*Ding* You have unlocked the Unseen Arrow class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

  Effects:

  - Unseen Arrow: Gain forty five stat points for each level in this class.

  - Shadow’s Might: Stamina increased by 550%, Health Regeneration increased by 250%.

  - Shadow’s Pursuit: Speed increased by 90%.

  - Stealth: Unseen, unheard. Present, yet unknown. Be one with the shadows and the land.

  - Archery: Master the bow and take deadly aim.

  Available Skills:

  - Shadow Affinity: Increased Shadow affinity.

  - Shadow Bow: Form a bow from the writhing shadows.

  - Shadow Arrow: Wreathe your arrow in shadows.

  - Shadow Shot: Fire your arrow through the shadows.

  - Shadow Barrage: Rain the wrath of the shadows down on your foes.

  - Shadow Bombardment: Leave a cloud of shadows on impact.

  - Shadow Split: Cause your arrows to split on impact.

  - Shadow Meld: Dive into the shadows, hidden away from curious eyes.

  - Shadow Cloak: Wreathe yourself in shadows.

  - Untouched Shadows: Remove dirt and grime from objects.

  “Wanna go try them out?" Emma asked, bending down to rub Fennel behind the ears.

  “Yeah, sure. Sounds like fun.” Zoe stood and reached her hands out to her two friends. They both grabbed on, and Zoe Cosmic Leaped them several dozen kilometers out into the middle of the forests.

  “That’s always bizarre.” Joe said. “I expected teleportation to feel more jarring, but it’s just one moment I’m sitting down in your chair, and the next I’m here, floating several feet off the ground, resting on a conjured, what is it this time?" He turned his head to look below him at the tendrils of wood resting supporting him. ”Wood.“

  “You should get some teleportation, Joe.” Emma said. “It’d be good for you.”

  “Bah. I like walking.” Joe waved his hand. “It’s nice. If I could teleport, I’d never enjoy walking through the streets.”

  “You could just walk through the streets anyway, y’know?" Emma asked.

  Zoe laughed. “He could, but he wouldn’t. Isn’t that right?”

  Joe sighed, and nodded. “It’s nice to be mundane, sometimes.”

  “Enough of that, I wanna test out these new skills.” Zoe pushed the system to give her Shadow Bow, Arrow, Shot, Barrage and Bombardment.

  The first thing Zoe noticed, when she summoned her Shadow Bow was how wispy the magic seemed. In her hand, the bow felt solid, like a normal, well made bow. But to her eyes, the bow was almost translucent, with the cloud of shadows she held ebbing and flowing through the form of the bow. Tendrils of shadows reached out and broke off, dissipating into the air. She tried to summon a matching arrow through the skill, but nothing happened.

  “Looks like it’s literally just a bow.” Zoe laughed.

  “You have any normal arrows?" Joe asked.

  “I do.” Emma said, holding her hand out. "I doubt Zoe has any.“

  “Yeah, I definitely don’t.” Zoe shrugged and grabbed Emma’s hand, approving of the trade for a few dozen arrows.

  First, Zoe tried firing off one of her Elemental Arsenal arrows made from cinders and frost. When the arrow was loosed, the shadowy string burst in a small cloud of shadows, propelling the arrow even faster than Zoe expected. The frost laden arrow flew straight, smashing into the ground a few dozen feet ahead where Zoe was aiming and embedding itself deep into the cold ground. Next, she tried the same process with one of Emma’s regular arrows, which behaved identically — though didn’t embed itself quite so deep into the ground as Zoe’s magically enhanced arrow.

  “Looks like it works with any old arrow then. So it’s just a bow.” Zoe said. “That’s fine, I guess. I can do better with my Elemental Arsenal though.”

  Joe held up a finger. “As long as your Elemental Arsenal bows work with these skills. They might only work with this bow.”

  “Most skills tend to work with any bow, I’ve found.” Emma added. "But that’s not impossible, either. I’ve heard of it happening before.“

  Zoe nodded, and dismissed her bow, watching as the tendrils reached out trying to grasp onto everything they could as they dissipated into the air. She summoned a more familiar bow, made from frost and cinders, with a string formed from rushing winds and water.

