Turning in the beasts at the guild was nothing especially interesting to Victor. The pay was more than most of the black requests, as long as you managed to get more than two of them. If he had only managed to get one or two then he would have been better off taking a proper request, but that was the risk of these sorts of requests.

"What do you do with these anyway now that you’ve got them?" Victor asked as he put away his coins.

"Nothing too interesting," the counter worker said as she placed the bodies in a wooden bucket, "Either bury them in gardens or use them to feed some farm animals that can handle meat. Unless they have a mana core, but even that would be so small that at best it would be used for a new enchanter to practice with so a more valuable mana core wasn’t wasted. At best you could expect the item to do something that stops working after two claps of the hand. If we find one though we do owe you a small copper coin."

"Ah no that's ok," Victor stammered, "I'm not worried about that. I mean..... I'm not going to come here just in case one of them has a speck of mana or whatever in them."

The woman nodded lightly, "That's what most people say since they have to keep track of which ones are theirs if they want us to make sure it's paid out. Most people find that to be too much of a hassle, especially if they did something like this as a group. I don't mind. Less paperwork for me. Now, do you have plans? Need someone to go over the new black requests or see if there is someone heading out of town in case you want to get promoted?"

"I don't want to leave yet," Victor said a bit more loudly than he meant, with just the smallest hint of a growl as he punctuated the last word.

He had managed to hold back from hitting the counter as he spoke, mostly because he was still organizing his money.

With a professional smile on her face, the woman nodded her head once, "If you change your mind many caravans will let guild members join for extra protection as long as they manage their own needs, just so the group looks bigger."

The two of them stood awkwardly for a moment before Victor coughed, "Well thanks for taking the critters and giving me the money. I'm taking today off I think.... I just need to clear my head. It was an odd day."

A quick polite goodbye between the two of them was exchanged as he left the guildhall. He took five steps before someone turned a corner and collided with him, causing him to stumble backward, just a bit.

The source of the collision turned out to be a woman slightly taller and thinner than Victor. She had a slight tan on her and lips that looked redder than most he had seen in the area.

"S-sorry about that sir," the woman said as she dusted off her clothes just a bit, adjusting an over the shoulder pouch, "I wasn't looking where I was going and I ran into you. You aren't hurt are you?"

Stepping closer to Victor the woman started to put her hands on his chest and started to trace her fingers over him, making him jump back and away from her.

"I'm fine, don't worry about it. I mean neither of us fell or dropped anything."

At Victor’s statement, the woman pointed behind him at a fruit that had fallen out of the bucket he had with him. Pinching the bridge of his nose he looked back at the woman.

"Let me put this another way. We didn't drop anything that would break and cause it to be a big deal. I wouldn’t have even noticed I was missing that."

Stepping closer the woman leaned down and tilted her head to look up at him, "But it's still yours and who knows if you can eat it now. Surely I can pay for the damages."

Looking at the woman, Victor was reminded of something that he had dealt with a couple of years ago when he was in high school. Shaking his head he backed away from the situation.

"No, it's fine, honestly. I don't need anything. It was a small accident. I mean you're probably in a hurry to get somewhere or you wouldn't be running. So just enjoy your day and..... bye."

Walking around the woman, even as she tried to get his attention, Victor headed right to where he had bought the spear previously and bought another one.

When he got to the store where he had bought his last weapon, the man who ran it made a fuss about how useless the spear was and how he would do better with an ax or a spiked shield. Regardless of his hatred of the spear, the woman that worked beside him was able to get him past the complaints and sell another spear. Although he did share why he needed another one already when asked what happened to the last one, to be mildly praised by the woman.

Once he left the store, Victor did a quick look around the area and walked down the street, turning the corner before he stored the spear in his card, thinking how if his trick worked once it was likely to work again if he found himself in trouble.

The woman had been following Victor once she felt sure he wouldn't notice her.

"Does he like men?" She wondered to herself as she watched him lingering in the weapons shop.

She kept her eyes on the shop the whole time that he was in there, planning to go to speak to them about him if she didn't learn enough about him. She didn't, however, want to, knowing that the man who ran the store would want to talk about, praise, or complain about every weapon if you would let him. Something that was useful or useless depending mostly on the luck of where the conversation went and if you could steer it towards a specific person.

