CHAPTER 13 - ARCHERY TRAINING

50 miles east from the army camp was an open area surrounded by trees and stones from all sides creating a fence-like structure. All the trees and stones had circles drawn on them, the circles were colored with different colors creating several layers. The outermost circular layer was colored in black while the smallest and the innermost circular layer was colored In red. The whole setup of the area looked like a target training ground.

Aria, the leader of the archers was sitting on a stone lost in her thoughts. She was dressed in her usual green dress that reached up to her knees, her pink short hair was tied up in a ponytail giving her a teenage-girl-kind-of vibe. Her deep blue eyes looked like a shinning pearl when the rays of the sun shined on her face. Beside her were a bow and a quilt with some arrows on it. The bow was brown in color with some golden metal-like structure attached at the body of the bow which was curved toward the wielder, it had a handle-like structure that attached the two bending curve body structure at the middle section. The handle was wide enough to accommodate two palms at the same time and it was embedded with a shiny red jewel and a small hole that was barely noticeable.

When Olivier arrived at the training ground, he was surprised by this picturesque scene. The view before him looked like something that came out of a painting. He just stared silently for a while. 'She is beautiful. He praised Aria inside his mind.

"You are here". A cold voice snapped Olivier out of his thought. Aria picked up her bow and the quilt and jumped off the stone performing a flip in the air and landed on the ground without making a single sound. Her movements were graceful and natural.

'What a show-off'. Olivier was impressed by her flip. Aria walked to the middle of the training ground that she had built. Olivier followed behind her and when he looked around, he saw targets drawn on the trees and stone. It did not need a genius to figure out the purpose of those targets. Back on Earth, he had seen similar targets being used in the dart-throwing game in the arcades.

He looked around curiously. At that moment, Aria drew her bow and let loose several arrows. When he looked at the targets again, an arrow was embedded exactly at the center of the red circle of each target. "From today onwards, you will learn archery with me. We will use those targets to practice every day. We will train here until you can hit that spot where my arrows landed every single time, then we will take it to next level. But today, your goal will be to hit the green circle". Aria said as she passed another bow and quilt with arrows to Olivier. Olivier was curious from where she had taken out that bow but he did not ask.

When he saw the bow, his expression changed a little. "Yes, this is the bow of the archer you killed". Aria stated confirming his guess.

"Is this your idea of revenge? Making me use her bow every day to train so when I use it I am reminded of her and feel bad for her". Olivier questioned.

"Out of all the archers who their life, she had the best bow. I am just giving you the best bow so that you can improve faster". She replied in her voice. Olivier noticed that she did not deny it and just gave some excuse.

"Well, I will think of it as training then. I will think of this bow as the remainder, a remainder to never hesitate to kill my enemies ever again". Olivier said to himself.

He then looked at all the targets on the tree. The target was colored violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, the same as the colors of the rainbow. As he looked carefully, he noticed that the green color was the fourth color on the target board.

"Ok. Should I try shooting arrows first?" Olivier asked as he drew an arrow from his quilt.

"Give it a try. I will correct your mistake as you shoot. Also, remember to control your strength so that you do not end up destroying the target boards. Control of strength is very important in archery. Having better control of your strength will allow you to manage your stamina and shoot for a longer period of time. also, do not use your energy when training until I tell you otherwise. First, we will train like normal person. When you get a good grasp of the bow and achieve good accuracy, we will start the real archery training. We will then start training our archer race's archery and our unique ocular skill ".

Olivier nodded. He thought it made sense. First, he needed to get used to the feeling of having a bow in his hand and the quilt full of arrows in his back and start thinking like a real archer. Then he imagined all the cool archer poses he saw in the movies and read on the book back on Earth. Thinking for a while, he decided. Then, put his left foot forward and his right foot backward in an arch. Then, using his right hand to hold the bow and left hand to grip the bow, he extended the bowstring. Thinking of a way to look even cooler, he shifted his upper body to the right and closed his left eye to aim. Then he released the arrow, feeling satisfied. But the arrow was way off the mark. Olivier lamented in regret, if only it hit the red mark how cool he would look? Sigh..

