The spell Kain taught me yesterday is… unbelievable. It's powerful, but simple. Just thinking about knowing it worries me. I know I'll never have need of using it, but I still asked to learn it, anyway. Some small part of me said to learn it, though. To always be prepared for the worst when it comes to monsters.

Taking a deep breath, I look at Liam and Cam. We're outside of town right now, the Soul Strikers teaching the two of them some new techniques, using the hares and squirrels as target practice. I'm collecting the kills and dressing them, then putting them in a basket.

Though I keep getting distracted as my mind continues to return to the destructive spell my brother taught me. It's powerful enough that if I used it too close to the town, it would damage the walls and the Gate, even though I'm only Level 18.

"Rex," Kris eventually approaches me as I'm placing yet another hare into one of the baskets we brought out with us. "I spoke with the Elder Hunter last night. You have a general spellset, and alternate between using them and using spells with a spear."

"It makes me a little more versatile," I nod. "I can't always attack from a distance. As you know, distance attacks can be blocked. Geoffrey showed that yesterday. I would have preferred to draw in closer to him, except he has a static shock spell that fills the area. Even with my lightning form, I wasn't sure I could handle it."

"Yes," Kris says. "The lightning form, a balance between offense, defense, and evasion. It increases your movement speed, makes it dangerous for a foe to touch you, and allows you to strike with your body, using martial arts. I take it you don't use it for offense, though?"

"Correct," I nod. "I'd rather use other spells or a spear for that."

"That spell," he mulls over his words for a few moments, looking up at the sky as he does. Then, he looks back down at me. "That spell isn't something just anyone can use. You are running electricity through your body at all times during it. Yet you executed it without a grimace. What did you go through to be able to be able to continue functioning when normal people would be paralyzed and full of pain?"

"I'm still full of pain," I tell him. "And it was an event which gave me nightmares for awhile. It's also not something I'd like to think about."

"That's fine," Kris tells me. "I noticed, though, that you focused on attacking and on stopping the attacks, when you were fighting the giant snail."

"Yeah," I nod. "I do have a few defensive spells. The wind wall is my preferred one, as it's more difficult to break through, the wind usually pushes the attacks to the side or dissipates them, depending on what they were. I know the water version of it as well, and can raise an earth wall. I recently realized I could use flashes of light to blind the monsters, though that's not too good to do because it blinds me, even if I close my eyes."

"So mostly wall spells," he nods. "The lightning body spell you use has a variation that lashes out at attacks aimed at you. It's similar to what the giant snail was doing, except you don't have to actively cast the spell. There is a downside, however, in that it'll strike any allies who move too close to you."

"It will drain my sacred power more?" I ask.

"Yes," he nods. "I can tell by your tone and expression you don't want to learn it. As a strategy Hunter, that makes sense. You use the stronger, more consuming spells only when you believe it will give an advantage, and not as a passive thing. However, you never know when you might need such a spell."

"And if it drains me out in seconds?" I ask.

"Why not learn it?" He asks. "So that you at least know it once you have plenty of sacred power, even if it takes years?"

"Alright," I agree to that. "I probably won't use it for a long while, though. The basic version has served me well so far."

For the next twenty minutes, Kris runs me through using the spell, and we determine that I can maintain it for a maximum of one minute at the shortest usable range for the defensive attacks. That's one foot away, and risks more solid attacks connecting with my body. Doubling that range, however, reduces my maintenance time down to twenty seconds.

"Two things that impress me," Kris says. "Is that you're able to prevent the spell from affecting your clothes. That's not something many can do without a few years of practice."

"Yeah," I feel my face heat up. "First time I used the spell, I did destroy my clothes. I've gotten a lot better since then, and I've had a few years to use the spell. The Elder Hunter says it's within reason."

"I see," he says. "First time I used it, we were fighting in front of a group of women. I wasn't aware it would destroy my clothes, and, well, I was quite embarrassed by it. Didn't let it affect the fight, but it certainly affected me after. The rest of the team didn't give me any relief that night over it, too. How much did you practice on your own after that first time, trying to manage to not destroy your clothes and gear?"

"At least once a day," I tell him. "For an hour from start to finish."

"I did two hours," he tells me. "Every night, after the team went to bed."

"You had a more embarrassing situation than me," I say. "I was practicing it at home, alone."

"I was going to practice it at the inn we were staying it," he says. "Except that we went out for a hunt right after, and I needed to move a little faster."

"Ah."

