Chapter 12: The Hunt

I stood in front of the Mercenary Guild, waiting for Vivian to arrive. After I made a breakthrough last night I spent most of the night refining the energy, not wanting to waste even a bit of the flowers effects. Now, that I had opened up my second chamber I could feel my energy increase by a great amount and that it was more solid than before.

My understanding had also increased which improved my utilization of energy. From what I could tell the amount of energy required had decreased by a slight margin, but I still didn’t know know how much exactly because I had yet to test it out.

The one thing that I was very excited to try out though was my partial transformation ability. Before it consumed way too much energy and I could barely hold it for a minute or two, since the ability requires more concentration to transform certain parts of your body then just the whole. Now that I understood energy more clearly I will have better control than before, which should increase the amount of time I can hold the transformation. Plus, I have more energy now, so I have a larger supply to draw from.

“Atilius!” I heard a shout in the distance. I turned my head towards the voice to see Vivan jogging towards me, waving her hand. She jogged up to me and stopped to catch her breath.

“Sorry, I’m a bit late. I’m not used to waking up so early so I slept in a bit!” apologized Vivan.

I smiled in response, “It’s alright. Plus, I said we will meet at sunrise, and it’s still sunrise so technically you’re not late at all.” She smiled happily at me and seemed to be looking over my attire.

“I didn’t know that you used a scythe. Do you use a sword and a scythe?” She asked me curiously and a bit surprised as she indicated at the scythe on my back and the short sword on the side.

“Yeah, I use a scythe as my main weapon and the sword was given to me as a gift when I left the city. The sword is easier to use at close range, while the scythe is more useful for long range.”

Vivian listened closely as I explained. “I see, I’m really looking forward to seeing you fight. Let’s get going shall we?” With that she started walking towards the city gates.

“Do you have any strategies or ideas on how we should face the boars?” asked me Vivian.

“Hmm, we should probably have one person distract them, while the other person gets the boar from behind while it is distracted.” I suggested

Vivian thought for a moment before answering. “So, who would be distracting the boars? I definitely don’t want to get chased by boars the whole time.” Vivian said and looked at me, like she was trying to tell me that I will end up doing the boring and tedious work.

“How about we switch off? I will take the role of distracting them for a while and then you take over. That way one person won’t have to be constantly chased,” I suggested.

“Alright, I’m fine with that” replied Vivian. After deciding how we were going to hunt the boars we just talked about random things, which mostly were related to school. We were both excited to start our school life and gain all kinds of different experiences.

Personally, I was looking forward to the Beastiology class. Just thinking about all the different kinds of creatures there are in the world made my imagination run wild. Especially when you have the power to gain some sort of ability from them. It’s like you have limitless opportunities in this world. That even if you miss one two more will appear.

Finally, we reached the city gates and I stopped to make sure that we had everything before leaving. “Did you get some food and some items to spend the night if we don’t make it back in time?” I asked.

“Yeah, I got enough food for two days and brought a blanket just in case,” I nodded in response. “Good, that should be enough.” I rechecked my stuff and we headed off to the outskirts of a small forest that was near the plains that I came from.

“Oh, gather herbs if you see any. We can sell them later to earn some more money, unless you need some of them.” Vivian just nodded and we kept on walking.

After a while we reached the outskirts and began looking for the boars. “Do you know in what kinds of areas these boars stay?” Vivian asked me.

“I don’t know, I never encountered these boars, but they probably shouldn’t be too deep within the forest. They will most likely be near the plains because it is an easy source of food for them. Let’s look around the outskirts and if anything we will go look deeper in the forest.”

Vivian nodded and we started walking along the outskirts of the forest, looking for any signs of the boars. We found some footprints on the ground but they weren’t fresh and wouldn’t really help us. After spending some more times looking for any traces of the boars we ended up empty handed.

“Ughh, where are they? We have been looking for these stupid animals for hours! Yet we haven’t seen even one of them so far. Do you think someone else hunted them here before us?” Vivian asked me, clearly pssied off.

“Let’s stop and eat and then we can go check out the forest, maybe we can find some there” I proposed. I was kind of getting hungry and I didn’t want to deal with a pissed off Vivian, so I decided to suggest a break.

We found a suitable spot to rest and took out some of the food that we brought with us. Mine mostly consisted of dried meat and some bread, while Vivan had a bit more of a fancy meal than me. She managed to get some cheese on top of what I had.

“Where did you get the cheese and for how much?” I asked her, thinking that if it’s not to expensive I might get some as well.

