As the sun began to fall below the horizon, Arin was finally satisfied that he had regained enough control over his newly increased strength. He could clearly feel the difference between what his body had been capable of before and what it could do now. Previously, he had been able to shoot an arrow roughly three hundred meters, although anything beyond that distance quickly became difficult to manage. Now, if he really wanted to, he could launch an arrow approximately five hundred meters downrange, and that alone was something he was extremely satisfied with.
Of course, there was one rather important problem with that achievement. Arin could not hit shit at five hundred meters. Even with his frankly absurd level of archery skill, accurately shooting something at that distance required a ridiculous amount of technique and control. Simply possessing enough strength to send an arrow that far was one thing, but actually placing the arrow where he wanted it to go was an entirely different matter. The further an arrow traveled, the more every tiny mistake in his movement was magnified.
Arin knew that if he told almost any archer outside their forest that members of his family could accurately hit a plate at a distance of two hundred meters, they would probably declare that he was lying. That was one of the major reasons armies traditionally preferred archers to fire in volleys rather than expecting every individual archer to make an accurate shot. When hundreds or thousands of arrows were being fired toward an advancing army, the most important question was how far the arrows could travel.
Accuracy? What was that supposed to matter when an entire army was running toward you? As long as an arrow landed somewhere within roughly fifty meters of the intended area, there was a reasonable chance that it would still hit someone. With enough archers firing together, individual accuracy became far less important than putting as many arrows into the air as possible. The Sonnenbergs, however, operated under an entirely different philosophy because their family had been built around the idea of individual precision.
For a Sonnenberg archer, it was not enough for an arrow to land somewhere near the enemy. They were expected to hit the person they had chosen as their target, and they were expected to do so from distances where most ordinary archers would not even consider attempting a precise shot. Their entire family had been bred and trained for that purpose, so to speak. Their bodies, instincts, techniques, and training were all built around making accurate shots rather than simply filling the sky with arrows.
That difference also demonstrated just how important technique became at extreme distances. At five hundred meters, even an incredibly small mistake in the direction of the arrow could result in a massive deviation by the time it reached the target. An error that seemed insignificant when the arrow left the bow could translate into a miss of several meters, or even dozens of meters, by the time the arrow finally reached its destination. At that range, Arin understood that raw strength alone was practically useless if he could not control every part of his movement.
That was why the Sonnenbergs practiced at practically every distance imaginable. They did not simply stand in one location and shoot at a target until they became comfortable with it. They practiced different distances, different positions, different movements, and different circumstances until the necessary motions became second nature. Only when an archer could perform those actions without consciously thinking about every individual movement would the family consider them a true sharpshooter.
A Sonnenberg archer also did not have the luxury of standing still for a minute while carefully lining up the perfect shot. In an actual fight, there might not even be enough time to breathe properly before the opportunity disappeared. At most, they could have a single second to steady themselves, judge the distance, align their body, and release the arrow. That meant the preparation had to happen almost automatically, with the archer already knowing what they needed to do before the opportunity to shoot even appeared.
Because of that, Arin knew it would take him a long time before he could accurately hit something at five hundred meters. His increased strength had given him the physical ability to reach that distance, but his technique had not magically improved alongside it. Unless he managed to learn additional skills now that he had become an adult, he would have to spend a considerable amount of time retraining himself. He certainly hoped that he would be able to learn something useful, because he had absolutely hated the training he had gone through today.
The problem was that his body had effectively changed its calibration. During the first hour of training, Arin had been unable to hit a target that was only fifty meters away from him. For someone from the Sonnenberg family, that was practically humiliating. His increased power had completely disrupted the calculations his body had spent years developing through practice, making every familiar movement slightly different from what his muscles expected.
After roughly an hour, his body had recovered somewhat and he had begun adapting to the changes. Even then, however, it had taken nearly eight hours before he finally reached the point where his control had returned to roughly where it had been before his breakthrough. It was frustrating, but there was ultimately nothing he could do about it. Arin had known that something like this would happen.
The reports had made that clear. When a person's body was effectively reborn upon becoming an adult, the additional mana they absorbed did not simply increase their displayed statistics. The mana strengthened their entire body, allowing them to absorb and utilize mana more efficiently even when they were not intentionally trying to do so. That meant that even if an adult had nearly identical displayed statistics to someone who had not yet become an adult, their bodies were still fundamentally different.
