Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player

The Department of Archery building was simply a hangar. Since NIST's Woodbury location used to be a famous military academy, this should come as no surprise. Still, everyone in the department was surprised when they first entered the place.

The training and development room was complex and complete.

There were state-of-the-art physical monitoring equipment, displays for viewing replays, long stands with holograms for training and space for ten archers, fields that simulated various training, resting areas, and so on. Even people who didn't like archery would be thrilled with so many things to use, and those who practiced couldn't ask for anything more.

So everyone in the archery department was very excited, and that feeling came out with every arrow they shot.

When all the students entered the booths with bows in their hands and quivers on their backs, they all felt the need to introduce themselves to each other. This feeling was especially concentrated in the quartet of boys in room 25 of dormitory A-3. Even though they had not commented aloud about the little competition for the leadership of the room when they entered the booths, they were all focused on this little bet, except for Klaus Park, who was too busy thinking about something else.

As soon as the countdown on the main booth display was over, the sound of the horn echoed, starting the target practice round.

Immediately, targets appeared in front of each of the seven standby archers, and since they already had their arrows positioned on the ropes, all they had to do was release.

Some of the targets were accurately hit, and the scores were recorded on the electronic scoreboards.

The quartet from room 25 in dormitory A-3 was tied with everyone else with 1 point, except for Klaus Park, who hadn't even moved.

Klaus was staring at the girl named Carrie Puma, which made Andrew frown so strangely and think:

Why didn't the retard shoot? Ah. He must be one of those guys who looks good on the outside but has never talked to a woman in his life. Too bad, he scared me when he looked at us like that in the bedroom...'.

But while Andrew was looking at Klaus out of the corners of his eyes, he saw that the black-haired boy suddenly turned his head forward and focused on the area of the shot. This time there was something different about Klaus, he had an even scarier look on his face than when he had looked at the others angrily.

And without even pulling the bowstring he was holding, Klaus suddenly released the arrow. At the same moment, Klaus' arrow flew through the air like a hummingbird and pierced the center of the holographic target a second before anyone had even shot the arrow.

This surprised Andrew so much that he forgot to shoot the second arrow, leaving everyone with confused thoughts like:

"What was that?

Before I could even think about where to aim, I heard a target hit. Was it just me?

Everyone else in the booth was thinking the same thing, but Andrew saw it with his own eyes and immediately stopped.

During the short interval between the second and third round, Klaus touched the string of his bow and felt how much lighter it was than the string of the Old Bow from Rise Online or the basic bow he used in the selection process, as if it might break at any moment when he pulled it back.

Still, Klaus smiled and said loud enough for only himself to hear:

"Come on, don't let me down halfway."

Since he had watched his other teammates shoot a few minutes ago, he knew how this booth and the holograms worked, but what he didn't really understand at first was how fast, accurate and technical Carrie was at the same time, so he stopped to watch her in the first round.

He realized that her secret to being fast and accurate at the same time was the fact that she used a light bow, which gave her more freedom to pull the string easily and also control the trajectory. In addition, Klaus noticed that she sometimes shot the arrow long before the string reached its limit, which decreased the accuracy somewhat, but this way she seemed to be very fast.

Klaus noticed from the beginning that she used a lighter bow than the others, but while the boys thought the reason was because she was a girl, Klaus did not underestimate her and thought that using a bow similar to hers might be the way to get close to her level.

So when the third round of targets appeared in the cabin, Klaus' arrow was the first to hit its target.

The disadvantages of speed and intensity that light-type bows normally have were simply broken by his monstrous physical strength. In other words, since Klaus was very strong, pulling a light string to its limit in one second was nothing to him.

During the course of the exercise, Klaus' arrows were always the first to hit their targets, even though he didn't hit all thirty arrows.

In the end, the total score was as follows:

[Clifford - 19/30

Benito - 14/30

Carrie - 30/30

David - 18/30

Nathan - 22/30

Andrew - 28/30

Klaus - 25/30.]

Carrie was declared the winner of the little competition and received applause and congratulations from all the other archers, especially David and Nathan, who blushed at the sight of her smiling face.

But what everyone was secretly thinking was that Klaus, who had only come in third, was much scarier than sweet Carrie, who had again not missed a target. All the students in the archery department were secretly impressed by Klaus' skill and strength, and Andrew, who had seen Klaus staring at the girl at the beginning of the exercise, realized that the boy was not actually clumsy with women, but was trying to copy her shooting style.

At first, the way he held the bow looked like a beginner, and it looked like he was trying to learn something while looking at Carrie.... I don't think she was doing it on purpose, but I can't deny that his natural reflexes are really impressive and have only improved over the course of the practice.... If we were to try this again, would he get an even better result than he did now? Andrew thought as he watched Klaus searching for the right place to remove the light bow until Carrie came over and helped him.

...

Edited by: DrHitsuji

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