章 47: Competition
After Lyra sorted out her feelings, things improved considerably inside the mansion. First of all, things livelier since Nyana could go to most places since all of the servants already knew about the soap opera that Laiex caused. Still, she was only a six-year-old little girl, adding to the fact that she was extremely shy, it was rare to find her outside her room doing anything.
Following his mother's words, Zaos began to think about what he should do for his little sister, but nothing came to mind. He was a guy who had nothing in his head aside from training and studies, after all. Fortunately, that situation solved itself. Nyana began to watch Zaos while he was training since she more or less could remember him, and he was the only kid in the mansion aside from that. When Zaos finished one of his training sessions, he gave her the sign to approach.
"Do you remember me, Nyana?" Zaos asked.
"Yes… you are the young master Zaos," Nyana nervously replied.
"Just Zaos is fine," Zaos smiled. "Do you want to play with me?"
"Mother said that I shouldn't bother… Zaos when he is training," Nyana replied.
"I just finished, so you are not bothering anyone," Zaos said.
Although Zaos said that, he had no idea what kids liked to play. Drannor and Ameria are always playing, but Zaos never paid too much attention. Regardless, Nyana hesitated a lot, so Zaos just grabbed one of the books from his mother's room and then began to read. When Nyana got curious, he began to read out loud and eventually began to teach her how to read some words. Zaos tried to be as friendly as possible. Still, even though Nyana was enjoying herself, it was evident that she was a bit wary of Zaos since he was the young master of the house and all that… it will take a while before she begins to treat him like a child.
Zaos waited for Nyana the next day, but before he could even reach the halfway point of his first training session, some noisy individuals appeared to bother Zaos. They were Drannor and Ameria. For some reason, both of them had short bows with them. They looked pretty animated as well, but their expressions broke when they saw Zaos wearing so many pieces of armor.
"You will damage your bones, Zaos," Drannor said. "I asked my father when I would begin to use armor, and he said the same thing to me. We are too young for that."
"I can mend my bones with magic," Zaos said. "Anyway, what are you two doing here?"
"Let's go to the other training ground, and you will see," Ameria said with a confident smile on her face.
Zaos already knew what they wanted… kids always like to show off, after all. In any case, he decided to play along with them. Otherwise, they will stay until noon, and Nyana will get too scared to come out of the mansion. In one fluid motion, Ameria picked out an arrow out of her quiver and nocked it. At the same pace, she let the projectile fly in the dummy that was located fifty meters away. While she didn't hit the target in the middle of the dummy's body, she hit a few centimeters below. If the target had been a human, they would have got hit in the belly.
"Impressive, Your Highness," Zaos said.
"Right? I am amazing," Ameria said, proud fully with her arms crossed after she dropped her bow.
"You can learn a few things, though, like how to treat your weapons more carefully," Zaos said while he picked the short bow. "Anyway, I thought His Majesty was against you learning how to fight. A bow and arrow are certainly more dangerous than wooden weapons."
"Father said that a bow is all right, magic too," Ameria said. "But mages are too weak-looking, so I am not interested in magic."
Zaos shrugged when he heard that, as expected, kids are dumb… no, most people of the kingdom were dumb. Zaos had no idea how magic was treated outside the kingdom, but he could see limitless potential in magic. Apparently, he was one of the very few people that could see that.
"What about you?" Zaos asked, looking at Drannor. "You look pretty proud as well."
Drannor also fired at the dummy, but the arrow hit the ground five meters away from the dummy. He had no reason to feel proud being that bad at archery.
"I am not good with a bow, but I am happy that Ameria found something she is good at and is having fun," Drannor said.
That was another thing that kids couldn't understand. Even if you are bad at something, it doesn't mean you will be bad at it forever. There were probably some exceptions to that, but everything can be learned and mastered as long as one trains hard.
"… Let's play and see who is the best at archery," Zaos said.
"Are you feeling ok, Zaos?" Drannor frowned. "You never said that before."
"Just shut up," Zaos said, and then he headed to the storage room to pick a short bow.
Until now, Zaos postponed that, but now he finally had a good reason to learn how to use a bow. It might come in handy in the future, but there was a small chance that his father would complain about it, just the same way he complains about Zaos's magic studies. Still, that was probably him overthinking things. After all, he saw plenty of bows being sold at the commercial district the other day.
Before trying, Zaos took off his pieces of armor and began to clean them. At the same time, he watched Ameria firing her arrows. It was hard to be sure since Ameria was just a beginner, but Zaos assumed that posture was more important than strength when it comes to bows. After all, Drannor was fairly strong for his age, and his arrows barely reached the target.
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