Chương 25: One Bow, Zero Archery Skills

The following months passed faster than Sieghart expected. Master Thorne arrived at the farm every week with a wagon filled with depleted weapons, enchanted farming equipment, lamps, heating plates, and several tools whose original purposes weren't immediately obvious. Sieghart charged everything beneath Edric's supervision. The shopkeeper reduced his payment to cover transportation, but the arrangement still earned Sieghart more than traveling to town by carriage.

It also provided regular training for Mana Transfusion. His control improved with every visit. Sieghart learned to recognize unstable enchantments, adjust his transmission speed to match different magical channels, and stop transferring mana before damaged runes became overloaded. Master Thorne occasionally tried to slip an experimental item into the collection without providing an explanation.

Sieghart responded by refusing to touch anything that hummed, smoked, vibrated by itself, or possessed stains the old man couldn't identify. The income transformed Sieghart's room. Books occupied the desk first, followed by the shelf beside his bed. When that space became full, Edric built another shelf against the opposite wall. Before long, books stood in carefully organized stacks on the floor.

Sieghart purchased volumes concerning magic, Aura, monsters, enchantments, geography, history, agriculture, medicine, and every other subject that appeared remotely useful. His grandparents occasionally questioned why a five-year-old required a six-hundred-page history of regional mining disputes. Sieghart explained that it had been inexpensive. That didn't answer their question, but it prevented them from asking another. He also saved part of every payment.

Books were useful, but complete independence would require more than information. Sieghart wanted enough money to purchase magical materials, travel without assistance, and survive if House Emberhart suddenly decided to interfere with his life. A few days earlier, Sieghart had celebrated his fifth birthday. His grandparents organized a small party at the farm, inviting several workers and two neighboring families.

There had been sweet bread, roasted meat, fruit preserves, and far more attention than Sieghart preferred. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the celebration. Unlike the birthdays of his previous life, no one compared his accomplishments to those of a more successful relative. No one asked about college, sports, or what he intended to do with his future. The only expectations involved eating too much and pretending to be surprised when Elara revealed the cake.

Sieghart succeeded at both tasks with a degree of enthusiasm that would have shocked anyone familiar with his usual restraint. Before the party, his grandparents had asked what he wanted as a gift. They reminded him that he possessed his own money and could purchase almost anything appropriate for someone his age. Sieghart could have paid for the gift himself, but doing that would defeat its purpose.

His grandparents clearly wanted to give him something instead of watching him treat his birthday like another financial transaction. He therefore allowed them to purchase a weapon he had been examining during Master Thorne's weekly visits: a smaller version of the enchanted bow he had charged during his first day at the shop. Master Thorne had modified the design to suit Sieghart's body. The limbs were shorter, the draw weight had been reduced, and the grip fit comfortably inside his hands.

Pale runes still covered the dark wood and connected directly to the bowstring. The weapon could store ten magical arrows under normal conditions. Master Thorne refused to guess how many it might accept when Sieghart charged it, claiming that he was tired of discovering hidden features inside his own enchantments. Sieghart had charged it carefully after receiving the gift. Twenty arrow markings eventually appeared near the grip, but he stopped there rather than testing the absolute capacity inside the farmhouse.

The magical projectiles possessed less power than those created by the larger bow. They were still strong enough to pierce wooden targets, small monsters, and any thief foolish enough to attack an armed five-year-old. Sieghart appreciated the weapon for another reason. It allowed him to carry magical attacks without preparing the emotions required by his elemental spells. Drawing the string created an arrow immediately, giving him a fast offensive option during situations where Fireball would take too long.

"I want Grandpa to teach me archery," Sieghart had said after receiving the bow. Edric had agreed without hesitation. Although his main Aura wasn't associated with archery, he had used bows for hunting and defending the farm long before Sieghart arrived. Their lessons began the next morning. Edric first taught him how to stand, hold the weapon, position his shoulders, and draw the string without twisting his wrist. Sieghart had expected the process to be simple.

Pointing a bow toward a target and releasing an arrow looked considerably easier when someone else performed the action. His first ordinary arrow traveled three meters before striking the ground. The second flew above the target and disappeared into a field, forcing Sieghart to spend ten minutes searching for it. The third arrow struck the wooden frame supporting the target. Edric generously described that as progress, although Sieghart suspected his grandfather was trying not to laugh.

Using magical arrows made aiming slightly easier because the projectiles flew faster and possessed no imperfect shafts or feathers. Unfortunately, faster ammunition also reached the wrong destination more quickly. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Sieghart trained every day for an entire week. His accuracy improved gradually, and he eventually struck the target more often than the surrounding landscape. However, the system remained completely silent.

No notification announced the acquisition of Archery. No path appeared on his status screen. His Dexterity didn't increase, and the bow refused to transform him into a natural marksman. Sieghart had learned Fire Magic after creating a flame. Water Creation unlocked almost immediately after he discovered the correct emotional state. Even Protection had appeared once he successfully circulated mana beneath his skin. Archery offered nothing.

