m scared.”

“Real, my arse! You can’t even strip!”

Multiple heads turned at the last comment, including Max’s, to where a man was using an excessive amount of force in an attempt to remove his pants. He was unsuccessful. It looked quite funny because it was as if he was trying to displace cement from his body.

“Pervert!”

“Scum!”

Several female players were also nearby, causing the man to give up and run away in fear of being lynched.

‘Alright, I should probably get g- oh wait, I have to turn my recording function on.’

Rone had told him to start recording as soon as he loaded in, which he’d nearly forgotten in his excitement.

“Record.”

"Recording started." A system voice sounded in his ear.

‘Oh, well that was unexpectedly easy.’

Actually, Rone also asked him to speak his thoughts out loud so it would be more entertaining.

“Oh, well that was unexpectedly easy.”

Wait, why was he doing everything that Rone told him to, anyways? Was he Rone’s Golden Retriever or something? Max scolded himself for his accidental obedience, before searching around for someone to harass for directions.

He spotted a kid. “T-” Actually, he shouldn’t say that out loud or it would sound weird.

‘Target acquired!’

“Hey kid, do you mind directing me to the archery range?” Max put on his least threatening face as he asked the random child.

“...”

“...”

The kid blankly stared at him and seemed to freeze up.

“Uh... You alright, kid?”

“H-Hero. A hero is talking to me – ah! I’m sorry! The archery is that way! No, I mean that way!” He fumbled with his hands and pointed one way before twisting his hand and pointing the opposite direction.

At first, Max was a bit confused by the kid’s reaction, but then realised that he might be distracted, as having several hundred or thousand people suddenly materialise out of the air in front of you could be a tad surprising for someone who’d never seen it before.

“Haha, thanks kid. What’s your name?”

“I-It’s Arden.”

“Arden. It’s a good name. I’ll remember that name.”

‘No I won’t.’

“You don’t seem so scared; did you know we would arrive here today?”

“Yes, the church told of your arrival. They said the Life Goddess brought you here and you’re here to protect us from the Demon Army.”

“That’s right kiddo, we are, but there’s one thing you need to know.”

“There is?”

“Yes. Most of us are nice, but not all of us heroes are sure to be good guys. For example, do you remember that man from earlier trying to take off his pants? He’s definitely a bad person.”

“H-He is?”

“Absolutely. A virtuous man only removes his pants when the situation absolutely warrants it. You’d do well to remember that.”

“Okay... I will.”

Max nodded and started leaving in the direction of that archery range, satisfied at having taught this young’un a valuable life lesson.

He almost tripped as he walked. Not because the walking was too different from real life but because it was too similar to real life. In the other Virtek Game, Hero of Liberation, with his copper capsule there was about a 200ms delay between willing his body to move and it actually moving. In fact, he’d nearly cut that kid off before he finished talking because his vocal cords moved too quickly. This was a really weird problem to have.

‘Oh! I should add Rone as a friend so I can harass him later.’

Another way that this game was different to Hero of Liberation was that it had a magic system. According to Rone, the magic system was actually controlled by your thoughts, and you needed to focus quite hard to be able to cast your spells.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

If this was true, then Max would be able to perfectly time a voice call to Rone while that unsuspecting guy tries to conjure one of his wind spells, therefore destroying his focus and causing him to regret all five years of their friendship.

[ Friend request sent to Cyclone_Rone ]

“Good. Good.” Max was about to rub his hands together like a villain but then remembered that there was a remote possibility of someone actually watching his recorded footage in the future and decided not to do that.

“Is this the place?” Max had already wandered quite far from the town centre and had stumbled across a structure that looked like part of a farm. Normally, he wouldn’t suspect a place like this to be an archery range, but turning his head slightly allowed him to see eight scarecrow-like mannequins strapped with large straw masses of concentric circles, which were kind of a dead giveaway.

“Howdy there partner! Be ye one of the heroes?” An incredibly cliché rancher with a cattleman-style cowboy hat and even a piece of straw in his mouth walked out to greet him.

Max instantly forgot about the archery test.

“I sure am! Say, that’s a really nice hat you have there. Do you have any extras for sale?”

“Heh, thanks. None for sale unfortunately, but if ya can hit all the targets, I’ll getchya one for free as a trophy.”

The playful look in Max’s eyes immediately changed to one of single-minded purpose. “Deal.”

“Eh?” The ranchman was taken aback by Max’s sudden change in atmosphere. Was his hat that appealing?

Max flipped back to his previous self as if nothing had happened, “Aha, I’ll try my best then. Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so where should I shoot from?”

“Right ova here!” The ranchman guessed it was just his imagination.

Leading him through a small cabin, the NPC handed Max a bow and a quiver with some arrows, as Max looked over the range to gauge the difficulty.

‘Oh? It’s actually quite difficult?’

Max expected the archery test to be a simple test – maybe shooting a target twenty or thirty metres away, to be beginner-friendly. However, this was not the case at all. There were actually 8 targets; one every 5m to the 25m mark, then one every 25m until the farthest target, which was attached to a laughing mannequin with a dumb straw moustache at a distance of about 101.3 metres.

Max faltered and started sweating a little. Assuming he needed to hit the bullseye for each target, and since his limit to reliably landing a headshot was about 90m in Hero of Liberation, he could probably only reliably hit the small bullseye up to the 75m target. The final target was definitely pushing his luck.

