Chapter 7 – The One with the Shooting Range
I slipped out of my room in the middle of the night, the small handgun jabbing awkwardly against my leg inside my pocket. It was far from comfortable, but I didn't have a holster and stuffing it into my waistband felt a little too action-movie cliché. My destination: the shooting range.
The place was shaped like a dome and sat quietly to the east of Dorm 1. Inside were 20 personal training rooms, and honestly, it was way too high-tech for something as simple as target practice. But I wasn't about to complain.
The targets here were spread out strangely, positioned in odd angles and heights, because most sharpshooters at Valor didn't shoot bullets. Magic arrows could curve, bend, and even boomerang back if needed. Physics was more of a suggestion around here.
[Rank 934, Noah Swagger, confirmed.]
A mechanical voice greeted me as soon as I pressed my smartwatch against the scanner at the entrance. Hearing it out loud felt... weird. Not bad, just not mine. Yet.
I stepped into the wide, circular lobby, where ten doors were evenly spaced like slices on a pizza. I picked one and scanned my watch again.
[Rank 934, Noah Seagger, confirmed.]
The door slid open, revealing a simple, silent shooting range. About 130 square meters in total. Right in the center was a small scaffolding for the shooter, just enough height to feel a bit cool, like you were the star of your own slow-mo montage.
I climbed up. Immediately, the same polite robotic voice rang out overhead.
[Initializing targets. Please select the number of targets. You may choose between 2 and 20.]
"Ten."
Blue lights flickered around the room as the targets rose up from the floor, mole crickets. Not literal insects, thankfully, but close. They looked like someone gave regular mole crickets steroids and a weird backstory. Barely monsters, but they moved like they had caffeine for blood.
[Select your difficulty from stage 1 to stage 9.]
Difficulty scaled up their speed and patterns. Stage 9 even let them fight back, nothing lethal, more like a nasty bug bite with special effects. Still not something I wanted to test at 2 a.m.
"Stage 4."
I pulled out my gun and loaded in the magic bullets. Technically, I could try compressing magic power into bullets myself, but the current me didn't have that kind of ability or patience. And between a gun and a bow, the bow would win in sheer destructive power. But I wasn't here to win awards. I was here to shoot things clean and fast.
"Start."
As soon as I spoke, the system kicked into gear. I locked onto the target farthest to the left. It twitched, then darted off like it sensed danger. The crickets moved without a set pattern, scuttling with those creepy, twitchy legs.
But I could see something else, an afterimage, like a faint prediction of where they'd go next. Thanks to my gift, Thousand-Mile Eyes, their movements weren't erratic anymore. They were just… calculated chaos.
I pulled the trigger.
A flash of blue light burst from the barrel, quiet and clean, no dramatic gunfire or kickback. Definitely not a traditional firearm. The bullet hit its mark, disintegrating the cricket into mana dust.
I didn't even stop to admire the shot.
Bang. Another shot. And another. My body moved before I could think, smooth, efficient. My hand aimed and fired like it had done this a thousand times before.
One, two, three, four… all the way to ten.
Each shot sent a mole cricket packing back into the pixelated void. Only two remained by the time the dust settled.
"Oho."
I blinked at the two survivors in the far back. Not bad. For a first real test with my gift, this was promising.
[Your training has ended. Elapsed time: 1.37 seconds. Sharpshooting score: 80/100.]
1.37 seconds.
I whistled low. That was faster than my fastest snack run.
"This is pretty fun."
Because here's the truth of life, being good at something makes it fun. It wasn't the activity itself; it was the satisfaction of doing it well. I felt like I was back in an arcade, high score in reach.
And without skipping a beat, I reloaded and shouted:
"Start!"
Let's go again.
An eternal truth: no matter how fun something is, do it twenty times and it'll suck the soul out of you. I wrapped up my shooting session around 3 A.M. and stepped out of the training room, stretching my stiff trigger finger. It deserved a medal, or at least a massage. Just as I relaxed, a faint sound came from the room next door.
— Whoosh Whoosh Whoosh
It was subtle but sharp, like the air was being sliced. Curious, I leaned in for a peek. Technically, I shouldn't have been able to see anything through the door, but for some reason, the wall turned semi-transparent like frosted glass melting away. Perks of being the writer, I guess?
What I saw inside instantly reminded me why bows outclassed guns in this world.
