Tuk tossed his rings in dazzling patterns and lines of light all around him. Covered in aura, the bright rings whistled through the air, breaking through the aether powered targets that the targeting circle generated and tracked for him.

  He tossed a ring towards the last of the targets, extending his long, doubled jointed arm, and watched as his little metal disc smashed the target with a small explosion of angry, fizzing aether, and received the last of his nine rings smoothly into his right index finger. He couldn’t help but smile at himself as the machine powered down, his skin prickling lightly from the very tiny discharges of aether that surrounded him before dissipating.

  We’re okay now… he thought, smiling at his rings. Like they say, we’re back in business!

  Clapping startled him.

  “Woah!” Rel said. “That was amazing!”

  Tuk chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, Crystal! Stop it. How long have you been there?”

  Rel grinned at him.

  “About five minutes,” she said. “Those were some very… Dynamic expressions you were making.”

  “Ah, for Crystal’s sake! I was just focusing!”

  “I know, I was just kidding,” the archer said, approaching him. “Still, you really are all on your own over here, aren’t you?”

  Tuk laughed. “Yeah… Only ring tosser the Master of Throwing Weapons has ever actually had. He’s heard of them, of course. Even seen them, though never in person, so it looks like we aren’t exactly that common… Even amongst the other truggers.”

  “Are there others?” Rel asked. Unfortunately, given how tightly packed the enormous Rangers Halls had been built, with its myriads of ranges, practice fields, targeting arenas and other such arrangements, it was impossible to see anything other than the protective anti-projectile walls of the ranges that enclosed everything and everyone.

  “Nah… I’m the only one here,” Tuk said. “Truggers are also rare, though Nar says there’s one in the Blades Hall of all places…”

  Rel dropped her jaw.

  “Ah, it’s okay,” Tuk said, before she could say anything. “I’ve seen enough truggers for a lifetime back home! It’s a lot more exciting to see new races!”

  Rel smiled, though it didn’t quite make it to her eyes and she nodded, not pressing the issue.

  “It looks like you’re back to your full self, then?” she asked, nodding at the rings in his fingers.

  “Yeah!” Tuk said, bumping a fist into the air. “We’re all back in order, and I even upgraded to [Will of the Ring Tosser 2], so we’re better than ever before!”

  “That’s really great to hear,” Rel said, chuckling. “Depressed Tuk was something I’d never think I’d see, and it was seriously starting to mess with my head, man…”

  “I know!” Tuk said, shaking his head. “It was like a bad dream… But now, I’m awake! And taller, better and funnier than ever!”

  Rel burst out laughing again. “Oh Tuk… You are the best.”

  “That I am,” he said, puffing out his chest. “But, hey! What’re you up to? Are you cleared for training again?”

  Rel shook her head with a sigh. “I used too much aura in the den, and did too much damage to myself apparently… So I’m not allowed to do anything for another two days.”

  “Oof! Sorry to hear that,” Tuk said.

  “Meh… It is what it is. I’ll slowly get stronger.”

  “You will,” Tuk said, nodding effusively. “So just take it easy, yeah? No need to rush.”

  “Says the guy that shredded his arms and hands, desperate to get his ring tossing back?”

  Tuk scratched the back of his head with a grimace. “I mean…”

  She laughed at his lost expression.

  “I’m joking,” she said. “And I know you’re right. Anyways, I’m just here to see the Master of Rangers to talk about my path.”

  “New and awesome skills?” Tuk asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

  “New? Yes. Awesome? I’m not so sure,” she said, deflating with a sigh.

  “Are they all… You know, penance-y and suffering-y?” Tuk asked, making weird, wiggling gestures with his fingers.

  “Pretty much,” she said, smiling at the tosser.

  It couldn’t be easy for Tuk to talk about her suffering centered path, or why it was there in the first place, but she appreciated that he actually talked about it, rather than skirt around the topic or be overly cautious about it like most of the others in the party. Though nothing could compare to Mul’s bluntness.

  That guy’s something else, she thought. Or Nar’s…

  Crystal, but Nar had asked her some pointed questions during their Climb, hadn’t he?

  “That stuff’s strong,” Tuk said, scratching his chin with one of his rings. “It’s a bit sucky, but damn… Two arrows and that Den Boss was gushing green out of everywhere!”

  “Yeah, right?” Rel said. “That came out of nowhere!”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No!” she said. “I was just using my [Arrow of Penitence]! Same as before!”

  “Hmm… I guess we didn’t fight anything that bled before,” Tuk said, leaving the cannibals unmentioned. “Maybe that’s why it never did anything?”