"Now," he says. "For the second thing that impressed me, Rex, is your recovery of sacred power. Your Level and use of it helps a lot there, but they aren't the only thing that helps with sacred power recovery. You do a lot of meditation, don't you?"

"I try to meditate at least twice a day," I answer. "Feel my sacred power and improve my flow of it. That helps with its recovery."

"It does," he says, sitting down, and I return to sitting down and using wind magic to pull usable dead monsters to me and begin field dressing them again, Kris helping me this time. "How long have you meditated that much?"

"Since before I became a Hunter," I answer. "The Elder Hunter advised me to learn how to meditate when I was first talking about becoming one. I think she was trying to deter me at first, but it didn't work. Then, when I became a Hunter, she told me to use the skill I developed in meditating to feel my flow of sacred power, to feel how it moves through me, and to increase its flow, improving both my grasp of it and my recovery of it."

"Nine years," he nods. "I can see you being within the realm of reason for your recovery rate, then. With us, we have to really push ourselves to overwhelm our recovery rate. Whether or not we can sustain fighting over long periods of time, that's another issue."

"Mental stamina," I say.

"Yeah," he points at the growing pile of monster innards and incinerates them with a stream of fire. "Everyone has their limits, and being a higher Level doesn't help improve it. It all comes down to how much you've fought and trained, and even then, the best of Hunters will start to falter. That's why it's recommended all fights last under an hour, even for us Soul Strikers."

Kris looks out to where Liam is attacking hares with bladed wind around the blade of his spear. Kain and Nathan are watching him and giving him pointers at the moment, though it was Seth and Pierce a little while ago. They swapped.

"He has a decent grasp on his sacred power, too," Kris says. "It shows in how quickly he is able to learn a new spell, even though his recovery is normal for someone who just became a Hunter. Most new Hunters would take more than an hour of practicing to learn a new spell, unable to enter the proper mental state to do so. I take it you had him meditating as well?"

"I did," I nod. "Though he only meditates once per day, with me in the mornings."

Kris nods, then looks at Cam, who is practicing under the supervision of Seth and Pierce. At the moment, he is practicing fire magic, though was using lightning magic before. Most people tend to align with only one or two elements and become experts in those. Learning all elements, like I did, is actually rare. It probably set me back, to be honest.

Cam is attacking the deer, rather than hares and squirrels, though he's field dressing them himself. He's also attacking stronger monsters than Liam is, and is taking around the same amount of time to kill them, though that's to be expected. Were Cam fighting the Tier One deer or hares or squirrels, he would simply kill them in one hit pretty much every time.

"He's pretty decent," Kris says. "Though his preference for light magic shows. He doesn't have much skill with anything else, and defaults to simply a single bolt of lightning when he feels stressed in a fight."

"He's always just backed me up before," I say. "He's not used to fighting, other than sending a bolt of lightning to assist when I need it. His sacred power recovery is on par with mine, too, despite being four Levels lower. Once he's Level 18, he'll be much more impressive."

"Possibly," Kris tells me. "But you're impressive in your own way. Most kids don't devote themselves to hunting as much as you and Cam did."

"You five did."

"We're among that exception, too," he shrugs. "But seriously, Rex, give yourself some credit. The fact that you've trained hard shows. You easily adjust into new spells, you have a wide range of attacks, and you're prepared to abuse the hell out of the banes of monsters. You have both distance and close-range attacks. Yes, you're average for an all-rounder strategy Hunter, but that's still impressive. It takes devotion and dedication."

"I want to make sure my town is safe," I say. "And that the townsfolk have resources they can't obtain on their own, but which would help immensely with their jobs or just their casual stuff."

"You three have the hearts of true Hunters," Kris tells me. "It's evident in the expressions on your faces as you fight the monsters. Kain wouldn't have taught you that spell last night if he didn't believe you had it."

"He told you?" I ask.

"Yes," Kris nods. "And it was evident you're still thinking about it. That's part of why you decided to let them train under us when we offered to teach all three of you."

"They need it more," I shake my head. "They're both much less experienced in combat than me. I wanted to let them get better training, especially Cam. If he'd been more of a combatant, we might have managed to defeat the Tier Six wolf."

That's been on my mind as well. Not us possibly beating it, but its presence, too. Yes, its pack's territory was outside of our normal hunting range, but something about it was strange. We should have noticed the signs of it sooner.

Its prey would begin moving further away as they realized there was danger. Even simple monsters would understand that. Yet we hadn't seen any signs of monsters moving more into our territory from there. The pack had only just moved in.

