The sky and its single star

Sofia grinned and lifted up her bow, giving it a soft kiss on its wooden body.

"Why tell when I can show, why don't we go into the forest and have ourselves a little hunt?"

And with that, the duo walk out of the Dome through the large tunnel, Kai glancing at the murals as he passes. Once surrounded by the thick, black tree trunks of the outer forest again, Kai sighs and asks:

"So... what exactly are we going to hunt?"

Sofia smiles and nocks an arrow into her bow.

"Let me ask you Kai, what's the better way to break something in? Slow and steady, or fast and hard?"

"I don't know, probably slow and steady if I had to guess."

Sofia shakes her and lifts up her bow, holding it steady.

"That would be true in normal situations, but this isn't a normal situation, is it? We have to fight in a war in just over two weeks after all. It's been over four years since I last used a bow after all."

Kai frowned, looking at the red haired woman as she practices pulling on the bowstring, her slender fingers moving with expertise.

She does look like she knows what she's doing... Then again, I don't know how a pro is meant to use a bow.

"So, what? Fast and hard is the right answer?"

Lowering the hardwood bow, Sofia turns to Kai and shakes her head.

"No, that's also not right. While it might help in the short term to get good quick, it would hinder my foundations later on down the line. It would be like trying to swim without using your arms, it would work for a while but eventually you would slow down."

"So then what is the right answer?"

Sofia grins and the bushes behind her rustle and a beast that resembles a honey badger jumps out. Black as night, teeth as sharp as blades and a crescent moon in its third eye. The beast soars through the air as as it goes to bite the Sofia.

"The answer?" She turns her body quickly, quicker than Kai could ever move. Sofia's form seemed to twitch slightly, as if even her body couldn't handle the speed.

Yeah... so her innate ability is something about speed.

Her hand flies backwards, pulling hard at the bowstring. She quickly let's go, a twang echoes through the air as the bowstring cracks. The arrow which was nocked flies freely through the air, embedding itself right into the beasts open mouth, launching it backward as it got struck with the arrow.

The beast whacked off the hard bark of one of the trees with a sickening crunch, whatever bones broke, there was a lot of them.

Sofia turns back to Kai, her movements slowing down to a normal humans speed, she lowers her bow and smirks.

"Just trust your gut, that's the best option in this scenario, and my guts never wrong."

Shit... that was too cool, am I blushing?

"Damn... you said you used the bow before, how much have you used it?"

Sofia sighed and hung the black bow over her shoulder.

"Back when I was in school yeah, I was in the archery club, I was pretty good too. But I had to drop out due to some... family issues."

Why does everyone around me have some kind of backstory. Noelle knows some super bag guy somehow, same as Sofia. And Sofia even has some sort of family ties to something. What about me? Why don't I get a cool-

Looking back at all he knows so far, he shivers and realises something.

...Maybe cool backstories aren't actually that cool.

Noelle seems to have some complex trauma which Sofia seems to know something about. Thinking about it, Kai would much rather have a normal life than some mentally scarring one. For all he knows, Sofia could also have some type of trauma that he doesn't know about, she could just be putting up a front.

"I'm just not going to ask, being oblivious seems much nicer than knowing anything at this point."

Sofia chuckles at his remark, inwardly making Kai proud. Sofia starts to walk back towards the tunnel of the Dome, but turns her head and waits for Kai to follow.

Once beside her again, she looks at him and smiles.

"I would have to agree with you, being oblivious is really nice in situations like those, but not so much situations like these. You know, talking animals and a four armed demon."

Kai smiles softly as they get engulfed by the dark entrance of the cave.

Now, he has a choice to make though. One thing that Failure taught him after he first got the bracers was that any item one obtains is stored in their soul, allowing you to equip and unequip them at anytime in exchange for Mana, the amount depending on the strength of the item. Another thing is that you are able to give your items to someone else if you wish.

He's seen Sofia's skill with the bow, how it's an item that she got with a recharging quiver, even how her innate ability seems to work perfectly with a bow. Being able to pull the same amount of arrows in thirty seconds that Kai could in two minutes due to her extreme speed is insane.

His bracers seem like they would suit her perfectly. Six stat points were basically negligible for Kai, if he wanted to, he could spend six of his sixty-three unnasigned stat points and get the same effect. But a boost to archery based on those stats... no matter how small, a boost to a skill would have to be much more useful than six stats.

Sighing, Kai stops walking and looks at Sofia. A few moments later she notices he stopped following so she turns and walks towards him.

"What? Why did you stop walking? You're not going to try and touch the mural again are you?"

Scowling, Kai remembers the embarrassing memory and inwardly debates if he should actually give away the bracers, rationality versus selfishness, survivability versus practicality.

... Rationality and survivability win of course.

"Give me your hand." He grumbles as he steps towards her, now within an arms reach. Sofia raises an eyebrow curiously and asks:

"Why?"

"Just do it, I want it to be some sort of surprise after all the shit I went through for it, getting poisoned and all..."