  “Maybe… Though I did gain some new skills and upgrades that could explain it as well.”

  “Oooh! Guess you better go see and the master then. He’ll know what's up for sure!”

  “What’s up?” Rel asked, frowning.

  Tuk waved at her. “Ah! Don’t worry. It’s just an expression.”

  Rel shook her head, even as she couldn’t help but smile. “Who was it this time? The flight deck crew? The kitchen staff?”

  “It was the weapons deck!” Tuk said, his eyes shining. “Oh, man! I need to take you guys on another adventure! There’s so much going on in the ship! And the weapons deck folks?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Let’s just say you guys are in for a surprise. A big surprise!”

  “I can't wait! It’s annoying I missed your first adventure, but next time, call me! Whatever that woman says, I'm coming with you!” Rel vowed.

  “You got it!” Tuk said, and raised his fist to her, laughing at her confused look. “You bump fists!”

  And hesitantly, she bumped her fist into his. “What’s it mean?”

  “Oh, it can mean a lot of things. It can be like, oh yes!” Tuk said, counting with his fingers. “Or, wow, that was awesome! Or like, even, let’s do this! Or, we got this! You catch my drift?”

  Catch my drift? She asked herself. However, she wasn’t sure if she was making the Master of Rangers wait for her, so it was best to cut the conversation short there, or Tuk would just go on and on.

  “I’ll have to ask you what that one means later,” she said. “For now, I need to go find the Master of Rangers. I don’t know if he’s waiting for me…”

  “Cool, cool!” Tuk said. “Come find me when you’re done! We’ll go for dinner together!”

  “Deal!”

  And with that, she left him to return to his practice.

  Now where is he? She thought, as she walked through the many thin corridors in the hall of rangers.

  Each and every training and practice area was equipped with aura dampening barriers that stopped any stray projectiles or skills, so she was able to walk around, focused on finding her master, without fear or worry of getting an arrow through her face. But while some of them were kept transparent, other barriers were turned solid, so she couldn’t see much of anything.

  TING!

  Uh?

  She had just received a message, and its subject line read F7.

  Rel glanced down at her feet, and searched until she found the “D4” letters painted onto the floor, a few paces behind her. That both told her the name of the practice range on her right side, as well as marked its entrance through the barrier.

  And if that’s D4, then… She swiveled and returned in the direction she had come from.

  The Rangers Hall was the biggest of all the halls. Its cavernous, multi-leveled vastness occupied an enormous section within the bowels of the ship, and it was even bigger than the massive hangar bay that housed the Scimitar’s smaller contingent of aetherships.

  She reached practice range F7 a couple of minutes later, and found her master standing quietly by a transparent section of the wall, his eyes tracking an instructor as she demonstrated a high altitude, arching shoot with her bow.

  Even after meeting the man a few times, she was still startled by his youth. Blond, attractive and easy going, sometimes it felt more like she was talking to an older cousin than to a master.

  “Hello, master,” she said, nodding at him.

  “Wassup, apprentice?” the man said, following the flight of another arrow with his ashen brown, ex-Climber eyes.

  Rel sighed. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Oh? It’s just the same as what’s up, I guess. Though maybe not. It’s got some nuance, you know? You’ll learn,” he said. “By the way, I’m happy Tuk is back in his good spirits. It pained us to not really know what to do with his class, but the Master of Throwing Weapons has been doing some serious research with K, so he should be able to start guiding him soon.”

  She tried not to be surprised anymore at the fact that her master could seemingly hear everything that went on in the noisy, enormous hall, but yet again, she failed not to. It was deafening in there.

  Just how much [Hearing] does he have? She wondered.

  “Alright, let’s talk and walk,” he said.

  “Yes, master.”

  “So…” he began, hesitating, as she fell into step beside him. “You got some gains.”

  She nodded.

  “I had a chat with Aedina to talk about your new skills,” he said. “But it pretty much only confirmed what we already knew, and what we had planned for you.”

  “A status effect path,” Rel said.

  “Yup. Nasty, nasty one, too.”

  She frowned at him.

  “What?” he said, shrugging. “It is nasty. You penance guys are as terrifying as the rogues… And really, really strong too.”

  Rel pursed her lips and made a blank face.

  “Alright, alright! Let’s see what we got, yeah?” the man said, pushing forward.

  A large screen appeared in front of them, and Rel found herself reading through her skills. She had them memorized already, of course, as there wasn’t much she could do under Priestess Aedina and the healer’s all-watching eyes as she recovered. Still, she scanned through them once more.

  “See? What did I say?” the master asked her, his eyebrows raising up to his blond strands. “Nasty… Cool! But nasty.”