Why were there so many of them, too? Five Tier Fives and a Tier Six? Wouldn't those normally run in different packs, each wanting to keep its own power as alpha? Yet they had formed up as a single pack.

"You're worrying about the wolf, aren't you?" Kris asks, and I nod. "We went out last night, after the feast. We thought something might have been suspicious. Observant and cautious Hunters like the two of you, being caught off-guard by a Tier Six running a pack consisting of five smaller packs, each run by a Tier Five? It didn't make sense. You would have noticed something suspicious before then."

"You investigated?" I ask.

"Yes," he nods. "We did. We checked their den. It looked as if they'd lived there for maybe a week. Not very long at all. Despite that, it was still impossible to determine where they came from, but we noticed something quite strange. They avoided the direction of the mountains."

"The mountains?" I ask.

"Yes," he answers. "The mountains. Their hunting ground consisted of everywhere south, west, and east of their den, except not north, and not in the direction of the mountains."

"That sounds strange," I say. "Why would they do that?"

"We aren't sure," he says. "But the only thing we could think of is that they were chased out of the mountains."

"Another Tier Six?" I ask.

"Another Tier Six," he nods. "We tracked it down, too. We actually only returned from the hunt about an hour before we met up with you three. Just long enough to wash up and eat breakfast."

"What was it?" I ask.

"Another wolf," he answers. "A Tier Six river wolf. We took out it and its own large pack, as well as several other strong monsters in the area. We couldn't bring everything back with us, so we just destroyed their hearts to ensure other monsters wouldn't come and feast on them as soon we left and get stronger from that."

"A territorial dispute," I say. "And a river wolf has a bane of a gaia wolf, making it easier for it to dominate."

"Yeah," he nods. "It wasn't on the mountain, though, just around halfway between the mountain and the gaia wolf's den. But it explains why the gaia wolf and its pack didn't hunt in that direction."

"And they stayed a distance from the town," I say. "Probably smelling Cam and me and wanting to avoid a confrontation."

"Quite possibly," he says. "Monsters do communicate, too, so it's possible they were warned of a pair of Hunters. Intelligent as a Tier Six gaia wolf would be, the beast likely want to learn your patterns and strengths before deciding whether or challenge you or not."

"And then," I say. "We stumbled upon tracks from one of the packs and ended up right at its camp, thinking it was just a normal wolf pack because there weren't signs it wasn't."

"Exactly," he says. "The situation is taken care of now, though, so everything should be fine."

"Okay," I say. "Thanks. You guys didn't have to sacrifice your sleep for that."

"We know," he says. "But when something bothers us, it tends to bother us for awhile, and then none of us get any sleep."

"I'm the same way," I say. "When something starts to bother me, I start to get antsy until I finally investigate it and figure out what was going on."

That has its pros and cons, and I try to manage it as best I can. At least we know the source of the Gate's warning. I'm surprised it was warning of a potential Single-Star monster with just the presence of a couple of Tier Sixes, though.

I mean, yeah, we thought as soon as we saw the Tier Five tracks that we'd found a potential source of the threat. A strong monster with a pack of strong monsters, outside our normal hunting range? It held the potential to reach a higher Tier in the next few years if left unchecked. And the Gate noticed it ahead of time.

The Gates are truly strange beings, especially with its apparent ability to observe behind the town, where it can't directly see.

Kris and I finish up the catches we have, Cam and Liam no longer hunting, but approaching us as they speak with the Soul Strikers. Then, the eight of us set up a fire and start cooking one of the deer Cam killed for lunch.

As we cook and eat, Liam tells me about his hunts so far, even though he knows I was watching. It excites him, being able to tell tales too, though, and it's fun to watch and listen to him, with the energy he puts into telling the story. Cam and I were like that, back when we started hunting, but as we grew older and more mature, we lost that excited energy Liam has now.

After lunch, Cam and Liam return to training, Kris remaining by me. He tells me he's not that good at teaching others stuff, and would prefer to leave the teaching to those who do.

"You did decently with the lightning body spell," I tell him.

"I've had practice teaching that one," he admits. "I've taught that version of it to a couple of others, and my first time? It was rather horrible. It took me almost two hours to properly teach it to them, and that was my fault."

"Well," I say. "You still did decently this time."

"Thanks," he says.

We're silent for a bit, though I can tell he has something he wants to ask. I'm about to ask him what it is when he finally speaks again.

"Have you… been hearing a voice?" He asks.

"A voice?" I ask.

"Yes," he nods. "A voice."

"Like, in my head?" I ask. "No, I haven't."

