"I can feel your amused gaze on my back," Adam mutters.

"Sorry," I snort. "I'm still finding it amusing that you actually did sleep butt-naked out in the open."

There's no path that leads to the region we're making for, apparently. When we reached the tavern he'd mentioned yesterday evening, there was a road continuing east and one heading south. We broke off north there and set off without a path. Adam claims that it won't be hard to stay on track as long as we keep walking north, but I'm not so sure about that.

We'll probably end up going the wrong way.

When we finally stopped to eat and sleep last night, Adam shucked off his clothes and just curled up on the ground without a care in the world. Even if the chance of someone seeing him in the buff was low, that's still pretty bold of him in my opinion.

"Why?" He asks. "It's not as if it's inappropriate. Now, if I were jacking off in front of other people, that would be an issue. But I wasn't. Why would I have reason to be worried? Unless you're referring to someone seeing more of my non-human parts than normal, but that doesn't bother me so much. It especially doesn't matter when we aren't in a town."

Right, this world doesn't view the naked body as inherently sexual, just as Earth used to not. Adam himself also probably wouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed if someone did walk up and see him doing something sexual, either.

He'd probably be more annoyed than anything.

"Right," I say. "Never mind, it's a cultural difference between our peoples. Are you sure you know where you're heading?"

"Yes," he points straight ahead. "There's a mountain in the distance. Your eyes aren't good enough to see it, but I can make it out. There's a peak over there that's unique, and where we're headed is to its west. I can keep us oriented in this direction. Finding the river would be even better, but that's at least a few days from now. That won't be important until we reach the forest, though, and if we don't come across it, we can just follow the forest east until we do."

"You said the village is on the river?" I ask.

"Yeah," he answers. "Otterkin prefer to build their villages and towns beside rivers as it makes for good fishing grounds. Truthfully, Beastkin do have some of their animal traits beyond just things like ears and tails and fangs. Otterkin, for example, are smaller than a human on average, excellent swimmers, and have a diet heavy in fish."

"Dogkin?" I ask.

"They really like to get scratched behind their ears," he tells me. "My mother used to tell me stories about a village of them she entered when she was younger. Most of them were playful, and more than a few enjoyed a good belly rub. Or scratch."

That's kind of an amusing thought. I hadn't actually expected there to be dogkin since that's a domestic beast, though.

"Do you want to try and take on the beast by yourself?" He asks. "With your current set of spells and your Magic, you might manage it using most of your Mana, and you're about full."

"What beast?" I ask as I look around.

"It's about a hundred yards that way," he indicates in a slightly northwest position, towards a large rocky protrusion from the ground. "It's hiding behind the rock. I'm asking mostly in case it attacks, but if you want to try and kill it for Experience, I won't stop you. I might let it thrash you a bit if you do it without it attacking first if you turn out to be too weak, just because."

"Someone doesn't want cuddles tonight."

"Cuddling is a bonus," he states. "I can handle not getting them for a night. Only once I met you did I not sleep by myself once I set off on my journey."

The reason he said 'once' he set off on his journey is because apparently, Demihuman (Dragon) families all sleep together, so he was used to sleeping with his parents and siblings all in a pile. Or cluster? I'm not entirely sure, and he quickly changed the subject after realizing he'd begun talking about his family.

Just another mystery regarding his past. I can't tell if it's because they died, they betrayed him, he was exiled, or what. All I know is that he does not like talking about his family or the clans in any detail.

"Well," I say. "Experience would be nice, and so would getting an actual proper fight in. If I fight it and it turns out to be too much for me, just know that the more I get hurt, the less fun you'll get until I recover."

His tail flicks a little.

"Noted."

Yeah, he's not going to let me get thrashed.

"If I do end up fighting it," I say. "Please don't step in unless absolutely necessary. I want to try killing it on my own."

"Understood."

I touch his back, gently tracing up and down his spine a few times. Adam's tail flicks happily in response to that, and because I'm a little behind him, it smacks my leg each time it flicks to this side.

"Not going to lie," I tell Adam when I pull my hand away. "I'm half-disappointed you don't have wings. You being part-dragon, it would make sense."

"There's a possibility of manifesting them," he tells me. "I don't have the power for it at the moment. It's something the dragon gods bestow upon us as a sign of our worth. The ability to transform into a dragon is another of those. We have to undergo a special trial for it."

"That's kind of neat," I say. "We're almost to the beast, right?"

I'm pretty sure that's the rock Adam had pointed at, but there are a couple of large ones in this area.

"Yeah," Adam answers. "It's moving."

We stop walking forward and watch the stone, the beast stepping out from behind it a few moments later. It looks like a large, muscular horse with a coat that's a blend of greens and yellows, causing it to blend in slightly as it moves around. A pair of stubby horns protrude from its head, both a darker green than its pelt.

After stomping a hoof a few times, the beast charges toward us. Adam moves out of its way in one direction and I jump in the other, landing on the ground. I scramble to my feet and summon a lilac [Sleep Bolt]. When the beast turns and charges back at me, I shoot the bolt at it and move to the side.