"…Natalie Cross."
There she was, focused and intense. Her expression screamed serious business. Four glowing magic arrows were nocked into her bow at once. She still hadn't mastered the technique to split a single arrow into multiple ones mid-flight, but her fundamentals were rock solid.
Whoosh!
The bowstring snapped forward with power, and the four arrows launched like blue comets. They zipped through the air and struck all twenty targets dead center, no hesitation, no wasted motion.
"Amazing."
I muttered, wide-eyed. Honestly, that was impressive. And yet, archery wasn't even her final form. Another weapon was meant for her later in the story, but she was already this strong with just a bow? What kind of busted settings had I written?
Just then, Natalie Cross suddenly turned in my direction. She definitely couldn't see through the wall, but I still flinched like I'd been caught peeping and bolted down the hall before things got awkward.
---
[Sharpshooting training has increased your gift's proficiency by 3%]
[Repeated sharpshooting training has increased your gift's proficiency by 2.9%]
[Luck has been applied! Your perception and speed have increased by 0.1!]
[Repeated sharpshooting training has increased your gift's proficiency by 2.8%]…
Those messages popped up on my laptop screen one after another. All that training had paid off, Master Sharpshooter's proficiency EXP shot up in chunks, and I even gained bonus stat increases thanks to my overpowered luck stat.
Because the gift started at grade 10, leveling it up was relatively easy. Getting it to grade 9 didn't feel far off.
▷[Master Sharpshooter]
[Low-intermediate rank]
[Spirit attribute]
[Evolving — Grade 10]
[Proficiency EXP 50%]
- Master Sharpshooter's Training: Familiarity with all long ranged weapons
- Thousand-Mile Eyes: Can see far away and somewhat predict a target's movement path
- Bullet Time: Only in combat and once every 24 hours, you may spend 3 seconds in bullet time
The more I looked at it, the better it seemed. A gift that worked for any long ranged weapon? That gave me a ridiculous amount of flexibility. Guns were perfect for now, but later I'd need to switch to bows for raw damage.
"But what's up with the SP?"
[You have obtained 0.2 SP!]
[You have obtained 0.2 SP!]
[An auspicious gift! You have obtained 1 bonus SP.]
[You have obtained 0.2 SP]…
All that work and I barely scraped together 5 SP. Training was efficient, sure, but boring. The 64 SP I got earlier just for being unique and choosing a gun? That had come from standing out. This grindy stuff didn't seem to pay nearly as well.
"Tsk."
Still, SP was SP. Tomorrow, or technically, today, we had the dreaded physical combat training. I wasn't expecting to become Hercules overnight, but I needed to at least pretend I belonged on the battlefield.
My biggest problem? Stamina.
Thanks to funneling everything into luck, my physical ability was currently somewhere between "couch potato" and "mildly anemic." If I couldn't fix that, I was going to be a very dead marksman.
I began browsing gear.
[Training Sneakers]
- Specially crafted sneakers. Will increase stamina and speed by 0.3 points.
"Maybe with this…"
Gear was the easiest shortcut. Boosting my stats directly was now off the table, but equipment was still fair game. I cracked my knuckles and got to work customizing.
[Mystical Training Sneakers]
- Specially crafted sneakers with a mystical power. Will increase stamina and speed by 0.3 points. Will enhance energy and stamina recovery.
[You do not have enough SP.]
Welp. That version was immediately rejected. I only had 5 SP, and apparently my mystical sneaker dreams were worth more than that.
But hey, I wasn't done yet.
[Mystical Training Sneakers]
- Specially crafted sneakers with a mystical power. Will increase stamina and speed by 0.3 points.
- When activated, energy and stamina recovery is enhanced for 1 hour.
- Cooldown: 24 hours.
- Duration: 1 month.
I added three restrictions: a one-hour active effect, a 24-hour cooldown, and a built-in expiration date after a month. Basically, the Costco sample of magic gear.
[You have used 5 SP. Would you like to save?]
"Oh! It worked!"
I slammed the Enter key with the force of a man who'd just won the lottery. A pale blue light burst from the screen and wrapped around the plain sneakers I'd left on the table.
They shimmered, glowed, and transformed into sleek trainers with a mystical shine and a glowing stripe, like they came straight out of a fantasy Nike ad.
Perfect.