"Not in your head," he shakes his head. "In your soul."

"A voice in my soul?" I ask. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's only been a few days, so maybe not," he shrugs, then lies back, staring up at the sky. "Stare at the sky with me."

Not sure why he wants me to, I do. We're silent for a few minutes ago.

"This voice?" I ask. "Why did you think I'd hear one in my soul?"

"It's strange," he says. "But apparently, people who manifested their sacred weapons really early, before Level 20, have a tendency to hear a voice from within their soul."

"Like… their soul talking to them?" I ask.

"No," he responds. "Though the records are scarce, according to the Master Hunter who responded to our letter. Oh, right. We sent a message to the Guild to let them know that we had an early manifestation here, and what happened. I think we forgot to tell you we were going to do that. You aren't in trouble or getting put under observation or anything, it's just so they know. The Elder Hunter had probably already reported it, too."

"I can understand wanting to keep track of manifested sacred weapons," I tell him. "It can be useful to know where someone with one is."

"Yeah," he nods. "They also want to track anyone who manifests early because of this voice. The Master Hunter who responded told us that everyone who manifests before Level 20 reported hearing a voice of some sort coming from within their soul. They all insisted it wasn't their soul talking to them, but none would say more than that.

"One of them," he says as a cloud blocks out the sun. "Had a strange event occur, too."

"A strange event?" I ask.

"Yes," he answers. "It was a few decades after they manifested, at Level 16, and they had become a Soul Striker by the time the strange event happened. They ended up separated from their team while facing a pair of Four-Star monsters working together. They weren't monsters the team could handle, and they had been ambushed by the beasts unexpectedly.

"Her team," he continues. "While searching for her, saw a dome of golden light form. They went towards it, and found themselves unable to peer inside. However, they saw both her tracks and the tracks of the Four-Star monsters leading into it.

"Six hours later," he tells me. "The barrier faded, and they saw their teammate. She was glowing, with a pair of wings of light extending out of her back, her eyes golden. There was no trace of the Four-Star monsters, but plenty of evidence of a fight. She herself was uninjured, despite being only barely a Soul Striker in Level."

Kris falls silent after that, as I think about his words. That does sound strange, especially since a single Four-Star monster could wipe out a team of Level 50 Soul Strikers. It would take a team of Level 80 Hunters to challenge them, being many, many times more powerful than someone her Level was. Not just double her power, but dozens of times it.

Yet she somehow defeated them so thoroughly, there was no trace of them left?

"This isn't just a tall tale?" I ask.

"No," he answers. "A Master Hunter and two teams of stronger Soul Strikers had gone to investigate the light, fearful of what it meant. The report came from multiple reliable people. After the barrier faded, she turned and looked at them, then the glow faded and she collapsed.

"When she came to a week later," he tells me. "They asked her what happened. All she said was 'they care for their children'. To this day, no one knows what she meant. Monsters? The voice inside her soul? Who cares for their children? It could apply to monsters, but why would she say that? How could a voice in a soul have children?"

Kris sighs, holding a hand up to the sky, and by coincidence, the cloud moves out from in front of the sun, letting light shine down on us. He snorts for a moment, then sighs again.

"That was a few centuries ago," he tells me. "And is the only known case of it to ever occur. Is it related to the voice in the soul those who manifest early have? Or was it some hidden power she had within her? The Master Hunter said she never displayed such power again. If you start hearing the voice, would you mind recording it? While they do doubt it was related to the incident, they still want to know as much as possible."

"I'll try," I tell him. "But I haven't heard a voice."

"That's fine," he chuckles. "It could be you don't hear the voice. After all, no one knows what it means, and it's rare enough for someone to manifest before Level 20, too. It's honestly possible that they went crazy in the head, and only thought it was their soul talking to them. The last case was more than a century and a half ago."

"Yeah," I say. "It could be. High stress can do that to people, and so can traumatizing experiences."

"Indeed."

"Anyway," I sit up. "Liam is still taking out hares and rabbits. The town's going to have plenty of meat the next couple of days, but only if we start field dressing them now, rather than letting them sit for a few hours."

"Yeah," Kris sits back up. "And if you do hear the voice, and it does mention something that could hint at whatever caused that Hunter to manifest that strange power, could you let the Elder Hunter know?"

"I will," I nod, then extend a hand and use wind magic to pull a hare to me. "I hope I don't start hearing voices, though. I think I've recovered decently from that incident."

I really hope I don't start hearing voices in my head. Or my soul. Or whatever. I'd rather go back to my normal life, now that the threat is over.