Like most Tier II bolt spells, [Sleep Bolt] can travel up to a foot per point of Magic. With me now being at 14 Magic due to my efforts yesterday, I no longer have to be quite close to my target to hit it. This gives me more leeway in terms of closeness to the target I have to be, meaning casting this to make it easier for me to attack from close range is a better idea than just attacking close from the start.

When a target is faster than I am, though, that means I need to move sooner than I did this time. The monster horse nearly rams me with its horns as it passes by, though my spell still connects.

The beast barely slows a little when my [Sleep Bolt] hits it, a sign that it's resistant enough to withstand its effects. However, that slowing suggests it did have some effect on the beast so I try again, this time managing to be a few feet away from the monster as it passes by.

As the beast continues to charge at me and I move around to avoid it, I determine that I'm not shooting [Sleep Bolt]s fast enough to knock it out and will just end up wasting my Mana if I continue. Even shooting them as quickly in succession as I can isn't enough.

Switching tactics, I summon a pale yellow [Stun Bolt] and shoot it at the beast. Just as with the [Sleep Bolt]s, the horse monster barely shows any sign of being affected by it.

"If that's how you want to play," I mutter as I avoid its charge again.

My next bolt is a pale, sickly green in color. [Poison Bolt]. I don't want to use [Magic Bolt] until I don't have to worry about the horse charging at full speed. Otherwise, the risk of it actually killing me is higher. Even knowing that Adam would save me before that happens doesn't reassure me.

There's a chance of serious injury despite that.

I shoot the horse with the [Poison Bolt], and it actually reacts this time beyond just a slight slowing down. Where the bolt strikes turns a pale and sickly green and the beast stops its charge. Whinnying, the horse stamps the ground with its front hooves a few times, then avoids my next [Poison Bolt].

The beast begins to slow in its charge the more times I hit it with a [Poison Bolt]. It might be tough, but it's not tough enough to resist the poisoning power of the bolt through sheer willpower. If my spell were stronger than it currently is, I could probably have killed it with a single bolt. Or at least, let it die from poisoning.

Instead, I have to strike it repeatedly with [Poison Bolt]s to weaken it further and slow it down. My Mana steadily drops as I cast these more expensive spells, but each poisoned attack seems to work more efficiently than the last. I'm going to make a guess and say that its resistance to them is weakening on top of having extra poison flowing through it.

As my Mana draws close to empty, the beast collapses to the ground, though there's no notification of its death. I summon a fully-charged [Magic Bolt] and bring it to as powerful as I can make it as I approach the beast. The beast weakly thrashes its head at me as I draw close, but fails to hit me.

I aim the bolt as soon as I'm within range and shoot the beast, and my bolt… barely breaks the beast's skin. The creature whimpers in pain, unable to do much more than that as my poison flows through its veins.

"Just so you know," Adam says as I stare at the spot my attack struck. It's bleeding a little, a small bruise already formed around it. "The beast is too physically tough to actually be felled by your [Magic Bolt]s. I noticed that after it revealed itself. Very low Mana, which it was focusing into its horns during the initial charges."

Yet he let me continue to fight it anyway.

"Adam?" I ask.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you let me fight it, then?"

"I said you can't fell it with your [Magic Bolt]s," he tells me. "I didn't say anything about your [Poison Bolt]s. It will take a bit of time, but I think you've hit it with enough of them it's going to die. Unfortunately, the poison's ruined the meat."

He looks pretty disappointed over that.

"Sorry?" I offer up an apology.

"Nah, it's fine," he says. "We'll probably come across another."

"Will I still get Experience if it dies from my poison magics?" I ask.

"Yeah," he answers. "Just a heavily-reduced amount. If you were an [Affliction Wizard] of any Tier, you'd get the full amount even if it died a week from now from your poisons."

"[Affliction Wizard]?" I ask. "Is that an Advanced Class?"

"No," he answers. "It can be taken on just by having a single affliction-type spell like the three bolts you have. It's like a [Fire Wizard] or [Water Wizard], it just requires more difficult spells to obtain."

So even normal Classes can have varying degrees of difficulty within a type. I suppose it makes sense that it would be a normal Class rather than an Advanced one considering Adam did tell me that Advanced Classes are typically obtained through a combination of Ranked-Up Classes.

"Are there Advanced Classes based solely off Skills?"

"Yeah, but those are rarer than the combination Classes," he answers.

"Okay," I look at the dying beast once more. "How long do you think before it dies?"

"Probably only a few more minutes," he answers. "Your affliction-based bolts are enough to do heavy stuff to a normal person, and while this thing has a decent Constitution and Vitality, you were hitting it fast enough its body couldn't fully purge the previous bolt's poison before acquiring more. Death by a thousand cuts. Pretty neat."

"Thanks," I say. "Uh… you said for a normal person?"

"Yeah," he says. "Your [Sleep Bolt] would likely knock a normal person out immediately. Your [Stun Bolt] would lock them up entirely for at least a few minutes. Your [Poison Bolt] probably wouldn't kill them, but it would make them need to see a healer or suffer the effects for a couple of days or so."

