Chương 21: Wash Yourself

Maya had been pretty annoyed when they'd left her behind in the village, but Alex had insisted on only taking Oliver and Evan on the hunt for Spitbeaks.

"You can't defend yourself," she explained.

"And these two most certainly can't defend you either."

"Hello? We've slain a Mud Golem and a Scrapmaw queen!" Oliver had protested.

"Doesn't that account for anything?"

"Beginner's luck," Maya said, grumpily flopping onto a chair in the village's tiny inn.

"She's right," Alex said.

"Don't let this go to your head. You both have made impressive progress in a short time, but don't get cocky. Punching above your own level can provide great rewards, but it's just as likely to get you killed." They left Maya behind and headed out, following the route the mayor had explained to them to find those Spitbeaks terrorizing the villagers.

"Is it true what you said about our progress in the inn?" Evan asked Alex as they trudged along a muddy, narrow path winding between the trees.

"Are we really ahead of the curve?"

"If what my mother said is true, then yes. She told me you got your affinity days ago, right? And Oliver? A few weeks?" Oliver nodded.

"About three weeks."

"Usually it takes several months to reach rank 2, and you two have already achieved it after just a few weeks. Or days in Evan's case."

"It's not always a few months between ranks, right? It gets harder?" Evan asked. He remembered that Oliver had told him he'd never heard of a mana user beyond rank 19 and how impressed he'd been with Alex's rank 11.

"Much harder," Alex confirmed.

"Reaching rank 2 isn't too hard if you really focus on training. Same for rank 3 and 4. If you're dedicated, rank 5 after a few years. Most never go beyond rank 5 or 6. Most people don't really need to. You can live a very good life with rank 5, but if you want any kind of leadership position in a guild, you need to go further. The head of Stormhaven's monster hunter guild is at rank 15, and the head of the guardian guild is rank 17. He's very old though. I doubt he'll get to rank 18 before he dies."

"Luther, the smith in Silver Creek, is only rank 3," Oliver said.

"Doesn't surprise me much. It's often harder for non-fighters to gain experience. Crafters, alchemists, even healers have a more difficult path."

"Is killing monsters the only way to earn experience?" Evan asked, surprised.

"No, not at all. You do get it for a bunch of stuff the Celestial Guardians approve of. Completed craft projects, brewed potions, healed patients — all net you experience points, but you can't do what you two did. You fought monsters above your level, which netted you a big amount of experience, but a rank 1 crafter can never forge a sword above their rank level. They can try, but they will fail, so they have to make it up in quantity, which takes time."

"So fighting the Golem and the Scrapmaw queen wasn't such a bad idea after all?" Oliver asked. Alex chuckled.

"If you want to rank up quickly, taking on higher-rank monsters is a viable strategy. Usually, you do it with a proper party, though. And with a better command over your skills than you two currently have. There's no way to fast-track advancement, boys. Believe me, many have tried. It takes time, dedication, discipline, and a lot of training and fighting. Which is why we're going after those Spitbeaks. Every bit counts."

"What exactly are Spitbeaks, anyway?" Evan asked. Oliver shuddered a bit.

"They're really ugly bird-like monsters that can—" Before he could finish his sentence, something the size of a white-headed eagle, but colored green and yellow, sailed down from a tree in front of them. It opened its razor-sharp beak with a screech. A sickly yellow fluid sprayed out of its beak. If not for Alex putting some kind of wind shield between them and the monster, Oliver surely would've gotten drenched head to toe. He jumped backward, scrunching his nose.

Evan got one whiff of the yellow stuff seeping into the ground and understood his friend's disgust. The fluid smelled absolutely vile, and that meant something because Evan's past life as a nurse meant he wasn't exactly squeamish about unpleasant smells.

"They can shoot really stinky spit out of their mouths," Alex finished Oliver's explanation. A smirk appeared on her face as she walked backward.

"Well, I'd say we found them. Good luck, boys." With those words, she dissolved the wind shield and went dashing in the other direction, leaving Evan and Oliver exposed to the next attack run of the disgruntled Spitbeak. Evan used [Teleport] to avoid the next glob of yellow spit. Oliver was forced to duck and roll away. Before they could properly get their bearings, at least a dozen more Spitbeaks shot down from the trees, diving at them with wings tucked close to their bodies, beaks shimmering in the sunlight.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. They both drew their swords, but Evan could already tell actually hitting the flying creatures would not be easy. They had to be smart about this.

"Use your new skill," Evan called out. Oliver swung his sword, activated [Gravel Strike] and released a burst of pebbles and dirt at the Spitbeak swarm. The bird monsters scattered with a lot of indignant wailing and screeching, and Evan used the moment of chaos to attack. He swung his sword, activating [Star Slash]. The blade, shining golden, cut right into a Spitbeak, severing its wing. Evan finished the dropped bird by ramming his sword through it, then whirled around for the next attack.

Alex's lessons were already paying off. He felt a lot more confident with the sword in his hand. Less like he was slapping things with a sharp stick and more like he was actually executing sword attacks. A second Spitbeak died to a sharp upward slash. Evan ducked under a spray of yellow spit shooting above his head and managed to pierce the culprit with a hearty forward thrust. The remaining monsters started to panic. The swarm gathered above their heads in a flutter of wings.

"They're trying to take off!" Evan yelled.

