[groovy71]

Knowledge is power.

Breathe. Concentrate. I slowly let the air out my lungs and focused on the target. My bow was fully extended and I just knew not only instinctively, but also intellectually that my arrow was going to hit the target.

I released.

Thunk!

It hit dead centre. I wasn’t surprised.

‘Wow. That’s a hell of a shot’ someone said behind me in a feminine voice. It was probably a woman but these days with the gods fooling around, one can never know.

‘Thanks’ I said and lost my focus. I hadn’t calculated the sleight change in wind and temperature conditions in the last few seconds.

The second arrow hit the target just off centre. I sighed. I had to concentrate on hitting my target before I could use my real skills. Mathematics, geometry and trigonometry were child’s play to me. Telling my muscles to aim the arrow at the vector and velocity that I had calculated was entirely a different affair.

The third arrow thrust itself through the air and slammed into the wooden target, only a finger span from my first shot. Not bad. I knew though I had to be a lot better.

‘What a shot! I say you must be some hunter’ the girlish voice said behind me. ‘Who trained you? I bet it was some mighty amazon or great hunter in the wilds huh?’

I grinned at that one, the wilderness. I couldn’t stand the lawns at the university, give me marbled floors anytime. Living off the land was for savages who had no time for poetry or reading of the epics. It was time for civilized man to take a stand. I glanced up to the heavens and I could see the darkness within the clouds. There was a war going on up there and it was only a matter of time before humanity would be involved, we had to be prepared.

‘I’m no hunter’ I said. ’This is my first time I’ve ever used a bow’

What I had said was an exaggeration. I had played around with the bow yesterday evening in my workshop. I spent several hours testing and calculating the pounds of force that the bow could deliver in order to understand and maximize the bow’s potential.

I could hear her jaw dropping from here. I unleashed my final arrow and triggered my latent power. The very core of my being focused on opening a doorway to one of the 8th Known Powers in the universe and then I tapped that power to my arrow, it became supercharged with supernatural forces and when it struck, it obliterated the wooden target into thumb sized shrapnel.
The birds once nesting on the rooftop of Apollo's temple took flight in panic from the sound of the explosion that was still echoing across the city state Thebes. I couldn't resist my non-civilized thought and grinned.

Zeus like lightning bolts indeed, I mused.

Ok project number two. If you were going to build an archer but he/she is not allowed to have access to the hunting mastery tree. How would you go about it? I want to hear some interesting methods and combinations of talent trees and gear. Can you make an a non-hunter archer viable?