Chapter 730
Harold opened his mouth, probably to argue that it wasn’t pride, it was pressure training, it was…
Cor raised a single finger. Harold shut his mouth.
Selene sighed dramatically. “Cor hates joy.”
Cor didn’t even look at her. “Cor hates funerals.”
That killed the mood better than any lecture. For a moment, there was only the labyrinth’s warm breath and the faint drip of water somewhere inside the stone.
Then Harold’s shoulders dropped slightly. He scratched the back of his neck, expression sour.
“…Fine,” he muttered.
Selene rolled her eyes but nodded anyway. Aleia gave Cor a small, approving nod, quiet agreement without making a show of it.
Even Ludger nodded once. He hadn’t come here to prove anything.
He’d come to steal competence.
“Good,” Cor said, satisfied. “We do this properly.”
Harold exhaled and jerked his chin toward the side. “Alright, then. Lesson first, run second.”
Aleia stepped closer to Ludger, eyes flicking up to the bow on his back.
“Let me see how you’re holding it,” she said.
Ludger unshouldered the bow and offered it without comment.
Aleia’s hands were efficient. She checked the string tension, the grip angle, the balance. Then she handed it back and stepped behind him.
“First,” she said, “don’t fight the bow. Let it settle.”
She nudged his elbow slightly. “Your draw arm, relax the shoulder. You’re already trying to muscle it. That’s not how archery works. You don’t win by forcing the string. You win by repeating the same motion until it’s boring.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed, not offended, absorbing.
Aleia continued, calm and precise.
“Anchor point,” she said, tapping lightly near his jawline. “Same spot every time. If your anchor changes, your shot changes. And in a labyrinth, a small change means you miss… and a miss means you just warned something with venom.”
She adjusted his stance with two quick taps to his feet. “Knees soft. Weight centered. You don’t want to be rigid, you want to be stable.”
Ludger lifted the bow, mimicking her instruction. His movements were careful, almost overly controlled, like he was handling a tool he didn’t fully trust yet.
“Breathing,” Aleia added. “Don’t hold it too long. Draw on the inhale, settle, release on the exhale. If you hold your breath, your body shakes. If your body shakes, you miss.”
Selene leaned in, grinning. “And if you miss, Cor lectures you until you die of boredom.”
Cor grunted. “If he misses, he dies of venom. Or suffers a lot until he heals himself.”
Aleia ignored them both and kept her focus on Ludger.
“Last tip,” she said. “Your eyes.”
Ludger glanced at her.
“Don’t stare at the target like you’re trying to intimidate it,” Aleia said, voice dry. “Look at a point. A single point. Choose where you want the arrow to land, not the creature you want to hit.”
Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly, a restrained acknowledgment.
“Understood.”
Aleia nodded once, satisfied.
“Good,” she said. “Now we go in. And you don’t try to learn everything at once.”
Ludger didn’t respond. Everyone pretended not to notice the way his expression said he absolutely would. Ludger held the bow the way Aleia told him to.
Anchor point. Soft knees. Breath timed to movement. Eyes on a single point, not the whole target.
He repeated the motion twice without loosing anything, just feeling the draw and release in the muscles of his back, letting the string’s tension settle into something consistent instead of forced.
And all the while, a part of his mind waited. For the familiar flicker. For the System to notice.
For that clean, inevitable line of text that always appeared the moment he pushed hard enough in a new direction.
[New Class Acquired]
[Archer]
Something. Anything. Nothing came. No chime. No pressure behind the eyes. No sudden sense of a new framework snapping into place.
Ludger frowned slightly and tried again, more deliberately. He drew, held, and released the string without an arrow, focusing on the details Aleia had emphasized. He expected the System to reward the intent.
Still nothing.
It wasn’t like Aquamancer, where the creature had shoved something into him and the class had landed like a brand. This was different. He wasn’t being gifted a class. He was trying to earn one. And apparently, the System wasn’t impressed by “I held a bow correctly for ten seconds.”
It made sense, irritatingly. An archer class wasn’t a trick you learned by understanding the theory.
It was a body of habit. Repetition. Thousands of tiny corrections until your hands stopped being hands and became an extension of the weapon.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Real practice first, Ludger realized.
Not a lesson. Not a tip. Not a neat explanation. Actual arrows. Actual misses. Actual adjustments.
The kind of work that made the class feel less like “something you picked up” and more like “something you became.”
His gaze flicked to Aleia as she checked her own gear, calm and automatic, like the bow had always been part of her spine.
Then his mind jumped sideways to the Northerners. How he’d gained Berserker from them.
Not because someone explained rage.
Because they lived it. Because they pushed him into a culture where strength meant committing fully, where “half measures” were an insult, and where going berserker wasn’t a technique, it was a state they treated like weather.
They didn’t dabble. They were berserkers. And the System had responded to that totality.
So if Ludger wanted an archer class… He couldn’t act like a geomancer borrowing a bow for a day. He’d have to move like an archer. Think like one. Practice until his muscles learned the language without asking permission.
He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing with that same methodical intent that had turned teaching into a weapon.
“Fine,” he murmured under his breath.
No shortcut. No instant reward. Just repetition. He slid an arrow from the quiver, nocked it, and drew, this time not waiting for a prompt, not hoping for a gift. Just working.
Because if the System only gave Archer class to people who were archers… Then Ludger would become one. And then he’d take that class the same way he took everything else. By force of discipline.
The mouth of the reptilian labyrinth swallowed them whole.