Aria watched the scene in a dumbfounded manner. Even her cold and frosty face had a change in expression. "What were you doing?" Aria asked Olivier who was sighing in regret.

"Of course, I was shooting arrows. Didn't look cool?" Olivier replied as his eyes shined with hope wanting to be praised for his coolness.

Aria sighed when saw his hopeful expression. She wanted to reprimand him for his behavior but she could not bring herself to do that when she saw his sincere and hopeful eyes. "Well, that was cool I guess". She said with twitching eyes. "But that was ... uh.. disastrous. Your posture was horrible and you used the wrong hand to hold the bow. Always used to dominant hand to grip the arrow and use your weaker hand to hold the bow. I noticed you used the right hand to hold the bow even though that is your dominant hand. From now on, use your left hand to hold the bow". Aria instructed Olivier.

Olivier immediately shifted the bow to his left hand. "And we need to fix your posture as well. Since you are practicing archery for the first time, separate your feet at a shoulder-width apart and stand up straight. When holding your bow, your arms should be perpendicular to your body, your arms stretching horizontally and your body standing straight vertically. Also, we need to fix your grip. Hold your bow like this". she placed the bow grip in the bend between her index finger and thumb, and relaxed all of your other fingers. Her hand had very little contact with the bow grip. As she stretched the bowstring she instructed, "When at full draw, the string should touch the tip of your nose while you look clearly through the peep sight. The placement of the release hand varies from person to person, but it's important to keep it consistent each time you shoot". She instructed as she released her arrow. "This is the most fundamental posture for archery. We will use different movements in different situations but the form is always the same with different dynamics".

Ollivier listened attentively as he followed her advice. When pulled the bowstring this time, he felt less tension on his shoulder, the aiming felt much easier and the tension on the bowstring just felt right. By instinct, he released the arrows. It was still way off-mark but the motion felt smoother.

"Good. Now practice. The only way to master archery is to train. Now train. Shoot arrows until you couldn't anymore". Aria gave out her rare praise and some words of motivation.

Olivier then began shooting arrows.

...........

Olivier thus began a scheduled training life. Each day he trained from morning till after afternoon with Kratos. After that, he trained from afternoon until late evening with Aria.

After returning back to the town hall beaten and exhausted, he would talk with Saya. Saya daily reported on the progress around the village. Bryan and Erwin, the two builders of the legacy village had been very busy these days. Every day they had to work from morning to night upgrading the structures around the village. As usual, Saya reported:

"Chief, according to your instructions, both the gold storage and the elixir storage has been upgraded to level 6. Now, each of the storage units could store up to 45,000 amounts of gold or elixir. Since we have two of each, we can now store 90,000 amount in resources. Adding the treasury in the town hall, we have hit the 100,000 milestones in storage".

"Wait. I thought the treasury in the town hall could only store up to 2000 amount of resources".

"You really are dumb, chief. That was when the town hall was at level 2".

"Really?"

"You are silly".

"How am I silly?"

"Because you are silly?"

Cough...

"Then start upgrading the gold mine and the elixir collector from tomorrow. we will start collecting resources. Then it will finally be the time to upgrade the strength of the barbarians".

"Mmmm".

When Saya left the room, Olivier was deep in his thought. Different thoughts were spinning in his mind and he was already calculating his next move. 'I can trust Uncle Kratos but not all the barbarians. I am still unsure whether I can trust the archers. It really makes me uneasy to increase their strength knowing they will be able to kill me more easily if they tried the next time. Sigh.. If only there was a way to win the trust of other barbarians and the archer....".Then, his a bulb glowed in his mind out of the blue as he stood up from his chair".

The next day, early in the morning, Olivier arrived at the army camp where the barbarian resided. His upper body was naked and he was holding a huge broadsword in his hand. He looked at the barbarians and smiled warmly, "Care for a spar?"

In the afternoon, some of the archers were resting and talking while enjoying the sun while others were training in their camp. Olivier arrived at the camp dressed in neat and clean clothes smiling like a real gentleman. He said, "Good afternoon beautiful ladies. I wanted to clear some of my doubts about archery".