His visit to the Guardsman’s Station turned out to be a dud. Randal was out from town, patrolling the grounds near the town while Jose had a day off. And with a few instructions from a friend of Jose at the station, John stood in front of a door of a nice little cottage. He knocked a few times, calling out to Jose but there was no reply. ‘He must be dead tired,’ John thought. Guarding the walls during the night wasn’t an easy job much so after the terrible event two nights ago.

As John was about to leave, his eyes found the man he was looking for. Jose stood before him with a bow slung over his shoulders and a few horned hares clutched in his grip.

“Sir Creed?” there was a look of disbelief on Jose. The dark circle man never thought he would see John in front of his house. Immediately, he knelt on the ground but two hands grabbed him before his knees could touch the ground.

“Let’s not do that, okay?” John helped him up with a smile.

Jose invited John in and compared to the smithy, the little cottage was very different. It had a calm ambiance with a rustic feel to it. John found himself a seat near the window at the table for two. From the look of it, Jose was a single man.

Sitting there alone, John watched Jose cook the horned hare he just hunted in the pot hanging above the hearth. Seeing it in real life reminded John of a scene in a tavern in Skyrim. NPC talking gibberish around the fire, repeating the same thing with a stew being made in the middle of a fireplace.

After a while, a bowl of hot-piping stew lay in front of John. He could see a few hare meat floating on the surface of the murky soup.

“Sorry, Sir Creed, my cooking might not be the same as the steaks that you like, but I hope you like it,” Jose said, flashing a sincere smile. He waited in front of John without touching his spoon, yet his lower lip was already trembling.

“Oh, yea,” John realized and took the first bite. He forgot to blow it first and it came with a cost. The steaming hot punched him right at the mouth as his mouth danced, juggling the soup and meat trying not to let them burn his inside.

[https://i.imgur.com/UtgquXg.jpg]

‘Ah, no wonder I didn’t feel anything,’ John stopped struggling and chewed his food like a normal person would. Who would have thought his innate spell would come in this handy?

Jose’s expectant eyes couldn’t stray away from John. While his spoon kept going for the soup, his eyes stared fervently at John, hoping his soup wasn’t bad.

John saw those eyes and paused for a brief second. “It’s pretty good,” John nodded in relish. Finishing his bowl, his eyes wandered the little cottage of Jose. It was a one-room house with a bed at one of the corners, a heath at the middle, and a variety of bows hanging near a designated wall.

“May I know why you are here, sir?” Jose asked the thing that had been bothering him all this time. He never had someone come here before, not even Randal, but here he had John who just finished a bowl of his amateurish cooking.

“Oh, it’s nothing, just checking up on you,” John said. “You wouldn’t have a problem do you?”

“Eh?” the question caught Jose off guard. “A problem? I don’t think so, sir.”

‘Well, that’s going to be my problem,’ as John thought, to know a person’s mind was reserved only for those mind-readers.

“I see you like bows, you have an archer job or something?” John asked. His eyes were drawn again to the many bows hanging on the wall.

“No, sir,” the answer wasn’t what John expected. “My job is a warrior and always had been.” For some reason, there was something in Jose’s eyes when he spoke those words.

“Then why the bow? A hobby?” he asked, leaning closer to Jose with his arms on the table.

“Um…yea, I think,” Jose cast his eyes away, staring at his bows on the wall. Yet the slight sigh escaping his mouth couldn’t escape John’s eyes.

“Hey, you think I can learn to bow?” John asked, and to his question the duo left the security of the town walls, heading to the western woods where Jose usually hunted his games.

“Ah, shit. I missed again,” John grumbled. He had been shooting his arrows at the tree that was fifteen meters away from him. And out of all ten arrows, none of them hit.

“You’re doing fine, sir, after a few more arrows you’ll get used to it,” Jose chuckled in silence as it was rather amusing whenever John missed his shot. The exaggerated sigh and the constant flipping of the middle finger to the tree always tickled his funny bone.

“Keep on laughing, man. Wait till you see me hit that tree right in the…” the arrow went loose, bouncing against the snapping string. It made a straight course right at the…

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Fuck!” John missed again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…fuck, fuck, fuck…” the cursed word kept on coming like a machine gun going for a rampage. He got this mad not without reason. He thought with his high dexterity, he would never miss a shot this close. But seeing how he missed every time, it seemed dexterity wasn’t the cure for bad accuracy.

Meanwhile, Jose was on his knees, clutching his stomach. He didn’t get punched or kicked at the gut. The man was just defeated by the constant laughing that started to ache his flank. Even his brown skin started to flush in red, with veins popping at the temple. Jose was really having a good time there.

“Having fun down there?” John asked with his arms crossing over his chest. He never knew he would be this bad at archery. Thankfully his hero when he was a child was Kenshin and not Ishida of Bleach.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Jose wiped the tears from the corner of his eyes. He got up from his knees and put on back that serious expression of his.

“Come on, I’m just messing with you,” John slapped him by the side of the shoulder. “And can you please drop the sir, we’re friend rights? Friends don’t actually call their friends sir if you know what I mean.”

