Ajax spent the whole of his first day off sleeping. Other than breakfast and dinner he, like most of the camp, decided to try and get rid of their status effects as soon as possible so he could actually get something useful done in the rest of the free time.

As it turns out sleeping for the better part of thirty hours was sufficient for the status effect to drop off. This however was true only for those who actually rested for the entire day yesterday. Most of the people in the army had gotten a good night's rest but decided to enjoy their time relaxing in other ways.

“Did all of you rest enough yesterday so the fatigue would drop off?” The hunter lead didn’t waste any time on greetings and got straight down to business.

“Er…” the newbie seemed a little embarrassed as he scratched his head. He was a little older than Tom but having seen both his senior and the kid nod without hesitation left him feeling bad about how he spent yesterday drinking and gambleing with the other soldiers.

“Ugh… We told you we’d be leaving today. Not only that, you are barely level twenty-two.” The leader stopped his tirade short, they had a job to do and the scolding could wait until after. “Forget it. We’ll deal with that tonight and tomorrow. For now today is going to suck for you.”

As he said this he dropped eight backpacks on the ground between them. The packs had enchantments all over them that while not exactly the same, reminded Ajax of the ones on the pack Hatchet had gifted him.

“I managed to get these from the commander. You should be familiar with the idea considering that the kid had something like this from the start but this will save us from making multiple trips as we rebuild our meat supplies. There are two for each of us to carry, you are free to bring your own as well.” he said the last part while nodding to Ajax.

Ajax himself picked up two bags and inspected them. Individually they were smaller than his own, though combined they not only took up more space but were a lot clunkier to carry. Not only that but the amount of space inside even combined was barely more than half of his own.

Despite the advantage grabbing his own would give them, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. No way they were going to be filling all eight of these so grabbing his own pack would just mean he has to empty it and carry more weight since he has more space.

“I'll just grab these. I doubt we’ll need more than all of them filled up.” Ajax said as he shouldered his packs.

As soon as they took off things started being put in perspective for him. Despite these being hunters that are part of the guard unit their hunting methods differed greatly from what he and Hatchet had been doing in the five years he had spent training up his stats. It only now dawned on him that Hatchet had not really been training him to be a hunter, but in fact an adventurer.

The differences were subtle but with the leader and veteran working at peak capacity it became obvious. Sure they could all hunt but they specialized in different things. He had a much easier time deducing the strength, and skills of the prey he hunted from the tracks it left, easily being able to zero in and efficiently take out any problem creature.

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The leader and the veteran didn’t have such accuracy when it came to that. The difference came to a head for Ajax when two boar tracks split off in different ways. Ajax could tell which tracks were left by the bigger boar who would provide more meat. Subtle things like the depth of the scratches on the trees and the depth of the hoof impression let him know this boar was around level twenty and weighed upwards of eight hundred pounds.

What he didn’t pick up on was that the other tracks belonged to a family of boars. Sure none of them would be individually close to the value the bigger boar would present but the amount of work for reward would be much better when hunting them down.

From there it was a relatively simple affair to catch up and collect the meat for the camp. The last two weeks of no hunting had also let the wildlife return closer to the camp meaning they didn’t have to venture out as far as before to find them. They group even took pity on the young hunter and filled his packs last so as he wouldn’t have to deal with the weight and fatigue for so long.

The trip was uneventful but it did firm up Ajax’s rezolve that he wanted to be an adventurer. It wasn’t that he disliked hunting but the ten boars, five deer and two bears they hunted down simply presented no challenge, no thrill. It was too easy, and not something he could see himself doing long term. Especially as things would get easier and easier as his levels and skills climbed.

As they returned they were greeted as heroes by the camp. Most of which was starting to finally be free from the shackles of fatigue and really missed the taste of food outside the rations.

With Ajax having already prepped some of the game they caught, the cooks started preparing it as soon as they dropped it off. With their part of the work done they all left for the baths as a day skulking through the forest had left them all sticky and dirty.

A good long soak later, as the hunters finally started to relax. Unlike the rest of the soldiers they had spent their first day releasing their physical stress in order to function for the hunt. They could now finally relax the mental stress the last two weeks of constant fighting had been on them, only leaving the warm bath when they got hungry.

The upside of having spent the entire day hunting for this meal was that despite the fifty man deep line waiting to get served all the hunters were led to a table and had food brought to them as thanks for breaking up the monotony.

The rest of the evening after the meal Ajax spent discussing with Tom and Kate. Tom let both of them know that not only the nobles but even the commander was of the opinion that the skirmish was nearing the end. At worst it would be two more months but that was unlikely, earliest was one week after tomorrow, the last day of the ceasefire, but most likely it would take around three weeks for all of this to be over and they would be able to head back home.

While this news was great it also put a clock on Ajax's own special training. He probably had two trips, if that, to not only take out the bear but also the fish before one or more commanders crushed them.

With this in mind Ajax went to sleep with a fire lit under his ass. He was determined to go out tomorrow and as long as the bear wasn’t sitting by the pond he would end it once and for all.

Like usual he woke up early the next morning and started getting ready for the trip. He noticed that Tom wasn’t here but remembered him saying last night that his performance in this skirmish got the commander to take a special interest in training him, that was most likely where he was right now.

He was careful not to wake Kate who, despite getting rid of drain , still had fatigue to deal with on his way out. Near the door he spotted Fluffy waiting for him.

“Sorry buddy, I can’t take you with me on this one.” He whispered while stroking the cat.

He wasn’t sure how the shadow cat figured out that he was going to kill the bear. It hadn’t tried to join him on any of the other trips after the first when they found out about the pond, but now that he was determined to kill the bear it waited dutifully for him beside the empty bowl of water.

As much as Ajax wanted to have the feline with him in hopes of earning some forgiveness for having been the one to kill one of her parents, even if in self defense, the bear was just too dangerous for Ajax to take the risk in having to guard someone who was still under level ten.

“Sorry but you can’t come with me on this one.” he continued to stroke the cat but she lowered her head, seeming upset. “I’ll bring you back his core. How about that? Would you like that?”

Fluffy seemed torn. One the one hand she understood she was too weak to be anything more than a liability, on the other she wanted her revenge against the thing that not only killed one of her parents but displaced her family from the pond and sent them closer to the army camp.

In the end she looked back up at Ajax and after maintaining eye contact for a few moments she gave him a nod.