378: Archery
Fuyuko shook off her musings about what Carmilla was up to — she knew her sister was dedicated to Azeria, so while the faerie swamp witch might want to play her games, she'd never do anything that would risk harming the nexus.
She headed downstairs to finish getting ready for the day, and to accept her jinbei back from Amrydor. Having his scent on her clothing was nice, but that was a thought she wasn't going to follow up on until after Gemeti left to return to Artgoi. Fuyuko didn't want to mess anything up there.
With nothing in particular scheduled for her, Fuyuko decided to take the nexus's shortcut down to the arena, where she found Amrydor just starting the same type of practice as her starting point for the day: archery.
It was not exactly the same set, however — Amrydor was training to remain proficient, and in this case to practice how to configure his armor's new ability to allow him to properly draw a bow fully. One of the limitations of his normal heavy armor was that its articulation was not designed to allow for drawing a bow, and required removing key pieces in order to do so.
This took much less time than Fuyuko's training, and he was ready to head to one of the other training areas while she was still working her way through her sets.
An idea struck Fuyuko as Amry was about to leave, and she called out, "Wait." When he turned back, she hesitated. "Um, I had an impulse to tease you, but I just realized it could be a little mean."
"Now I'm curious." He smiled and gestured. "Go on."
Fuyuko was wearing her normal shirt and skirt combination over her armor, so she paused to take her shirt off and draw her hair forward over her shoulder. After she picked her bow back up, she modified the back of her armor the same way she had on the day when she had managed to nearly make herself sick.
Then, with her bare back facing him, she very slowly and deliberately notched an arrow and drew it back, then held the pose for a moment before she loosed her arrow.
Amrydor's reaction to watching her back was... satisfying, which worried her. "Am I that vain?" she asked softly. "For all that I don't want all that you want of me, I kind of like the appreciation part of your reaction."
As he walked up behind her, Fuyuko simply waited, not sure what to expect. She felt him lightly touch her neck, then he caressed down her back. It was somehow soothing, and she relaxed into his touch. "Vain?" he said. "Maybe a little. But you also don't seek that reaction from anyone but me, so I don't think it's something you need to worry about. You might want others to think you are pretty, but you don't care as much about what other people think. And I like that you enjoy my touch. Even if your reaction is more like a spoiled pet's rather than most girl's reaction."
She turned her head to glare at him, but he just reached up and scritched her ears, making it hard to focus on glaring. Maybe she did rather like this sort of touching.
"I think we can call it even," Amrydor said, a laugh in his voice as he stopped scritching her ears.
"Go on, get out of here," Fuyuko muttered, and once he was gone, put her shirt back on before resuming her training.
Her training set began by working with her heaviest non-magical bow and shooting twenty times with each draw style that she had been taught. These were simple full draws done without haste and with a focus on precision and accuracy. She then repeated the process when she switched hands, but only ten times each. Fuyuko was not attempting to train herself to equal proficiency; she simply wanted to be able to use either if the angle of a shot around a barrier required switching hands.
This bow was not the heaviest that she could possibly draw, but Papa had said he wanted her to practice at no more than this weight for a while, and to focus on mastery before he got her a bow with a heavier draw.
After that, she switched to what was a mid-weight bow for her, which was still heavier than the bow that she'd been given a year ago, and activated one of the room's training sequences. A set of barriers rose out of the ground at the end near her, and a few moments later, moving targets with their own barriers and ranged attacks appeared at the other.
Her objective was simple: shoot all the enemy targets without getting hit by them. The targets were shooting arrows, spells, and the occasional bullet, but these were constructs made mostly of illusion. They did carry some force and would hurt, but had far less impact than the real version would. Instead, they affected the muscles around the impact point, making it harder to move and restricting some actions.
It was almost impossible to complete the course without being hit a few times; however, that too was part of the training. Being hit hurt and reduced speed and power, but being able to continue on despite being hurt was important.
However, if Fuyuko did manage to consistently get through the randomized course at this difficulty, it would automatically change to the next tier of difficulty. Papa had created tiers to the point he couldn't clear it without getting repeatedly hit in the process, using any ranged attack of his, not just using a bow. So, Fuyuko had plenty of improvements to make, and she did get a scoring sheet at the end of each run, so she could track her improvement for a given tier.
Unexpectedly, it had been Momma K who had added a weird addition to the courses. She’d said that the smell of the training room was distracting and that no-one would ever be fighting somewhere that smelled like that, so she insisted there be random scents and ambient noises included in each training sequence. Momma M had said that Momma K just hated the smell of sweat that tended to fill training rooms, but the idea had its merits — making the environment smell and sound more like places where a person would need to use these skills would make the training more effective.
Once she was too tired to keep running this course, it was time to take a break and eat while she recovered. Well, she could have gone for a little longer, but the scent had just changed to a nice blend of flowers and grass with a hint of forest. The next set of smells could be much less pleasant, as Papa had decided to add things like bogs, dirty slums, and sewers to the possible scents.
The next training set involved various maneuvers. Instead of dashing between cover and then shooting, she had to practice shooting her bow while moving. This involved a lot of jumping and leaping, as being mid-air in a smooth arc was better for both accuracy and power than being mid-stride while running.
There were also other maneuvers, such as one that involved sliding onto a knee with the other leg out and bringing her body nearly level to the ground to dodge below incoming shots while drawing her bow, and coming partway up to shoot back; from that stance there were a few options such as rolling forward or to the side to come up to her feet, or dropping back down again.
