“So, how tall are you, Alex?” I ask

“About five foot six, why?”

“Just wondering, bit of a height difference between us.”

"So how tall are you, Nina?"

"No idea."

“Do you not know how tall you are?”

“Eh, I never really bothered to check. So how long is the walk back to town from here normally?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“So, it’s going to take us an hour. How did you get caught out here anyway?”

“Me and my team were going on a posted bounty about a small troll just up at the base of the mountain. Unfortunately my girl Shara convinced everyone that we could head out a week earlier if we took one of the new dead weights, I mean graduates they sent from the capital as our scout. The useless dipshit was hitting on her instead of paying attention, and we got jumped point blank by a pack of thirty wolves.”

“Holy shit that’s a lot of wolves!”

“Yes, it is, I got my leg ripped apart immediately but managed to keep fighting. At least until the alpha showed up. The useless ass had gotten his throat ripped out in the first five seconds of the ambush so it was just a four versus thirty. We killed most of them, then the alpha showed up and dragged down our defender Grant. Then the others pounced.”

Alex stops moving, standing with a faraway look in his eye.

“Hey, keep moving, or more wolves will find us.” I say

“Yea, sorry. After they pounced I just ran, eventually made it to that glade where the dryad was hiding.”

“What is a dryad anyway? You keep talking like it’s dangerous, but I didn’t see anything there with you.”

“Of course you don’t know, nobody knows how to read, so no one reads the hunter code book or gets taught lessons on it. Dryads are cataclysm class monsters, do you even know what that means?”

“No clue!” I reply all cheery.

“The rank a monster gets is based on the danger it poses and what kind of team you need to take it out. The order goes, stone, leather, copper, iron, silver, gold, crystal, mithril. In addition to that sometimes events involving monsters, or individual monsters themselves can receive a special danger rating. This danger rating indicates that it proves a danger to society on some level or another. They start off with high, extreme, destroyer, cataclysm, and apocalypse.”

“Sounds overly complex if you ask me.”

“Not really, a creature may only be iron level in difficulty but have a destroyer additional classification because its ability-set allows it to mass disrupt the function of society. An example would be the mana balloon bug, it’s usually only a leather class monster, but it automatically gets the extreme additional classification since it tends to suck up all the spare mana in a huge area around it. This causes magical items to lose charge and mana regeneration to plummet for everyone. So, despite the fact that it won’t even attack you, it's labeled as a priority and killed quickly.”

“So that additional rating is more like a priority to kill than an actual danger level?”

“Yea, that’s a good way of putting it.”

“So why the hell didn’t they just call it a priority level or something like that?”

“I don’t know, because they wanted it to sound melodramatic or something. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“So what do the levels mean anyway?”

“High is a threat to an entire large town or city, extreme threatens multiple cities, destroyer threatens an entire nation, cataclysm threatens multiple nations or an extremely large region, and apocalypse threatens to end civilization as we know it. Is that clear enough for you?”

“Yea, so why are dryads a cataclysm danger or whatever it was?”

“Because a few months ago some dryad was found in some key junction point between three nations and started tearing up anything that moved, also did a bit of damage to one of the nations I hear. I don’t know which ones, we don’t get much news out here, and any we do get is barely discernible from the rumors that come with it.”

“And that is all it took to get labeled as cataclysm? Does stuff like that happen often?”

“No, personally I don’t know what it did to get its whole race changed from extreme to cataclysm but clearly it was enough to get all the nations to agree. That’s why we need to get back and report it immediately.”

“You keep saying it was there but when I found you there was nothing around but dead wolves and grass.”

“I know what I saw last night, it was a green woman, small in stature, connected to a giant flower and had control over plants. Almost the literal definition of a dryad in the hunter code book.”

“Yea, so why is green lady with plant control bad?”

“They are normally quite destructive, and violent, among other things. They are capable of turning entire swaths of land into killing zones using their control over plants. The worst part is they usually don’t start slaughtering until someone stumbles upon them. This can lead to their areas getting very very big before someone pisses them off and then boom. Suddenly that huge area with who knows how many people in it is actively trying to kill anything that isn’t a monster. That as you can imagine is a bloodbath, particularly if a town or city happens to be within the area.”

“That sounds bad, but that can’t happen often, right?”

“No it doesn’t but when it does it usually ends poorly, they tend to be extra brutal in the killing of their victims. That’s if you're lucky enough to die. Sometimes they keep their victims alive, slowly draining their life away until they die. If you're unlucky enough to be a man, well, they have been known to brutally rape their male victims to death.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

That last little fact had me stop in place, a mix of disgust and disbelief running through my mind. What the fuck, no wonder he was so freaked out. But I still don’t like him, he threw fireballs at me.

“Hey you good?” Alex asks me.

“Yea I’m good, just needed a moment to take all that in. No wonder you were freaked out if you thought that kind of thing caught you.”

“Yea, that’s why we need to get back to town and warn the lodge master.”

“Lodge master? Is that the head of the local branch or something?”

“Yea, do you not know about the hunters guild? Never mind don’t answer that, I’ve had enough unbelievable crap happening recently.”

Wait, that makes me realize something. I don’t know anything about this world, which I knew already. But more importantly no one in this world knows about me. That’s a good and a bad thing, I guess. But a strange girl who knows nothing about anything might draw suspicion. The kind of suspicion that would lead them to dig around and find nothing. Or find out I’m a dryad by prying into my identity, maybe literally in the case of a magic item or whatever. I need to start building a believable identity for myself. But even that is complicated because I don’t know jack shit about this world. What to do, what to do? I have a few ideas pop into my head while me and Alex continue walking. We are only interrupted as we approach the large stone Alex mentioned.

“Turn right here and cut through those trees, we keep going straight until we hit the road.” He says.

