“Hailey? Hailey! Are you alright?”

  Hailey looked up from her spot on the ground. Her head swam and pounded as things began to darken for a moment, she her mind panicked, throwing unintelligent thought to what was happening, but she kept breathing and things slowly returned to normal. The world had regained its colour, and with-it, Hailey’s ability to coherently think

  “Ugh,” Hailey said. It was the most intelligent thought she could muster at the moment. “Fuck. I- I think I was about to black out there.”

  “Oh good,” Tennison said, breathing a sign of relief. “That’s all it is. I thought for a moment you had sustained a more threatening injury.”

  “Are you alright? I saw the second boar coming and I moved. It would have hit you at a bad angle, and I figured I had to kill it before it could get you.”

  “You did great. Thanks for having my back there. I would have been fine; I am sturdier than I look, and the armor isn’t just for show. What you showed here tells me that you are well suited for combat. You seized the openings provided, and you covered your allies back. Excellent work,” Tennison said.

  “I’m just doing what comes naturally to me. Doesn’t everyone?”

  “You’d be very surprised. This bit of monster hunting after awakening is usually one of the worst days of most people’s lives. Between facing the threats that they never knew existed, beasts that can harm them in an instant, and the whole mortal peril thing, a lot of people never get through that fear. They lock up, and the first monster that they slay ends up being their only monster they slay.”

  “And those people are the ones that end up with profession classes?” Hailey asked.

  “For the most part, yes. The system likes to match things up to a person’s inclinations. Most of the time. Other times it makes assassins and apprentices into berserkers.”

  “Oh? That sounds pretty specific, what happened there?”

  “Here, let me cut out these boar tusks. The Watcher guild has a reward for each set that gets turned in,” Tennison said as he set to work prying the dagger-length tusks from the corpses.

  “So, part of Watcher school is getting to do a couple of post-awakening monster tours with the newly awakened and a senior member of the guild. They show you the ropes of what to do, how to act, etc, and in turn you gain experience in this whole endeavour. Well, on my last monitored tour the newly awakened, Steven, was his name, got a bit of a raw deal.”

  “Steven was the baker’s son in a village a similar size to ours. It was expected that he would probably get a class related to baking of some variety. He had been training for it, as we found out afterwards. Anyways, we find a monster, we batter it up and hold it down for Steven to take the final strike. He does. All is well and dandy, then his eyes turn red. Just like the boar’s here. He then runs deeper into the forest, and we find him half an hour latter after he’s tired himself out. Around him were a couple of monster corpses that he had managed to kill with his ax.”

  “His injuries were quite bad, and after patching him up, we hauled his unconscious ass back to the village. Somehow, berserkers are not on the ‘do-not-tolerate’ list of classes, but they are on the mandatory recruitment list. So, we contact the army, as is our job, and we sat and waited for them to arrive. Steven came to and was all out of sorts, as berserking tends to do apparently. He didn’t remember charging off into the forest, or slaying any of the monsters, other than the first one.”

  “The army arrived and escorted him to their facility. When I asked my mentor what was going to happen, he just said that Steven would be given some training, then shipped off-world, apparently. We don’t have use for them here, but they apparently have a use out there,” Tennison said as he waved the boar tusk in his hand skywards.

  “You know, I don’t think I ever gave the out there any real thought. They teach about it in school, but it feels so far away. Technology that we cannot even begin to imagine, travel between the stars, huge mega-cities build out of rock and metal. It all seems so far away, and not relevant,” Hailey said.

  “Well, to the village, it isn’t, like at all. The village is just about as far from civil society as one can get without building a shack up in the mountains. If it wasn’t for the particular ore deposits in the mountains being useful to both the world and the out there, the village wouldn’t exist. So even though we are out in the middle of nowhere, its all related to the out there,” Tennison said.

  “I think we have gotten far enough off topic. Are you good? Can you stand?” Tennison asked.

  Hailey pushed herself up and back onto her feet. She took a couple steps and found that her balance was back to its normal state.

  “Check your status before we continue. You’ll need enough mana points to continue moving forwards. If you can’t move properly, we can’t proceed.”

  Status

  Charging Boar slain. Experience rewarded.

  Charging Boar slain. Experience rewarded. Bonus experience rewarded for level difference. Bonus experience rewarded for matching Assassin profile.

  *Ding* Assassin reaches level 2. Stats increased. 2 Free Points awarded.

  *Ding* [Shadowstep] reaches level 2

  “I leveled up?” Hailey said.

  “Tends to happen when you put the pointy end of your knife into a monsters brain cavity, yes,” Tennison said.

  Hailey laughed. “No shit. I’m just surprised I already leveled. That’s all.”

  “The boars were level 13, and 9 respectively,” Tennison said, pointing them out in turn. Hailey’s solo kill had been the level 9 beast. “That’s a big difference for a level 1. We could go get some rabbits for you to punt if you feel like a level 1 or 2 beast is more your speed.”

  “Hmm, that’s good to know. I need one of these identify skills,” Hailey said.

  “In due time. Now, your mana? What’s it at.”

  “15 out of 45. I can [Shadowstep] once with that much mana.”

  “That’s not good enough. Let’s take a break. I have some sandwiches packed for lunch.”

  “Shouldn’t we move to a less dangerous spot to eat?”

  “Nah, we’re good here. The smell of battle will keep the other monsters away for a while until it dissipates. The theory is that they can somehow figure out what happened here through smell, or residual domain energy. Or something else entirely, but the tried-and-true method we’re taught is that if we need to recover, its best to do it beside the monster you just slain rather than move away.”

