The moment he spawned in, Max was immediately divorced from his previous thoughts and shocked into silence.

  ‘Wh-Why... It looks so good?!’

  Max had materialised into a town square that looked just like any other town square you would see in real life. The shog part was that it looked just like any other town square you would see in real life!

  ‘WTF?! It’s so realistic!’

  Max looked around at the people, the trees, the finely detailed stoructures with faint imperfes and varied tours. Was this his new silver game capsule, or was the game just this good-looking? It looked almost indistinguishable from real life!

  The opening cutse must have been made in the old graphics as an iional prank by the developers. Croug down, he felt the stone ground with his hands and, as expected, a yer of dusty dirt covered his fingers, with small, tangible grains.

  ‘HOLY SH*T!!’

  Max was freaking out.

  Many other people had also spawned in nearby and were making a fuss, albeit for varied reasons.

  “Wow! Everything is so pretty!”

  “Why does this feel more real than real life. I’m scared.”

  “Real, my arse! You ’t even strip!”

  Multiple heads tur the st ent, including Max’s, to where a man was using an excessive amount of for an attempt to remove his pants. He was unsuccessful. It looked quite funny because it was as if he was trying to dispce t from his body.

  “Pervert!”

  “Scum!”

  Several female pyers were also nearby, causing the man to give up and run away in fear of being lynched.

  ‘Alright, I should probably get g- oh wait, I have to turn my rec fun on.’

  Rone had told him to start rec as soon as he loaded in, which he’d nearly fotten in his excitement.

  “Record.”

  "Rec started." A system voice sounded in his ear.

  ‘Oh, well that was uedly easy.’

  Actually, Rone also asked him to speak his thoughts out loud so it would be more eaining.

  “Oh, well that was uedly easy.”

  Wait, why was he doing everything that Roold him to, anyways? Was he Rone’s Golderiever or something? Max scolded himself for his actal obedience, before searg around for someoo harass for dires.

  He spotted a kid. “T-” Actually, he shouldn’t say that out loud or it would sound weird.

  ‘Target acquired!’

  “Hey kid, do you mind direg me to the archery range?” Max put on his least threatening face as he asked the random child.

  “...”

  “...”

  The kid bnkly stared at him and seemed to freeze up.

  “Uh... You alright, kid?”

  “H-Hero. A hero is talking to me – ah! I’m sorry! The archery is that way! No, I mean that way!” He fumbled with his hands and pointed one way before twisting his hand and pointing the opposite dire.

  At first, Max was a bit fused by the kid’s rea, but then realised that he might be distracted, as having several hundred or thousand people suddenly materialise out of the air in front of you could be a tad surprising for someone who’d never seen it before.

  “Haha, thanks kid. What’s your name?”

  “I-It’s Arden.”

  “Arden. It’s a good name. I’ll remember that name.”

  ‘No I won’t.’

  “You don’t seem so scared; did you knoould arrive here today?”

  “Yes, the church told of your arrival. They said the Life Goddess brought you here and that you’re here to protect us from the Demon Army.”

  “That’s right kiddo, we are, but there’s ohing you o know.”

  “There is?”

  “Yes. Most of us are nice, but not all of us heroes are sure to be good guys. For example, do you remember that man from earlier trying to take off his pants? He’s definitely a bad person.”

  “H-He is?”

  “Absolutely. A virtuous man only removes his pants wheuation absolutely warrants it. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “Okay... I will.”

  Max nodded and started leaving in the dire of that archery range, satisfied at having taught this young’un a valuable life lesson.

  He almost tripped as he walked. Not because the walking was too different from real life but because it was too simir to real life. Iher Virtek Game, Hero of Liberation, with his copper capsule there was about a 200ms dey between willing his body to move and it actually moving. In fact, he’d nearly cut that kid off before he fialking because his vocal cords moved too quickly. This was a really weird problem to have.

  ‘Oh! I should add Rone as a friend so I harass him ter.’

