Kay was not fine.

“Who’s idea was this clusterfuck!?” He screamed as he ran.

“It’s the normal way to hunt them!” Korz screamed back from somewhere to his right.

Kay saw the bright blue line of the rope coming up in front of him, and he put on an extra burst of speed as he sprinted towards it.

Korz appeared out of the tall grass to his side, also sprinting as fast as he could.

As they crossed over it, the rope pulled taut and the massive magical bison, the same one’s Kay had thought might be living in the grassy plains to the south of Tumbling Rapids, tripped over the rope, completely blind to it in it’s rage at Korz and Kay.

The Hill Bison’s massive body slammed into the dirt as it tripped, and Kay whirled around to start attacking it.

With the monster struggling to stand back up, and four people attacking it, it died quickly.

Kay stood there, panting, his hands on his knees, when Eduard walked over and patted him on the back.

“See? You’re fine.”

Kay glared up at the half-elf. “That sucked so hard.”

“Yeah, running like that is a bitch.” Eduard gestured into the distance. “But it’s better than a whole herd of them chasing you.”

Kay couldn’t argue. Hill Bison were native to the hilly plains around Tumbling Rapids, and they were a pain. With mental magic that let one member of the herd tell others about dangers, and a tendency to send lookouts to perch on top of hills, thus the name, it was quite difficult to hunt them as attacking one usually resulted in dozens of them trampling you.

For whatever reason though, if you managed to get one of them to attack you, then the rest of the herd ignored it. By being what amounted to an obnoxious asshole, you could send the monsters into a blind rage and they would chase you until one of you died. So the strategy to hunt them was to get really close, and hit them with rocks. Seriously. The Hill Bison’s hide is tough enough that throwing rocks at them felt like bug bites, and they didn’t consider it a real attack. So you hit a Hill Bison with rocks till it gets pissed off, then get it to chase you into tripping over a rope. Then you kill it. And the herd would ignore the whole thing.

“These are some weird monsters.” Kay commented as he thought about it.

Eduard nodded. “Yeah, they’re strange. But the meat’s good, and the money for thinning out the herds to manageable sizes is good.”

“How many is that?” Kay called out to Verndan, who was helping butcher the dead bison. “I lost track what with me being bait every single time!”

Verndan openly laughed at him. “This is the fifth one!” He called back. “You’re on rope duty now!”

“Thank goodness for that.”

Eduard joined Verndan in laughing at him and slapped him on the back again. “It’s break time for you, runner boy. Only five more for the day, and you’re on rope duty for all of them.”

Kay waved off Eduard’s mocking tone and sat down in the dirt. As he worked on getting his breath back, his gaze turned to the broken body of the bison getting harvested, and the blood dripping form it. A scowl slowly came over his face as he watched the red liquid drip to the ground.

The news of a Blood Mage being in the area had spread through the city at such speed that Kay had wondered if the people here secretly did have the internet. By the end of that day it had seemed like everyone had heard about it. By the end of the next, the whole city had heard about him having some kind of blood magic. The end of the third day had brought rumors that he was involved!

With some help from the guild, and some friendly adventurers, he’d traced those rumors back to the idiot from Graceful Success, Coultron. According to him, Kay was an infiltrator, cleverly using his “not-quite-a-Blood-Mage” class to sneak into areas and help real Blood Mages attack. Ignoring the convoluted logic that almost made that idea work, there was only one Blood Mage roaming around the outskirts of Tumbling Rapids’ territory, which meant an attack on the city was not eminent. But the rumor had spread through various Nelamian businesses and supporters like wildfire, and then the regular citizens started picking it up.

It had gotten to the point that people were glaring at him in the streets, with random strangers recognizing and avoiding him.

It was, thankfully, entirely random strangers that were believing the nonsense. People who had actually met him thought it was nonsense, including one pissed off Dorine, who had left her business just to track him down and rant about how much she hated Graceful Success and the bigoted pricks who supported them.