  Tennison said as he found a tree to lean against. He rifled through his trusty pack and pulled out two tightly wrapped bundles. When unwrapped, two nearly perfect sandwiches were revealed. He offered one to Hailey who took it without a second thought. She bit into the sandwich and was delighted to find a piece of real meat inside of it. It had been so long since she had casually had meat in a meal. Sure, last night she had been treated to a lovely dinner at the inn, curtesy of the village, but it was a luxury that rarely graced her family’s table in recent years.

  “So, why are you telling me all of these things,” Hailey asked. “You just said that your job was to basically offer me a single monster kill, but we have now strolled into the realm of monsters and we’re on kill number three.”

  “Oh, well, its not charity work. Part of being a watcher is being able to organize a hunting party out of the citizens you’re overseeing. You know, in case there is a wave of monster attacks, or the village is threatened by a strong monster, or a search party is needed, or many hands are needed to help with some emergency, and so on and so forth. So, we train an entourage to be able to handle those situations. It’s not paid work like the other 99% of watcher duties, but it is for the betterment of the village.”

  “Being newly posted to the town, and without an entourage, I need to start recruiting and training my own, which brings me to you. Welcome to being conscripted to my entourage. You’re getting the deluxe post-awakening tour because A, I expect that you will be doing lots of hunting and killing of monsters on your own, so I might as well jumpstart that process for you. Which will in the end make my job easier. And B, I need you to be able to operate as part of a watcher’s entourage,” Tennison said.

  “Hmm, that’s fair enough,” Hailey said. “I was kind of wondering how a watcher made their entourage. It always seemed to me that a watcher picked their friends to join them, but I guess everyone ends up becoming friends if they’re spending time working together.”

  “Oh, and the village is only so big, so a young watcher only has their peers age-wise to try and recruit people from. Depends on what classes people get. If everyone else ends up as a miner or a baker, I’ll be hard pressed to find people to recruit.”

  The two ate their lunch without many more words being exchanged, after a little while, Hailey checked her status once more to find that her mana points had ticked up to 32 points. Confirming to Tennison that she was good to move again, the two set off through the realm of monsters to fight some more threats.

  The afternoon slipped by as they managed to find two more boar encounters. This time fighting only one monster at a time. The added stats made things a little easier. Hailey found that she was able to move a little bit easier when faced with a charging boar running down at her. This time when she sidestepped, she was fast enough to avoid getting clipped and managed to get through the fights without injury.

  [Shadowstep] still threw her sense for a loop every time she used it. I guess even with the system helping me do these incredible things I’m going to need to practise and train myself to use it to its full potential, Hailey thought.

  After the final boar monster encounter Tennison decided to call it a day, and they proceeded to hike out of the dense forest with their hard-earned collection of charging boar tusks. Once Hailey passed through the domain boundary marking the realm of monsters, she found her shoulders releasing stress that she didn’t know she had been harboring. The air also seemed cleaner and tasted oddly sweet to her. The rest of the journey was unremarkable, and the two emerged from the forest with half an hour of sunlight left in the day.

  Upon walking up to the gate Johnathon waved at the two of them. He seemed genuinely happy to see that they had returned with all their limbs still attached. Hailey returned the wave when she felt the telltale shiver of an identify ability being used on her. Her stomach did a backflip, but her mind couldn’t quite catchup with the feeling before it was too late. They were already at the gate.

  “Shadow fighter, eh?” Johnathon said. “That sounds like quite a useful class. See, what did I tell you earlier, the world is a big place. There is plenty of opportunities to be had, well, everywhere for a monster killing specialist. I’m sure Tennison has already recruited you to his entourage? I’m a bit jealous, to tell you the truth. Having a fighter specialized to fight in low-light environments sounds ideal for up here. Forests, caves, the mines, the long nights of winter, plenty of niches to be extra useful in.”

  Tennison laughed. “Oh, you’d be a lot more jealous if you saw her fighting this afternoon. Mark my words, she’s going to make our lives a whole lot easier in the coming weeks.”

  “You think she’s going to decimate the monster population that badly?” Johnathon asked.

  “I know she will. This girl is going to want to cash in on all those monster bounties we currently have. I know times have been tough in her family, and she’ll want to set her mom up with a nest egg before she leaves us all behind in the dirt.”

  “I’m not leaving anytime soon,” Hailey said “This is my home. I can’t leave my mom out here like this.”

  “Well, you’re going to be leaving for a little bit whether you like it or not. As a shadow fighter you are required to register with the Adventurer’s guild, which is down in Oreside City. Now that I think about it, I don’t think you’ve ever left the area before. You have two choices. One, you wait for the monthly ore shipment and tag along with the miners as they make the trip with the refined metals. Or you make the journey on foot.” Johnathon said.

  “If I were you, I would take the scenic route down the mountain and try to get some more levels under my belt before applying to the Adventurer’s guild,“ Tennison said. “Not to say they won’t treat you well if you show up as the level 3 that you are, but if you showed up at level 10 or higher, then they know you know how to use the pointy end of your knife.”

  “Ugh, fine, I guess I don’t have any choice in the matter. What about my mother in the meanwhile? I can’t just leave her with no one to help care for her. She’ll starve,” Hailey said.

  “Good thing you’re about to not be broke. While you cannot turn in the bounties for the boar tusks quite yet as you are unregistered, I will do so in your stead and give you the reward. That should tide things over long enough for you to make the trip there and back a couple of times,” Tennison said.

  “As a reminder, that goes against Watcher guild guidelines, but I did not see or hear anything. When you see the captain just remember to tell him about your great day of hunting, Tennison. Alone.” Johnathon said. He took a couple of steps over away from the others and looked down the valley returning to his vigilant watch.

  “Come, let’s go hit up the inn. You get settled in and I’ll go turn in the bounties. We can have dinner, and you can talk to Mrs. Filch and get things sorted out with your mom’s care needs.” Tennison said.