Rone id down on his couch with some pop and pressed py on Max’s rec, which he’d hooked up to his TV from his ptop. He ughed as Max instantly began to spout nonse some child before nearly tripping and falling over randomly.
‘This is sure to be eaining’, Rohought as he tossed pop into his mouth.
Max reached the archery range a up with some cowboy, but Rone wasn’t ied in that. What he really wao know was how this stupid guy mao get a unique css. Those shouldn’t be so easy to acquire.
His eyes bore into the TV as Max took his first shot. Then his sed shot. Rone’s eyes were already opened wide before he’d taken his third. ‘S-so fast?’
Max’s firing speed was insane. He only took two seds to draw, aim, and fire. Roched as the 5m, 10m, 15m, 20m and 25m shots were all bullseyes, before spilling his pop when Max did the exact same thing with the 50m target like it was child’s py.
“Hey, what the f*ck??” Rone moved closer to the TV and could barely see the arrow in the tre of the bullseye. “A perfect shot? At that distance?!”
He k. That bastard was secretly a monster! A monster pretending to be normal!
Max took a short break to read an oicle, before whipping his bow out and sending another arrow flying toward the 75m target. Before Rone could eveer what happened, a small thunk came out of his soundbar.
‘Did he hit the bullseye?!’ Rone sprung up ahe TV with both hands, pressing his face up against the s as he sed the pixels. He thought he could vaguely see the arrow in the bullseye.
“Ahh!! What the actual f*ck Max! You old me you were this good!” Rone jumped around his living room, before he proceeded to lose his sh*t shortly after when Max humbly asked the cowboy to give him the archer css. It was like watg Einstein ask a fellow stist for an apprenticeship position.
Before he could regain his posure, Max picked up the bow again.
“No. There’s no way. There’s actually no f*g way.”
The st target looked absolutely tiny from where Max was standing. Rone could put his thumb over it oV and it would be pletely obscured.
Pew.
Max took slightly lohis time, 3 seds, up from 2 seds, as he fired his st arrow.
‘...Did it hit?!’
Rone had no idea if it nded; he didn’t hear anything, and he couldn’t see it either.
He rao his ptop and toggled the rec perspective. Uhe one avaible four years ago whily recorded first-person footage, Virtek’s new rec module was also capable of various different rec perspectives, such as third-person, bird’s eye and free-roam. The free-roam footage took the vast majority of the module’s putational power because it recorded all the space around the pyer in what was essentially a 3D s. Rone ged to this perspective as he dragged the camera to where the target was.
Upon reag the maximum rec range of 100 metres, Roopped and gaped at the s. ‘Holy sh*t!!’
No wonder he got a unique css; this guy was a freak! A freak among freaks, even! Was he always this good? ...No, surely those had to be flukes, right?
Ro a pulsion to call Max, but that guy would be driving his car right now and wouldn’t pick up. ‘Okay, calm down. Calm down.’
He decided to watch the rest of the footage. If it was a fluke, that would be made apparent ter on.
...
‘IT WAS NOT A FLUKE.’
By this point, Rone had dragged his entire couch closer to the TV so he could see the arrows better. Goblins were droppi, right are like flies. No, actually, flies would have had at least a ce at dodging; this was just a straight-up massacre. The goblins didn’t even have a ce to scream as they instantly perished.
Not only that, but he was simultaneously sprinting through the facility like a possessed person. Was it because they had been rag? Ro depressed watg the footage, he really was like a toddler in parison... How tf was Max hitting all those shots while running?! Rone cursed as he heard Max ent about low difficulty. ‘It’s not easy, you’re just irregur!’
At the same time, He also felt some anticipation. He wao know how Max would deal with the dungeon boss.
When Rone fought the boss in the dungeon, he barely won. That fearsome goblin warrior had tossed him around like a ragdoll during the fight, making it impossible to trate on spellcasting. He prevailed in the end through accumuting damage, but his health had already been reduced and he was nearly crushed to death in the process.
The Max oV ehe boss room and fired two shots, before breaking into a three-sed run and then stopping.
“Huh? Why’d he stop run-”
The goblin fell ft like a domino.
“...”
Rone wasn’t even surprised at this point. He’d subsciously been expeg it and just didn’t want to believe it would happen. Looking to the side, Rone observed his empty bucket of pop a an affinity with it. It accurately resembled his emotional state, as all ability to feel had beeied out of him. Nothing he saw from now on could even...
‘Speed record? I don’t remember anything like that.’
“...”
“...”
“...”
Over a million pyers would have challehe starter dungeon during unch day. There was just no way. It simply wasn’t possible.
Roo his ptop and opened up the game forums. Using the search fun, he looked up speedruns for the dungeon.
After looking through a few hundred ehe fastest time was 5 minutes and 2 seds.
He took his phone from his pocket to use as a stopwatd repyed Max’s dungeon raid from beginning to end.
“...”
2 Minutes and 47 seds.
...
...
Max pressed his head against the train’s window. He quite liked doing this, as the train’s movement would give a sort of vibratory massage which he found therapeuti nature. Unfortunately, it was uhat he’d tio ute by train, so he wouldn’t feel this sensation again for some time.
As he gazed out the window, his phoarted ringing. Without b to look, he pulled the pho of his pocket and held it up to his ear, answering like a robot. “Hello?”
“Max...” Rone’s voice came from the other end, “Is there anything you’d like to say to me?”
“To say to you?” Max thought for a moment. “I don’t think so... Is something wrong?”
“Okay, I see, I see.” Roook a loud breath which was audible through the phone, “How would you rate your archery skills from a scale of 1 to 10?”