  “Yes, yes,” she sighed. Though to be frank, there was no denying his assessment.

  It is nasty, Rel thought. Bleeding, curses, afflictions… Crystal, it almost sounds like a diseased path.

  “No [Will of the Ring Tosser] for you, I’m afraid,” the master said. “But you don’t need to go through the motions like the others either, given how you had already lost your Climbing blessings when you… Uh, you know, went sideways for a bit.”

  Rel nodded stiffly. Priest Aedina knew most of, if not the whole story, and the Master of Rangers had told her that as her master, he needed to know everything if he was to properly guide her, so Rel had given him an honest and gory rapport, even if not the full deal, and as her master had just said, she had indeed lost the Climbing blessings of the Crystal.

  These blessings had no official name, that was just the way her master had decided to call them, and people seemed to call them different things, as they weren’t even recognized by the Church as being a real thing. However, Rel knew otherwise…

  When she had gone sideways, as her master had so eloquently put it, she had lost two things. First, the ability to know about the attributes that were known to her party members, and secondly, she had lost the guidance of the System, Crystal or whatever Radiant it had been, and had to learn how to use her bow from scratch. Fortunately and unfortunately, there had been no lack of talented archers to teach her amongst the Cannibals. Of those, Kol had been the most agreeable of them, and so, Rel had learned from her.

  The first of those blessings had been recovered when she joined Kur's party, but the second had remained outside of her grasp, which somehow had turned out to be a silver lining in her whole mess of a cannibal situation. While the other ranged apprentices panicked and suffered through the basic learning of their weapons, like Tuk had, she hadn’t needed to go through the same process, which had been doubly fortuitous considering how she’d been bedridden for most of the previous month. She still needed to properly learn how to shoot her bow of course, but, at least, she was still in fighting shape.

  As for the third blessing, the one that allowed her the easy use of her aura, the priestess, Aedina, believed that the Radiants had left her that one as a mercy, as she hadn’t fully joined the path of evil and corruption, but Rel had no way of knowing the truth. Nor did she care to find out.

  “Right, so, here’s where we’re standing,” the master said, guiding her through a different corridor. “[Arrow of Penitence] and [Bathed in the Blood of the Innocent], through your [Weight of the Past], are both incredible skills for a [Bleeding] focused style of fighting. You may or may not know this, but [Bleeding] continuously saps your opponent’s HP as their HP tries to regenerate lost blood and heal, so, as long as your target can bleed, these two skills, with their enhanced [Bleeding] powered by your… Guilt, will be very, very good, and will never let you down. And you saw it yourself with the Den Boss. The Navy finished it off, but that thing was already half dead when they got their grubby hands on it.”

  “Yeah… How did that happen, anyways?” Rel asked. “There was no mention of [Bleeding] in my skills before that fight.”

  Her master shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest. But don’t think too much about it. Using skills before actually having them is pretty common for auramancers. It’s how the majority of us learn said skills, actually.”

  Like Nar and his [Sword Aura], Rel thought.

  “What about my… [Continuous Atonement]?” she asked, her voice lowering as a squad of apprentices and their instructor came into view.

  “Don’t worry,” the master said, nodding at the instructor as they passed each other. “No one can hear us.”

  Rel stared wide eyed at the apprentices as she and her master squeezed up against one of the barriers to let the gaggle of them and their instructor pass.

  “How?” she whispered.

  “Stuff,” the master said. “But yeah, your [Continuous Atonement] passive is bread and butter for a penance path, but right now, though? I don’t think you should use it. And I already told you what I thought of those broken arrows of yours…”

  “I already said I got rid of them!” she said.

  “Good. An arrow that can’t fly true is not an arrow. And no matter how fine the crack or the splinters, their randomness will always prevent you from 100% controlling the arrows' flight,” he said, with a serious glint in his eyes for once. “So, no more pricking yourself on those crappy arrows. If we need to do it, there’s ways to do it without destroying perfectly good arrows… But going back to [Continuous Atonement], you already have enough on your plate with your [Arrow of Penance] and [Weight of the Past], so let’s focus on those first. Besides, you’re already going to be taking enough damage as it is, and no need to add that passive on top of it. It’s crap anyways for now. A 0.01% effectiveness increase? You’d need to shoot a hundred arrows before you even make it to 1%!”

  “That’s true… And it has a 10 second cooldown in between triggering,” Rel said, pursing her lips.