About the time Victor left the shop, she was glad to have somewhere to go rather than sitting and waiting.

Not needing to move at first, she watched him go to the side of the shop spear in hand.

"So he fights with a spear," she said quietly to herself, "Not a bad weapon. I think that...."

Her words stopped in her throat as saw something. One moment the man had the spear in his hand and the next it was gone.

A slight smile spread on her lips, "So that's it. A bit of sneaky magic. What did he do?"

Following Victor, the woman kept him in her sight as much as she could, only occasionally losing track of him for the smallest amount of time before finding him again.

"There has to be some hint of what he did. Does magic make people not notice something? Does it change size?"

For the rest of the day, she watched Victor moving from place to place around town. She learned where he was staying, where he was eating, and what, she even saw him talking to a couple of people a small amount, making note she might want to talk to them.

Despite the different interactions he didn't seem to display anything of interest except for the fact that the spear he bought suddenly vanished. That and the fact he had a book that looked to have some amazing binding on it, though that could be explained by having enough money.

She was even starting to suspect that she had imagined it being bought as he went to leave town. Knowing that she would need to figure out places to observe him as the geography changed to a more open location, she was able to hear him say something about practicing.

That one word got her to feel a bit more determined as she kept trying to sneak and observe him more closely. She stopped at the edge of town because the cover that she could hide behind was getting more sparse. Even then she was moving forward when she could, as to not lose sight of him.

Having left the shop and stored away his spear, Victor put some of his money in his room and took one of the smaller books he had to read. Sure he had already read it, but it was something to take his mind off things.

After leaving the inn he did see the woman who told him that he shouldn't group up with the people he skinned dragon corpses with.

While it was mostly in a teasing manner she insulted Victor a bit for going with them instead of listening to her. He thought she meant no harm by it so he didn't complain and took the first opportunity he could find to leave the conversation. After that, through various wanderings he found himself going out of Green Rebirth just enough to find some trees that held no fruit.

Putting his sword in the ground next to the tree, he stepped back and looked around. Thinking he saw something, he picked up a rock and threw it where the motion was coming from, thinking that whatever it was would run off with a bit of motion.

"Alright," Victor said to himself with a deep breath, "It's obvious now that you won't be able to avoid combat forever. Creatures, people whatever.... so stop slacking off and practice seriously."

His words changed into silence for several minutes before he slapped himself a couple of times.

"Come on. This is the time to practice not to slack off. You need this, you understand, just do it. Even if you only do it a few minutes. It's worth doing even if you only do it a little, damn it."

Looking at the tree his mind went to the man who he had killed as a shiver went through his entire body.

"Listen you fucking coward he deserved it! He was going to do who knows what to that woman!"

Kicking the tree with his foot, he hopped back a little bit from the resulting push.

"That woman is alive thanks to you and all it cost was the life of the man who was going to end hers. You have no reason to feel bad and if you don't stop dragging your fucking feet you might not be able to help the next person!"

Swinging one of his arms forward, he brought the spear into existence, the tip of the spear lightly cutting into the bark of the tree and nearly falling out of his hand, only for him to pull it back into his card as he spun.

"I'm not saying you have to go look for people to help. You aren't supposed to be here so you aren't going to try to be anything special. You need to just live. There is no reason to think about anything but that for now, but you can't just run from things like that, understood?"

Getting into a bit of a motion of summoning and dismissing the spear as he swung at the tree, he knew that he wasn't skilled, but it felt a bit easier to manage the sudden appearance or disappearance of the weight in his hand or hands as he both praised and insulted himself all the while, even if there were more insults than praise.

Eventually, with a hard thrust, the tip of the spear got stuck into the tree causing Victor's hands to slide up the wooden pole as his body kept moving forward, scraping his hands just a bit.

Pausing to look at his hands, he noticed that there was a bit of blood on them. Giving the weapon a half-hearted pull he simply put it back into the card without a second thought before picking up his sword and returning to town.

Now that his cell phone was long since dead, and because he never had a watch except for a pocket watch he used for a costume once, he only guessed that he had been out there about twenty minutes, or maybe a half an hour. Regardless, he felt a bit disappointed he was stopping already as he turned to return.