  Another way that this game was different to Hero of Liberation was that it had a magic system. Acc to Rohe magic system was actually trolled by your thoughts, and you o focus quite hard to be able to cast your spells.

  If this was true, then Max would be able to perfectly time a voice call to Rone while that unsuspeg guy tries to jure one of his wind spells, therefore destroying his focus and causing him tret all five years of their friendship.

  [ Friend request sent to Cye_Rone ]

  “Good. Good.” Max was about to rub his hands together like a vilin but then remembered that there was a remote possibility of someoually watg his recorded footage iure and decided not to do that.

  “Is this the pce?” Max had already wandered quite far from the towre and had stumbled across a structure that looked like part of a farm. Normally, he wouldn’t suspect a pce like this to be an archery range, but turning his head slightly allowed him to see eight scarecrow-like mannequins strapped with rge straw masses of tric circles, which were kind of a dead giveaway.

  “Howdy there partner! Be ye one of the heroes?” An incredibly cliché rancher with a cattleman-style cowboy hat and even a piece of straw in his mouth walked out to greet him.

  Max instantly fot about the archery test.

  “I sure am! Say, that’s a really you have there. Do you have aras for sale?”

  “Heh, thanks. None for sale unfortunately, but if ya hit all the targets, I’ll getchya one for free as a trophy.”

  The pyful look in Max’s eyes immediately ged to one of single-minded purpose. “Deal.”

  “Eh?” The ran was taken aback by Max’s sudden ge in atmosphere. Was his hat that appealing?

  Max flipped back to his previous self as if nothing had happened, “Aha, I’ll try my best then. Well, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so where should I shoot from?”

  “Right ova here!” The ran guessed it was just his imagination.

  Leading him through a small , the NPded Max a bow and a quiver with some arrows, as Max looked over the rao gauge the difficulty.

  ‘Oh? It’s actually quite difficult?’

  Max expected the archery test to be a simple test – maybe shooting a target twenty or thirty metres away, to be beginner-friendly. However, this was not the case at all. There were actually 8 targets; one every 5m to the 25m mark, then one every 25m until the farthest target, which was attached to a ughing mannequin with a dumb straw moustache at a distance of about 101.3 metres.

  Max faltered and started sweating a little. Assuming he o hit the bullseye for each target, and since his limit to sistently nding a headshot was about ~80-90m in Hero of Liberation, he could probably only reliably hit the small bullseye up to the 75m target. The final target was definitely pushing his luck.

  Max felt a bit distressed at this and knew Rone would make fun of him if he failed the css test. Though this line of thought did not st long, as he khat stressing would cause his hands to shake. Emptying his mind, he decided to just do his best and took aim at the first target.

  Notig the troubled expression on Max’s face, the rancher realised that Max probably felt demoralised and decided to offer some moral support. “Don’t fret it, partner. Even I haven’t mao hit all’o’them darn targets in a row and I’ve been at this for over nine years!” He ughed and fiddled with his hat.

  Max let the arrow loose and it hit the bullseye of the first target.

  “Hoh! That’s a nice shht there, hit the middle of the-”

  Two seds ter, Max loosed another arrow, which hit the tre of the sed target.

  “Uh, that-”

  Then a third. And a fourth. After that was a fifth and stly, the sixth, which flew twice as far as the previous shot. Only then did he stop. He hit six of the eight targets over a span of 14 seds.

  By this point, the ran was no lhing, instead staring in shocked awe while unsciously gripping his hat tightly, as though the hat were a hypergamous lover that threateo leave him for a superior and more manly alternative.

  “Whoa, I wasn’t sure of it before, but that’s awesome!” Max paid the pitiful NPard, since he’d just made a huge discovery!

  Quickly opening up the system interface for the first time and dismissing some bothersome alerts and welessages, Max navigated to the game’s in-built web browser and did a search: [ World of Heroes aim stability ]

  He tapped on the first result and flicked to scroll through down the page.

  “I k! Hahahaha! This is awesome! The best!”