“One of the stores near my inn sell some. They sell it at eight copper coins for a piece that's the size of your fist.”

“Oh, I see maybe I’ll get some in the future.” I sighed mentally. The prices in the capital were no joke. To think that a piece of cheese would cost so much.

“So, do you want to get going?” I asked her after we finished eating and rested for a bit.

“Sure, let’s hurry up and find these boars already. I’m getting tired from looking for them most of the day.”

We packed up our stuff and headed into the forest. The trees were pretty far apart, giving us lots of fighting space for when the time comes. We continued walking through the spacious forest, observing every detail, looking for some sort of tracks that the boars could of have left.

“Hey, I think I found something” I told Vivian as I knelt down and observed my find. On the ground, slightly buried by the leaves were some fresh footprints that looked like they belonged to a boar.

“Do you think a Yellow Boar left these?” Vivian asked me as she came up to see what I found. “I’m not sure, but they seem similar. I think we should check it out. So far this is the best lead we have all day.”

We cleared the leaves that covered the tracks and began to follow them. It didn’t take us long until we saw something yellow in the distance, eating something by one of the trees.

“Is that it?” asked Vivian excitedly.

“I think so. It’s yellow and looks like a boar so it is most likely what we are looking for.”

“So, who will go distract it?” asked Vivian, her eyes shining as she looked at me. I smiled, and lightly chuckled at how easy you could read her.

“I’ll take the first one I guess. Have to show you how it’s done, don’t I?” I told her with a smirk playing on my lips. She just looked at me before laughing, “you’re a few years too young to tell me how to do things” replied Vivian.

I slightly frowned, “how old are you?” I asked, just realizing that I still didn’t know her age. I could tell that she was around my age but couldn’t grasp exactly how old she was.

“Now, now, hasn’t anyone ever tell you not to ask a woman’s age?”

I laughed, “I don’t see a woman here.” I told her, grinning like an idiot. She looked at me, probably not believing I just said that.

“Take that back!” she exclaimed and hit me playfully.

“Nope, I’m not taking it back no matter what you say.”

“Ughh, I’ll get you back for this, just you wait. I’ll strike when you least expect it” she tried to threaten me, but I just smiled and couldn’t help but think how cute she looked right now, waving her fist around and threatening me.

“So, how old are you?” I asked her again, since I didn’t get a proper answer.

“What makes you think I’ll tell you?” she asked me like she had the advantage here.

I just smiled evilly, “well, lets see. How about I just call you little girl from now on then. Sound good to you?”

She just looked at me, her mouth wide open. “Oh no you didn’t. You will not call me that!”

“Nope, little girls have to listen to their elders,” I teased her.

“Ughh, I’m fifteen so stop treating me like a kid and calling me a little girl!” I just laughed as she raged out and tried to get an upper hand.

“For someone your age you sure act you’re younger than me. I guess it’s true that actions speak louder than words.”

“Ughh, you’re unbelievable. I’m done with you, let’s just go kill the boar already.” I laughed as I followed her towards the location of the boar.

As we approached closer, I calmed myself down and focused myself to the task at hand. “Okay, I’ll distract it and you go around and then when you see an opening attack it.”

Vivian nodded and started walking towards the right and around the boar. I looked at the boar and smiled. “It’s just you and me, let’s show her how it’s done.” I found a small rock nearby and threw it at the boar as hard as I could.

The rock struck the back of the boar, causing it to whine and turn around in anger. “Crap, that might of had made it too angry.” I said at loud, cursing my actions. The boar spotted me, got into a charging stance and darted towards me.

I quickly got out my scythe and got into a guard stance, ready to engage the boar. The boar got closer and closer with every second and I could hear my heart beating loudly inside my chest. I focused my attention on the boar, not letting it out of my sight.

As the boar neared me, I jumped to the side, my scythe trailing behind me. I barely by passed the boar, leaving a light scratch with my scythe on it’s side, causing it to whine in pain and get more angry. The boar turned around and charged at me again, this time even more aggressively.

I got into a defensive stance again to be ready to engage the overly aggressive boar. This time as the boar got near me I jumped up in the air and over the boar. Quickly turning around I sliced at the boar's feet with my scythe, cutting them off cleanly and causing the boar to crush into the ground.

Vivian darted out from a nearby spot up to the boar and stabbed it in the neck with the trident, ending it’s life. “You took all the fun. It feels like I just killed a harmless sheep,” pouted Vivian as she finished off the boar.

“You took too long,” I told her and started to skin the boar. After we skinned the boar, and took everything that we could use before looking for another boar to kill.