"What about on you?"

"I'd estimate the beast to have a little less Constitution and Vitality than me," Adam tells me. "So they'd be slightly less effective on me."

"That's why you didn't want me to hit you with [Sleep Bolt]," I realize. "It would have affected you, even if slightly."

"Yeah," he confirms. "The moment of sluggishness before I shrugged it off would be annoying."

"Well," I say. "I'm glad I didn't hit you with [Poison Bolt], then. How would that have affected you?"

"Eh," he says. "I'd have probably felt light-headed and nauseous for a few minutes, but my Constitution is high enough it would have barely affected me that even without my high Vitality, it wouldn't be an issue. I'd recover within a couple of days and could have mistaken it for eating bad food or just a normal illness. With my Vitality, though, I'd have healed from what little effect it had within minutes."

"I see," I look at the beast again, which is trying to rise to its feet, only to fail. The beast has turned a sickly pale now. "So my [Stun Bolt] could lock up an entire human, but did nothing to this. Huh."

"Part of it was that it was already moving," Adam informs me. "It's harder to lock something up when it's moving. Part of it is willpower, sort of like with [Sleep Bolt], and that's not a measured Attribute. Since it's not a mental effect, Mind doesn't help."

"Oh," I say. "So I might have locked it up if I had already weakened it before."

"No," Adam says. "The beast is too big for that. Most [Affliction Wizard]s combat other magicians because the majority of their spells are resisted based on willpower rather than Attributes, and Leveling them is difficult for normal people because they're Tier II and higher."

Also because of the difficulty of Leveling spells, but that's not a barrier to me for lower-Tier spells. While I did only bring [Sleep Bolt] up to Level 3 and [Stun Bolt] and [Poison Bolt] up to Level 2, that's still incredibly fast for normal magicians. I can already tell that bringing them up to Level 7 like my [Magic Bolt] currently is will take me more than just a few days of practice.

The slower learning pace actually excites me a bit, as it means I need to put in more effort for them.

"If I bring the Skills up a bit more," I say. "I'd be able to ignore that?"

"If their core aspects are stronger than the target's willpower," Adam says. "Then it won't be resisted. It's like dropping a vase. The vase is the effect, the ground is the person. A glass vase will shatter quickly. A ceramic vase won't shatter as quickly, but still shatter. A stone vase will shatter less. A pure-gold vase will probably get a little dented. A steel vase will probably not get dented at all. An adamantite vase will probably dent the ground."

[Apprentice Wizard] Experience Acquired: +87% Level Up! You have reached Level 13. Loot Dropped: [Venomous Bone Knife]

If that's the reduced amount of Experience I gained for killing the beast with poison, just how much would I have gotten for killing it directly with a [Magic Bolt]?

"The beast is dead," I say.

"I noticed," Adam says. "It dropped loot, too."

"You could tell?" I ask, and he indicates something on the ground.

"Loot is almost always made directly from the monster," he explains as I pick up the bone knife. "And drops on the ground beside it if you don't have Auto-Loot on or do but there's no room in your Inventory. It's off by default."

The knife came with its own leather sheath, and judging by the pale green leather, it was taken from the beast's hide. The handle is pale bone with the grip wrapped with a strip of leather in a spiral. I pull out the blade, which is about as long as the hilt, single-edged with the blade curving slightly up to meet the back in a point at the tip.

Venomous Bone Knife Rarity: 2 A knife made from a beast's bone, a deadly toxin saturates it. Its cut will inflict a minor poison upon the victim.

"Oh, neat," Adam says. "It's a Rarity 2 drop. You got lucky there. Sometimes, something used heavily in a fight can cause an upgrade to the drop if you're lucky. Since you used a lot of poison on the beast, repeatedly hitting it with some, that gave you an upgrade. Let's harvest the beast's bones, too. Whether you keep it or sell it, the bones will be useful."

"Why?" I sheathe the knife, not sure if I want to keep it.

"They can be used by a magic craftsman of the right type to repair the knife back to brand-new," he tells me. "Though it might lose the poison effect if they're not skilled enough or don't have the right items."

"Ah," I say. "Well, uh, you should probably be the one to handle that."

"Yeah," he says. "Cleaning them will be a pain, but if we roll them in the grass, that might work. The lake's still a fair walk away, and we can clean them off in the river."

He keeps mentioning the lake, but never a town there. I'd expect there to be one considering it's a source of water and fish. Is there something there that makes it dangerous to live at the lake?

I'll find out eventually, so I let Adam work instead of bothering him. Once he finishes removing the horns and bones and cleaning them off as best he can, he gives them to me to put into my Inventory. I send the knife in there as well, then open my mouth to ask Adam if we're going to have lunch soon.

Before I can do that, however, Adam starts saying something in another language, a deeper and more guttural one than Zolmar Common. Judging by his tone and body language, it's cussing.

"Everything alright?" I ask.

"Yeah," he sighs. "A pest is about to arrive."

"A monster strong enough you can't handle it easily?" I ask.

"Worse," he responds. "An annoying person."