The support from people who knew him, and most of the Adventurer’s Guild, had kept his spirits high. But people who’d never met him thinking he was some evil monster out to hurt them was wearing on him. He really hoped that someone killed that asshole Blood Mage and let him slowly fade from everyone’s memory.

Until then, he was out here in the wilderness hunting monsters, getting stronger, and making money.

“Alright!” Verndan called from the sled they’d rented and the magical ice box attached to it, “That’s the last of this one! Let’s move to that other herd we saw earlier.”

While the meat of the bison monsters was tasty and worth a good penny, the real reason they were out there was to decrease the size of the various herds in the plains outside the city. For massive monsters, Hill Bison bred very quickly, and they could become annoying pests if there were enough of them. Larger herds brought larger predators into the area hunting them as well, and the area’s danger would rocket upward if certain predators started making the area their home. The regular predators of the area were bad enough. No one wanted a Roc moving into the area.

“Shit, that’s not a hill!”

Kay turned and saw the large hill in front of them starting to shift.

“Scatter! It’s a Grass Snake!”

Taking the order to heart, Kay picked a direction and started running. Verndan took off another direction with the sled, while the other three sprinted off like Kay.

A reptilian head bit into the dirt where the group had been a moment before. The giant snake spat out a hunk of soil and hissed in anger as it glared around.

Grass Snakes were not what Kay was used to. Tiny little harmless snakes on earth, Grass Snakes on Torotia were sixty foot long monsters that were covered in the same grass that grew on the plains here, making them annoyingly well disguised ambush predators.

Thankfully Eduard’s eyes were better than those of a Hill Bison, and they managed to move in time. The snake stared at them in annoyance as it looked back and forth between the various members of the party that were now running in various directions. Like most ambush predators, Grass Snakes generally left prey alone if it managed to dodge the initial attack. No use wasting energy that could be used for another ambush.

Unless of course, the monster was hungry enough to chase down it’s prey. Which apparently was the case here as the giant snake started slithering through the grass after one of the others.

“Dammit!” Kay spun around and started chasing after the snake. He was sure there had been a job or two that had gone exactly to plan since he’d started adventuring, but he couldn’t remember any right then.

The snake rose up from the grass and it’s head shot forward as it tried to bite one of Kay’s comrades. The sound of shouting and weapons being drawn told Kay that the others had done the same as him.

Through the tall grass Kay saw Korz standing between Alice and the snake as it tried to bite down on them. Over and over Korz shifted his body and shield just enough to block the snake’s fangs from digging into either of them. After leveling his Shields skill to twenty, Korz had picked up the well-known tank class Guardian. Specialized in intercepting attacks during more mobile battles, as opposed to the less mobile but more armored Bastion, Guardian came with two skills, Draw Attack, a short taunting skill, and Cover, which let Korz more easily put himself between allies and incoming attacks. That combined with the fact that the party had paid for him to get enough training to get his tier three Shield User class back was letting him tank the big snake’s bites without taking much damage.

The reason that Korz had needed training to get his Shield User class back was the same reason Kay’s Class Line Progenitor title was so coveted. Normally when a class was evolved into a new one, the original class was lost. So after evolving Shield User to Guardian, Korz had lost Shield User. To get it back and keep leveling his Shields skill, he had to get enough experience in Shields to level it again, even though he couldn’t. Without a class that used the Shields skill, his tier three level twenty skill was effectively a tier zero level five skill. And it was stuck there. By using the skill enough to level it, whether through training or regular usage out in the world, he was able to take the skill again at the tier he’d lost it at, but it required the same amount of work as leveling it from twenty to twenty-one would have taken.

That’s why Class Line Progenitor was so powerful. At lower levels it wasn’t much, but as someone got to higher and higher levels, it would take more and more work to get your classes back. Since Kay could never lose one of his base line classes, he could keep leveling his skill continuously. He would never have to slowly work at earning his classes back with skills that were suddenly less powerful than they had been.

