Chapter 4: Black Magic
The process was the same today as well, he came in and took us out of our cages, led us to the training grounds then left us there to do whatever.' Did he not care what we would do, this entire operation must be illegal, is he not worried we will alert someone?' Jake thought. Jake and Kin quickly met up and starting working, today they had different plans. Kin wanted to work on his speed so he was planning on going to the obstacle course whilst Jake wanted to improve his accuracy so he wanted to go to the shooting grounds. They decided to split up before they did that they walked to the weapon stand and picked up their weapons together. Jake picked up the iron bow which felt much lighter than before, he was right-handed which made it much more natural to have the bow in his left hand. This time he picked up a quiver of arrows and headed towards the shooting grounds.
Once he arrived at the shooting grounds he saw that there were multiple people there, surprisingly there were also mages there practising their aim. He went to his shooting board and started shooting, the shots were complete misses, one would rather believe he was trying to miss on purpose than hit it. Some went too far up and others did not travel a few meters. This was how it was for the first few hours. He kept on practising, 5 hours after and he would hit the shooting board 3/4 times every shot. Making the percentage go up further from this point was increasingly difficult. He kept on practising this day and the next day passed the same way.
At the start of the fourth day he tested himself, he hit 19/20 shots on the shooting board with 5 of them being bullseyes, he had learned the basics quite quickly maybe because of him being an archer. After a while, his shooting board was running out of space for more arrows. He decided to switch to another one when he heard a voice behind him.
"That is my shooting board," he said with a tint of superiority
The odd thing is he could have sworn nobody was using it, it was pristine quality and on top of that, it was one of the few ones left to use. He decided to refute him and in response, he put his hand on his shit and got in his face grunting.
"Do you want a fight"
Jake simply stared at him for a few seconds.
"fine"
The two went to a corner of the training grounds to duke it out. Whilst they were walking, Jake noticed that his opponent had no weapons and deduced that he must be a mage. They found a spot and started distancing themselves, whilst Jake thought about his strategy. He must have a larger effective range but he knew that the further away from the less his chances of hitting his shots were. Mages were restricted and if they got into a melee skirmish Jake would almost certainly win because he was stronger and faster and also had a weapon whilst he had not. He seemed to have the advantages this fight but mages were tricky figures where his fighting style would be obvious their would not be. Eventually, they stopped walking away from each other and with a nod, the fight started.
The second the fight started he backed off and stared at him, simply analyzing him. The opponent did the same but he was standing still. Then out of nowhere, an ice shard came flying at him. He tried to dodge it but was to slow and got hit in the shoulder, paralyzing it. He then realized that he did not have the range advantage. Jake started sprinting. He could smell the sand and feel the sand going through his toes. The mage was surprisingly standing still. Jake started hearing rumbling and he felt the sand under him become almost harder, then, like before something appeared, this time it was an ice spike which would have pierced Jake but stopped at his chest thanks to the barrier. Jake knew he would be dead without the barrier and gave up at that point.
Jake then realised his greatest weakness, he had no defence at all, he was a glass cannon. If you could call him that, he was not strong enough to be called a cannon. He needed some sort of defence. Then he remembered that he had another skill route he opened up his skill tree and saw that all three skills available to him were good choices.
First, he had "Eagle eyes" which would improve his vision and reaction speed.
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Continuation to "Predator eyes"
Active skill: Eagle eyes ~ Eyes become increasingly sensitive and can view thing from far distances
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The skill "Shadow form" would make him way more stealthy, it would be really strong in the night time or dark setting.
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Continuation to "Way of the Grim Reaper
Active Skill: Shadow from ~ By circling death energy around in the body,
Side effect: A black mist starts radiating from you and you stop reflecting light making you a walking shadow.
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Then he had the new skill "Black magic circulation" which would make him stronger and faster.
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Active skill: Demon form ~ Circulating black magic in the body
Side effect: Increased strength and speed
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He could choose between strength and speed, reaction speed or he could go the stealthy route. As of now, he was forced to fight which means that most likely the stealthy route would be useless. He thought about learning both skills but opted against it as he would rather have one skill with high proficiency than two with an okay amount of proficiency. He decided to go with strength and speed as reaction speed would not matter unless he could act on it. These last couple of days had not only been spent shooting. He was also meditating and had gotten a feel for death magic
However there was a problem, if he circulated death magic around his body he would enter his shadow form whilst if he circulated black magic in his body he would turn into his demon form. The tricky part was that he did not know how black magic felt. He remembered the tutorial however if you wanted to unlock a skill you had to in most cases think about unlocking it. So he did that, he sat down with one thought, to open the skill and after 2 hours it finally opened. He sat down and meditated, this time he tried to feel black magic and he was unable.
Then out nowhere, he had an ice shard flung at him.
"Weakling, wake up. I got bored and there is nothing more fun than harassing weaklings"
He could not hurt Jake but he could give him a lot of pain. The issue with ice was that when it hit, it would burn him from the coldness, then when the cold disappeared he would feel the pain from the impact. Jake stood up and backed off but the ice mage would follow up. Jake kept shooting at him but almost none hit the target, and the few that did would get blocked by some ice armour spell. He kept getting rocked by ice shards almost losing consciousness but he kept moving. He had learnt his lesson not to move into close range, he did not want to get impaled.
Then he felt it, he felt another energy in him. Whilst death energy had felt calm and natural to him, this energy was the opposite, it was highly aggressive, reactive and simply did not want to be there. He directed thought to the energy, told it to start circling in his body. It started doing it with, first slowly but it started picking up the pace until it was the same as his blood. His heart was beating rapidly. He then noticed that his entire body starting getting covered by a black substance.
Then the fight got a lot easier, he could dodge at least 1/3 of the ice shards and tanking the rest did not hurt as much anymore. He was still getting an ass whooping, just now it was an acceptable ass whooping. He tried shooting, he shot the arrow with a lot more power but it was a lot harder to control making it go way off target. The mage changed his strategy since he realised his ice shards were not doing as much damage anymore. Now he made long spears that were accurate and a lot faster but Jake didn't care about that, all he cared about was that they hurt like hell.
Suddenly a spell disappeared in mid-air and he saw a face of panic on the mage. The mage tried to play it out cool.
"pathetic," he said, whilst he started walking away with his back towards Jake.
This did not fool Jake, he got a large shit-eating grin when he realised what was going on and he kept it on. Then he started rushing towards the mage and the mage started running away but it was nothing for Jake. A few seconds later and he was in Jakes's hands, now nothing would stop him and he could toy with this mage for hours. He started repeatedly punch the mage in the head, hard enough to give him brain issues. He hit him hard enough for his head to bounce back from the sand, the sand(THE FUCKING SAND). After he was done with completely fucking up his brain, he started using his arrows to puncture his skin multiple times, thanks o the magic formation he could not kill him but this was enough. He was enjoying the shouts for him to stop, the shouts changed to insults, which turn to screams of rage, which turned to him begging him to stop, which eventually turned to sobbing.
Jake had no issues with killing, heck he could even torture and be completely fine with it. As long as it was bad people he did it too, Jake thought of himself as the protector of the good and punisher of evil. But this was not completely true, he did have a sadistic side to him which simply liked to cause pain.
When the strange man came out, it showed that the training time was over and that they are to head towards their cages. As Jake got into an iron cage, he started meditating to suck in even more death energy into his body. He would alternate between this and circulating black magic around his body, to train the techniques.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone