10 Infusion

Jin had tried practicing with the short and long bow over the next few days and had come up with a few pros and cons of each bow.

It was mostly what he had already deduced before but it was more extreme once he experienced it himself.

The long bows he found indeed had more 'strength' behind the arrows and could be shot longer with more accuracy.

The issue was that these long bows were too long and clunky.

As for the short bows, they were very easy to handle but clearly lacked the power of the short bows.

Jin wasn't too familiar with archery from his previous lives but there was something he had realized even with his shallow knowledge.

'None of these bows... None of them are recurve bows.'

Jin knew that recurve bows allowed for a bow of the same length to shoot further and have more strength. It was either that the technology level of this world was before recurves were invented or his father simply couldn't gather one.

Another thing to ask Luca once he returned.

The main issue had at this current point was that, despite having read the basic manual left by Luca, he was having a hard time getting the arrows to land properly.

The front yard of his house was roughly 40 meters in length so he had placed a makeshift target, which was basically just a large log with its bark stripped and a circle drawn, to practice with.

This was probably likely due to one other issue, the bows were a bit too large for him.

Jin was only around 1.4 meters or so tall, and the longbows were actually far longer than his actual height. Though it didn't touch the ground as he held them, the issue was the draw length of the bows as his arms weren't long enough to wield them.

As for the shortest bow in the shed, it was still just barely shorter than himself. It was clear that these bows had been designed for adults, which made sense of course but it was still annoying to Jin.

So instead he focused on his basic training and decided to await Luca's return.

He played around with a small dagger he had found in the shed and had used to create the target log. It was a small double bladed dagger made of some blue metal.

He had picked this out mainly because he had noticed a small amount of wind essence was released every time he swung the dagger.

'Is this an enchanted dagger of a sort?' Jin thought back to the various games he had played during his younger days on Earth as he played around with the small dagger.

-----

Jin sat by a boulder this time, facing towards the southern side. He had been repeating this for the past few days, awaiting his father's return as there wasn't much he could do outside regular training. Also, he had run out of a few food ingredients and he himself had no money to purchase any so instead he had sustained on various foraged goods and just rice.

At that moment, he sensed some irregularities in the usually free flowing wind essence. It seemed like a storm was approaching from that direction before soon revealing a small human figure who was shrouded in this green essence.

He soon realized it was Luca, moving down the mountains at a speed that even Jin could barely follow in the distance.

Ssst!

Luca soon appeared before Jin's shocked eyes with sweat dripping down his face as held onto a long box on his back. "Hey Jin, I'm back."

Jin smiled back at Luca before curiously looking at the box before following Luca back into their yard.

"Ah, I see what Lady White had given you." Luca noticed Jin's eyes and nodded. "Good, it should help you on your road of archery."

"You know about these white eyes too? Someone called Ahn had come to teach me about these and he knew you" Jin was surprised. His father was becoming more and more mysterious the more Jin learned about him.

"Oh, that boy had come? He should've stuck around and greeted me, tsk." Luca grunted. "He's just one of the kids I tutored in the past."

"Tutored?" His father was a teacher?

"Haha, it's all in the past." Jin chuckled as he walked. "If you really want to know more about your old man's glory days, I'll tell you more later. There's a few things I need to do for now."

"We ran out of some food, I was getting worried that I'd have to survive on mushrooms and fruits." Jin spoke as they walked into the shade of a roof.

Their house usually never ran out of meats as Luca often went out hunting. But as this world had no refrigeration system, they never had more than a few days worth of meat at a time unless they were preparing for the wintertime where they would preserve some meats.

"Ah right, I forgot to leave you some money. That's my bad, I'll go buy a lot of food later since we'll need it soon anyway." Luca chuckled.

"Need?" Jin responded.

"Right. I hurried back on my own but in a few days a guest will arrive. I went to visit one of the special bow makers I knew from the past in the main branch and specially invited him. He's not a wind element user so he'll take a bit longer to arrive. I came back on my own first for you and some preparations." Luca explained. "I visited him but he didn't have a lot of bows that seemed like it would match your height or strength. So instead I invited him to make you a custom bow for you."

"Oh... That's great actually but wouldn't that be expensive? And then, what else is in this box?" Jin asked as he gazed at the long box Luca had brought.

"Well, we aren't as poor as you think son. Though we live in a rural area, I've made my fair share of money in the past but I didn't really pay him much other than the materials. He's actually just one of my old friends of my past and he owes me a favor." Luca explained. "As for this box, it's the materials for bows and arrows that I brought instead. It's because I need to do some preparations to the materials within the box."

Luca opened the box to reveal various pieces of wood of different color and a few bowstrings. "As for preparations, you should be able to see the flow of wind with those eyes so just watch."

Then he held out one of the long wooden pieces before a marvelous sight befell before Jin's eyes.

A tremendous amount of wind essence started to gather around Luca's hands and got sucked into the wooden piece in his hands. Because of this, a small storm seemed to have appeared around their village as wind continued to flow into their yard.

'My father is definitely not just at the qi condensation stage.' Jin deduced as he watched this scene.

Though he had never met any others in the qi condensation stage outside his father or perhaps Ahn, he could instinctively feel that the aura Luca was radiating at the moment was leagues above what he felt from Ahn.

Soon, Luca stopped this process and sat down as more sweat flowed down his face. "Phew. This is a step called infusion. It's something anyone at the qi condensation stage and above can perform to a degree and it's just driving elemental essence into a material and holding it within it until the material itself absorbs it."

"Though I advise against doing it often as it's quite taxing. Also the material and the element are rather dependent on each other since most woods won't be able to hold much fire essence before quickly burning away." Luca explained.

"Here." Luca handed Jin a few silver coins. "You can go get some food while I do this actually, it's better if I focus on this."

"Alright." Jin received the silver and walked out, glancing over his shoulder again as the wind essence started to flow towards his yard once again.

And for the next few days, a storm continuously brew above their small village.