“Hello”

There were 3 people inside the room, excluding Jack.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Stanley Chambers.”

A boy similar to him in age greeted him. Besides him, there were two girls and only one of the girls was dressed similarly to Jack. Everyone was sitting on the ground in a meter distance from each other. The boy had unimpressive leather armor and trousers knitted from some long fur. The girl had furry robe over her body. That fur was looking delicate and light. Jack could spot clothes from some strange material under that robe. The house itself looked poor. There was only a short table and no chairs.

“I’m Jack.”

“This is Aleena Greene,” the boy pointed at richly dressed girl, “and this is Lillie,” this time pointing at the girl dressed in loincloth and fur bra.“

“Nice to meet you too. “ Jack walked closer and sat in a meter distance to the trio.

“So, you are not a noble?” Lillie asked, while moving to Jack’s side. She sit down in about 30 centimeters from Jack.

“No. Do you guys are nobles?” Jack felt awkward about Lillie girl ditching the other two, but could somehow understood that Lillie was feeling awkward sitting with these guys.

“Sure” Aleena said.

“No, we are not. Don’t trick the new guy,” Stanley said a bit sternly.

“We were born way higher than these peasants, especially me. It would do you all best to just listen to me and do your orders,” Aleena said.

In this moment another boy walked into the house.

“Hello. I’m Stanley Chambers. Nice to meet you.” Stanley said with a smile, completely dismissing Aleena’s words.

The boy was dressed the same way as Jack.

“I’m Patrick.”

And then, he just came to Jack and sited down next to him similarly to Lillie, creating a half circle with Jack in the middle. Now Jack felt very awkward. Allena wanted to be a leader, and he was just made a leader of a peasant uprising.

“Hi. I’m Lillie.”

“Um. I’m Jack.” He felt forced to continue, and introduce himself.

Jack looked at Stanley and Aleena. The boy was still smiling and didn’t seem disturbed by the course of action. The girl however looked furious. There was tension between two groups.

“I’m Stanley Chambers and this is Aleena Greene.”

Stanley than stood up, walked to Jack and sited back in front of Jack closing the circle.

“Come on, Aleena. Sit with us.” Stanley said with smile, patting the ground to his side.

The girl frowned and walked away to one of the two connected rooms.

“Please don’t mind her behavior,” Stanley said.

“Do you have some relationship with her?” Jack asked.

Situation was still awkward. Lillie and Patrick looked disturbed by close proximity of Stanley. Jack didn’t know what to think about it. It was completely new situation to him. His charisma skill wasn’t helping him.

“No, I don’t. I’m just concerned about our team. We are going to stay together for a while. It would be best to learn about each other.” Jack opinion on the boy was raising, as he had the same view on the team.

“What’s her problem?” Patrick asked.

“She is from a count household. They have spoiled her a bit.” Stanley whispered second sentence.

“Um, so, are you guys nobles, or not?” Lillie asked hesitantly.

“No, we aren’t nobles. Well, I may as well explain to you what nobles are about. I’m from a baron’s house. My father is a baron. When someone gets to the 4th tier, being over level 50, he or she gets a baron title from the imperial court and a few privileges. Mostly, baron’s family can live in the cities close to the Kenar mountains.”

“Is living in a city better?” Jack asked.

“Yes. Cities have additional defenses with spells inscribed on the walls, there are more items for sale and greater opportunities. So, barons gets privileges mostly to keep their families safe. It’s better for the imperial court to have warriors who aren’t constantly afraid about their families. Nobles are also wealthier than lower leveled people, obviously, like I got this armor from my dad.” He hit his armor proudly.

“Ok. So what about that girl? You must know her, since you know she is from a count household.” Jack asked.

“No, I know her as much as you. There are officially 81 counts and 34 count families. I just know all count’s and duke’s family names by heart.”

“Why only 34 count families?” Jack asked.

“Family’s rank is determined by a person with the highest level. There are count families with more than one count and there are also duke families with counts. You get the count title for being over level 100 and getting a 5th tier class. Dukes are in 6th tier – over level 200.”

“Wow! Over two hundred. I wonder if I reach that level someday,” Lillie said.

“Only if you are lucky and very talented,” Stanley replied.

