It feels good to be doing quests again. To just be able to focus entirely on helping others and not dwell on other matters. The experience rewards have been predictably poor considering the time invested in them, but I don't mind. Quite the contrary, I'm rather glad. Right now, I don't want to think about experience or levels or my disgraceful past behavior. I just want to focus on the tasks at hand, and aid the citizens, one at a time.

As for the quests themselves, they aren't particularly complicated. The fact that I am able to accomplish them without either hands or the ability to talk should be proof enough of that. They are a little more advanced than those of my home village, often comprised of multiple parts, but essentially the same principles: Go somewhere to gather some resources, deliver an object to someone, and, of course, plenty of hunting quests.

These offer an effective reminder of just how misguided I had been before. Even if I were so determined to fight and gain experience, I could have easily accomplished both of those tasks at once, and reaped the same rewards along with helping someone in need. I'm still feeling bad about it, but I'm not too depressed. It was a learning experience, and a lesson that I won't soon forget. It will help to keep things in perspective.

Still, I can't deny that the wolf pack is a significant problem, and represents a far greater one: In the end, I'm just a dog. A very good one, as we have established, and I suspect a pretty strong one, too, but even if I am the strongest dog on earth (am I? Probably not, but maybe!), I'm still just a dog. There are obstacles in this world which I am simply incapable of overcoming. I'm not giving up, of course, but that's just reality. Even if I can defeat the AbyssalWood Alpha, and that's a pretty big 'if', what happens when I run into something stronger? If all that it took was grinding a few mobs in order to become powerful enough to win any fight, everyone would do it. It's not realistic, especially if I happen to run into a particularly insurmountable problem.

I may not be ready to give up quite yet, but I am at a loss of what to do. As I predicted, none of the rewards thus far have been useful (not that I mind), nor am I getting significantly stronger. What option remains once I run out of quests here? Should I risk taking the long way around, and potentially losing my master forever? Should I continue grinding for levels for what, days? Weeks? I honestly don't know how strong I'll need to become in order to have any real chance of winning. Clearly much, much stronger than I am now. In the meantime, who knows what sort of danger my master is in?

One thing at a time, anyways. Obsessing over such things won't help. For now, there are still plenty of people who need me, and as much as it hurts my head to keep going over such problems again and again, those wonderful head pats that I get as a reward for a job well done make it all worthwhile. I'll just keep doing the best that I can. That's all that I can do. I can only hope that that will be enough.

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I am enjoying these quests a little more than the ones in my home village. They aren't exactly matters of life and death, but it's satisfying to need to work a little bit harder, whereas back then I had felt as though I were just being showered with rewards for nothing. They still aren't terribly difficult, but do take a little time and a little work, and I can legitimately understand why the quest givers might have had difficulty accomplishing some of these tasks themselves. Maybe it isn't quite as rewarding as knowing that I'm drawing ever closer to my master, but there is a pleasure, and not a trivial one, to be found in the sense that I'm making peoples lives just a little better, and in turn, making the world around me just a little bit brighter.

The hunting missions are rather easy at this point, too. Even when larger numbers of monsters, or rare drops from them are needed, I can finish the battles very quickly. Of course I am, once again, stopping to bury the fallen, and offering them a small prayer in the process. I've always been a super talented digger, though, and with practice, those skills have only improved. It's a rather simple task as a result.

One by one, the exclamation marks over the heads of the humans vanish (although there were a few quest chains where finishing one had opened up another), and in time, the last one is completed. Of course, as with before, it proves to actually be the second to last one.

A new quest has appeared, not given by a proud knight, but rather by a scruffy, overweight man sitting atop a wooden stool, hunched over, looking particularly cranky. A part of me dreads approaching him. Last time I had to fight off the trinity serpent, by far the most powerful monster in that region, and this time it could well be another. The problem? The most powerful creature I have encountered in the region is the wolf pack alpha, and if he asks me to defeat it, I honestly don't believe that I can, and if I fail... no, I don't even want to think about that.

I take a deep breath, raise my head proudly and approach, certain that there is a dangerous task which he needs completed, and desperately hoping that I am up for the task.

"Go clear out some of the rats from the storage shed." he says.

New Quest obtained, "Rat Race!" kill 10 Rat(s)!

I blink and head tilt. Really? Ten rats? That's it?

---

AbyssalWood Alpha: "Hmm."

Squire: "What? What is it?"

AbyssalWood Alpha: "Oh, I was just thinking about the fact that you've been murdering nonstop ever since you got here, and I have yet to kill anyone. It feels rather unfair that I'm the one considered the villain, here."

Squire: ...