"Look," He reassured himself softly, "I know the guard or the army would spend a lot more time at this, but you aren't them. Sure it might barely be anything but you did something and with enough small somethings it can become a big something."

As he walked back to town he thought he saw something running ahead of him. At first, he thought it was something like a cat, but seeing the way it ran he realized it was most likely a person and his heart sank just a bit and for the first time since he got here, he hoped that the people who abducted him were watching him. Especially since the only other choices were that he was right and it was them or someone he knew nothing about was keeping an eye on him.

Not completely sure what she had seen, she ran.

He had his spear, but at the same time, he didn't have his spear.

That was the simplest part of what she was thinking regarding what she had seen. One moment he was unarmed and the next he was. The length of wood with the metal end kept appearing and reappearing as she slowly got closer to Victor, her mind locked on the sight, even partially forgetting about the cover she had previously been trying so hard to keep.

She started to go over the forms of magic she had seen or heard of before, but nothing quite fit.

Making someone not notice the item would make it not be noticed and, she reasoned, if that was the purpose of this then why let it be visible at all unless his focus wavered that often, but even then there must be some attacks that would be unseen.

Invisibility felt closer but was very unlikely since it never fell onto the ground. The grass would still part as it landed and he would have to bend over to pick it up and, at least a few times, his movements were clumsy enough that he dropped it only for it to vanish from sight.

She had heard of someone being able to summon weapons to their hands, but it required a lot of work to attune the weapon to them to prevent another from doing it and, even after all that, required some magical enchantments to be placed on the weapon. After all that it still wasn’t what she saw as the weapon would, with its own power, fly towards the person's hand not vanish and reappear.

The only thing she could think of is it was one of those passive magics people have. Something that they are always doing, even as it prevents them from doing any other sort of magic.

"That has to be it," she told herself, "He has to be one of those. Some sort of magic that's always running? Maybe his weapons only come out when he needs to have them and they’re gone the instant he doesn't need them."

When she finally stopped, she forced her breathing to return to normal and entered the crowd, not wanting to have any unneeded attention drawn to her.

Walking through the people, she nearly danced as she got between everyone doing their end of the day shopping. She never once bumped into someone despite getting close to them, her hand barely touching a bit of cloth or leather that was off the main outfit was the only interaction she had with them. A couple of them, without realizing it, would find their pouches were a little lighter than before she walked past them.

Moving from between the crowds she stopped at a stall to get some food, including juicy fruits, before entering a broken down building on the outskirts of town. The building was damaged, but standing with a section of the roof and second-floor wall missing as its owners had run out of money before it was finished and simply left to escape the builders.

Looking around she moved a box from a corner and pulled up on a door that was hidden under it. Pulling on it she started to go down until she saw who she was looking for.

The young girl smiled and ran up to her, stopping only because she held up food and set it down before accepting the hug.

"Doliy you're back! I missed you so much and the embers are almost done glowing and I was worried you forgot which house we were in."

Doliy held the younger girl tight to her breast, trying to look strong and barely managing to.

"We got some good food today. I was a little lucky with work today, but I wasn't able to find the good wood so I'll leave the door open a little for you tomorrow."

Sitting around the glowing piece of wood the girls ate their meal. It wasn't warm, but it was filling and the fruit worked well for hydration.

"Was it good?"

The younger girl smiled and hugged Doliy from the side, "Yeah! I liked the fruit too, where did you get it?"

Thinking of Victor and the fruit he had, she suddenly thought to herself how maybe she should have asked for some of it instead of stealing some more money from the people around her.

"The stalls in town, but that's not something you need to worry about. I want you to sleep well tonight because I might have to work a little bit tonight."

The younger girl went quiet and looked away from Doliy.

"Don't let them hurt you this time ok?"

Holding the girl tight, Doliy kissed her on the top of the head, "Well of course not. I told you nobody hurt me I just slipped on some water because the moon wasn't out. Now just go to sleep ok?"

Doliy held the girl close until she felt her going to sleep. Once she was sure she wouldn't stir she changed out of her proper clothing and slipped into something not so eye-catching. She thought it was something that would attract attention, but not enough to cause her to worry. She just needed to look good enough for nobody to question her slipping into someone else's room in the middle of the night.