“So, how many dukes and barons families are out there?” Jack asked.

“There are six dukes, each with his own family. As for barons… There is something about eight thousand barons and five thousand families. I can’t tell you the exact number as it changes rapidly.”

“That many?” Lillie asked.

“Yep. Barons are considered minor nobility, not anything special, without great privileges. Actually, as monster hunters enrolled in the military we have high chance to become barons ourselves in the future.”

Jack could see that both Lillie and Patrick were relaxing and accustoming to talking with Stanley.

“Can you tell us about privileges?”

“Sure. For barons, it is mostly having families in cities, but also they have access to better materials for armors and weapons. They still need to pay, though. A count gets one square kilometer of land. They mostly cultivate they own plants there, for example – Aleena’s clothes are from a plant often cultivated by counts and dukes. Also, some keep monsters there for breeding.”

“Like those gray ones?” Lillie asked.

“Yep. They are called Surne. There are others types too. Dukes get fifty square kilometers with people living in that territory. They can conscript them into their own private forces, or make them plow their fields.”

“Good thing I haven’t been born there.” Lillie said.

“I heard it’s not that bad. You can mistreat people or they will escape.”

Group got acquainted with each other. After a hour, they all were talking freely. In the meanwhile, they heard blowing horn, signalizing shift change on the walls. They also talked about their abilities.

“I’m level 12 monster hunter. My father took me once to get the achievement.”

“I’m still 1st tier,” Patrick said.

“Me too,” Lillie said.

“You most likely will be sent to shoot from the wall until you kill something. The monster hunter class is standard for monster hunters in the military. What about you, Jack?”

“I’m level 8 survivor. I got that class in the fight with locusts.”

“Wow. Is it good?” Lillie asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but it seems slightly better than the monster hunter. It’s just a bit of bother, as it doesn’t have the charisma skill in the class skills. Therefore, sorry if I say something wrong.”

“Sure.” Lillie said.

Stanley frowned, but soon his cheerful expression returned.

“You guys should start learning magic. Most noble children learn it from a young age. I know a minor recovery and a minor strength spell.”

“You know magic?” Lilith asked visibly excited.

“Yep. These two are weak spells, but that the start. You need to learn magic too. Even close combat warriors learn magic to supplement their fighting.”

“Great! I always wanted to do magic!” Lillie said.

“I’m afraid it won’t be so easy. You will need at least a few months to cast even something relatively easy,” Jack said.

“You have a magical education?” Stanley asked.

“No. There was an old monster hunter in my neighborhood. He taught me a few things. I can cast the minor recovery spell, but that’s all.” Jack replied calmly. Rick’s death was still fresh in his mind, and he couldn’t just be happy about his advantage over Lillie and Patrick.

“That’s not bad. Most warriors only learn specific spells and don’t bother with any understanding of magic,” Stanley said.

“What about that girl? Do you know what she can do?” Patrick asked.

“No, but it would be the easiest to just ask.” Stanley stood up and walked where Aleena had gone previously. There were five fur-beds lying on the ground. Aleena was cross siting on one of them.

“Hey. We were discussing our combat prowess and it would be nice if you could tell us about yourself.”

“Why should I do that?” She said with a bit of spite.

“We are going to be a team. It’s best to know each other abilities. Lillie and Patrick are still tier one. Me and Jack have a few additional levels and can cast simple spells. Are you similar?”

She frowned.

“I’m a level 12 fire slinger. My class is magic oriented and I can cast offensive fire spells”

“I’m sure we will all get along,” Stanley said cheerfully.

“Don’t bother me anymore. Since you fail to see the reason, I’m going to concentrate on training.” Aleena closed her eyes, but she continued to sit.

“It’s getting dark,” Patrick said, looking through the hole in the wall.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Jack said.

He was irritated by Aleena’s behavior, but decided to just keep quiet and observe for now. He didn’t want to pick a fight with a count family accidently, even with Stanley ensuring, that they don’t need to mind Aleena noble origins much. According to him, most nobles don’t interfere with their children military career.

It was a bit hard to sleep for Jack in the new place, so he tired himself with rune shaping practice.

