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The key belonged to the Church, as most items of value did, and Jacob was the current safekeeper. He stared at it for a while as he considered… well, everything.

The upcoming event was all about different Paths if one had made different choices. Jacob had made many choices that he questioned himself about, all the way back to the day the Tutorial began. Shortly after entering the forest, Jake shot a boar that attracted a larger level 10 boar that had attacked them. While Jake had killed the beast, Joanna had come away crippled.

Back then, Jacob had admonished the man for his decision. He had blamed Jake, and Jacob believed that decision had been what initially had torn a wedge between him and the rest of their group. Then when Jake defended himself and killed three men… they all blamed him again.

He couldn’t blame Jake for leaving the group and going off on his own when confronted by Richard. If he had stood up for Jake then, things would have been different, but Jacob’s bad decisions didn’t end there.

Jacob had been used by Richard, fooled by Caroline, and ultimately tricked by both to lead Jake into an ambush… he had stood by and done nothing worthwhile as all the people he felt responsible for had been killed one by one. He had been cowardly and stuck by his own rules of non-aggression… he had decided the fate of so many people.

That had “rewarded” him with the class of Augur. A fate Jacob was quite comfortable with. He liked who he was now for the most part, but he still couldn’t help but wonder: what if he had done differently?

What if he had pushed Caroline and maybe started an uprising against Richard? What if he had tried to keep Jake close? What if he had killed William when he had the chance?

He did know that even if he did end up killing William back then, it would only have led to everyone dying later on due to a beast tide when Jake eventually progressed far enough in his quest to defeat the King of the Forest. However, would that truly have killed them all if they had done all they could to progress and fortify their settlement?

So many doubts haunted him, and they had for a long time. He couldn’t even claim that he now only did what was best for the Holy Church. He made decisions not necessarily beneficial for the Church but for his own personal feelings. Jacob had warned Casper about the goals of the Church and that plans were being made to crack down on the Risen. Needless to say, then sharing such information was clearly not in line with the goals of his faction.

Jacob even had to do so during the World Congress, too, as it was only there the gods could not peek at his conversations. He was fully aware there was already much scrutiny on him from several internal factions due to a number of factors. His friendship with Casper was just one of them, but that he still stayed relatively close to Jake was even more of an issue to many. While the Order of the Malefic Viper was not an enemy of the Holy Church, they were definitely not allies either. They were more of a faction that the Holy Church ignored and left alone - an approach they had wanted Jacob to take with Jake too. Add to that the fact that the Holy Church was losing more and more influence on the planet and their ever-falling chances of becoming the World Leader… things were rough.

What if I had made different choices? Jacob repeatedly asked himself.

Chances are he would be dead. He was reasonably sure he would be dead, actually. That wasn’t the most important thing, though. It was a question of if the planet would be in a better state if he had died. Without him, the Holy Church would still be there, but he knew they would be far smaller. He at least gave himself that much credit.

The work of the Church had also only become easier in recent times. The former King of the Forest seemed to have reined in the wild beasts quite well, and attacks on settlements had practically dropped to zero. The system event of Unusual Unions had also helped immensely with many beasts and monster factions now even working with human settlements. There was still conflict, and many humans did not want monsters in or too close to their cities. Attacks on settlements also still happened here and there, but such was unavoidable. In the same vein that humans could attack beasts in their habitats, so did humans have to accept the fear of being attacked in theirs.

Feeling the key in his hand, he considered using it. He knew he could. He found it a bit hypocritical that his job was to guide others to their ideal Path while he so often questioned his own… but perhaps that was part of it.

No… I have made my choices.

A future had been realized partly due to his choices. Jake had become a Progenitor, Casper an influential figure of the Risen, and Bertram still lived by his side. Even his own survival mattered as he knew things that would be beneficial due to his class. He knew that undercurrents were building and that the independent factions were preparing something. Something big.

Putting the key down on the table, he decided it would go to Maria, the strongest fighter in their city – possibly excluding Bertram - even if she was only a mercenary and not a member of the Church. It would benefit her the most. She had been part of the hunting teams for one anyway, and Jacob knew she wanted one. Bertram had already made it clear he had no desire to get a key himself.