Max felt a bit distressed at this and knew Rone would make fun of him if he failed the class test. Though this line of thought did not last long, as he knew that stressing would cause his hands to shake. Emptying his mind, he decided to just do his best and took aim at the first target.

Noticing the troubled expression on Max’s face, the rancher realised that Max probably felt demoralised and decided to offer some moral support. “Don’t fret it, partner. Even I haven’t managed to hit all’o’them darn targets in a row and I’ve been at this for over nine years!” He laughed and fiddled with his hat.

Max let the arrow loose and it hit the bullseye of the first target.

“Hoh! That’s a nice shot right there, hit the middle of the-”

Two seconds later, Max loosed another arrow, which hit the centre of the second target.

“Uh, that-”

Then a third. And a fourth. After that was a fifth and lastly, the sixth, which flew twice as far as the previous shot. Only then did he stop. He hit six of the eight targets over a span of 14 seconds.

By this point, the ranchman was no longer laughing, instead staring in shocked awe while unconsciously gripping his hat tightly, as though the hat were a hypergamous lover that threatened to leave him for a superior and more manly alternative.

“Whoa, I wasn’t sure of it before, but that’s awesome!” Max paid the pitiful NPC no regard, since he’d just made a huge discovery!

Quickly opening up the system interface for the first time and dismissing some bothersome alerts and welcome messages, Max navigated to the game’s in-built web browser and did a search: [ World of Heroes aim stability ]

He tapped on the first result and flicked to scroll through down the page.

“I knew it! Hahahaha! This is awesome! The best!”

“Uhm, may I ask what is going on?” The ranchman was no longer reeling from shock and observed Max with confusion.

“The goddess! The goddess has blessed me with superior aim! Praise the goddess!”

“Oh!” The man nodded in feigned understanding. It seemed a bit strange that it was possible for the Goddess of Life to help people aim bows better, but the abilities of the gods were far beyond his comprehension, so he would just accept this as truth. Additionally... praise the goddess!

[ With the upcoming launch of World of Heroes, many bow-lovers are concerned that the bow may be underpowered in the new game, as the tricky weapon had been considered difficult to utilise in the game’s predecessor, Hero of Liberation. In response to these concerns, archers will be thrilled to hear that Virtek have announced a new ‘shake reduction’ feature! Shake reduction is designed to reduce involuntary muscle movements in the player’s arms to deliver improved aiming stability! Additionally, rumours suggest that the effect is boosted in proportion to your ‘Dexterity’ stat! Could this be a complete game-changer for archery in World of Heroes? ]

Max’s eyes sparkled as he read through the article. It was true! He could feel the difference from his very first shot! It was like an invisible force was helping to hold his arms steady.

Excited, and wanting to test out his new range, Max moved the bow again to aim at the next target. He’d already found that there was a slight crosswind moving to the right, and he also needed to compensate for gravity at this distance. Having seen the launch speed of the previous arrows and feeling that the arrows were about 25g each in weight, Max aimed his shot diagonally left above the 75m target and let his aim hover over the sweet-spot. Sure enough, his aim wavered much less than normal, as he gently let go of the arrow, sending it catapulting into the distance in a curved arc...

Exactly two seconds later, the arrow sunk into the target with a barely audible thunk.

“...” Realising that his eyesight was too poor to see the arrow out that far, the ranchman pulled out a collapsible spyglass from one of his pockets, extended it, and held it up to his eye.

“Pfuh, well I’ll be damned. You really hit the bullseye again.” He lowered the viewing instrument, only to raise it again, doing a double-take. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen shootin’ like this my entire life. You’re really somethin’ special, you know that?”

“Haha, no need for flattery, sir. Though, if I manage to hit the last target, would you be willing to give me the archer class?”

“Eh?”

“The archer class, sir. I hope this doesn’t come across as rude, but my main goal in coming here was to earn the qualifications to become an archer.”

“? Didn’t I already... No, wait...”

Max didn’t realise this, but the ranchman was supposed to tell him he’d earned the qualifications to become an archer after hitting the target at 25m. The problem was that Max shot the targets so fast that there was no time to inform him of this, causing him to actually break the NPC’s dialogue tree. Now the AI needed to come up with a new type of response, outside the list of pre-scripted answers.

“...All right, yeah, if you manage to hit that last target, I’ll officially endorse you as an archer.”

“And the hat?”

“?” The ranchman waited for Max to elaborate, but he did not. “Hat?”

“You said that if I hit all the targets, I can have a cool hat like yours.”

“Oh! Yes. Of course, that deal still stands.”

“Thank you, sir.”

‘Muahahaha! The hat is mine!’

Feeling his determination reach peak levels, Max tilted his back and shot an arrow up into the air. The projectile carved a smooth arc as it flew toward the 100m target.

After a moment of hesitation, the NPC realised it wasn’t a practice shot, and hurriedly brought out his spyglass to find the arrow. Sure enough, it was there, just five centimetres out from the bullseye. Not able to process this, he sunk to his knees in disbelief.

Ding!

Meanwhile, a notification interface appeared in front of Max.

[ Player has obtained the qualifications for the ‘Deadshot’ class. Accept? Y/N ]

‘Eh? Is this the archer class?’

He’d assumed the class would just blandly be called ‘Archer’.

“Hm...”

Oh well, since he’d successfully passed the test, this should be a naming choice by the game company, probably for originality purposes.

“Yes!”

Max pressed yes and a bright flash of ephemeral green light was emitted from his body.