Later that same day Peil came to see Kaden. He used his magic to scan Kaden and checked that there were no lingering problems.

“You should be fine now. You must have been watched over by the gods”, Peil said and made a religious symbol with his hands. “You really did get out of that with fewer injuries than expected.”

“Than you, priest Peil”, Kaden replied. “It was indeed my luck this time. Hopefully there will not be a second time!”

Kaden had spent most of the time cultivating magic, but he was quite eager to return home. On his way out of the Dashire’s temple healing quarters, Kaden momentarily stopped in front of statues of the gods. He put his palms together and bowed. Perhaps he had indeed been watched over by the gods. It was a pretty good moment to show some respect.

Kaden planned to basically hide at home and hope his blunder would be forgotten the next time he had to show up in the village.

Yet, things rarely go the way we want things to go.

Basically as soon as he stepped out of the temple, Jon appeared. Kaden frowned. “How does that guy have enough time to wait for me to come out?”

Jon clearly was planning on messing with Kaden once again. He swaggered towards Kaden like he owned the entire area.

“What do we have here?” Jon said as he stopped uncomfortably close to Kaden. “Could this be Dashire’s newest hunter?” He then poked at Kaden’s chest a bit.

Kaden slapped Jon’s hand away.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Kaden angrily replied to Jon.

“I don’t know”, Jon continued. “You made us waste time yesterday as we dragged you out of the forest. You even had found quite the prey. What a fine specimen.”

“Are you planning on saying something, Jon?” Kaden said before Jon could continue further with his remarks.

“What I’m saying is that you should leave hunting to professionals and not waste our time by pretending to be able to fight beasts and then getting into trouble.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you could already call yourself professional”, Kaden told Jon. “As far as I know, they still just drag you along to mainly observe.”

“Whatever. I’m more professional than you at least”, Jon replied and sarcastically added. “You will only be a professional pile of shit, if you fight anything else than pathetic mangy wolf.”

Perhaps Jon was going to do more than just open his mouth, but he was interrupted. Jon noticed his father, Cleff, was coming towards and he had enough sense that he wouldn’t bully Kaden there so openly before him. He only scowled at Kaden and turned around to leave.

Kaden watched Jon walk away for a moment and then he decided to do so too. As he was going around the corner he saw Jon’s father talk to his son. At first that was it, but then Kaden thought of his recent discoveries about mana use and instead stopped at the corner and enhanced his hearing by pouring some mana in his ears.

At first he managed to get his ears ringing, but then he was able to adjust properly.

“… train more, Jon”, Cleff was speaking to Jon in stern voice. “You need to leave Aden’s son alone too. I know what you have been doing and you need to stop it. We all live here in Dashire and we need to work together. You will be the hunter, a warrior, and a warrior needs his weapons. Aden has made my weapons and armor and once he is too old, it will be Kaden who makes your weapons and armor.”

“Kaden, Kaden… its always Kaden!” Jon said angrily.

Cleff sighed. “You two arent even real rivals. He might have good talent for mana, but you and he are on entirely different paths. Where is the problem? More attention? Do you feel like you haven’t had enough attention? All the resources you have had? All the training? You are a young adult now. Young, but still adult. You need to start acting like it and not like a child. There are troubles coming and you need to be ready for it and Kaden isn’t the problem. Come with me now and stop this nonsense. I will not accept any more of this. Understand?” Cleff was getting slightly angry.

A moment of silence. “Yes, father”, Jon said obediently.

“Now go home. We have things to talk about.” Cleff ended the discussion here.

Kaden could hear Jon walk away and he was planning to do so too.

“It is rude to eavesdrop”, Cleff said. Kaden barely could hear it, but it was clearly directed at him. Cleff left it at that, though and gave Kaden only a reminder.

As far as Kaden knew, Cleff was at tenth layer. If he was able to take one more step forward in his magic cultivation, he would become a Channel Opening stage hunter. He was basically the right hand man for current leader. Knowing this Kaden realized it was not odd that he had been discovered, but he couldn’t figure out how that had happened.

As far as what Kaden had heard, he wondered what exactly was this “trouble” Cleff had said to Jon. He decided to leave it at that for now. Perhaps, if it was anything significant, he would eventually learn of it.

Kaden made his way back home. This time without any troubles. He even made sure to try avoiding running into people. He didn’t want people to ask him questions about his mistakes.

Once at home, he stepped inside the door without saying anything, but it wasn’t much of help. It seemed his parents had been waiting for him to come back.

Ann walked up to Kaden. She didn’t say anything either and then suddenly hugged Kaden.

“Don’t ever do something like this again”, she whispered.

“I know”, Kaden replied.

