Chapter 6.

In the middle of the night, I got out of my room . The handgun in my pocket rattled uncomfortably, but I couldn’t do anything about it without a holster .

My destination was the shooting range .

Located east of dorm 1, the shooting range was a dome shaped building consisting of 20 training rooms . The targets were oddly distributed around where the sharpshooter would stand . This was because unlike bullets, magic arrows could easily change their trajectory .

[Rank 934, Kim Hajin, confirmed . ]

When held my smartwatch against the shooting range’s entrance, an unfamiliar robotic voice called my name . Indeed, my name had changed from Kim Chundong to Kim Hajin . Feeling a bit odd, I walked inside .

Past the wide circular lobby, there were ten doors evenly separated from each other . I held up my smartwatch against one of them .

[Rank 934, Kim Hajin, confirmed . ]

The door opened .

The shooting range looked simple . At the center of the 130-square-meter circular space was a scaffolding for the shooter . I walked towards the center . When I placed my feet on the low scaffolding, a courteous robotic voice rang out from the ceiling .

[Initializing targets . Choose the number of targets you want . ]

[You must choose at least 2 and can choose at most 20 . ]

“Ten . ”

My voice rang through, and insect-like blue objects popped up from the ground .

I looked at the targets surrounding me . A monster that was barely considered a monster, mole cricket . They were similar to mole crickets everyone knew, the only difference being that they were much bigger .

[Choose your training difficulty . ]

[You can choose from stage 1 to stage 9 . ]

Higher level naturally meant targets moved quicker . At stage 9, the targets even attacked . Although the attacks should only sting at best, they were extremely dangerous to me .

“Stage 4 . ”

First, I set the difficulty to stage 4 and loaded my magic bullets . If I was skilled in handling magic power, I should be able to compress magic power into bullets without having to get physical bullets, but the current me didn’t have such talents . And even if I could do such a thing, using a bow was much more destructive and efficient .

“Start . ”

First, I notified the system to start and aimed my gun at the leftmost target .

The slowly moving mole cricket seemed to have noticed my hostility as it began to speed up . It scuttled around without a set movement pattern, but I could see its trajectory . It was like I was seeing an afterimage, but of its future path .

Predicting its movement by a step, I pulled the trigger .

A blue flare shot up from the barrel . There was no loud noise like the guns from Earth . Leaving the barrel silently, the bullet should pierce the mole cricket .

I didn’t bother to check the result with my eyes . The moment the bullet went out, I moved on to the next target and fired . My hand moved on its own .

One, two, three, four… ten .

The trigger was pulled ten times, and the mole crickets that were struck scattered into particles of mana .

Only two targets survived .

“Oho . ”

I was quite impressed .

Just by writing a Gift, I managed to hit all the mole crickets other than the farthest two .

[Your training ended . Elapsed time: 1 . 37 seconds . Sharpshooting score: 80/100]

In just 1 . 37 seconds .

“… This is pretty fun . ”

An eternal truth . The better you are at something, the more fun it is . It was fun because you were good at it .

Feeling like I was at an arcade, I shouted ‘start’ once more .

*

An eternal truth . No matter how fun something is, doing it twenty times makes it boring .

At about 3 A . M . , I stopped my shooting practice . After getting out of the shooting room, I was relaxing my sore finger when I heard a noise next door .

—whoosh whoosh whoosh

The faint sound of shockwaves . It was the sound of arrows cutting through the air . The source was the room next door . Curious, I snuck a peek . I shouldn’t have been able to see anything because of the closed door, but I could see through it .

The door turned faint and the interior revealed itself .

The scene beyond the door was showing why bows were superior to guns .

“It’s Chae Nayun . ”

Chae Nayun was target practicing with a serious face . Four arrows were sitting on her bow . They were magic arrows weaved with magic power . Because her magic power technique was currently lacking, she couldn’t perform ‘split shot’, which multiplied a single arrow into multidirectional shots .

—Whoosh!

Chae Nayun let go of the bowstring . Her arrows left behind a blue trace of magic power as they hurled towards the 20 targets . As though they were alive, her arrows obliterated the targets .

“… Amazing . ”

I exclaimed in shock .

Still, Chae Nayun’s real aptitude wasn’t for bows . There was a weapon that suited her much more . But if she was already that amazing with a bow, just what kind of a setting did I make?

At that moment, Chae Nayun suddenly turned around . Her eyes met mine . Though there was no way she could see me through the wall, something still seemed odd .

I quickly escaped .

*

[Sharpshooting training increases your Gift’s proficiency by 3%] .

[Repeated sharpshooting training increases your Gift’s proficiency by 2 . 9%]

[‘Luck’ applies! Your perception and speed increase by 0 . 1!]

[Repeated sharpshooting training increases your Gift’s proficiency by 2 . 8%]

…

…

The above messages were written on the laptop . Master Sharpshooter’s proficiency shot up, and the stats I gained with luck were an added bonus .

Thanks to the Gift’s grade being low, I had already gained 50% in proficiency EXP . Achieving grade 9 didn’t seem to difficult .

===

▷「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 target’s movement path .

—Bullet Time

*In combat only and once every 24 hours, you can spend 3 seconds in ‘Bullet Time’ .

===

The more I thought about it, the better this Gift seemed, especially in how it applied to ‘all long ranged weapons’ . Currently, it was easier to raise proficiency with a gun than a bow, but since a bow was stronger, I would have to switch to it eventually .

“But what’s up with the SP?”

[You obtained 0 . 2 SP!]

[You obtained 0 . 2 SP!]

[An auspicious gift! You obtained 1 bonus SP . ]

[You obtained 0 . 2 SP]

…

After practicing for twenty rounds, I only obtained 5 SP . Choosing a gun as my main weapon gave me 64 SP, meaning showing off and standing out gave more SP than quietly training .

“Tsk . ”

Although I only received a tiny bit of SP, I still had a use for it .

The dreaded combat training was tomorrow . To obtain even the tiniest amount of points, I needed to make up for my lacking physical abilities .

The biggest problem was stamina . Because I threw all my points into luck, I was weaker than an ordinary person .

===

[Training Sneakers]

—Specially crafted sneakers .

*Adds 0 . 3 points into stamina and speed .

===

“Maybe with this…”

The easiest way to fix my problem was with equipment .

I began to tap on the keyboard .

===

[Mystical Training Sneakers]

—Specially crafted sneakers . Contains a mystical power .

*Adds 0 . 3 points into stamina and speed .

*Enhances energy and stamina recovery .

===

[You do not have enough SP . ]

But this time, the modification I made was canceled without being adjusted .

I wasn’t too surprised . After all, I only had 5 SP .

But it was still too early to give up .

===

[Mystical Training Sneakers]

—Specially crafted sneakers . Contains a mystical power .

*Adds 0 . 3 points into stamina and speed .

*When the wearer desires, energy and stamina recovery is enhanced for 1 hour . After use, this effect cannot be used again for 24 hours . This ‘effect’ disappears after one month .

===

To save SP, I put a total of three restrictions . A 24 hour cooldown time, one-hour effect duration, and effect dissipation after one month .

[You used 5 SP . Would you like to save?]

“Oh! It worked!”

I hit the Enter key ecstatically .

Immediately, a blue light flashed from the laptop . The dancing light melted into the sneakers, and a streak of color was branded onto the white sneakers .

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