Jake got really lucky in story number twelve. In that one, he was so fortunate as to be a suspected mass murderer who was thrown into solitary confinement for potential crimes against humanity.

Now, Jake had to admit this story was kind of interesting. Jake had arrived after the suspected crime was done and in the middle of the arrest, not knowing what was going on. What’s more, the character Jake was in didn’t seem to know if he had murdered anyone either. At least he claimed that he didn’t have any memories of the last week, which was one of the reasons he had just been imprisoned and not killed.

This left the mystery of whether he was guilty or not, and if he wasn’t the true mass murderer, who was behind this plot? Jake knew that losing memories was very, very rarely a thing with the system, so there was also a good chance the character was just lying. But it was technically possible he didn’t have any memories.

Jake would guess that a big part of this particular story was to figure out if the guy was guilty and, dependent on the answer – or your personal conclusion to the answer – how you would react to the entire judicial system.

Interesting, yes, but far less interesting than controlling the character for ninety-five percent of the time to practice his own skills while in isolation anyway. Considering Jake knew he was just waiting for some unknown investigation going on and that he would have to be stuck in prison for at least two weeks, according to the guards, Jake decided this was prime time to get some skills upgrades in. This was definitely not how things were intended to be, as Jake guessed it was meant to be some mental training exercise or something, but that just sounded like a needless waste of time.

Plus, Jake hid by erecting a stable arcane mana barrier to seal his cell away, and he seriously doubted any of the local E and D-grades could ever see through it. The cell itself was decently large, being around five-by-five meters, so just enough space for Jake to move around and work on skill upgrades. The reason for this size was to make space for the energy-draining magic circle installed on the floor that was meant to drain the one trapped there of stamina and mana, but, well, it didn’t seem like the thing worked properly on C-grades. This magic circle was part of the reason Jake was confident in controlling the character without missing anything, as with no resources, he would just have been on the floor, unable to move.

As for why he had waited with his skill upgrades, it was naturally due to the backlash. One could only upgrade skills when one intended to upgrade them or experienced a moment of sudden insight or enlightenment, so he had purposefully kept it off till he had fully recovered. Jake feared that if he upgraded his skills while all his senses were messed up, it could potentially fuck up the upgrade. It was maybe an irrational fear, but better safe than sorry, especially considering he didn’t need the upgraded skills while inside the Test of Character Challenge Dungeon.

But now it was time to finally integrate what he had learned.

During the Colosseum of Mortals, Jake had primarily worked on three things: basic archery, what he called Fear Gaze, and his expertise with making quasi-Protean arrows. While he had also worked on general energy control and whatnot, the gains there were far lesser than with these three.

One also had to remember that Jake had practiced energy manipulation far more than he had ever practiced archery. Every single time he did alchemy, he practiced manipulating his mana, and when using nearly every single skill, he improved his use of stamina. On the other hand, general archery was something Jake only ever really improved when he consciously worked on doing so. In battle, he only often used his skills, such as Arcane Powershot or Splitting Arrow, giving him little time to work on his usual archery.

However, archery was still part of all these skills. It was the foundation that all of Jake’s other bow-related skills worked with. Even when Jake, say, used Arcane Powershot, the loosed arrow benefitted from his archery skill as well, even if he didn’t think about it.

Having decided to start with improving his archery, Jake got to work with consolidating his gains and insights. He spent the next day or so going through his practiced archery in his small cell, no one coming to bother him at any point.

After this one day of practice, the system finally recognized his efforts to integrate what he had learned, if barely.

Expanding Horizons

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An Archer’s best friend is the bow in his hand and the arrow in his foe’s heart. As your horizons expand, you realize flaws and build upon a foundation to make that expansion everpresent. You do not shy away from mixing archery with magic and making your arrows arbiters of your will. Your arrows will cross all horizons and bend over any obstacle to pierce your target, with only your own will limiting the possibilities. Allows you to

than exciting but still recognized by the system to be enough for a notification. The only real change was

to apply your will to control the

now, it had turned

affect the trajectory of arrows already in flight. By infusing arrows with your will before

at least he now had skill-assistance when controlling his arrows mid-flight, while he didn’t doubt his prior method of infusing his will before shooting was

skill, though it was no doubt peak epic now, extremely close to ancient rarity. Overall, it didn’t appear like a big deal, but Jake knew that he had taken an important step forward in his

the skill hadn’t suddenly grown significantly or even added much new and fancy, he knew he had shored up many weaknesses in his archery. He had hammered out some bad habits, both through his own practice and through the advice and sparring with Artemis, who naturally was a far better archer than himself, even as a level 0 significantly

inspiration. It was a bit similar to how Jake trained against Sim-Jake, though he, of course, had far more time with his other self. Jake learned incredibly well by seeing others, likely because he had such high Perception, proving it was truly the

content belongs on Royal Road. Report any

skill was now far more primed for

continue to upgrade the skill, well, Jake felt like one of the best ways to do that would be to expose himself to more skilled archers. He had learned so much watching melee fighters, mages, and whatnot, but people

literal goddess is too busy to waste time with some random C-grade.

refocused his attention on something else. After thinking for a while, Jake consolidated his gains in regard

make the structure

at this but not that surprised. The skill was already ancient rarity, making it

expected any either. He just knew that many skills were now far closer to an upgrade than ever, especially those he

be augmented by the “new” technique Jake created while inside the Colosseum of

now, Jake would only experience a headache after using Gaze too many times and a quick sharp pain if he used it on someone too strong. He

Valdemar during their fight. The backlash he suffered was intense, as the skill effectively made their two souls clash, and if Jake wasn’t confident about coming out on top, it

come out on top against pretty much anyone of equal

Gaze more risky to use if he wanted to integrate Fear Gaze. At least he would have to accept that should he introduce the concepts he had learned, the backlash he would suffer from misusing the skill would increase significantly. He didn’t necessarily think he would die, even if he tried to use Fear Gaze on a literal god, but he would definitely knock himself out for a

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