One step past the broken jaws of stone and the world changed, air turning thick and warm, dampness clinging to skin and gear like sweat that never dried. The walls narrowed into slick rock carved with those scale-like grooves, each ridge catching the faint light of their mana lamps and throwing it back in dull, greenish glints.
Water dripped somewhere ahead. Not a steady stream, random drops, like the place was breathing and sweating at the same time.
Harold took point without ceremony. Cor moved behind him like a bad omen with a staff. Selene drifted to the side, light-footed and smiling like she’d been invited somewhere fun. Aleia walked with her bow half-raised, eyes already hunting angles and lines.
The newer members clumped tighter than they meant to. It was their first time inside this particular kind of heat. Their first time hearing that damp echo that made every footstep sound like it belonged to something bigger. Harold raised a fist and the group slowed.
“Knives out,” he said, low and firm.
Several recruits blinked, instinctively checking their main weapons, spears, swords, axes before remembering where they were. Reptilians didn’t just bleed. They shed. Today wasn’t only about survival. It was about harvest.
“You’ll be getting the scales today,” Harold added, voice matter-of-fact. “So don’t hack them like idiots. Cut clean. Peel clean. If you ruin the hide, you waste everyone’s effort.”
The recruits nodded quickly, hands going to sheaths. Short blades slid free with soft, nervous scrapes.
Ludger watched them, noting the shift. He adjusted the bow strap once, more to settle it than because he planned to shoot soon. The string felt unfamiliar against his shoulder. Not unpleasant. Just… new.
They moved deeper. The corridor widened into a low chamber where the floor dipped and pooled with shallow water. The surface reflected their mana light in broken fragments, like shattered glass. The walls here were darker, almost black-green, and the grooves grew deeper, thicker, more pronounced.
Then something shifted ahead. A ripple in the water.
A scrape against stone, slow, heavy, deliberate. The recruits tensed.
Harold didn’t. He leaned forward like a predator.
The first monster emerged from the shadowed bend like it had been molded out of the labyrinth itself.
It was reptilian, but not the clean, “lizard” shape most people imagined. This thing was built for tunnels and ambush. Its body was long and low, almost crocodilian in silhouette, but heavier through the shoulders, with forelimbs thick enough to dig claws into stone. Scales overlapped like layered armor plates, dark emerald with streaks of muddy brown that made it vanish against wet rock. The scales weren’t smooth either. Each one had a tiny raised ridge along the edge, like serrations meant to catch blades and twist them aside.
Its head was broad and wedge-shaped, but the jawline was wrong, too flexible, too many hinges, like it could open wider than anatomy should allow. Its mouth hung slightly open as it breathed, revealing rows of hooked teeth that curved backward, designed to drag prey inward.
The eyes were the worst part.
Not because they were glowing or magical—because they were smart.
Vertical pupils. Amber irises with flecks of green. They tracked the group with a slow, confident awareness, like the creature wasn’t surprised to see them.
It was deciding who to bite first.
Along its neck and spine, small frills lay flat against the scales, barely visible, until it exhaled and they lifted just a fraction, revealing pale membranes threaded with veins. Venom sacs. Breathing vents. Something designed to spit or mist or do something unpleasant if it got pressured.
The recruits tightened their grip on their knives. Harold didn’t wait for fear to mature. He charged.
Boots splashed into shallow water, sending droplets up his legs as he closed the distance in two brutal steps, sword already coming up with the kind of intent that said you don’t get to think.
The reptilian’s head snapped toward him. Fast. Too fast. Its jaw flexed, preparing to lunge, and its eyes locked on Harold like he’d just volunteered.
Aleia’s bowstring sang.
A single arrow clean, silent, perfectly timed cut through the damp air and slammed into the reptilian’s head. Right above the eye.
The shaft buried deep with a wet thunk, punching through scale and into softer tissue beneath. The creature’s gaze jittered, its lunge faltering mid-motion as its body spasmed like the world had suddenly tilted.
Harold didn’t slow. He reached it as it stumbled, blade already in motion.
“Good shot,” Selene murmured, voice almost pleased.
Aleia didn’t respond. She was already nocking another arrow, eyes calm, posture steady.
Ludger watched the arrow’s placement, the timing, the way Aleia had waited for the moment the reptilian committed, when its head angle was predictable, when it couldn’t dodge without abandoning the attack.
That, he thought, watching Harold crash into the opening, is what an archer looks like.
Not the bow. Not the stance. The decision. The certainty. And somewhere deep inside him, the System stayed silent, waiting for Ludger to earn it the hard way.
The arrow hit, the reptilian spasmed, and for a heartbeat the world slowed in Ludger’s mind.
Not because he was shocked. Because something clicked.
Aleia’s shot had been clean, commitment, timing, economy. It wasn’t “archery” as a hobby. It was archery as a decision to end a fight before it started.
Ludger’s hands moved before he fully thought about it. He pulled an arrow free, nocked it, and drew.
He copied the shape of Aleia’s calm. Anchor point. Soft knees. Breath. Single point. He didn’t aim at the creature’s whole head.
He aimed at a point the size of a coin, where scale met soft tissue, where a strike mattered. Then he released. The shot wasn’t perfect. Not like hers. His muscles were still learning the language. But the arrow flew straight enough.
It struck into the reptilian’s skull ridge with a sharp crack, and the creature jerked, collapsing harder into the water as Harold’s blade finished the job.
Ludger’s vision flickered. A familiar pressure settled behind his eyes, System acknowledgment, cold and clean.
[Class Unlocked: Hunter] + 03 Dex + 03 Luk
[Skill Acquired: Power Shot]