No more words are exchanged, I’m concentrating on what I should do for my made-up backstory and Alex is trying to walk as fast as he can without falling on his face. Should I go with sheltered rich child background? No, I don’t know any mannerisms and stuff, that could backfire hard. Roaming vagabond? Maybe, but people might question why I have so little knowledge for a drifter. Shit, I am not qualified to be crafting fake identities. Alex finally pops a question after another few minutes of walking in silence.

“So, how did you manage to get a class like novice paladin offered as your first class?” he asks

“No clue, just had it in the options available and it looked better than the rest, so I took it.”

“No shit? Why would the church send someone like you out to the middle of nowhere, alone no less? You pissed off a high priest or something?”

“Church, what church? I don’t serve a church.”

“Bullshit, the church takes everyone with light or life attributes. And they are hard line about it to, no exceptions. I hear even nobles have to give up their kids.”

That sounds insane, but I might be able to use this to my advantage. Hmm, say my parents kept me in the house all day. But then what do I say about parents? Eh I’ll just say they died of sickness. And that I came from a long ways off and have no idea where I am. It will have to do for a cover story for now. I can always move towns if it gets too hot here, perks of the backpack I’m wearing right now.

“That explains why my parents didn’t let me go out very often. I’ve been wandering since they died a while back.” I say.

“My condolences, people die out here all the time but that does not make it any less of a loss. So how long have you been wandering for, and when did you get into town?” Alex asks.

“It’s been … I don’t know, maybe half a year. It’s hard to keep track of the exact time but it’s been a while.”

“Explains why you look like a hobo, no offense. You could always try your luck with the church, I’m sure they would snap up a wild paladin right quick. But you should be careful if you don’t want to join them, they tend to not like being told no from what I hear.”

“Sounds like you’re not hardcore or anything, how bad can they be?”

“My uncle told me a story once about how an entire family was slaughtered in their own home because they didn’t want to give up their kid with a light attribute. I never heard anything about it from anyone else, but he said that’s because they are too scared to talk.”

Oh boy, do I smell a theocracy. Because this church sounds like nothing I want to have anything to do with in any way shape or form. Better get some more information.

“So does the church rule everything or just deals with religion?” I ask

“No, they don’t rule everything, but they might as well. Far as I can tell they are intertwined with the local lord. Not donating will get you shunned, which doesn’t do much aside from bar you from church services and healing. It’s law that all children with light or life magic must go to the church but hell if I know why, been that way for longer than my parents have been around. Speaking of healing, since they have all the healers in the land they charge an arm and a leg for any kind of healing. I knew a guy who had his finger nearly chopped off in an accident, he went to the church to get it fixed back up and they wanted to charge him a whole gold for it. He just said hell no and patched it up himself.”

Wonderful, not a full theocracy but sounds like the local government is in bed with the church. They might not like me being freelancer for more reasons than I can currently bother to think of, so I need to avoid them if possible. He said local lord so I’m assuming it’s feudal monarchy.

“I don’t know much about money but a whole gold sounds like a lot.” I say

“It is a lot, we make maybe ten silver a week if we get lucky with extermination postings. You said you don’t know much about money? Well ten copper is a silver, and one hundred silver is a gold. I think there are higher values but I don’t know what they are, never seen nor heard of them.” Alex replies.

“So is there an age limit on being a hunter? I need a way to earn some money.”

“Not that I’m aware of, as long as you are competent enough that the girls at the front desk don’t think they will have to fill out your death report within the same week. You could try selling some of your healing too, but I would be very careful doing that. The church does have a branch here, small one since our town is small. I have no doubt that they would call templars if felt threatened in any way.”

“Sounds dangerous, maybe I should keep out of that business for now.”

“I would not go openly flaunting it no, but you could probably get away with secretly healing a few here and there for some spare coin. As long as you only charge half of what the church charges you will get some customers, under that and people will actually start to like you. No one would be stupid enough to get a healer helping out on the down low in trouble. The ones that would, quickly end up in a ditch outside of town. That’s just my opinion anyway, no telling what would actually happen.”

So, I might have a source of income, but of course it’s dangerous. Nothing can ever be easy or simple. Sounds like I could just go hunting for a living if need be. I could probably go out alone and drop my disguise then just slaughter wolves and bring the bodies back to town.

As I think on the ways I can get a hold of money and information I might need, an idea pops into my head. I’ve used Alex to get back into town so why don’t I get some more information and help from him. Obviously, it’s going to be a trade, forcing him at mace point would be a horrible idea in the long run. I’ll offer to fix up his leg, and in exchange him and his friends help me out a bit and answer my questions. Of course this is all contingent on him having no other way to fix his mangled leg, but it sounds like those other options are limited. Worst case scenario I can probably pack up and jump towns, civilization does not seem to be super advanced judging by Alex’s garments and the way he talks about things. So, they probably won’t bother to chase me unless they fully find me out.

“Hey Alex, I got a deal I’d like to offer you.” I say.

“Oh, what’s that?” He asks hesitantly.

“I don’t know much about anything, as you have seen. So how about you and your friends help me out and teach me for a week or two. In exchange I’ll try to fix up your leg.”

“Deal!” Alex practically screams.

Dude almost jumped as he answered, I barely got to finish my sentence. Maybe I sold myself short here. As I finish with that thought we finally come to the road, it’s just an extra large dirt path with a shit ton of potholes on it.

“We turn right here and just keep going straight until we hit town.” Alex says, sounding extra pleased.

Well, at least I don’t need to worry about Alex lacking enthusiasm, and I’ll get the opportunity to convince his friends he’s crazy. After all, that wasn’t really a dryad he saw in the forest. We turn right and start walking down the road, trying to avoid the potholes best we can.