  “Uhm, may I ask what is going on?” The ran was no longer reeling from shod observed Max with fusion.

  “The goddess! The goddess has blessed me with superior aim! Praise the goddess!”

  “Oh!” The man nodded in feigned uanding. It seemed a bit strahat it ossible for the Goddess of Life to help people aim bows better, but the abilities of the gods were far beyond his prehension, so he would just accept this as truth. Additionally... praise the goddess!

  [ With the uping unch of World of Heroes, many bow-lovers are ed that the bow may be underpowered in the new game, as the tricky on had been sidered difficult to utilise in the game’s predecessor, Hero of Liberation. In respoo these s, archers will be thrilled to hear that Virtek have announced a new ‘shake redu’ feature! Shake redu is desigo reduvoluntary muscle movements in the pyer’s arms to deliver improved aiming stability! Additionally, rumours suggest that the effect is boosted in proportion to your ‘Dexterity’ stat! Could this be a plete game-ger for archery in World of Heroes? ]

  Max’s eyes sparkled as he read through the article. It was true! He could feel the difference from his very first shot! It was like an invisible force was helping to hold his arms steady.

  Excited, and wanting to test out his new range, Max moved the bow again to aim at the arget. He’d already found that there was a slight crosswind moving to the right, and he also o pensate fravity at this distance. Havihe unch speed of the previous arrows and feeling that the arrows were about 25g ea weight, Max aimed his shot diagonally left above the 75m target a his aim hover over the sweet-spot. Sure enough, his aim wavered much less than normal, as he gently let go of the arrow, sending it catapulting into the distan a curved arc...

  Exactly two seds ter, the arrow sunk into the target with a barely audible thunk.

  “...” Realising that his eyesight was too poor to see the arrow out that far, the ran pulled out a colpsible spygss from one of his pockets, exte, and held it up to his eye.

  “Pfuh, well I’ll be damned. You really hit the bullseye again.” He lowered the viewing instrument, only to raise it again, doing a double-take. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen shootin’ like this my entire life. You’re really somethin’ special, you know that?”

  “Haha, no need for fttery, sir. Though, if I mao hit the st target, would you be willing to give me the archer css?”

  “Eh?”

  “The archer css, sir. I hope this doesn’t e across as rude, but my main goal in ing here was to earn the qualifications to bee an archer.”

  “? Didn’t I already... No, wait...”

  Max didn’t realise this, but the ran was supposed to tell him he’d earhe qualifications to bee an archer after hitting the target at 25m. The problem was that Max shot the targets so fast that there was no time to inform him of this, causing him to actually break the NPC’s dialogue tree. Now the AI o e up with a ype of response, outside the list of pre-scripted answers.

  “...All right, yeah, if you mao hit that st target, I’ll officially endorse you as an archer.”

  “And the hat?”

  “?” The ran waited for Max to eborate, but he did not. “Hat?”

  “You said that if I hit all the targets, I have a cool hat like yours.”

  “Oh! Yes. Of course, that deal still stands.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  ‘Muahahaha! The hat is mine!’

  Feeling his determination reach peak levels, Max tilted his bad shot an arrow up into the air. The projectile carved a smooth arc as it flew toward the 100m target.

  After a moment of hesitation, the NPC realised it wasn’t a practice shot, and hurriedly brought out his spygss to find the arrow. Sure enough, it was there, just five timetres out from the bullseye. Not able to process this, he sunk to his knees in disbelief.

  Ding!

  Meanwhile, a notification interface appeared in front of Max.

  [ Pyer has obtaihe qualifications for the ‘Deadshot’ css. Accept? Y/N ]

  ‘Eh? Is this the archer css?’

  He’d assumed the css would just bndly be called ‘Archer’.

  “Hm...”

  Oh well, since he’d successfully passed the test, this should be a naming choice by the game pany, probably finality purposes.

  “Yes!”

  Max pressed yes and a bright fsh of ephemeral green light was emitted from his body.

  Lasz