It was probably a decision that would once more land scrutiny on him. Nothing would be said or done openly, but just small whispers in the corners questioning him. He could seek to silence it, but he saw no point. No, he would stop questioning himself as he reaffirmed himself. He closed his eyes and sighed.

I know my task.

To choose the best Path for Earth. The best Path for the most people.

Even if that Path did not include the Holy Church.

As a Malefic Dragonkin, Draskil had killed his first C-grade when at level 173 or 174. Needless to say, Jake wanted to beat that by killing one even earlier. While Jake wasn’t entirely confident he could beat Draskil even if they were the same level, he had a large advantage when fighting higher-level foes due to his class and even his profession. Alchemy allowed him to often come out on top in drawn-out fights – something any bout with a C-grade was bound to become – and his entire class was about punching above his weight class.

With his new Stealth Attack, he had even more confidence. Not right away, necessarily, as he planned on spending the next few days practicing and trying to improve it. He checked the time for the event and saw he had nine days left till the system event with the Seat of the Exalted Prima began.

Nine days of hunting.

Thus, his journey as a stealth archer in practice began. Before when Jake hunted through the jungle, he would tear up a path and kill everything that attacked him, but now Jake went slow. He would slowly stalk through the greenery and always stayed hidden.

The only times he struck, he did so when not seen. His senses made him know if his foe was aware of him, allowing him to more easily land stealth attacks. Except he quickly ran into one issue.

Danger sense was not something necessarily unique to Jake. Honed warriors and nearly all beasts also had some form of danger sense, and even if it was far weaker than Jake’s Bloodline-empowered ability, it was still there. This meant that the moment Jake released his attack and his arrow headed towards the beast, the beast would be aware, canceling out the effects of Stealth Attack.

That sucked. Big time. At least Vinewood creatures seemed to have no proper danger sense but allowed Jake to easily land sneaky attacks. He did notice that he could get stealth hits in melee for beasts, but only if he struck when they were right next to him. He managed to barely land a Stealth Attack on a pig-like beast that wandered right next to a Jake hidden with Arcane Stealth.

Also, magic attacks did not count as ranged attacks. Only physical blows did, which the scaling with Agility and Strength only should have been a hint to. Funnily enough, throwing a rock would trigger Stealth Attack, but a stable arcane bolt would not. Ignoring the absurdity of that, Jake quickly found more and more lacking aspects of the skill. Then again, what could he expect from a common rarity skill? He did not doubt it would have been way better back at level 50 and E-grade in general, but it was pretty damn hard to use in D-grade.

However… when it did hit. Jake did not know what he had expected when he had picked it up. Maybe a few percentages more damage? Five to ten percent seemed fair enough to him. Oh boy, had he been wrong.

Stealth Attack effectively increased damage by a third when it was triggered. Thirty-three fucking percent damage bonus from a common rarity skill. Sure, it was hard as hell to actually land a Stealth Attack, and it was limited to one a fight, but it was so much more powerful than he could have ever expected. He did regret not picking it up earlier in some ways, but then again, he had not really picked any skills he didn’t like. A few had fallen to the roadside like Descending Dark Fang, but he was confident he could improve them with time. Shit, it even had fang in the name.

Now, thirty-three percent was great, but landing an Arcane Powershot with it triggering was borderline impossible. The energies it gave off just made it too easy to notice for anything with halfway decent senses, making it only applicable against foes such as elementals. And even if it did land, Arcane Powershot was partly magical, so yeah.

Needless to say, Jake would work on improving that. To do that, he first had to figure out what exactly did Stealth Attack do? Not what its effect was, but why there was an effect at all? Jake quickly bit onto the fact that he did not expend any extra energy at all, but that did not mean there wasn’t anything extra added to his attacks.

There was… something. It was subtle. Jake would not quite call it energy, but more like all the energy already in the attack was affected subtly. The energy did not truly change but was somehow “primed” to work as a Stealth Attack. Jake reckoned this was done by the concept behind Stealth Attack.

These were the things Jake could swiftly discover himself, but it was only the first step. Even if he saw changes, he also needed to know what happened with these changes when actually used. How could this changed energy and concept suddenly disperse the moment a creature was aware it was being attacked?

Not just aware of the attack itself or its nature, but just that something was attacking it. Jake was lucky and found two foes fighting and confirmed that his Stealth Attack did work, meaning the foe just had to not be aware of the attack he launched.

