With my technique now circuting and all the Qi in the area now visible to my eyes, I realized that it did not help much, if any at all. The main reason for that was, it seemed, was that no one here except the rare few had broken through to the Qi gathering realm. Not only that, but the ones who did could be counted on one hand, and that was taking into account my two companions.

  One of the balistae then fired and took out one of the Qi gathering bandits. This left only one more on their side. The other balistea then fired and took out another person, but this one was not the Qi gathering realm bandit. Still, the bandit that was taken out had been wearing a lot of hardened leather and was wielding a massive weapon.

  This did manage to even out the odds, and my bow would help put that in our favor. Speaking of which, I notched and fired three arrows in rapid succession at some of the bandits that were closest to me. Sadly, I had already lost the advantage of surprise, so one of the arrows managed to get dodged, but the others hit their targets, even if they did not hit the mark that I was aiming for. That did not matter, though, as the red-hot arrowheads did the rest of the work for me.

  The screams of the two downed bandits caused the third to pause in fear, which was a mistake, as I already had the next arrow drawn and ready to release. The problem here was that it only took a moment of thought to release the string, while dodging the shot would take far more than that. This meant that the arrow smmed home in his sternum with an almost white hot broadhead.

  He would not be getting back up again.

  I then turned around and started firing at the other bandits in the area. By this point, everyone had entered some form of melee with bdes fshing and the cngs of metal filling the air. None of this made my job any easier, but if I wanted to become a better archer, I would need to hone my skills during this period of time.

  As they say, there is no better teacher than experience, and there was no better time than the present to get some. SO I started providing some fire support

  It was not easy at the beginning, as I had to shoot around my allies and try to only hit the enemy, but that was something that only took a small amount of time to fix. Soon, I was beginning to predict the movements of my allies, and I was scoring more hits on the enemy. What did not help was two guards who were now sporting a new piercing, and a free arrow to go with it.

  On the other hand, the bandits that got shot did not end up like the other that I had targeted, mostly because I did not get a clear line of sight. The arrows were still debilitating, though, and some of the guards even took advantage of them by striking the back off them or ripping them out rather violently. It would honestly be fairly gruesome if I were not focused on analyzing the battlefield.

  I was so focused on paying attention to my surroundings in fact, that I was able to notice this movement of Qi from the corner of my eye and feel the slight disturbance of air passing one of my tails. That sent an arm ringing through my head that I did not ignore, and I instinctively rolled forward in the spur of the moment. This meant that I narrowly dodged the axe that went slicing through the air where my head was.

  I did not even care how close I came to death at this point and just half drew my bow before releasing and letting the arrow fly. Because of the half-draw, there was not as much power, so it did not do as much damage, but it still pierced the leathers he was wearing and caused him to stagger for a moment. This was all I needed to get a full draw and put another arrow into his head.

  It was then that I instinctively leaned to the side, avoiding another weapon slicing through the air where I should have been. This time, it was a spear that someone had thrown. I did not really give a care about that besides taking a page out of my mom's book and using a pulse of Qi to find the thrower's location. After that, I formed an arrow made of water above the requisite tail and sent it flying at the perpetrator's location. I also made sure to send an additional arrow made of fire at another person who seemed to want to target me.

  From there, I went back to assisting my allies in clearing the rest of the bandits. I was clearly getting better at doing this, too, so it felt great to keep assisting. That was until I saw the st Qi gathering practitioner start focusing their Qi into their arm, holding a sword. That was enough for me to roughly see what was about to happen and fire an arrow into his shoulder. This caused the buildup of Qi to disperse, but there was no catastrophic backsh like st time.

  That, of course, confused me and made me wonder why that happened in the first pce, but I did not continue to ponder on it and fired a few more shots at him.

  He did not manage to dodge any of the shots, but he did block or cut a decent few of the arrows. This meant that I would have to find a different way to hit him. Thankfully, I caught a glimpse of a piece of metal on the ground and got an idea. Quickly gncing at the ground littered with the weapons of the bandits and the stones that they had kicked up allowed that pn to fully form in my mind.

  Firing a few more shots at the bandit, I lured him closer to me before changing my aim and firing at an axe buried in the dirt. This caused the bandit to sneer at me for some reason, and he was even about to say something, before the ricocheted arrow pierced through his neck. The bloodied arrowhead even poked out from his jugur with a spray of blood.

  This left the bandit to colpse on the ground with wide eyes, and me to scan the battlefield looking for a new target. It was only then that I noticed that the fighting had ceased.

  All the bandits had either died or fled, leaving their wounded to fend for themselves. It also allowed for my brain to slow down and the adrenaline to subside. Meaning I was now left with the realization that I had killed many people just now, and I did it without a moment's hesitation.

  Why did I just do that?

  Vulthurtoor