The next few days went by smoothly. They had the opportunity to explore the town, and Mash managed to buy a few items he could use as presents for his brother. Well, buy wasn’t the right word, as he was really just given each of the items. He planned on doing some trades with the magic items they looted from Gerard’s team. However, any attempt at doing so was met with firm refusal, and Mash didn’t want to make the store owners feel uncomfortable by insisting. Instead, he just settled on letting Aifell pick whatever items she wanted from the pile.

The pile consisted mostly of extra or duplicate items. Items that did things like produce water or fire. The types of items you find on a lone adventurer who was trying to survive on their own. He doubted that they had hunted many within the dungeon, but all of the spare items showcased how many people they hunted. There were several storage items, and Aifell took two of them. Apparently, they could manage something similar, but they needed a larger system to set something like that up.

She claimed that she could replicate it given enough time and that she would return the items later. Mash just waved it off, saying it would less valuable than the item she was already making for them. The others also wanted to get the upgraded language item and insisted on helping her if she needed it. So far, she seemed to be making progress on her own, so they mostly left her to it.

After the first two days, Aifell seemed to understand that they weren’t going to cause any problems and mostly left them to their own agency. The four of them took advantage of Mash’s position and explored the town freely. They saw two concerts over the past week and received several different things. Clothes that matched the style of this place, and a few magic items that they couldn’t easily acquire back home.

The best item Mash found was a wooden flask that generated a sweet notorious sap so long as he provided it with some mana. Apparently, it was what all their hunters used as the drink was much more convenient than stopping for a meal. It tasted like a luxurious fruit juice, and he had actually bought a few of them. He got one for himself, and one spare in case it broke. As well as two more to give to his siblings when he had the chance. After the shopping spree, they made a list of the places they had visited and told Aifell to make sure they received storage items. It wasn’t an even trade as they got a lot of interesting things, but the money they possessed wouldn’t be valuable here.

Mash found an item that would be a great gift for a wedding and had made sure to package it safely in his storage space. It was unlikely to come to damage, but he wanted to make sure to keep it secure. It wasn’t particularly frail, but it was valuable. Valuable enough that he felt bad about just being given it. It was a seed for a tree that bore fruit once every year. It was strange how the item wasn’t valued very highly here but would easily be considered priceless back home.

The tree was called Goldenweave for how golden lights seemed to intertwine with the bark of the wood. The fruit itself provided a huge benefit to those who consumed it. It produced two fruits, one improved one’s affinity to fire mana, and the other did the same for ice mana. Perfect for his brother and the princess, but mostly irrelevant here. The Vians had affinities to mana, but they were able to develop their affinities much more quickly than humans could. He had methods to do it, but normal people had to rely on the class system to improve something like mana affinity. An item like this would sell for a fortune back home.

They grabbed a few items like that. Items that had little use to these people or were considered commonplace here but had huge value back home. They didn’t have many of the affinity trees, and most of them were used to letting their children pick up the affinities more easily. Even still, Mash managed to get a seed. When he showed even the smallest inters in an item, it was practically forced onto him.

His friends had grabbed some things for the wedding as well. The three of them together picked out clothing that was designed for men, women, and children. Mash found the idea of buying something like that to be awkward but decided that they probably knew what they were doing. After getting their presents in order, and spending some time visiting concerts, Mash realized that he was probably sitting in one place for too long. Rather than inviting trouble to the city, he and his friends decided to go and hunt monsters.

The worms in the desert had been good for levels, but Mash wanted more practice fighting without needing to use his large-scale skills. He would still use some but mostly wanted to work on mixing his old fighting style with his forms. Also, he wanted to fight and rely solely on his weapon. So, they had asked Kirk what monsters he knew of and had been surprised to receive a detailed map. All of the locations were followed by a short description of the area, part of which included information on the monsters located there. It even talked about their relative strength. Since they had only fought the worms, they used that as the baseline for their comparisons.

Kirk was glad to suggest monsters to them, as it would help him deal with problematic monsters. Currently, they were headed to fight wolf-like creatures. Kirk referred to them as Doluves, though the description told him that they were really just two-headed wolves. One head could breathe fire, and the other spat out shards of ice. Unsurprisingly, it was where they had found the seed that Mash had received. The group was honestly glad to do something to help the village, especially when they considered all the items they had received for basically free.