The next day was spent experimenting even more, as he killed quite a few beasts and Vinewood creatures, but his hunting speed had definitely slowed down in comparison to the week prior. Not that his time was fruitless as he finally got a good idea of what to do with the Stealth Attack skill. A skill that truly was limited, making the entire common rarity tag make more and more sense.

So, Jake had several goals and avenues of improvement:

First of all: Magic. He needed his stealth skill to work with attacks of a magical nature. Right now, what was considered a magic attack or not was highly arbitrary. Arcane Powershot was only partly physical, but his explosive arrows were not at all; hence the explosion didn’t benefit from Stealth Attack; only the small initial impact of the arrow did.

Secondly, he needed some kind of consistency against different foes. He needed it to trigger even if the opponent became aware of his attack, as quite frankly, the skill was just useless as-is against some enemies like beasts. There were two ways of doing this: obfuscation or a change of trigger requirement.

Changing the trigger requirement was simple enough in theory. Jake just had to do so that even if the enemy was aware of a blow coming, it had to know more of the attack or attacker than the current rules required. Either by requiring it to know that Jake was the attacker and maybe even locate him, or by doing so that Stealth Attack worked as long as Jake fired the attack while the foe was unaware.

Obfuscation was a bit more tricky. The goal here would be to hide Jake’s attack until the moment it hit. Jake knew a thing or two about danger senses, as he had quite a potent version himself, but that didn’t make his danger sense fundamentally different than others. For the danger sense to trigger, some part of you had to be able to sense it. In Jake’s case, it was primarily with his Sphere picking it up or his even more overpowered intuition warning him. Most often, these two worked together along with all his other empowered senses, and that resulted in his overpowered danger sense. For beasts, it was much the same.

Perception-related abilities were not rare at all, and Perception as a stat allowed most creatures to sense things around them, especially mana. Everyone could sense mana in their environment, and Jake firing an arrow that disrupted energy within his foe’s “Sphere of Perception” would make them aware of his attack, rendering Stealth Attack useless. So Jake would have to hide it somehow.

This did not deal with the intuition part. Many actual danger sense skills used intuition, even if it was considered far less reliable. The description of Bestial Survival Instincts back then had even said: “has a small chance to feel a distinct sense of danger from any attack,” which was – as the name suggested – a common ability of beasts.

Naturally, an ideal solution would be to change both the trigger requirements of Stealth Attack and hide the attack for maximum effect. Now the issue was just figuring out how to do that, as well as allowing it to work with magical attacks.

One thing was certain: it had to do with the odd sensation of concept he got from his attacks. The invisible concept was something only he could see and feel. His first issue was figuring out how to actually engage with it. It was untouchable to energy, and no matter how Jake tried to somehow affect it, he failed.

Yet he did not give up but kept trying different approaches. He figured out more and more nuances of the skill, such as how the blow did not count for his poisons at all, but only the initial impact, and the one time he managed to land an Arcane Powershot from stealth on a Vinewood creature that seemed to be in meditation while hidden in a tree-canopy, he saw how the damage amplification was a lot less than it should be according to his “adding a third” assessment, confirming his prior theory that Arcane Powershot would be limited. This made Stealth Attack increase overall damage by way less than a third, not because the amplification did not scale, but because of how much “magic” was involved in Jake’s archery by now, especially with poisons mixed in too.

Time passed as another day went by, with Jake using his new skill repeatedly. He did not consider much else than merely figuring out how to improve Stealth Attack. How to apply the concept to the magical aspects of his fighting style or how to make it more reliable. He used it on different foes, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, and he did get a sense of improvement and like his success chance increased.

His only method of improvement was to simply use the skill over and over again to observe what he did when the skill was used. One had to remember that the user was the cause of every skill; the originator. This meant Jake was the one who infused the concept into his physical blows, and as long as he could figure out how and why he did that – something the skill currently did without Jake consciously noticing – he would be able to control it.

The breakthrough came in an unexpected way. As Jake was hunting a boar-like beast while in deep focus, he sat hidden with Arcane Stealth as he nocked an explosive arcane arrow. He was so focused on drawing his bow and trying to observe the process as the Stealth Attack concept was applied that he didn’t even notice himself mutter under his breath before it had already been done. He muttered his so-far unspoken hope towards the arrow.

“Be stealthy…”