I don’t remember anything from yesterday after the long day of hunting and the beating I got from Hatchet. What had I done that seems to have upset him so much, to the point that he will beat me within a few points of my health, if with no long term damage being done.

Getting out of bed and going to eat I remember a faint timeline for last night. It was a quiet affair. I had dinner with my parents, them asking questions about my day and me answering in short vague sentences. Judy spent the night with Alana at her house, we were expecting them to spend tonight here before leaving for the city tomorrow morning. Their presence apparently saved the village a 30% price rise that the other merchants would have tried to push through.

“Mom, dad, are you here?” Judy and Alana came through the door as we were all finishing up with breakfast.

“Just finished eating sweetheart, would you like me to warm something up for you?” Mom asked.

“No, no, it’s just that the caravan got done unloading, the night crew pulled an all-nighter and finished up a day early. We are leaving in an hour, two at the most.” Judy said.

“I see, that’s to be expected though. You stayed here for a few months before you took your brother to the city.” Dad said calmly.

This brought to the forefront something else I had been considering. I thought I would have had time until tonight but it seems I had to make the decision now. My previous life had made it abundantly clear what I should do, it was just that I wasn’t all that sure that the same would apply here.

“What will the two of you be doing in the city now?” I asked, trying to gather a bit more information. “All I got to see you do is go get things appraised and take part in one auction on the organisation's dime.”

“We did well in that auction!” Judy smiled at me. “ I forgot to tell you since it happened while you were still out of it, we both got promoted. Now that we are going back they are going to push us through the training our new positions need. It’s usually done right as the promotion happens but they made an exception for us since this trip was already planned for.”

“We’re going to join one of the senior members and travel in between cities.” Alana said.

“Isn’t that what you are doing now?” Mom asked.

“No, this is a bit different. Instead of buying and selling things we will just go and mark things for delivery. We will be going by horse-drawn carriage, it’ll take only two or three day to cover a distance similar to the one from here to Lessis. Once we arrive at a new city we will take a look at what they have and make orders of where to buy it and have it sent to.” Judy was clearly very excited about this.

“Well at least the official representative will. We will be there to observe the procedure for when we will start doing the same thing. We will have to cultivate our own contacts and transport people before that happens though.” Alana seemed a bit more subdued about their trip, I could empathise as it sounded boring to me.

This helped me make my decision so I headed back into my room and collected a rather hefty bag before I came back to sit at the table. I opened it up, took a single gold coin from inside before placing it in front of the both of them.

“I’ve been thinking about this on our way back here. I have this small fortune that was gifted to me and nothing much to spend it on right now. So I was thinking, especially since all you will be doing for the next little while is observing, how about you have some money to work with should an opportunity arise.” I left the bag with ninety-nine gold coins in between them.

“You’re just giving this to us?” Judy asked, Alana also frowned at that.

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“Not as such, I am asking you to invest it. I will give you the coins to use as capital, when I am ready to join the Adventurer’s Guild I will come back for them. At that time you will give me back the ninety-nine original coins and half the profit that you managed to make using them.” I explained.

They both stood there looking at the bag of money, investing wasn’t something that was done here as rich people mostly bought out companies and managed them as an organisation and everyone else would be robbed blind by anyone asked to handle their investments. But having your money make more money for you was a lesson I picked up in my previous life.

“What do you mean?” Judy still seemed a bit confused about the process.

“Well let's say that I give you the ninety-nine coins here, in five years you grow them into one thousand, then I get five hundred and forty nine of them.” I felt a smile form on my face at the extravagant example, I had full faith that they could pull off something like that in such a big timeframe.

“Aren’t you taking a bit too much?” mom said “You are taking more than half while doing none of the work.

“But he carries all of the risk. If me and Judy lose the ninety-nine gold he takes the loss.” Alana figured me out and shared a look with Judy. With a quick nod she turned back to me and picked up the pouch. “ We accept.”

With that taken care of I headed off towards Hatchet’s hut with a weight off my shoulders. Now I only had what seemed to be brutal training to worry about, at least if yesterday was any indication.

“You got here quite late.” He said as I walked up to the door.

“My sister and Alana are leaving today instead so we said our goodbyes.”

He nodded and motioned for us to go to the sparring ring we used yesterday evening. I could already guess what was about to happen and I wasn’t looking forward to it. But if this is what it took to improve then I was going to do it.

The session ended a lot sooner than yesterday, as I still had half my health points remaining. It was quite the skill he demonstrated by having all the hits inflict a decent dose of pain, shave my health off by a few points and leave nearly no mark on me. By the end of the session I had unlocked the [Pain Resistance] skill.

“This should be enough. Start bringing your health back up slowly with that healing spell you know.” Hatchet said he hadn’t even broken a sweat knocking me around for the last hour.

“Hatchet, is there something I did to upset you?” I was sure something was bothering him now.

“Why did you even choose to be a hunter, why not go learn to cast if you were going to put most of your points into your mental stats?” He answered my question with a question of his own.

So that’s what this was about, I could see how it seemed from his point of view, I claimed to want to be a hunter, used my own mana in different way but spent all my points for something that is lacklustre for someone who should be at least level eight from the skill he knows.

I decided that if I was going to trust him with my magic I should trust him with my points too. He could probably work out a way to maximise everything if he had all the information.

“I don’t want to be a mage, at least not like the ones I have seen. The reason that I haven’t put any points in my physical stats is because I haven’t spent any of my points.” I came clean.

“What do you mean?” he frowned at me. “You lost the points?”

“No, I can assign them at any time, I just figured out a way to hold off on using them.”

“How did you manage to do that?” his eyebrows had chased his receding hairline at that.

“Instead of closing the window that notified me of my level up I just made it very small and moved it to the bottom corner of my vision, there it will stay until right before my Apprentice trait ends or an emergency happens.”

“I am doing this for two reasons, one is so I can get as many forced free points as possible without giving up the boost to assigned points Apprentice offers, and the second is to gain as many levels as possible until then. Experience is also influenced by difficulty. My brother got to level ten very quickly when he started as a guard, level fifteen came by decently fast, level eighteen was slow, level twenty was a crawl. By keeping low stats points I am hoping to have higher experience gain while hunting these spots.”

He didn’t say anything for over a minute, just staring at me like I was some sort of weird unique creature. He then frowned slightly and started tapping his pointing finger on the bottom of his chin.

“Yes, it is certainly true that you can’t very well maintain experience gain without having a dungeon that we could use. The increase in forced stat points is a great asset to boot as well. But are you aware of the drawbacks?” he asked.

“Yes, I know that if I am caught unaware without spending my points they would all go to waste.”

“Not that drawback, that one is obvious.”

“What other drawback is there?

“By not spending your points you are limiting your growth. Well not limiting but constraining it for the time being. Regardless, this will in turn affect your skills. With only low stats to work with your skills will platou. Depending on how much you manage to gain in forced stat points you might be able to have your skill reach level forty before any gains all but stall.”

This was something I hadn’t considered. I suppose it made sense, there was only so far you could take something with lower stats. It was also a sacrifice worth making. Apprentice didn’t increase my skill growth, it did increase my experience and stat point gains.

“Yes, I am willing to accept that as well.”

“Very well then, I will adjust your training to reflect this.” Despite the ominous words a brief smirk made its way onto his face.