After a few practice runs to get warmed up, Fuyuko activated the training set. This configuration had her running forward toward a small group of enemy targets while also firing her bow, trying to shoot them while not getting shot. Once more she ran this until too tired to make clean work of it. This scenario’s random terrain had her diving repeatedly into or over a muddy gully. She was very glad that when the sequence disappeared, so did the mud coating her from head to toe.
Her final round of archery training was to repeat her first set, firing twenty shots of each notching style using her right hand, then switching to do ten shots with her left hand. This time it was a lot harder, and her muscles protested the action, but she completed the set with clean shots every time.
A very important aspect of this was that she was doing this with muscle alone, with only the passive effects of her body having been reinforced by her spiritual strength. This still meant that she was a lot stronger than she had been a year ago, and it built up a better base for her spiritual power to amplify. It was amazing to think of what a naïve kid she'd been a year ago.
So no battle aura, no killing intent, no focusing her will to make her body move beyond what muscle alone could do; just pure physicality.
Everyone she knew who was really strong and skilled agreed on this basic methodology: During solo training of physical skills, a person needed to build physical power directly without depending on spiritual power. During sparring and such, a person should build spiritual power by contesting against others, using their inner strength to enhance what their body alone was capable of.
Training her shadow-based abilities was still restricted at the moment. The game of tag with the hatchlings was one thing, but pushing herself in the way that would be required to really enhance her skills was another.
While Fuyuko was pondering what she should do next for training, Mama K's thoughts touched her mind briefly. "The caravan is close; you may want to head up."
She smiled and stretched to help relax her muscles, passed the message on to Amrydor, then made her way toward the entrance to the shortcut to the surface. This was going to be the end of her training for the day; it was time for some people watching that also part of her job as a contractor. While being a princess had its own complications and benefits, Fuyuko had no intention of not also being the best contractor for Azeria that she could.
Naturally, Amrydor was making his way up as well, though his focus was clearly going to be different than hers. At least he looked a little bit guiltily embarrassed when she said, "You look eager. Just don't go drooling all over her."
"I would never do that," he said, and when she raised an eyebrow, he amended, "In public, at least."
Which made Fuyuko realize that the conversation was drifting toward details she didn't want to know.
A single step into the shortcut brought them up to the shrine area, and heading into the warrens let them bypass the normal lines of people going through the main entrance. "Well, make sure to let her know I said hello. And I do want to be able to spend some time with her, so don't go locking her up in your room or something."
Amrydor smirked. "No, it's princesses who are supposed to get locked away to suffer durance vile."
The odd phrase took a few moments for Fuyuko to process, then she frowned at Amrydor's retreating back. "Eww." While she was interested in exploring how much she'd enjoy spending more time physically near him, Fuyuko had an idea what sort of 'suffering' a princess might endure.
Of course, he already knew that wasn't the sort of thing she was interested in, and had even declined her offer last night, so she knew he was just messing with her. Mostly. Blegh. She was stubborn enough that she wasn't going to take back what she'd said, but she was really glad he'd not acted on it.
She dismissed that thought and headed for one of the taller trees along the main road through the trading post. A quick jaunt through the shadows brought her to a nicely shaded perch on a sturdy branch, and there she settled in to watch the people below.
Most days, there was very little chance of anything happening, but this caravan had a lot of people who were all new to the area, let alone the nexus. They wouldn't be here with friends or comrades who had experienced Azeria before. This made the situation a little more uncertain, and her job was to keep an eye out for potential trouble.
There were plenty of inhabitants that would be interacting with the crowd too, of course, but this view would let her possibly see things that might get missed by a distracted bunkin looking in a different direction or from a different angle.
While she waited for the first of the caravan's passengers to arrive, Fuyuko broke out a practice lock that Papa had gotten for her. She'd previously mentioned to her Azeria parents that her clan parents, her father in particular, had begun teaching her a little about clockwork mechanisms, as that had been his job, though she didn't remember much. Kinda hard to practice such things at an orphanage, though she'd had cause to get practiced in lock-picking. The big locks were easy to force, if noisy, but the little ones with all the pins were harder if they were made well.
Well, now she had her very own enchanted 'lock' that would reset and randomize itself every time she closed it, including randomizing the number of pins, and could only be opened by picking it, as it had no key. The maximum number of pins increased if she started picking the previous one too easily, and there were tricks that it would add randomly as well, such as pins designed to feel like they'd been raised high enough before they actually had. There was a subtle difference, but it was an easy mistake to make if she wasn't paying enough attention.
The dwarf who had made it had also provided some basic training on clockwork mechanisms, given how little she remembered clearly of what her father had taught her, and the nexus now had a collection books on clockwork and lock-smithing, which Fuyuko was studying.
She was confident that she could now assemble or repair simple things like a basic music box if she had all the parts, but there was still a lot for her to learn or relearn, and things like crafting a spring or a gear were not things she was ready for at all, and that kind of crafting hadn't even been talked about in the books she'd read. But maybe that was something her mother had done for her father, since she was a smith.
Did Amrydor know how to smith? She should ask him at some point. Though he'd need to know white smithing, not black smithing. Or maybe something else. She wasn't entirely sure how exactly one made gears and springs. The books only talked about which ones were good for what and how to match and assemble them.
While she was musing, the caravan came into view, and the first of the passengers started to break away from the caravan.
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