“But the others–”

“Ah, don’t worry about them. Hakeem had already dropped the sir with me this morning, so you might as well do the same,” John said. Indeed it was the truth regarding Hakeem. But John wasn’t going to tell Jose that Hakeem decided to call him Master instead of sir.

“But what should I call you?” Jose asked as his voice got a little brighter compared to those heavy dark circles of his.

“Just call me John, it’s what my friends always called me,” John replied.

For the next half an hour, Jose coached him in using the bow. Detailing to him of how posture mattered the most when drawing the arrow.

“So you’re telling me Dexterity influences the damage but it doesn’t help with the aiming at all?” John learned something new.

Jose nodded. “The aiming could only be affected by the archery skill itself or other spells that boosted a person's accuracy,” Jose said.

“So it all boils down to putting out the hard work,” John grinned, “and I like the sound of that.” John valued hard work more than anything. Well, since his dad always drilled it to his skull, he came to love it eventually.

John and Jose took a break under the shade of a tree. Each in their hands was meat jerky. John didn’t know what kind of meat it was but it was better it stayed that way. As they enjoyed their little break, John popped the question. “Dude, I got this thing that bothers my mind…but why didn’t you choose archer as your job?”

Jose stopped chewing. Once again his head tilted down as if a dark cloud hanging above his head.

“Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine, I’m just–”

“It’s my family,” Jose said. He finally opened up. “Our family had always been warriors, from man to woman, even a newborn.”

“Wait, you’re telling me someone can force you to get a job even when you’re still a baby?” John was shocked by this.

“Not exactly…” Jose kept his silence for a while. “Since I kept your secret about that night would you do the honor of keeping mine as well?”

From what John was hearing here, the problem with Jose was bigger than he thought. “Sure, you keep mine and I keep yours, a fair deal,” John said.

“So unlike everyone else, my family is a bit special…” Jose narrated the full story of how his great-great-grandfather received a blessing from an undocumented dungeon and received an exclusive job known as Sun Warrior. Before he left to the next realm, Jose’s ancestor bestowed upon his family the heritage of how to become a Sun Warrior themselves. It was a closely guarded secret only known to the De La Sol family.

“Stop,” John halted the story-telling. There was a fact he was trying to interpret here and it got him confused. “You’re telling me your ancestor is a Nomad?”

“Yes, why?” It didn’t seem to bother Jose.

“Then what about Randal, Hanz, and the Mayor?” John had a hunch about this, and he had to dive further.

“The same…” Jose said and John’s mouth dropped. “…I thought you nomads know? All of the first ancestors of the people that lived in this world are all nomads.”

“You sure? But why does Randal and Master didn’t seem like they know anything about this?” John asked.

“It depends on their family. Some lasted through the years, keeping in check their tradition and heritage to live on while some died down, lost over time,” Jose said. His words were unlike his usual self. It was full of wisdom taught by the strong family he was born from.

“Sorry, Jose. I just got overwhelmed from all of these new things,” John said, massaging his temples. “Let’s put that aside first and continue your story…”

Jose narrated how he was different than the rest of his kin. Those of his age were proud of their heritage as a Sun Warrior since it was no normal job. They prided themselves in their heavy offensive and the big boost when under the light of the sun. But Jose had a different inclination. From a young age, he liked the bow more than anything in this world. To see something flying across the air as if unbounded by the shackles on earth made him feel liberated. He had been practicing the bow in secret and by accident someone in the family discovered it.

He was brought to the family council and all of the elders, and the leaders forced him to forsake the bow. But Jose couldn’t. As a punishment, he was exiled from his house, his land, and his family. He wandered through the world and then he found Satbury, the place where people find themselves.

‘Wow, that’s just fuck up,’ John kept those words to himself. Saying it out loud meant that Jose’s family got a few screws loose.

“Is that why you didn’t have a choice in taking archer as a job? And why can’t you just take a second job? Isn’t kind of possible?” John asked.

“Unlike you, for us, we can’t have more than one job…but in my case, if I do that then…” Jose looked at John in the eye. “…I would lose my family for good. I would lose the only thing that bonded us together. If I do it, I won’t be a Sun Warrior anymore.”

‘Okay…this is pretty deep, and I don’t think I should part him away from his family,’ John thought. ‘But man his family is pretty messed up, forcing a newborn to choose a job before he could even think was not the way to go.’

“I know it’s not my place to say anything about your family, but I can tell you this, follow what your heart tells you, and from that, you can find your own happiness,” John gave the vaguest answer he could pull out from his ass. It was the definition of general advice to lost souls.

“But what about my family?” Jose leaned closer, desperate for an answer.

“They will always be your family. Even without the same job, you and them share the same blood, and I bet you this, your parents will welcome you back no matter if you turned your back on them,” to John’s words, tears trailed down from Jose’s eyes.

Jose abruptly got up with a pair of strong eyes. “I’ve decided,” he glanced at John.

“I will become an archer!”

Commemorating Jose’s new determination, a blue window appeared.

[https://i.imgur.com/o3JLQWo.jpg]