Jack was woken up by the blowing horn. Everyone in the room was waking. A day was 30 hours long and nights were chilly even in the summer. Everyone was sleeping covered by fur blankets. Stanley took off his armor for sleep, leaving him with naked torso as the rest of the boys. Aleena slept with her clothes on, placing her folded robe on the bed.

“We should go,” Stanley said while putting his armor on.

The whole group 12 soon left the house 124 and went to the plaza. Aleena was walking a few steps away from the group. At the plaza, there was a lot of people. Huge groups were slowly leaving headquarters, traveling alongside the frontier. Jack was looking for his brother, Maria and Stave. After some time, he managed to spot Maria and Stave leaving with other recruits. Jack felt a bit bad about not saying goodbye at least.

“Hey, Jack!”

Jack turned around and spotted Bob with 4 others. There was only one boy with better clothes than standard in Bob’s group.

“Who’s that, Jack?” Stanley asked.

“That’s my younger brother, Bob. Bob, that’s my team.”

“Yeah, these guys are team 23 together with me.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Stanley Chambers.”

Both groups weren’t enthusiastic about making acquaintances with each other, but they introduced themselves, excluding Aleena, who was oblivious to the whole brothers thing. Soon, the lieutenant Elizabeth Bonner came.

“Attention! While monster hunters are assigned to the whole frontier section and commanded by a colonel, in practice, you will be using some facilities which are under my direct command, so better listen carefully.”

The lieutenant explained what happens now. Normal recruits were going to pick their new class, got on the walls, and shot at the incoming monsters. They had access to training facilities, but only if a monster hunter wasn’t using it. There were also some theoretical classes for them.

As for Jack and others, they were going to have a half year training before being sent to fight. The training would include stats and skill increasing, tactics against specific monsters, and general knowledge about them.

The schedule was fairly simple. After waking up, there was an hour long physical stats training, then breakfast and 3 hour long lecture about monsters. After that, there was another 4-hours skills training with instructors. After dinner, there was 2-hours stats training with instructors, and then free time for the second half of a day. There were also apparently some spell runes displayed publicly in the mage tower for learning and everyone was encouraged to learn. Jack couldn’t wait.

Today, everyone was spared the morning training session and the day started with the lecture after the breakfast.

“We are classifying monsters in three groups: plants, herbivorous, carnivorous. Most monsters aren’t hunting for essence, they are hunting for food – that’s the same as humans. A common practice used by both humans and monsters is attacking only lower leveled opponents. Let’s start with these three groups. First – plants. Most plants are either low leveled, or are trees. Humans can’t eat most of plants and killing them is generally uneconomical. Low level plants give you a miniscule amount of essence, while higher leveled trees have an extremely durable bark. Cutting down a similar leveled tree takes a lot of time and you can’t eat it. There’s a method allowing to kill a higher leveled tree – you need to pluck all leaves. The tree will start to grow them back, but as long as you are patient, the tree will die after some time. It’s an extremely long method, and giant trees can have so many leaves, that you will never manage it on your own. Generally, we humans aren’t killing plants. It’s similar with fungi. They are dangerous, however, as most of them can blow a cloud of poisonous spores in case their main bodies underground getting damaged. Most plant – with a few exceptions – are totally passive and harmless. “

The old, gray haired lectured started telling the names of various trees and other plant commonly seen in the forest in the exterior.

“Herbivores are less harmless. They won’t hunt you for food, but if there is being they deem easily killed in their close area, they will usually kill it. They may also attack you if they are threatened or defending their pack or young ones. Herbivores – as they mostly only kill low leveled plants – are not very high leveled themselves. There are exceptions, of course, like for example Hallola birds, who eat trees and can kill them. General idea is: if you spot much higher leveled herbivore – run away, if you spot lower leveled herbivore – you can try to kill it. Most of carnivores do the same.”

The lecturer one again told about common herbivores.

“The most interesting and deadly are carnivores. Similar leveled carnivores generally won’t hunt each other, since it’s always life and death fight. You should do the same. Carnivores are generally highest leveled and most dangerous, and they will be a central point of your lectures.”

After three hours the lecture ended and monster hunters had a skills training.