  She pushed mana into her Shadow Arrow skill as she summoned another Elemental Arsenal arrow, and watched as the arrow was wreathed in more of the tendrily wisps of shadows, obscuring it a little even from Zoe’s Cosmic Vision. The arrow flew, dragging the shadows behind along with it and exploded into a small cloud of shadows that seeped into the ground where it hit, before they dissipated into the air as well.

  Shadow Shot was a little different — giving her a slight nudge as she aimed the bow, pushing her to fire it towards the shadows cast by the trees’ canopies. Zoe let an arrow fire towards the darkest shadow, shoving as much mana as she could into the skill. The arrow vanished into the shadows and Zoe felt a tug in the back of her mind as it continued through the shadows, letting her have some modicum of control over it. She directed the arrow through the shadows and back out the other side, launching it into the air and into one of the tree’s branches.

  Shadow Barrage was a far more intense version of Shadow Arrow, in Zoe’s mind. The tendrils of shadow that flew along with the arrow were stronger and much more solid, smashing through the nearby branches and tossing snow into the air as they clawed at everything within reac. When the arrow hit the ground, the tendrils exploded, skittering along the ground, ripping up the cold hard dirt on the surface before they vanished a second later.

  Shadow Bombardment was similar, though its effect was targeted entirely on the impact. The tendrils that reached out stuck around for far longer, digging into the ground and ripping up the bark on the nearby trees for about a full minute before they vanished.

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  Zoe pushed the system to replace her skills with the three remaining — Shadow Split, Meld and Cloak. Shadow Split was interesting though Zoe couldn’t see a time when she’d have much practical use for it. When she fired an arrow at a tree, it would split into two shadowy tendrils that continued on behind the tree at forty five degree angles. Any effects she had on the arrow seemed to carry over — letting Zoe wreak havoc on the forest as she fired off splitting Shadow Barrage arrows.

  But she didn’t have any control over where the arrows went when they split. They always split in exactly the same way, continuing on behind whatever she was shooting at with the same trajectory the arrow already had. If she happened to have three creatures to shoot, that happened to be standing in exactly the right way, the skill would be devastating.

  Or perhaps if she were firing into an army with enough bodies nearby that precision wasn’t the most important thing to her. But she didn’t fight armies — at most she fought a dozen creatures at a time. And it was either something she could already handle, or something she wanted to prioritize escaping from. In a worst case, the skill would be entirely useless because somebody had hostages behind them.

  The skill took a lot of mana, and it was very powerful, but it just didn’t seem very practical to Zoe. It would require thinking about positioning in a way that she’d never had to think about before, which would be even more strain she didn’t need. Which was unfortunate, because the multiplicative effect of the skill seemed so potent. It just lacked the precision that Zoe so appreciated from her other skills.

  Shadow Meld was by far the most interesting skill to Zoe though, letting her step entirely into the nearby shadows and travel through them. It was almost like teleportation from an outside perspective — letting her vanish from one place and appear in another. But to Zoe’s perspective, it was much more like invisibility. She could hide in the shadows, and travel through them, but she did have to travel.

  It was an odd feeling being in the shadows, too. She couldn’t walk, there was no physical anything to push off of. If she didn’t push mana into her skill, she felt like she was floating, drifting through space without anything to support her. But when she did, it felt like she was flying.

  Not flying in the way Zoe had been doing it for so long — lifting herself with her magic and pushing herself around. But truly flying, moving through space in any direction she liked with just a nudge from her mind. It was fun and exciting, and would have been even more fun if she could breathe in the shadows.

  Within the shadow realm, as Zoe had quickly taken to calling it, there was nothing. There was no light, there was no air, there was no ground. There was nothing. It was empty. She could see where she was thanks to her Cosmic Vision letting her peer outside of the shadows, but her eyes were useless, her sense of smell was useless. Every sense she had besides her Cosmic Vision was rendered completely moot — making Zoe wonder how useful the skill would be to somebody who didn’t have the benefits she did.

  But, whether it was a good skill on its own or not was besides the point. To Zoe, it seemed like a fantastic addition to her arsenal of movement options, and was something she would try to replicate sooner rather than later.