  “Yup. That’s not to say it’s not a good skill, though. It’s just not good for you right now… So, we’re parking it until it makes sense to pick it back up again,” the master said, stopping to stare at a number of apprentices shooting at distant targets, in a very long, but narrow archery range. “What I think we should do, though, is go all in on those status effects and debuffs of yours, rather than direct DPS. And it's best for you to also consider poisons and maybe traps as well.”

  She snapped her head towards him. “Poison?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Poisons come in all kinds. The killing types. The weakening types. The torturing types. And the type that would help you get your path to that next level… The ones that target the mind, and lower your target's resistance to your skills.”

  Rel frowned at him. “That makes sense… I guess. But can I even use poisons?”

  His master sighed. “Nothing that causes pain or direct HP damage, unfortunately. Aedina was very clear on that. But poisons that make it hard for your opponent to think straight, or cause confusion in their senses? That’s fair game for your penance path.”

  “And the traps?” Rel asked, considering his master’s words. “Are those okay too?”

  “As long as it's limited to the same stuff as the poisons, as well as movement restriction, it’s fine,” he muttered. “I can’t tell what the difference is between a cursed arrow and a poisoned one, but, it’s not for me to make the rules.”

  “Yes, master…” she said, hesitating.

  She too had to admit that the restrictions placed on her, for her penance and search for forgiveness and reparations, didn’t make the most sense. And on top of that, she had to abstain from eating meat as well, though it wasn’t as though she ever felt tempted to do it.

  “Anyways, if you’re up for it, I’ll hook you up with one of the Shadow instructors,” the master said, turning to face her. “We’ve got plenty of poisons around, but mind stuff is freaky, and it’s best if you learn from the pros.”

  “And the traps?”

  He snorted. “That you’ll learn from us, of course! Though I’m still unsure on whether to add them to your path or not. We’ll see.”

  The Master of Rangers resumed walking again, scanning transparent walls whenever they found them.

  “In terms of your bow though, I think we’re going to have to change it,” he said. “You’ve got Tuk for close and medium range, and Cen in your party to cover medium and long range. For now, at least. But, like you saw in that den, your party is missing an extreme range fighter, and that’s where I think you should come in. You’ve got enough [Strength] to just about manage the weakest of the CDCBs, Colossal Distance Composite Bows, or as everyone just calls them, the colossal bows.”

  “What in the pile is that?” Rel asked him.

  The master stopped and lifted a hand to her. In it, a thick, curved bow appeared, and while she didn’t know why, the sight of the thickness of the bow’s arms made her instantly nervous. That string had to be under a tremendous amount of tension, and the thought of it snapping made her gulp. And even curved, the bow was almost as big as her current one…

  She reached a hand for it, and the master dropped its weight on her, forcing her to scramble to keep it from dropping on the floor.

  “What was that for?” she asked him, fuming.

  “For being scared of it,” he said. “Respect the bow, but don’t fear it.”

  Rel looked down at the colossal bow in her hands. Its arms were thicker than her wrists, and it was heavy enough that lifting it required her to reach for her [Strength].

  “And Rel, you will respect this bow,” her master said. “You will only use it in my presence and when I tell you to. I will teach you how to use it, little by little, at the same time as you are improving your normal archery with your current bow.”

  And he knocked gently on the bow’s limbs. “This thing will rip your arms off, Rel, and slice through your fingers and anything in the way if you’re not careful.”

  “Why-Why are you giving this to me, then?” she asked him.

  “There’s nothing more powerful, or helpless, than to drop your targets before they’ve even gotten a chance to reach your party,” he said. “If you can deliver deadly status effects over distances of half a mile or farther, you’ll be untouchable, as your target will either die on their way to you, or reach you in a state where they’re hardly a threat anymore.”

  “Ha-Half a mile?” she squeaked.

  “Or more… How far do you think I can shoot?” he asked her with a grin. “You have the [Sight] and [Accuracy] for it, and in fact, you will probably get your third modifier on [Accuracy], so why not use it to your advantage? Later on though, depending on what skills you get, we might want to swap your current bow to the opposite of this one. A short bow, for close to medium targets. Tuk’s rings are impressive at covering the close and medium range, but he might not always be there, or he might need help, so it will be good to be able to be flexible. Plus, you will face plenty of close-range encounters in your life, and we can’t neglect those.”

  “Uh-hu…” she said with a slow nod.

  “Other than that, in terms of attributes…”

  Another window popped open in the air, this time containing her status.