Aden was sitting by the table putting together things and letting Ann do her thing. Yet, Kaden knew the look on his face and knew he would have a talk with him.

Ann noticed Kaden’s look. “There are things he wants to say.” She then left towards the side where family’s workshop area was.

Kaden sat down by the table.

Aden let there be a moment of silence.

“There will be a punishment”, Aden finally started talking. “Do you know how worried we were? Just how many people went to search for you? Luckily you didn’t hide your path and it did not take long to find you.”

“I’m already aware I did stupid things”, Kaden said.

“Well, you were lucky that you only needed a bit of healing”, Aden continued. “I’m going to keep you quite busy for now. Consider it your punishment. It will also be good for you.”

It didn’t sound that bad. Its not like Kaden himself wasn’t planning on something roughly the same as what Aden was planning.

“You need to get stronger”, Aden added finally. “There is some trouble brewing.”

“Oh?” Kaden questioned. It seems he did not indeed need to wait long to know what Cleff mentioned to Jon.

“Recently some of the hunters returned from the trip to Celadon”, Aden started explaining.

Celadon was one of nearest cities. It wasn’t very large, but it could still be called a city. People at Dashire occassionally made the trip there to buy some things they could not acquire themselves. This included information too.

Aden had a slight frown. “They brought back some bad news. There is a war brewing. Our Sacronan Empire against the our neighbors the Holy Saint Empire.”

A war? Kaden knew these two neighbor empires didn’t really get along, but last large war had been before he was born. Skirmishes and small fights around the borders was constant, though.

“If we are lucky, it might just pass us. We are slightly out of the way”, Aden kept explaining. “Even, if this area gets conquered, they likely just forbid worshipping our gods and switch to the ones they worship. In my opinion the gods they worship are worse. We worship Fualu and his fires makes our forge good. Saints have a fire god too, but Corshik is a destroyer, not a creator like Fualu. They have craftsmanship god, Tonih, which we probably have to start worshipping, if it comes to it. Our forge will not be as good as before, but things we create will be better.”

Which god to worship was important. Kaden listened carefully. He knew of the foreign gods, but gods had their differences too so there were divisions and different pantheons to worship. So, if the area Dashire was at gets conquered, there would be need to adjust. Even, if they did secretly continue worship of gods that were not approved by current ruling church, the presence of this worship would eventually be noticed as it clashed with domains of gods that opposed each other. There would be harsh punishments. Usually public executions.

“We would of course keep Fualu in our hearts and perform whatever tasks Tonih would require of us”, Aden continued. “But this is not our biggest problem.”

“Then what is?” Kaden asked. If new church came to area wasn’t the biggest problem, then what was.

“War reduces the strength of humans as we fight each other”, Aden began explaining. “Small towns like us will have our warriors, but soldiers of the empire no longer hold back beasts as much as they are during time of peace. Beasts will spread further. Stronger ones specifically. It is likely we might even run large number of dire beasts at some point.” Aden quieted for a moment and frowned. “Even a high beast is possible. We need everyone to get strong.”

A high beast! It would take everyone able to fight in Dashire and have them coordinate together to have a chance of stopping a high beast! Possibly even working together by other nearby villages! There would still be losses. High beast was equivalent of human at Formation stage, which came after Channel Opening. They were already extremely powerful and understood speech even, if only few of them could produce speech themselves. They often used magic while dire beasts still basically were just relying on their physical might.

“Don’t look so dismayed yet, son!” Aden said trying to lift the mood up a bit. “It is still quite unlikely, but there will surely be dire beasts. Those we can still fight against reliably. Knowing what is coming, Dashire elders have decided to give out resources as usual when hard times are expected. There will be a tournament to determine best distribution of resources.”

“A tournament?” Kaden asked. “Why? Don’t we already know who are strong?”

“Its traditional!” Aden simply said. “It is also your chance to get more powerful like you seem to desire so much. As you are now, you won’t be getting far in the tournament. So while I’ll be cramming all the smithing ability in your head, you need to get your body stronger along the way. Keep cultivating and don’t go running into to the forest alone again. You got three months.”

Resources! Dashire did collect quite a bit of things from the hunts. Beasts were basically living treasures. From them humans could collect beast cores, pelts, teeth, claws. Lots of things. Also random odds and ends could be found like precious minerals and herbs. Usually these were reserved to hunters and crafters like Kaden’s family.

But now some of this could be acquired for personal use! This was a good chance for Kaden. Problem was that he had to qualify for it first.

Kaden felt determined to get his share. Weaklings would only get pushed around by the stronger people. He did not wish to be a weakling.

“Looks like you understand”, Aden pointed out and continued working with the things he had on the table.

“I will do my best!” Kaden nodded and without saying anything else left for his room where he planned to start furiously cultivating.