"I got it!" Oliver used his [Ironroot]. Sturdy roots shot from the forest floor, wrapping around several Spitbeaks that couldn't fly out of reach in time. He managed to get four of them, tying them to the ground in a tangle of roots. All they had to do was pick them off one by one with their swords. The rest of the flock reformed for a new attack. They seemed to have some way of communicating, because they all released a burst of stinky spit at once.

Evan and Oliver dove out of the way, Evan to the left, assisted by [Teleport], Oliver to the right, but both of them got a hefty dose of spit. Gagging, Evan reoriented himself. The remaining Spitbeaks were veering off again. Oliver leaped upwards and cut down two of them with one sword strike before he landed on the ground with a heavy thud. Evan chased after the last one. It was desperately flapping its wings, rising into the air.

Evan sprinted, jumped, and used [Teleport] to lift himself into the air an extra few feet. Using his momentum, he swung at the last bird monster and managed to slice parts of its bright green tail off. Unbalanced, it spiraled toward the ground, right into Evan's outstretched sword. Oliver looked around, breathing heavily.

"I think we got the entire swarm." Exhausted but happy, Evan sheathed his sword. He noticed a notification in the corner of his view and opened it. [+Speed]"Constantly teleporting around is really paying off," Evan said, "I leveled up Speed again." Oliver high-fived him with a smile.

"Good job." Alex approached, covering her face with her arm.

"Well done, boys," she said, her voice sounding muffled.

"Now, please, go and wash yourselves." They washed their clothes and their bodies in a nearby stream, branching off from the main river running through the region. While they tried to scrub the monster spit off their skin, Oliver told him the river was called the Silverwater, while the region they were in was called the Rainwilds. Evan filed the new information away for later.

He was so focused on advancing his rank and training his abilities that he sometimes forgot how little he still knew about the world he was in. His new magical powers gave him some security, but if he was honest with himself, he was still terribly lost. He knew so little about the people, their customs, how everyday life worked here. Religion? Government? Laws? He'd have to learn all of it, and fast.

After their bath in the river, they returned to the village to inform the mayor that the Spitbeak threat had been eliminated. On the way back, Evan checked his stats. Their fight with the Spitbeak swarm had advanced his [Swordmaster Apprentice] quest to 6%. That was worth the extra laundry. Back in the village, they reported their success to the mayor, who showered them with praise and paid them a very generous reward. 100 mana stones for both of them.

Evan immediately reinvested 90 of those mana stones to buy a second and third set of clothes. Slaying monsters was dirty work. His encounter with the Spitbeaks wasn't the first fight that had ended with him being covered in filth, and it probably wouldn't be the last, so some spare clothes seemed like a very smart idea. He used the leftover ten mana stones to buy a cup of Mari juice for all four of them at the inn, which slightly lifted Maya's mood. Alex volunteered to pay for their lunch.

She gave them a bit of a debrief on their Spitbeak fight while they ate, and then they were back on the road. They rode past two abandoned farmhouses, the ones the mayor had mentioned. They inspected both, and in the second one Evan spotted the same claw marks he'd seen in the village. He pointed them out to the others, and all of them found them concerning.

"Claws… so maybe not a mana user after all?" Oliver asked.

"Maybe it was a monster attack?" Alex shook her head.

"We already ruled that out. Monsters would've left behind corpses. These people weren't just killed, they were abducted. No, this is definitely the work of mana users. Some of them have rather… beastly powers." Evan gulped as he tried to imagine a magical ability that would allow a human being to leave such marks.

"Could be a bear affinity, a wolf affinity, fox, lots of things," Alexandra mused.

"But still a good observation, Evan. We'll pass that on to the Guardian Guild so they can pick the team accordingly." They searched the area around the farmhouse but found no tracks, no trace of where the attackers might have taken the poor people who had lived in the house.

"The Guardians have dedicated trackers. They might be able to find hints where we can't," Alex said, looking over her shoulder, back at the abandoned house, as they steered their horses back onto the road. The next two days of their journey passed uneventfully. They stopped at every village they passed to check on the villagers and to warn them about the danger, but thankfully they found no signs of more abductions.

The rogue mana users, whoever they were, seemed to have limited their radius to the more remote parts of the Rainwilds region. At least for now. Despite the nagging worry about the abductions, Evan enjoyed their road trip. Their riding pace was too fast for casual conversation, so he quickly resigned himself to enjoying the landscape. To the west, mountains rose high, their steep slopes covered in green shrubbery and mist. To the east was a dense forest in a hundred shades of green.

Ferns, vines, moss, and ancient trees. Along the main road, civilization had taken hold with golden fields and green pastures, interrupted by the occasional stream and small river branching off the Silverwater. It was warm, and the air smelled of wet dirt, moss, and pine needles. On the second day, Evan learned why the region was called Rainwilds when they got caught in a torrent-like rain that lasted for several hours and forced them to interrupt their journey to seek shelter in a barn.

They used the involuntary downtime for more sword training, just like they did every evening and every morning. Evan could tell Maya was getting increasingly annoyed at being left out, and he felt for her, but he was just too eager to learn from Alex to skip the training session to keep Maya company. And their training showed results. His [Swordmaster Apprentice] quest was already at 16%.

Finally, after three days on the road with only the occasional pit stop in one of the tiny villages dotted along the road, the first larger city Evan had seen since waking up in the Celestial Ruins came into sight.