  “You’re going to need a crap ton more [Aura] than that, and you also need to work harder at your [Aura Pathways] and [Mastery], as you can’t even use one of the status effects of your [Weight of the Past] yet,” he said, scanning through the list. “You’re going to be gaining a shit ton of [Constitution] from all of that self-damage too, but unfortunately, I don’t think you will ever unlock [Toughness]. Some penance paths move on to mental and soul suffering, but given your bleed heavy path, I think your suffering will always be physical, and given the whole repentance stuff, [Toughness] would be cheating, am I right?”

  “I… Think so,” Rel said, with a grimace. “I need to… Feel it. Take it all…Completely, for it to be true.”

  Her master sighed. “I figured. Well, other than that, your attributes look generally good for what we’re trying to achieve. A bit more [Strength] maybe, but that will come, and we’ll need to unlock [Vigor], of course. Your party members told you, yeah?”

  She nodded. She knew about the attribute that all but Kur and Cen had suffered to unlock, and she was happy to know she would also unlock it. But she wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, given the stories of suffering the others had gone through.

  “[Accuracy], like I said, is critical, and gaining an attribute modifier on it will be fantastic, and your [Sight] is good, but can always get better and it will get better. And… 15, uh?”

  “Can you see what that is?” she asked him. To her, it was still just a [???].

  “I can’t,” he said, his tone cautious. “I have suspicions, as I know enough to make assumptions around what I can’t know, but all I can say is that… Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out when time comes.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” she pressed him.

  “It’s neither good nor bad,” he said, passing a hand over his hair. “It just is. But that’s just from my understanding. When you unlock it… Well, I can’t say anything about it now, but we’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

  He stopped and turned to face her, and Rel noticed that they had reached the circle of targets where Tuk was training.

  “And there you have it,” the master said. “That’s the path me and Aedina have in mind for you, and it should reflect on your status at some point soonish. What do you think?”

  “I like it,” she said, honestly. “But… Is this the best I can get with my… Situation?”

  He nodded. “It’s always up to the apprentice to work hard and fight hard to get the gains they want, but yeah, this is a very, very powerful path. There are downsides to it, of course, like there are for all other paths. You’ll struggle against non-flesh targets, though we can kit you up with armor piercing arrows and the such for tough opponents, and beasts will be mostly immune to your [Affliction of Guilt] and [Marked by Transgression] curses. They are creatures of instinct, perhaps even cruelty, but they’re not evil. On monsters though, work away. They’re usually just like us.”

  Meaning… These skills will work on people too, she realized, with a slight quiver.

  “Other than that, you might struggle against targets with high mental resistances, but that’s what the poisons are for,” he added.

  “And the traps?”

  He shrugged. “For flexibility. You never know when they might come in handy. But again, I’m not sure yet if we’ll use them.”

  She nodded to herself. “I do like it. I like it a lot. I mean, it is nasty, but… I won’t be using any of this stuff on people, and it will help me contribute to the party. So yes, I’ll take it. Thank you, master.”

  “No worries,” he said. “I’ll set up our schedule with Aedina, and get an instructor from the Shadows Hall for your poison classes. You won’t fully understand or respect them unless you learn how to and make them yourself.”

  “That sounds good, master.”

  “Alright, in that case, off to dinner with you, before Aedina calls me,” he said. “I’ll see you either tomorrow, or the day after, Rel, and we can get started on that colossal bow.”

  “I can’t wait, master,” she said, with a short bow. And in truth she really couldn’t.

  The quicker she could master her new skills, and even the monster of a bow she now had stashed away in her ring, the quicker she could provide their added benefit to the party, and the closer she could start properly repaying them for everything they had done for her and… Well, repenting.

  However, as Rel watched her master disappear into the maze of corridors of the Rangers Hall, she opened up her list of skills once again, her eyes coming to rest on the specific one she was looking for.

  It really is hidden, she thought to herself. It hadn’t shown up on the list of skills the master had read through, and she doubted the master wouldn’t have brought it up, considering how powerful it was, or its unknown nature and rank.

  “You will know when the time is right,” Priestess Aedina had told her. “The divine will reveal everything to you, as long as you remain on the path of penitence and repentance. For now, speak of it to no one, child. Do you understand?”

  Of course, everyone in the party knew about it, and so did Row, though she was unsure if anyone else in Row’s party knew about it too. Nevertheless, she had promised not to speak of it until the priest gave her the go ahead.

  Still, I wonder what’s behind those ???.

  All she could do was stick to the path before her. To remain loyal, faithful, and repentant.

  And suffering…

  But in truth, she believed the priest. When the time was right, the divine would reveal everything to her. After all, Someone had heard her plea, all the way down in the B-Nex, and had fulfilled her request…

  In time, she would know everything.

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  Thank you for reading, and I hope that you have all enjoyed the journey thus far!