Page 25

We met with Mirianna briefly to merge our party in the guild records and headed out of town.

“The forest close to the town tends to be safer than further out but you should still be on your guard. Occasionally people get lax when they’re just gathering near the town and end up getting killed after an unexpected attack,” Morrigan told me as we were heading out of the town gate.

“We should probably stick to the formation we talked about earlier then, even if we’re in a low danger area it would still be good practice,” I said to the group. After a few nods we arranged ourselves. Since Torien was leading us to the herbs we walked side by side and Morrigan watched the rear.

We were walking in the icy forest for about thirty minutes when Torien pointed to few plants growing near the base of some trees. “Those are Sorphom flowers, the apothecary told me they were used to ease fevers and helps when breathing becomes difficult.”

“Interesting, how are you supposed to harvest it?”

“This plant is easy, you’re supposed to cut the stem about this far from the base. You’re not supposed to cut too far or else it will have trouble growing back apparently.”

“Neat, do you guys mind if I take some time to draw it and take notes in my journal?”

I got some confused looks and ultimately some shrugging before I took that as assent. I pulled the leatherbound journal I bought yesterday and opened it to a blank page near the beginning. I’m not really sure where the impulse to draw the flower came from but this felt right to me, like I had done this before. I pulled out a dip quill and some ink and began to draw the flower into my book, the feeling came naturally, the instincts felt more real to me than the sword instincts I stole from Bitch. This felt natural to me, this felt real to me, drawing made sense.

I only spent around ten minutes before I was satisfied with the image of the Sorphom flower I had drawn. I had a surprisingly accurate and lifelike image of the flower in the book and I was happy with how it came out. I made a mistake here and there but I worked it into the drawing, at no point did I hesitate to build the picture up despite the expensive paper or the permanent ink. It came naturally to me.

[Drawing Lv. 1 unlocked - Created a representation of an object through observation.]

[Drawing - Uncommon Skill]

The Drawing skill governs the ability to accurately reproduce and create images. Higher ranks improves the ease of these tasks and improves instincts related to this skill.

Neat. I’m pretty sure I was some kind of artist in my past life. This comes naturally to me in a way that nothing else has so far. I can feel the difference between the ‘instinct’ I get from the swordsmanship skill and the ‘muscle memory’ I have with this. And the system clearly wasn’t helping me out, this was all me. I suppose this means that even having a skill isn’t quite the same as being experienced in an area even if there’s obvious overlap. Those with a high skill are likely to have a similar amount of experience to go with it otherwise they wouldn't have a high level in the first place. I'm probably the anomaly here, being someone who has practiced some skills outside of the system's influence.

When I moved on from drawing to writing notes about the flower’s properties and uses Torien came to look over my shoulder. “Oh wow, that’s amazing. I’m surprised your drawing skill is so high, that’s not something I would expect a swordswoman to dabble in… And you can read and write too? That’s amazing.”

“Yeah… I suppose.”

“Guys there’s a monster coming!” Bella yelled out.

I set the book down and drew my sword in one fluid motion as I stood up. In an instant all of us were in formation facing the direction Bella had pointed. The monster looked a little bit like a mangy dog with long bony protrusion sticking out through its fur. Its eyes glowed red as it walked around our group and tried to circle us.

Now that I was looking at the monster stalking up to us, everything suddenly felt real in a way it hadn’t up until then. When I came across the wolves in the woods that felt more like me hiding from a giant animal, this was different. I had my sword drawn and I was going to face off with a creature that had a level of malice that I had never felt before. This creature’s existence felt wrong, like it didn’t fit in the world, shouldn’t be here.

But this is the first time I ever held a sword with a real desire to use it. The first time I held a weapon with the intent to kill something. I don’t think I had ever been hunting in my past life. I likely got in a fight or two but I was not a soldier, a warrior. I was probably an artist of some kind and now I was standing here holding a sword against something that could only be described as a monster.

If I was alone I might have ran, might have tried to escape from it, but now I was with a team. A group that was relying on me to stand in front and protect them. I took a breath and gripped my sword. The weight felt familiar in my hand, after having drawn and getting a feel for an actual trained skill, I could tell this felt different. But I also knew that I could trust these instincts and I would grow into them until they felt natural to me.

The creature continued to circle us, looking for an opening. This time I circled it back, tried to flank it and put it in a vulnerable position. At first I thought it was too focused on me to notice it slowly being surrounded but I miscalculated. As soon as it was near my other teammates it started to turn, its glowing eyes looked away from me as it was preparing up to spring at Bella.

It all happened in a split second. The moment the creature’s eyes flicked away from me onto Bella, my instincts guided me to attack. I slashed in a sweep in tandem with my step forward and my blade cut through the creature’s tendon just as it was releasing the built up energy into it’s leap. However, with it’s new hamstrung leg the leap didn’t go as planned and it crashed headfirst into the dirt on its side.