Kay darted through the grass, aiming for the Grass Snake’s body. The snake was entirely focusing on Korz and Alice, and it let him get close enough to slash down at it with his sword. The blade ricocheted from it’s scales with a ringing noise. More slashed and stabs ended the same way, with him not being able to penetrate the monster’s scales.

I wish I had the halberd right now! Kay thought. The spike would have made beating through this thing easier!

Aiming for the small gaps between scales, Kay was able to make small scratches, but he couldn’t put any real damage into the beast.

From the front of the monster snake Kay could hear shouting and pained hisses, so he knew that the others were having more luck hurting the front of the Grass Snake. He stared gathering blood from the snake and his flask and gathering it into a dense ball. If he couldn’t cut through it’s defenses with a normal attack, he just needed something sharper. Or something with more force.

Picturing the water cutter his friend Dave had shown him once upon a time, Kay concentrated on compressing his controlled blood into a tiny, powerful stream. He released the blood as he pushed his hands forward towards the snake, looking a bit like he was releasing a Kamehameha Wave as he unleashed his attack.

Completely unlike the cutting stream of liquid he was picturing, the blood shot forward like a fire hose, drenching the side of the snake in blood with enough force to push back a smaller creature.

“Fuck.” Kay scowled and started gathering the blood back up. That wasn’t his first time trying that technique, but he just couldn’t get the stream to stay pressurized enough to cut. He hoped it was just a symptom of being too low-leveled in Manipulate Blood, and not because it wasn’t something he could do with the skill.

He started running towards the front of the monster, with his magically controlled blood floating along beside him. Right as he got to the site of the rest of the battle he saw an arrow shooting through the air and into the creature’s slitted nostril. The Grass Snake hissed louder than before, it’s eyes glaring down at the group. Apparently they’d become too much trouble, because is hissed again and disappeared into the grass.

The party glanced around, waiting for it’s eventual return attack. The snake was unlike the Knight Hornet from before though, because it actually did leave.

“That was fun…” Korz muttered as he glanced down at his dented shield.

“Well, that once again proved one of the most important pieces of advice in adventuring.” Verndan said as he cleaned the blade of his spear.

Everyone turned to look at him questioningly.

“Always invest in the tank and the healer.” He put his spear on his back and straightened up. “Let’s get the sled back and keep going. We’ve still got five more bison to hunt.”

Kay groaned and started funneling blood back into his flask. Then he smiled as he remembered. “Oh, right. I don’t have to run.”

Eduard glared at him. “Don’t be too pleased. We might bump into another Grass Snake.”

“Don’t joke about that. I could barely scratch the thing.”

“Still couldn’t get that cutting technique you were talking about to work?”

“No. I’m hoping it’s just because my skill level isn’t high enough to control it.”

“That probably is the problem. It’s pretty common that you can’t do more complicated things like that until at least tier three levels. But you should ask your teacher. She’s probably seen something similar enough to give you an idea.”

“Nice thought.” Kay stretched his arms and legs as they waited for Verndan to get the sled back. “I’ll need to grab her when she’s not working though. She’s been busy a lot the last few days.”

Korz had wandered over, and he shot Kay an interested look. “She say anything?”

“About her investigation? No.” He glanced at the three of them that were in earshot. “And honestly, even if she had, I wouldn’t tell you guys unless she told me it was alright.”

Alice and Eduard nodded. Korz grimaced a little, but shrugged. “Yeah, I get it. I still want to know if they deliberately tied to sabotage us.”

“If I find out and it’s cool to tell you, I will. Although if they did do it on purpose, the guild is probably going to handle it.”

“I know.” Korz waved his hand in a circle. “And they’ll do good by us. At the same time though…”

“It’s personal.” Alice said. “You almost died.”

“Exactly.”

Kay nodded. “I get it. And like I said, if she says something, and I can tell you, I will.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you doing chatting?” Verndan called out. “Let’s get going! Me and Eduard have some running to do!”

Eduard groaned and started trudging towards the party’s leader. The others laughed and followed along.