After killing that one boar we managed only to find only a few more before it started getting late and we decided to camp out in the forest because we wondered off a bit too far and most likely wouldn’t make it back in time before the city gates close.

We found a suitable spot and started to set up our camp. I setup my bedroll and started looking for some sticks that we could use to start a fire. Finally, after some time Vivian and I managed to gather enough sticks to keep the fire going through the night.

“Do you want to cook some of the boar meat we got today?” I asked Vivian after we finished setting everything up and had a nice fire going.

“Sure, sounds good” replied Vivian as she continued gazing at the fire.

“Alright then, I guess we’ll try some boar tonight.” I got up and went to get some boar meat from one of my packs. I took a few chunks of meat and went back to the fire. Taking a few of the sticks from the fire I put the meat on them and placed the over the fire to roast them.

“The fire is pretty, don’t you think?” Vivian asked me suddenly.

“Yeah it’s beautiful, but at the same time quite dangerous.” I replied back, remembering the time I set the plains on fire.

“True, there is always a different side to everything.” We continued talking through while waiting for the food to cook, learning more about each other and finding out that we had more in common the we originally thought.

“I think the meat is ready to eat now,” I told Vivian after checking the meat one last time.

“Oh finally, I was afraid that my stomach would eat me if I wouldn’t eat something soon.” I laughed and handed her a piece, which she bit into right away, causing her to almost spit out the meat because it was kind of hot.

I waited a bit for my meat to cool off before biting into it. I let a slight moan at how good it was. I could feel the deep flavor washing over my taste buds, causing me to want more. I tried to eat my meat as slowly as I could to make it last but ended up eating it faster than I thought I would.

“We should have cooked some more” I told her after we finished eating.

“Yeah, I could probably eat the whole boar myself.”

“You’ll get fat” I told her in a joking matter.

“I’ll just go fight something to get back in shape if needed,” replied Vivian like this wasn’t even a problem to her.

“Well, we should probably get some sleep so we can finish earlier tomorrow. Do you want the first watch or the second?” I asked her.

“Hmmm, I think I’ll take the first watch.”

“Okay, wake me when it’s my turn.” I unfolded my bedroll and laid down to sleep. Apparently I was more tired than I thought I was because the next thing I remember is Vivian trying to wake me up.

“Get up Atilius, it’s your turn.” Vivian told me with a sleepy voice. I opened my eyes to see her leaning over me, her eyes right above mine. Our eyes met and we just looked at each other for a few seconds, not breaking eye contact.

“You’re finally up, it took me forever to wake you up. You sleep like a freaking dead person. Did you not sleep last night or something?” Vivian asked me as she walked to her bedroll and laid down.

“Yeah, I was refining my energy most of the night,” I told her.

“I see,” was all she said before she went to sleep, leaving me to the crackling sound of the fire. I guess I should utilize this time and refine some more of my energy.

“Hey Ennius, do you mind taking the watch?” I asked him.

“Sure, I got nothing better to do,” he replied with a bored tone.

“Thanks.” I closed my eyes and enter my energy chamber and began refining it bit by bit.

The next day we woke up at sunrise, gather our things and began our search. It took us most of the day, but we finally managed to kill enough boars to complete the request. We went back to the guild and turned in our request, receiving the money reward. After that we sold off some of the boar meat and most of the hides and other things we could sell, earning a total of around ten silver coins each, counting the money we got from the request. Finishing up everything up we got ourselves new requests and decided to start the day after to get a day off.

Overall, that's basically how our days passed by over the days before school started and today, finally the semester started. I walked past the Academy gates and entered to school yard. I was now officially a student here.

I pulled out a map of the Academy I received and went to find my dorm, which ironically was called “The Wolf Cabin.” Like seriously, what kind of coincidence was this? If the principal played a joke on me then she’s pretty good. After looking for my cabin and finding out I went into the opposite direction I finally found my dorm.

The dorm itself was pretty big and looked like it had at least three floors. Outside of the dorm stood a big statue of a wolf, which kind of looked like a Phantom Wolf to me. I went up to the door, opened it and entered the building. On the first area was a small lounge and a fireplace along with a table and some chairs around it.

In the left corner of the room was a spiral shaped staircase that led to the upper floors. I went up the stairs to go quickly find my room so I had time left to find where my classes were located. I found my room pretty quickly since it was on the second floor and entered my room.

The room was relatively simple. There were two beds, two desks with a chair each, and two cabinets. Seeing as both sides of the room were empty I assumed that my roommate still wasn’t here. I put my stuff on the left side of the bed, organized some of them and decided to do the rest later.