“From 1 to 10... Probably an 8? Or a 9? I’ve ied a lot of time into archery, so I’d like to think I’m he upper echelons. ht, I’m actually pnning to try to get into prof-”
“YOU’RE NOT A F*G EIGHT YOU F*G M*R*N.” Max nearly dropped his phone as Rone suddenly started yelling into the microphone. “DO YOU KNOW A SINGLE PERSON ON THE F*G PLA WHO SHOOT A BULLSEYE AT ONE HUNDRED METRES?! IT’S ZERO! NOBODY F*G DO IT!”
Max hurriedly turned his call volume doeople started gng at him orain. “Hey, what gives?! Don’t suddenly destroy my eardrums!”
“AAHHH!!! Do your boss and coworkers actually hate you or something??”
“No they don- Actually, I was fired so I don’t have any.”
“What? You were fired?”
“Yes. Are you calm yet?”
Roated before responding. “...Okay ...Okay I’m calm. Tell me what happened.”
“One of the students went into school with a bow and took shots at his cssmates. Nobody was hurt, but the club was held responsible and all the students pulled out of our programs.”
“Woah! That’s crazy. What kind of unhinged psycho just pulls up and starts shooting their peers?”
“Yeah, and what sort of unhinged psycho just calls up and starts screaming into their friend’s ears? You still haven’t told me what that was all about, you know.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault you’re a freak.”
“A freak? Since when am I a freak?”
“You tell me. How long have you been hiding your skill at archery?”
“I haven’t been hiding anything. Is that what this is about? You think I’m some sort of secret archery genius?”
“You are though. You literally hit a bullseye at 100 metres.”
“That’s nothing. Hero of Liberation has dozens, if not hundreds of archers who do that.”
“...So just to be clear, you’re using NPC archers, in a video game, as your point of reference.”
“Well, when you put it that way... yes. But I don’t see how it would be any different from real life.”
“How about the fact that the NPCs are based in an intense war setting that would force them to train as hard as they could every day for years, siheir lives depended on it? And that their aiming ability is set by programmers?”
Max faltered for a moment, “W-well yeah, but modern archers today probably train close to that amount. Archers today also have longer lifespans, so they train more...”
“Do you know what range petitive archers shoot at?”
“Probably somewhere from 90 to 120 metres. Maybe a hundred.” Max guessed.
“It’s 70.”
“...” Max blinked, “Are you sure?”
“Dude, I’m positive. Check the forums, look at how the other pyers did on that archery test. Try to find oher person who did as well as you.”
“Hmm...” Max didn’t really believe it. After all, how could he? Others had traiheir whole lives at archery, some even training for multiple decades, whereas he himself had only trained properly for a bit over 4 years. It was unthinkable that he could already tend with the best.
Max opehe forums aered ‘archery test’ into the search prompt. He expected that most people would have trouble shooting out to 25m, but experienced archers should have no trouble hitting the 50m target, which would probably be around ~3-4% of the test-takers as a servative guess. He read through the first entries.
— Just took the archery test and I want to die, did aually pass it who shoot me?
— Why the f*ck is the stupid archery test so hard??
— Theory: Someone assassinated one of the dev’s firstborns with a bow, making them hate archery and want nobody to have the css
— Does anyone know if you retake the test? I really want to py as archer, but I failed
— Fix the test or I’m refunding!
“Wow, these posts are really visceral.” Max flicked through the thread. He was already expeg this, so it didn’t really shock him. He kept scrolling to find the successful people.
— The pass rates for all the other tests seem quite high, why is it just us who have to suffer? And why is there only oempt per target?
— The bow is hard to pull back?? It felt like my arms were going to fall off while aiming that thing
— Guys, Virtek are holding a post-unch press fereomorrow m! Keep posting so they ’t ignore us!
Max furrowed his eyebrows. He’d been scrolling for a few minutes and hadn’t seen any successful pyers yet. He ged the prompt to look for people who actually passed the test. The number of results dropped to the low thousands.
— People using this tag: Although I am unworthy, please make me your disciple
— I passed! I hit the edge of the target on 25m and nearly cried
— I also passed. I do archery but I could not hit the 50m target. The bow is heavy and does not have stabilisers.
— I passed by the skin of my teeth. For people w how close that is, teeth don’t have skin
— Guys, I missed the first target and tried to shoot the NPstead, but I missed again, and he killed me. Teically I still passed because I passed into the afterlife, right?
After scrolling for some time, Max did find people who hit the 50m target. Some had attached images, showing that they hit nowhere close to the bullseye. Max couldn’t find anyone who hit the 75m target either.
“Are you vinced yet?” Rone was still on the line.
“...Just because I ’t find sharks when I swim in the o doesn’t mean they do.”
“Tch, being stubborn, I see. Go check the streamie then.”
“The streamie?”
“DiveLive. It’s where Virtek games are live-streamed. Check it out and pare the number of streamers in the archer category to the other categories.”
Max found the website and checked the streamer ts for each of the game’s main csses.
[ Warrior: 23,607 ]
[ Rogue: 16,063 ]
[ Archer: 1,167 ]
[ Mage: 36,789 ]
[ Healer: 9,524 ]
“...”
“Well? You saw it, right?”
“I get it, not a whole lot of people passed the test. But that’s only because the average person hasn’t used a bow before.”
“I know. I had another reason for showing you that. Basically, you know how you don’t have a job anymore?”
“I am very aware of that actually, yes.”
“There’s your solution.”
“My solution?”
“Bee a streamer!”
