Rolan had hit a rather frustrating, and in retrospect obvious, roadblock after some time spent drilling his technique. Quite simply put, he had reached the mechanical limit on the speed he could span his crossbow. Short of significant modifications, there was only so fast he could fire a shot, lower the crossbow and brace it while fetching his wippe lever, draw the string back, stow the lever, load a bolt, all to take aim and fire again. While he could hold the shot far longer than any archer could, he would never match the speed without some significant leaps forward on his crossbow's design. Something to consider, certainly, but no amount of skill or training would fix it. He was wasting his time, essentially, beyond breaking the habit of tracking shots to their mark before beginning the process of making ready for his next shot. Which meant changing his approach to training, which meant considering where he was deficient, and that was something he thought on while getting everything packed back up to return to the training yard.

Rolan always prided himself on accuracy, something he could claim to have been refining from the moment he was handed the crossbow, but that hit a limit, and just not improving wasn't an option. He had originally hoped there was more room to improve in speed, but he had underestimated how fast he was already moving, or perhaps how little room there was to improve. His technique wasn't going to change much more, so that left adding more tools to his options. Which left him with very few options, at least among those that he could come up with. Of course everyone heard stories of archers firing multiple arrows, sending arrows curving around barricades or deflecting off one target to hit a true foe, but not only would Rolan not know where to begin, he doubted how much of that was compatible with his preferred fighting style. 

Why not intensify his efforts in alchemy? Rolan paused as the thought crossed his mind. Sure, officially poisons and the like were frowned upon, if he was caught doing it, but nothing said he couldn't look for more overt combinations. With the amount of talent available to the Iron Roses, surely an alchemist could be found that he could train under. Hopefully they would not mind a more offensively focused preference, since as far as poisons went he had to mostly rely on paralyzing mixtures rather than lethal ones. But perhaps he could find recipes and mixtures that mimicked what those magically gifted could do, or at least a fraction of it. Or perhaps instead of relying on catching up, he could do things they couldn't. Having made mistakes learning reminded him of blinding mixtures of stinging fumes that had gotten him stern lectures, but perhaps weaponizing that was an option too. Either way, that meant finding an alchemist.

Moving back towards Candaeln with a sense of purpose again, Rolan would begin asking around for where he could find a skilled alchemist to learn from. He made no secret of his focus on improving his capabilities of employing alchemy in combat, ideally to augment his current capabilities. Whoever that turned out to be, well, remained to be seen but first things first was finding out who that was and tracking them down.