I grabbed some of the stuff I needed and headed out to find my classes. The academy grounds were quite big so it took me a while just to get to the place where my first class should be. My first class of the day was beastiology which I was really looking forward too. The building in which the class was taught in was pretty big, but seemed to have only two floors. The cool thing about it was that right next to it was a stable that was almost as big as the main building.

I entered the building, seeing how there wasn’t much time left to go look for the other classes. I found the my classroom on the first floor and entered the room to find a few people already sitting there. There were six rows of tables in the room that allowed around eight people per row. I sat down in the middle of the third row and waited for the class to start.

Having nothing to do, I looked around the classroom. On the walls there were different kind bones hanging or some sort of pictures of different creatures. In the front of the room hung a chalk board and there was a desk a bit to the side.

I continued to observe the bones and the pictures, trying to guess what the creature might of been. People started to show up soon and Vivian finally showed up. She looked around the classroom, spotted me and smiled.

“Hey,” she said as she walked up to me and sat down next to me.

“Hey,” I replied casually. “How’s your morning so far?” I asked her.

“Great, but the academy grounds are so big and my classes seem like they will be really far apart.”

“Yeah, the academy grounds are huge. It took me forever to get here. If I didn’t leave early I would of had probably been late.”

We continued talking while waiting for class to start. We checked our schedules to see when we have breaks and can go eat lunch together. Finally, the teacher walked in and class started.

“Hello all, my name is Marell and I will be teaching this years Basic Beastiology. This class is relatively simple; there will be two lectures every week and at the end of the semester there will be a project. I won’t discuss the project at the moment, but later on in the course I will tell you what the project is. Now if there aren’t any questions I would like to begin the lecture.”

I looked around the room to see if anyone had any questions to find everyone just sitting there waiting for the lecture to start. The teacher looked around the room one last time and began his lecture. Throughout the whole lecture he mostly talked about what kind of beasts there were, what their origins were and how they came to be. Basically, most of the things I learned from getting the Phantom Wolf powers. The only things I learned were some of the types of creatures there are and the rest of the ancestral beast.

My next class was Herbology which surprisingly was really close, just a building away. In that class the teacher mostly explained what we were going to do and gave us a brief introduction. She told us how we will each grow our own her towards the middle of the semester and that it will be our project for the class. In addition we will learn how to properly plant different types of hers and also gather them. Lastly, like any other class there will be a few short lectures a week.

After I got out of Herbology I went to the dining hall to get some lunch and to find Vivian. My classes were finished for the day so, I planned to go to the library to see if they have any interesting books that I could read and maybe get a head start.

I entered the dining hall to find a lot of people in there eating and talking to their friends, and many others waiting in line to receive their meals. I tried to look around for Vivian but it was almost impossible at the moment from the amount of people currently present.

“Damn it, we should have picked a place to meet. At this rate it will take me ages to find her.” I walked around the dining hall looking for Vivian and after some time just gave up and went to the back of the line to get some food. I stood there for what felt like hours, but eventually I got my meal and went to go find a seat. Surprisingly, I managed to find one pretty fast, so I sat down and started to eat.

My meal consisted of some mashed potatoes, a piece of meat and some vegetables. I’d say it was probably one of the best meals I had in my life. Normally, I used to eat bread and some other cheap stuff just to save money. While eating my meal I still looked around for Vivian and finally managed to spot a blob of blond hair.

“Vivan!” I yelled to get her attention. Her head spun towards my directions and I waved at her. She noticed me and began walking in my directions.

“It’s so crowded in here I couldn’t find you at all!” she exclaimed as she sat down in the seat that I had saved for her.

“Yeah, after looking around for you for a few minutes I just gave up and decided to get some food. So tell me, how were your classes?”

“Well, you had beastiology with me so you know how that one was, but Ability Control was pretty fun. The teacher is pretty cool and we get to use our powers. A pretty easy and fun class I’d say.”

“I see, so you shouldn’t have any classes today anymore right?” I asked her since the rest of the classes she had should be the same as mine.

“Yup, I’m free for the day. What were you planning on doing?” she asked me.

“Oh, nothing much. Just planned to check out the library and then get back to my dorm and finish unpacking my stuff. You want to go the library with me?” I asked her.

“Sure, I have nothing better to do. Might as well go see how the library looks like for future reference.” After that we just talked about some other stuff, I told about my Herbology class and we just discussed our academy experience so far. After we finished our lunch we got up and left for the library to check it out.