  Shadow Cloak was a disappointment, if Zoe was honest. She had expected something like the actual cloak she got from the mole dungeon with Brick’s party, but it was more like her Elemental Arsenal than anything else. It did obscure her a little, but a writhing mass of shadowy tendrils was hardly something she’d consider ‘unseen.’

  “Skills seem easy enough to choose between, at least.” Emma said.

  “Agreed.” Joe said.

  “Affinity, Shot, Barrage, Bombardment, Meld.” Emma said.

  “What? I’d replace Shot with Cloak or Arrow, personally.” Joe said. “Shadow shot seems interesting but I don’t think you’ll use it much, honestly.”

  “No?” Emma asked. “I think it’s better than Cloak or Arrow. Arrow is just worse than Bombardment and Barrage. And if Zoe cared about Cloak, she would’ve kept the one she gave to Sally forever ago.”

  “I don’t think that Arrow is just a worse Bombardment or Barrage, really. It’s just more precise, which Zoe likes.” Joe said.

  “Hold on, hold on.” Zoe waved her hands. “We don’t even know what they do as enchantments, yet.”

  “Oh, right.” Emma said. “You do that.”

  Joe chuckled.

  Shadow Bow was a simple enchantment which almost mimicked Zoe’s Archery skill as an enchantment, though with less force and the addition of a small burst of shadowy tendrils when she launched the projectile.

  Shadow Arrow wreathed an object in shadowy tendrils that seemed more cosmetic than anything else at first. They did disrupt light objects placed nearby — papers or leaves, but they weren’t very destructive. When Zoe threw the ball of frost however, it exploded in a small cloud of shadows, leaving a small mark where it landed on the ground.

  Shadow Shot allowed Zoe to store the object in shadows — though it popped out of the shadows a few minutes later when the mana expired or when too much light broke up the shadow it was within. If she focused when she made the enchantment, she could direct it through the shadows on specific paths, but she had no control over it after the enchantment was already made.

  Barrage and Bombardment were similar enchantments, and both quite destructive. Both formed shadowy tendrils that lashed out at everything they could reach, but Barrage’s tendrils were intensified while the object was in motion while Bombardment’s tendrils were intensified while it was stationary.

  The most interesting skill as an enchantment for Zoe was Shadow Split — it was almost like a replacement for her Enchanted Mirrors skill as an enchantment in some ways though far more limited. If she enchanted an object with Shadow Split as well as other enchantments, then with a burst of mana, a shadowy tendril would launch from the object with similar effects to the enchantments she gave it.

  It wasn’t a one to one, Zoe found. Many of her enchantments just weren’t affected for some reason — Cosmic Familiar had no impact on the tendril that launched out, for example. Bearer of Ink didn’t make the tendril leave an ink splatter behind. But many of her skills did work, and it let her create a ball of frost that shot out explosive tendrils of shadows on command. The mana draw was far greater than just enchanting another projectile, and for Zoe wasn’t much faster than just creating another projectile and flashing an enchantment on it. But unlike Zoe’s normal projectiles, Joe and Emma could use this one without her help.

  Shadow Meld repelled light in a small area around the enchanted object, casting deep shadows nearby. Zoe couldn’t see much use for it, besides maybe combining with Shadow Shot for some party tricks. And the final skill Shadow Cloak was little more than a worse Stealth for enchanting, as far as Zoe could see. It wreathed whatever object she had in more of the harmless shadowy tendrils, obscuring it from sight but with far too much movement for Zoe’s preference.

  “See?” Zoe asked. “You need to see the enchantments first. Shadow Split sucks as a skill, but as an enchantment, I need it.”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “Whatever. What skills are you taking then?”

  “Well the affinity, of course. And then I definitely need Split. Barrage and Bombardment seem like great additions, and then the last one will probably be a flex spot, but I’ll stick with Shadow Meld for now cause I think it’s really fun.” Zoe smiled.

  “Then it’s settled. Congratulations on your new class, Zoe.” Joe said.

  “Well, for now. This class kinda sucks, honestly.” Zoe said.

  Joe rolled his eyes. “Congratulations for now, then. Mind taking us back? I’d like to get back to the inn and make sure everything’s alright.”

  Zoe nodded and held out her hands for her friends to grab. When they both did, Zoe Cosmic Leaped them back into the living room they were in an hour earlier.

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