That was where they were headed now. The trees actually grew smaller the further out they went from the city, and they could actually fly over the trees now. The colors matched though, and they flew over a bed of blue tress and white leaves. It made it feel like they were flying above the clouds. The leaves moved uniformly in the wind and the effect only added to the feeling.

The location they were heading towards was a natural hot spring. The water had some healing effects and these wolves have made it too dangerous for the normal Vians to travel to them. Their job was to deal with the wolves to secure the location for them. According to the map, the pack of wolves as a whole was only a little weaker than a group of the desert worms, but individually they were a lot weaker. That was the perfect type of enemy for their group, and they were confident in handling the group. Against enemies like these Jill was free to teleport, and Red was practically invincible. Mash felt comfortable not doing his usual and focusing on fighting without using his skills excessively.

They decided to fly after realizing that the hot spring wasn’t that far away. The mana use wouldn’t be that bad for a flight like this. This time Mash just used wooden wings, not wanting to waste energy transforming. Eventually, he noticed the hot springs, as obvious clouds of steam were pouring out from beneath the trees. They all noticed it around the same time, and Red called for them to stop.

“Let’s stop on that tree and see if we can spot them.”

She pointed toward one of the trees. She flew by controlling her body like it was a singular mass of blood, and it let her have free movement regardless of how her body was actually positioned. They did as she had ordered and landed atop one of the trees. From it, they were easily able to look onto the forest floor.

The wolves were trivia to find as they weren’t hiding and there were a lot of them. Easily over a hundred wolves hung around the hot spring, and he was amazed when he realized what they were doing. One of the wolf’s heads was asleep, but the other was attentively watching its surroundings. It was a strange sight, but it wasn’t a big deal. They had discussed how they wanted to fight. The plan was to break up the wolves into smaller packs and each of them would handle a portion of the monsters. Normally, they wouldn’t care about maximizing level equality, but with these weaker creatures, it was something that they could do.

With a plan in mind, each of them jumped in a different direction. Mash jumped toward the spring, landing on the ground before it. He formed a swordstaff mid-air and landed in a large sweeping blow. He aimed for two wolves with the one strike, and he managed to kill both of them with the strike. Each of them only lost a single head, but that seemed to be enough to end their lives. It wasn’t enough for a level, but he expected he would gain one soon. Looking around and seeing dozens of wolves rise to their feet, he wondered how many levels he would gain.

His domain basically covered all of the nearby wolves, and he made sure to keep his vision wide for the fight. A projectile of ice passed from his flank, and he easily stepped out of the way. He plunged one end of his blade into another wolf, as he turned his dodge into a directed leap. Remembering to flow with his attacks, he cut across the wolf while rotating his body to strike another. Not every blow needed to be a killing one, and his next swing was aimed lower. The wolfs weren’t stupid, and he had noticed it preparing to bite at his weapon. It was pointless though as he could see it move without needing to face it, and he simply slid his blade lower, cutting the front to legs of the beast. In that same moment, he dropped an imitation of Priscilla by the body, letting it begin to grow and devour what it could.

Several wolves had gathered together a large stream of fire heading towards him. Mash tried spinning out of the way, but the fire was large and singed his side. The wolves noticed that it had worked and more had begun doing the same. Thinking quickly, Mash jumped into the group of wolves, cutting one of them. His fingers grabbed onto the falling body, and he threw it towards the next burst of fire. The fire burned the wolf and finished it off, but Mash didn’t have time to worry about it. He felt the rush of a level up and finally received a stat bonus from the imitation that he had let go of. The wolves were already slower than him, and the added boost only made it easier to move around them.

There was a spray of ice, but he easily managed to deflect or dodge them while spinning his body. A few shards still managed to hit them, though they were too small to do real damage. Even as he got cut by them, he poured more energy toward his neck tattoo to begin closing them. It wouldn’t work with deeper cuts, but he could rely on the item for flesh wounds. It was something he should’ve been doing, but he hadn’t needed to worry about light wounds when he used his transformations. Looking over the wolves, he began picking up his pace, aiming for more fatal attacks, as he moved. Accepting small injuries, let him go for killing blows more often, and he began killing the wolves much more quickly. As he felt the rush of another level up, he found himself feeling more confident.