Sofia hesitates, but relents and puts out her arm. Kai places his hand on hers and opens his status.

Item: Abominable bracers of the gibbous moon (Rare)

Bracers created...

A feeling of loss wells up somewhere in his chest as he gives the final order. Then again, he won't miss the bracers too much as he mainly just liked the way they looked on his arms, they made them look less scrawny.

Funny how life changes. From overweight to scrawny, if I was fed anything other than porridge and had some idea of how to work out properly maybe I would have some muscle.

"What?" Sofia flinches and pulls her arm away from Kai, but then freezes as her eyes stop moving.

She's reading her status.

Her eyes widen as she swallows, she looks back up at Kai, then down at her arms as a pair of dark red bracers form out of thin air, wrapping themselves around her forearms.

"Woah..." Awe creeps into her voice as she looks back up at Kai, her eyes wide in shock and... gratitude?

"A boost in my archery based on my Strength and Dexterity, it's litteraly perfect."

She smiles and places a hand on Kai's shoulder, looking him in the eyes.

"Thank you, Kai, I really appreciate this."

I would've just taken it back if you hadn't...

But even with thoughts like those, he still can't stop a smile from forming on his blushing face, he nods his head slightly as he answers.

"Yeah... don't worry about it, it would've have done me much good anyway, plus I get loads of unnasigned stat points every level up anyway if I wanted to increase my Strength or Dexterity."

Sofia lifts her hand off his shoulder and looks at him blankly, blinking a few times.

"Really? I only get four unnasigned stats per level up? What sort of class do you even have?"

Kai tenses up, but quickly relaxes. There's not really any need to be so secretive about his class.

I'm sure other people have good classes. Or maybe I'm just extremely lucky? I didn't even get offered a common class. I don't think Sofia or Noelle has a common class either, they seem too strong for that. At minimum, I think they both have rare classes.

But why was I so lucky though? Actually, I don't know if a class that has a 60% chance of death when picking it is lucky...

"I'm an apprentice... mage? I'm an apprentice of something, just I'm not sure what... exactly I'm an apprentice of."

It's only once the words come put of his mouth he realises how dumb it sounds. How can you be an apprentice of something you don't know?

Sofia stares at him blankly, then blinks a few times, then shrugs.

"Well it must be good for you to pick it, my options were all kind of eh. I had a plain, common archer and a fire mage as two of my options, I obviously picked the third."

Curious, Kai leans in slightly towards the red haired woman and asks:

"Which is?"

Sofia shrugs again and looks away from Kai, up to the sky...

... Well, the treetops completely blocking out the sky.

"Astral archer, it was called. It's a rare class so it could've been a lot worse. It's just the archer class but with bonus effects to do with stars, it also ties in perfectly with my innate ability."

"Huh, well it sounds like a pretty good class. My class didn't give any bonus effects, it just gives a lot of stat points per level."

And the fact I'm now the student of some possibly crazy God.

Sofia chuckled as they approached the cave exit into the Dome. It wasn't long since they left, but the amount and depths of the defensive trenches are constantly changing in preparation for the end of the tutorial.

"Alright Kai, if you don't mind, I'm going to go get used to these bracers and practice my archery. Really, thank you again for them, they're a really good item."

She pats his shoulder a few times before walking away towards where the boars do their armour making.

She's not going to use them as target practice... is she? Nah...

With some faith that Sofia won't try and hit the moon boars with her new bow, Kai checks how long is left in the tutorial and sees that only eight hours have passed since he asked Failure to teach him.

What can I even do now? Everyone's doing something else and I don't want to read the diary anymore... Is there any skills I can practice with-

Realisation hits and Kai thinks back to his previous conversation with Sofia about the best way to get stronger and better quick.

'Just trust your gut, that's the best option in this scenario...' I mean, she's not wrong, and my gut hasn't exactly been bad to me either thus far... Well, except for Sleepy manipulating me that time.

Now that he thinks about it, it really isn't a bad idea to trust your gut. Gut instincts were always thought on positively back on Earth, and for most they are reliable. If Kai was to go off his gut wants to do right now, he wasn't sure if he'd agree.

Will of the Kaiser

Something in his gut was screaming at him to use his innate ability, or maybe its to learn how to use it more efficiently. Getting a random beast everytime he uses his ability has worked out so far, but what about later on? What if he gets unlucky in an important fight? Or he gets an otherworldly creature that will make him lose his mind even more than the Goblin or Hobgoblin.

And what about when he gets more Mana? Up until now, the only way to get his mind back was to pass out from Mana exhaustion, but what about when he has vast reserves of the resource and he randomly gets assigned Goblin mode.

If it takes 10 Mana a minute, what about when he has 10,000 Mana, or 100,000. If he had 10,000 Mana it would take over sixteen hours to run out, and who knows what he could do in that time?

But the feeling in his gut wouldn't dissapear no matter how hard he tried to deny it, so Kai knew what he was going to do for the next few hours.

Practice his innate ability.