Arin accepted that explanation with a sigh before another thought suddenly occurred to him. If mana could strengthen his entire body, then perhaps he could use that strength in a slightly different way. Instead of simply using mana to reinforce his muscles, he wondered whether he could deliberately push mana into a specific part of his body and use it to enhance a movement.
"Speaking of that," Arin muttered as he looked down at his feet.
He carefully tried to move some mana toward the front of his foot, concentrating it around his toes. The sensation was strange because this was not something he had practiced before. He had already learned that controlling raw mana was possible, but using it in a precise movement was an entirely different matter.
"Let's see if this works," Arin said as he removed his shoes. He did not want to accidentally destroy them if the experiment went wrong, and considering how badly his previous attempts at controlling his new strength had gone, he considered that a perfectly reasonable precaution. Once his shoes were safely out of the way, he stood still and focused on the mana gathered inside his foot.
"Right, mana ready," Arin muttered to himself. "So when I push myself off that foot with the mana and release it, I should fly forward."
He paused for only a moment before making his decision.
"Right. Let's go."
Arin pushed himself off the ground while simultaneously releasing the mana he had gathered in his foot. He timed the release for the moment when his foot struck the ground at the apex of his movement, the point where he could generate the greatest amount of force by pushing against the earth. The instant the mana was released, a flash of green light appeared beneath his right foot.
Then Arin launched himself forward.
He did not merely jump. He flew, or perhaps glided, along the ground at a speed that would have looked like a car traveling at roughly sixty kilometers per hour if someone had been watching from a distance. For the first few moments, Arin was too surprised by his own success to understand what was happening. He had actually managed to use mana to propel himself forward.
Then he realized the rather important problem.
He had absolutely no control over himself.
"Shit!"
Arin desperately tried to change his direction as the ground rushed beneath him. A tree rapidly grew larger in his vision, and for one horrifying moment, he was certain that he was about to become a very fast-moving pancake. Fortunately, his newly strengthened body reacted quickly enough for him to launch himself to the side at the last possible moment.
He narrowly avoided the tree.
Unfortunately, avoiding the tree did not mean he had successfully controlled his landing.
Arin looked toward the direction he was now traveling and immediately realized that there was nowhere safe for him to escape to. His momentum carried him forward, and a cluster of nettles waited directly in his path. There was no time to stop himself.
A second later, Arin landed face-first in the nettles.
"Ah, shit."
He lay completely still for a moment, staring down at the plants beneath him while silently questioning several of his life decisions. The experiment had technically been successful, but he was beginning to think that success might have been slightly overrated.
"Right," Arin thought bitterly. "Tip for next time: experiment in an open field."
At least nobody had seen him.
Or so he thought.
Luckily, Arin's strengthened physique protected him from most of the mild irritation that the nettles would normally have caused. His skin barely reacted to them, which meant that the physical consequences were almost nonexistent. Unfortunately, that only made the situation more embarrassing because the one thing he could not protect himself from was the shame.
He would honestly have preferred the nettles to hurt.
"Hahaha! What were you thinking, Arin?"
Tom's voice immediately destroyed any hope Arin had of pretending the incident had never happened. Arin turned his head and saw Tom rolling around on the ground while laughing so hard that he could barely breathe. Bill and Bertho were with him, and judging from their expressions, they had witnessed the entire thing.
Arin slowly climbed out of the nettles and stared at them.
"Oh, yeah?" he asked, his pride already recovering enough to become dangerous. "I dare you to try what I did and see if you fare any better."
The laughter immediately became more uncertain.
"Oh, yeah?" Bertho asked as he sat up, wiping the tears of laughter from his eyes. "And what exactly did you do, then?"
Arin's eyes narrowed.
"You are all adults now," he said, a wicked grin slowly appearing on his face. "Perfect. I will show you."
The three of them probably realized far too late that Arin's demonstration was not going to be a simple explanation. Less than three minutes later, one of them was hanging upside down from a tree. Another had launched himself directly into the same nettle bush that Arin had landed in, while Bertho, who had somehow managed to avoid the nettles entirely, had instead jumped over them and landed directly in a puddle of water.
The result was arguably even better than Arin's original failure.
Bertho was completely soaked, while Tom was lying in the nettles beside him and wondering how exactly he had managed to get himself into that position. The sight was enough to make Arin grin from ear to ear.
"Now you see it," Arin said smugly, "it is not that easy, is it?"
Bill, still hanging upside down from the tree, glared at him.
"Don't be so irritating, Arin," Bill complained, irritation clear in his voice. "You were not any better."
Arin's grin only grew wider.