“We will teach you spear handling and footwork skills here. You will also learn how to analyze monsters’ power level after a few month. The main human strategy when hunting a beast is throw to spears. If an enemy is stronger than you, get more people and throw more spears. If the enemy still stands, throw even more spears. Throwing a spear is your answer for almost everything. If throwing a spear can’t solve your problem, then most likely you are death, unless you have mage in a team with adequate skills to the situation.”

They all were throwing their spears for four hours. Jack muscles were very sore at the end, but he managed to get his spear handling skill to lv. 19 – earning him 8 levels to the skill, and another one for the economy of movement, which was slightly guiding him through the motions.

Patrick and Lillie were much worse than him, but they were also improving fast. Stanley would be the best of the team, but Aleena was even better.

‘I thought that as a mage she will be weak physically, but her base strength is probably around 10-12. Her technique is also good - she must have been taught that before.’

After the dinner, there was stats training. Strength and endurance training was simple – just physical exercises. For intelligence and mental endurance training, it was recommended to train that by drawing runes. The most arrangements were for training agility and perception. Agility was trained by stretching, precise movement with a weapon and keeping balance on a thin trunk. Perception was trained in two chambers. In the first chamber, there were droplets of water constantly falling on the ground. The task and exercise was to count falling droplets by the sound of droplet splashing on the ground alone.

In the second chamber, there were a lot of smells kept in bottles. Instructors were realizing them into the chamber and the task was to name every single smell in the mix.

There wasn’t much transitional skills training the first day, as instructors were mostly correcting new hunters about their posture during exercises and the best exercises to train their stats.

“What are you going to do now?” Stanley asked.

“I want to see spells in the mage tower,” Jack said.

“Me too!” Lillie said.

“I probably have seen them already. I’m going to our house,” Stanley said.

Patrick also went with them, while Aleena left earlier without a word.

“Which spells are there? Do you know?” Lillie asked Jack.

“Probably the minor recovery. You should start with it anyway, as I heard it’s segmented into pieces for safe learning,” Jack said.

“It doesn’t sound exciting. I suppose the spell is practical, but I hope there will be something more mystical and cool,” Lillie said.

“I will be glad if I can cast any magic,” Patrick said helplessly

“How is your intelligence stat?” Jack asked.

“It’s 8,6” Lillie said.

“I’m at 8,” Patrick said.

“You need to have it at least at 16 to cast minor recovery. I think that without 2nd tier class it’s impossible.”

“That’s not fair,” Lillie said with a scowl. The girl was very expressive, even too much. Jack didn’t know if that was her normal behavior, or if she was doing it to copy with change in the environment. It wasn’t bad, but Jack thought that a bit unnatural.

“Don’t worry. When you get the monster hunter class, it will be easier to raise your intelligence. It’s always easier to make gains in stats when you are weak, than when you are already strong.”

The mage tower was the highest building in the headquarters. The biggest building was the colonel’s office, which also worked as an armory and a shelter in case of an unstoppable attack. There was a bunch of people before the tower. They were mostly other new monster hunters.

“You guys came for the spells too?” Some guy asked.

“Yes. Do we need to wait in the queue?” Jack asked.

“Pretty much. There are ten spells and not everyone can study them at the same time. There’s not enough space.”

“Where are the spells? Are they in the tower?” Lillie asked.

“Yes. There a room with the spells just when you go into the tower. We aren’t allowed further inside. If you want, I can tell you about the spells there.”

“We would like to,” Patrick said.

“Sure. There is the minor recovery spell segmented in parts to make learning it easier. You should start with it.”

“We know that already. Get to something more interesting,” Lillie said irritated.

“Sure, girl,” the guy chuckled. “There are all six stat boosting spells, like minor strength, minor endurance and so on. There’s also an additional perception boosting spell that only grants you better vision in darkness, rather than boost all your senses. There’s a handy warming spell, so you won’t freeze to death. The last one is the hardest. I’m not sure you can even cast it in the 2nd tier. It’s an air barrier spell. Apparently, it’s creating a translucent barrier that blocks everything thrown at it.”

“I’m going for that barrier,” Lillie said ambitiously.

Jack was more restrained.

‘I need to check how those spells compare to the reinforce material spell. I can barely cast minor recovery. It’s best to choose the next easiest spell and slowly build my intelligence.’