He could learn the movements through repetition, but the system didn't recognize them as a skill. Either one week wasn't enough, or Sieghart couldn't acquire abilities unrelated to magic. That possibility bothered him more than missing the target. His status might not be a universal system capable of recording everything he learned. It might be a specialized structure created by his infinite mana. If so, his magical affinities hadn't merely become stronger.

Infinite mana might have consumed every other possible affinity, leaving him capable of developing only skills that directly involved magical energy. Sieghart didn't intend to stop practicing. A system skill would have accelerated his improvement, but people on Earth had learned archery for thousands of years without receiving notifications. He possessed hands, eyes, a functioning brain, and an unusually patient grandfather.

That combination should eventually produce acceptable results, even if his status refused to provide assistance. Still, the absence of an Archery skill encouraged Sieghart to examine the relationship between inherited traits, Aura, and magical affinity. The books filling his room finally provided enough information for him to recognize how unusual his existence truly was. Aura affinity was strongly influenced by blood.

Two parents with powerful combat Auras usually produced children with similar potential, although the exact nature of the child's Aura could differ. A swordsman and an armored guardian might have a child suited for either discipline. In rare cases, the child could develop an Aura combining traits inherited from both parents. People without combat Auras occasionally produced children with exceptional fighting potential. Sieghart's mother was one example.

Elara and Edric possessed useful Auras suited for farming and practical work, yet their daughter had awakened an unusually powerful combat Aura. That rare awakening had allowed her to become a warrior and eventually marry Lord Alaric Emberhart. Her strength might have represented an unexpected bloodline trait inherited from a distant ancestor. The opposite situation was considerably less common. Two powerful combatants almost never produced a child without a strong fighting Aura.

Even when the child inherited a different type, that Aura usually possessed obvious combat applications. Sieghart's father commanded the Emberhart forces and carried the accumulated martial potential of a noble bloodline that had defended the border for generations. His mother possessed enough natural talent to rise beyond the limitations of her birth. By every known principle of inheritance, Sieghart should have awakened an exceptional combat Aura.

The old man who examined him after birth had probably expected to discover the foundation of another legendary warrior. Instead, he found almost nothing. That explained his parents' reaction more clearly than Sieghart wanted. They hadn't merely received a weak child. From their perspective, they had witnessed something that should have been nearly impossible. Sieghart represented a failure of bloodline, tradition, and every expectation surrounding House Emberhart.

His younger sibling was presumably being raised as the true heir because their parents believed his existence had been a terrible accident unlikely to happen twice. The knowledge didn't make Sieghart forgive them. Understanding why someone abandoned a child didn't transform the decision into something reasonable. It merely gave their disappointment a historical explanation. His parents had examined the absence of a combat Aura and concluded that he possessed no useful potential.

They hadn't known that his system displayed an infinity symbol where his mana reserve should have been. Perhaps infinite mana had replaced the Aura he was supposed to inherit. Magical affinity and Aura might compete during a child's development, with the stronger force determining which paths became available. If that theory was correct, his infinite reserve would have overwhelmed everything else before birth. Sieghart hadn't failed to inherit his parents' power. His own abnormality might have erased it.

Unfortunately, none of his books discussed anyone with infinite mana. Most barely explained advanced spell development, and the sections concerning magical affinities remained disappointingly vague. Sieghart learned that emotions helped shape elemental mana, enchantments could store magical effects, and raw energy could be transmitted between compatible targets. He found no reliable method for creating entirely new magical paths. The only consistent clue appeared in histories describing foreign societies.

Magic was far more common beyond the territories controlled by traditional Aura families. Several neighboring cultures trained spellcasters alongside warriors. More distant nations supposedly relied on ritualists, monster tamers, alchemists, and other specialists who manipulated mana through methods condemned within Emberhart territory. Unfortunately, the books described those societies with obvious hostility.

Their founders had often been fallen humans who rejected the limits of natural Aura and pursued strength through forbidden experiments. They consumed monster flesh, implanted cores, modified their descendants, and performed rituals designed to steal or combine affinities. Their civilizations had been built upon an endless desire for power that eventually became indistinguishable from madness. The histories called them corrupted kingdoms, fallen territories, or nations of heretics.

They possessed deeper magical knowledge than Sieghart's society, but much of that knowledge had been developed through methods he had no intention of repeating. Sieghart didn't want to eat monster cores, replace parts of his body, sacrifice anyone, or invite mysterious entities to live inside his head. He already had one impossible advantage. Adding uncontrolled mutations seemed unnecessarily greedy. However, madness didn't make every discovery useless.

A dangerous society could still understand mana better than the people who dismissed combat magic as cowardly or inefficient. Sieghart closed the final book and looked around his crowded room. Months of reading had expanded his knowledge of history, Aura, and the world, but they hadn't taught him how to unlock Projection, Healing, or any advanced elemental path. The answers he needed might not exist inside respectable libraries.

They might be hidden inside books written by the very people his society considered monsters. That presented a difficult problem. Sieghart wanted to expand his magic without becoming a fallen human. To do that, he might eventually need to study those who had fallen, and discover exactly where they stepped off the edge.