Chapter 565 565

Luna stared at the bamboo shoot in her hand with great concentration, carefully painting over the runes that she had drawn on in pencil and then double checked. A Runic weapon needed to be perfect, both in form and in creation, or it simply wouldn't work.

Carving the tube for her blow gun proved to be rather simple, she only had to make it smooth and pick a straight piece, since bamboo was already hollow. But after that, the Runes had to be properly placed, balancing the location against the effect of the individual runes to have them all work together.

For now, she was making the simplest of runic weapons, an enchantment that would increase the speed of the projectiles. In the runic language, her inscription was all one word, and it just had to be spread down the tube so that the dart would increase in speed as it went.

In theory, that should be really easy, but Luna had never written anything before, and it had taken her more than ten tries to just get the pencil part right so that she could check that it was correct.

When they were properly placed, Runes gave off a feeling of power, which was enough to tell her that she hadn't made a mistake, but in order to get them to activate, they needed to be permanent, and a Pencil didn't meet the requirements.

First, she made the little snake with no head, then the one looped around to touch it's middle. Those ones she understood, and they were written easily. But the next one had an extra branch, and she wasn't sure how she was supposed to connect it so that it looked right.

Hard angles weren't easy for her either, especially with the paintbrush.

Again she referred to the Calligraphy book, memorizing the brush stroke order, and carefully put down the third and fourth matching runes. They still looked right, and Luna put extra focus into getting the final one right, so she wouldn't have to discard this blowgun in the making.

It was also a snake and should be easy to draw, but it had two hard angles. Luna checked the book again, trying to understand, then suddenly inspiration came to her. These weren't all snakes, some of them were more than one snake. This was a curved one, and a straight one and each was its own brush stroke.

Why hadn't Papa Cain explained it that way, to begin with? Now that she knew, this calligraphy thing was way easier to understand.

Luna drew the final rune on the blowgun and added a bit of mana, watching the carefully painted runes glow with blue light before the whole blowgun faded to a soft silver color, with blue runes engraved on it.

It was right, she was certain of it. That was what was supposed to happen, the Runes made the material stronger, and added an enchantment based on the strength of the creator, or the wielder if they added the mana after the initial charges had faded.

With a successful first attempt in hand, Luna slithered off her seat and went looking for the target range that the Librarian had promised was nearby.

It was made for archery, so it should be far enough for her to test her blowgun, and there were trained people there to help the rookies like her, who had never done it before. At least, she hoped that one of them knew how to use a blowgun. You just added the dart and blew, right? Simple.

She just didn't quite understand the aiming thing without the System helping her.

When she got to the courtyard, Luna found that there were a lot of people waiting around the archery field, so she slid between their feet and went to find out what was so interesting up at the front.

Two young elven archers were having some sort of competition between themselves, with an old elven man judging them, so Luna simply climbed up the old man's leg and onto his shoulder to take a look.

"Hello, don't mind me. My name is Luna, I arrived with the Ancient Cain." She whispered to the Archery Master who she had just climbed.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Luna. These young men only have a few shots each if you wished to train afterward." He responded with a warm smile.

"I made a Runic Weapon Blowgun, and I was hoping that someone could teach me to use it. It seemed like the easiest ranged weapon for me to learn, since I'm a bit small for a proper bow, and I'm not a mage-type class to be casting spells everywhere." She explained.

"I know the blowgun, and I can take some time to teach you the basics. Watch how the archers line up their arrows. Notice how they sight it, adjusting for the wind and the distance? That is also how you aim a blowgun.

Learning the wind and rate of drop takes a lot of practice, even the simplest weapons aren't easy to truly master, but if you watch the archers you will learn how to point the blowgun properly.

Like the bow, you want one hand at each end. Instead of the bow and string, one hand near your mouth, and one closer to the front. Don't move your far hand for everything, adjust the one closest to you for fine targeting. See how they're doing it?"

This guy was a way better teacher than Cain. If she had learned to draw letters from someone who taught this well it might not have taken her all day to figure out the trick to writing the runic alphabet.

If anyone had been listening to her thoughts, they would surely want the strange the tiny lamia. Since when does it only take a single day to master a new alphabet?

But Cain had gotten it right away since the Runic Alphabet was similar to one he knew from his past life, so Luna thought that was the normal and appropriate learning speed, and that she was a slow learner because Cain was bad at teaching people how to write.

Luna watched as the archers drew back their bows, then memorized how they fine-tuned their aim, checked the windsock and adjusted again, then let loose the arrow.

Both arrows flew true, hitting the target and touching the others that were already embedded in the straw block, and the whole crowd clapped. Archery looked like a lot of fun, but not the combat art for Luna. The bow needed to be drawn across the body, and that would block her other two arms.

The blowgun was different, it was up and out of the way, so she could use swords in her bottom arms while she aimed the blowgun. It would take work to get the hang of doing them all at once, but using swords came naturally to her, so she didn't think it would be that hard to adjust her style for times when she wanted to fight up close and at a distance at the same time.

The two archers fired one more arrow, tightly clustered with the others, and the referee leaned over to whisper to Luna.

"This is how elves measure their archery skills. The judges will go out with a string and wrap it around the cluster of arrows. Whichever group gives the shortest string wins."

All the arrows were in the same little red circle in the middle, so there had to be some way to score them, but Luna hadn't expected a piece of string to be the measuring tool to determine their total points.

"If you are here for a while, come back at midnight, the students do the challenge with moving targets in the dark, to make it more difficult. You could learn a lot, and it is fun to watch the new archers learn." The old Elf told her, patting Luna's head.

"I will for sure. Once I learn a little bit about the blowgun I will have some time before I start on another project for Rune Crafting, so I can come to visit." Luna agreed.

"Your guardian won't be upset at you moving about at midnight?" He asked curiously.

"Oh no, he is used to it. I eat until I fall asleep, then I am up again two hours later." Luna told the old elf proudly, making the nearest members of the audience giggle.

They didn't see many Demons, much less baby ones, so the thought that she was proud of an erratic sleeping schedule was highly entertaining.

"Doesn't he need to sleep at some point as well?" One of the Elves asked Luna, too curious to keep quiet.

"Not really. My Guardian is my father, the Ancient Cain. They only sleep a few hours a night, or not at all if they are busy, so one of the times when I fall asleep so will he, and then we are both ready to go again once I am awake. Maybe he will come to check out the archery too. He sees really well in the dark, so I think he would enjoy it." Luna informed him, drawing the attention of everyone around her, including the archers.

"The Ancient's daughter wants to learn from us? Now that is an honor. Here, I will set up a table for you, so you can fire from the same height as the others. Lots of us have learned the basics of the blow gun for dense woods where it is hard to pull back a bow." The winning archer told her, still holding the short red string that the judges had brought back to mark his victory.

"Thank you all for the help. People here are really nice, aren't they?"

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