The moment it touched the ground spikes of wood rained down from the trees impaling it from above. I quickly started to take a few steps around it to get in better position for a finishing blow when an arrow plunged through its forehead.

“Another from the east!” Bella yelled.

I turned, and with the finesse of a practiced swordfighter pivoted my stance towards the direction in one fluid motion. Unfortunately the second dog creature was already in a full bore sprint and coming up fast. It sprung up and jumped, aimed right at my face. Following my instincts I lowered my stance and swept diagonally across its body.

This time the blade didn’t smoothly slice through and instead caught one of the bone protrusions. My instincts told me to follow through on the swipe and use the leverage to push the body out of my path but I just didn’t have the raw strength to divert its path. Instead the creature landed on me and my blade slid back the way it came. As it leaned in to take a bite of my face I blocked its mouth with my left arm. It didn’t manage to disarm me on the way down but I didn’t have a good angle to attack it from this position. Luckily for me I was able to hold it still for long enough that Morrigan was able to finish it off with a large wooden spike shot from a nearby tree.

Its blood poured down from the new hole through its chest right onto my new shirt. Once it lost enough blood the teeth jammed into my forearm lost pressure and I was able to pry them off my arm. I heard a subtle ding in the back of my head but I ignored it for now. I pushed its heavy body off of me and took a moment to just breathe before I sat up. That was a rush. I had never felt like I was in so much danger before but I also have never felt so calm. In retrospect I was scared, terrified of the horrible monster that was circling us. But somehow, in the moment, I felt serene. Fully focused on the fight. I’m not sure if it’s because of my swordsmanship skill or something else but I felt in control of the situation despite how outside of my comfort zone the situation was.

I looked at my arm, it was covered in a very obvious bite mark and black gunk from the monster’s gross mouth was in the wound.

“There’s no way this is sanitary. Bella, can you heal this? Wait we should probably clean it first I don’t want to get an infection from that gross thing.”

“Hold it out for me.” She gently took my hand and inspected the wounds. “This shouldn’t be a problem.” She swept her nature scepter and a trail of green light followed the now glowing green gem. The light then flowed from the scepter back into my arm and wrapped around it. The wound sizzled without pain, the black goo looked like it was boiling away and I watched the blood clot before my eyes. It was like watching a video at 100x speed as the wound scabbed over then fell off leaving an obvious scar on the skin before my short fur grew back in.

“That was trippy,” I said staring at my arm.

Torien dropped out of a tree that she had been shooting from and ran up to me. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, it bit my arm but Bella was able to heal me up. I’m glad I bought this new shirt, I couldn’t imagine trying to get this much blood out of my nice one.”

I looked down at the creatures on the ground next to me. “What the hell are these things?”

“Bone dogs,” Torien explained. “They are shadow type monsters that have formed into the shape of hounds. They’re uncommon at best but their core should be worth something. The same can’t be said for the rest of their body, now that it’s dead it’ll start to disappear, shadow monsters don’t decay the same way most monsters do.”

“Core? What’s that?” Torien looked at me with a confused look on her face.

“Oh that’s right you said you’re new to adventuring. Still, I don’t know how you got your swordsmanship skill to that level without also hunting a monster or two.”

Torien pulled out a knife and began to carve open its chest cavity. She didn’t even flinch as she began to pull the organs out of her way as she cut into the carcass. Morrigan turned away in silent disgust and I thought I was going to be sick looking at Torien work. And the smell, god damn was it disgusting. I looked over at Bella who seemed to be paying close attention, somehow not at all grossed out by what was happening. Life on the farm was probably pretty dirty work in a world like this.

After a few more minutes of cutting Torien finally pulled something out, she held a sphere the size of a large egg that seemed to pulse with black energy.

“Are either of you enchanters?” Torien asked. We both shook our heads and she continued, “Well how about we sell these and split it four ways like we were planning with the quest reward?”

“Sounds fine to me.” I looked to Bella and she nodded in agreement.

“Good, who wants to pull out the other one?” Torien asked while looking at the other corpse.

I hesitated and thankfully for me Bella quickly volunteered. Morrigan and I were shocked at the enthusiasm that Bella showed for the task. Once she pulled out her knife and begun to dissect the monster Torien looked over to me and I just shrugged. I have no idea what that was about either.

Torien went up and started pointing out places to cut while Morrigan and I stepped away to keep watch for other monsters. I picked up my journal and looked over to the mage demi-beast girl next to me. “It’s not just me right? That was super gross right?” I asked her somewhat jokingly.

Morrigan nodded. “I’m really thankful I convinced Torien to do most of that stuff. It’s a little silly considering I don’t even flinch at killing them, but a little bit of blood and guts and I want to vomit.”

“We all have our strengths.” We shared a laugh at that.