"This path is super convenient. The decline isn't so bad and it takes me the shortest way possible without needing to slide down too much. It's like it was made for exactly this moment."
All Roy needed to do was follow the dirt path that wound between large rocks and bushes. There was a portion of it where he committed to a one-way trip. He could've jumped down to the next section but instead, he sat on the edge and slowly pushed himself until his body slid off. He had the space to land the jump but he preferred to take it easy and safe. There was no real incentive to go down faster anyhow. It wasn't like doing so would get him any items or extra experience points.
"Or would it?" he thought aloud. From what he understood, anything was possible. He just burning a wood-clacking, ghostly Living Stump after all. He only wished it was a named Living Stump so that he could receive extra experience for it.
"Okay! Onward!" At the bottom of the cliff, Roy dusted the seat of his pants and everything else that accumulated dirt, before he started walking on the road. It took him a while to reach the part of the road where it passed underneath the town entrance gate, about thirty minutes he estimated. He couldn't be sure, he didn't have a watch on him.
But then he noticed something in the corner of his vision that he hadn't before.
"Has that always been there?" Briefly, he was distracted by the presence of a digital clock in the upper right corner of his vision. On the left side he noticed a solid green bar which he guessed represented his health, as the numbers above it were the same as his status window. Underneath it was a blue bar to indicate his current and maximum MP and under that was a measure of his SP colored Red.
"Welcome--Oh, sorry, did I startle you?"
"Oh, no." Roy collected himself before responding, "I was just distracted."
"I see. Well once again, Welcome to Inicia Town! There isn't much to do here but there are a few inns, places buy a hot meal from and a caravan or two pass by each day if you're looking to hitch a ride. In fact, one just passed through here not long ago."
"Thanks for letting me know."
"My pleasure. If you need help finding something, just let one of us town guards know. If we can't help you, no one can."
"Got it, I'll keep that in mind. Say, do you know of any, uhh, I guess day jobs or something? I don't have any money."
"You're looking for temporary work?"
"Yeah. Something like that."
"Hmm. I'm not sure. I don't think anyone's hiring around here but...I know. You should talk to Old Man Jensen. He always needs help either with the farm or the wild boars that try to eat all his produce. How well do you use that sword on your hip?"
"Well enough, I think. I also just burnt a walking tree stump to a crisp?"
"A Living Stump huh? It's a little on the weaker side but...Yeah, I think you'll be fine. A wild boar is a bit stronger than that, but as long you pay attention, you shouldn't be in any real danger. Especially if you can just hit them from afar. Jensen is that way." The town guard pointed to a direction outside of the town. "You see that house in the distance? That's his place. This time of day he's probably outside tending to the crops. Good luck!"
Roy thanked the man watching over Inicia Town's entrance gate and started walking toward the farm on the hill.
"Boy this is really starting to feel like a game. Except I have to actually walk places and they're just as far as they would be in real life. At least I don't feel tired. Maybe I should actually try running."
Roy picked up the pace and started to jog. While normally that would force his body to breath faster and deeper to get the right amount of oxygen the body demands, his breathing pattern didn't change at all. He kept the same one as if he was standing in place or laying down on his bed. When he picked up the pace however and ran at his maximum, he saw that about every second his SP would drop by 1 point. Apparently, pushing himself to maximum effort cost him SP points.
"Well, I'm almost there. I might as well keep it a jog." Soon Roy came upon the sign before the farmland which read "Quinn's Farm." He saw someone hunched over some vegetables to the side of the house and waved a hand.
Roy called out to them, "Are you Old Man Jensen?"
"Yes, I am. Who are you?"
"My name is Roy. I'm looking to earn some money in exchange for working. I heard you could use a hand."
"Is that sword for show or can you actually use it?"
"I can use it. I've got some magic too if you're interested."
"That's perfect. Every now and then wild boars terrorize my vegetable fields and it's making me lose profit having to buy more magical fertilizer each time to grow replacements in time to keep up with demand. I may be old but my farm still produces a good amount of ingredients that get sold in town. They come in a group and break down my fence too, then they stuff their snouts before I chase them away. I've grown tired of dealing with them. Can you see to them in my place?"
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"Sure, no problem old man. As long as you pay me, you won't see a single vegetable lost to another of their raids."
"Thank you!"
"So should I just wait here by the fields or...?"
"Yes. I don't know when they will appear today but it shouldn't be too long from now. They usually came from the hills over there to the northwest."
"Got it. Leave 'em to me."
Roy walked over to the northern edge of Jensen's fields and sat down in the dirt. He waited for the boars to come and they finally arrived when the hunger pangs started to kick in.
"Ugh, finally. Maybe I can ask the old man to turn them into bacon or something; I'm starving." Roy stood up and kept his sword sheathed. He used most of MP in possession on casting Fireball repeatedly at the group of boars. There were five of them who charged the fields and two of them faltered and tripped over themselves. A third was down with what appeared to be a broken limb and had difficulty standing.
The remaining two boars still ran as fast as their legs could carry them and Roy prepared to engage with the small blades of energy produced by his Power Slash skill. His sword briefly glowed with a soft blue light and as he swung, a small arc of magic shot forward like a sharp boomerang. It was hard to describe the motion but it was like a crescent that traced around a circle continuously while at the same time moving forward in the direction Roy made a slashing motion. With each swing, he expended 10 MP, for a total of 50 MP. The five slashes caught both the two healthy boars and one of the ones that tripped previously. The healthy ones crashed onto the ground with severe injuries to their torso and legs. The third suffered a long gash into its side and bled profusely from its wound. Despite that, it continued to run. The last boar saw that danger in continuing any further and turned around to flee.
That made it three downed wild boars, one that continued its charge, and another that ran away. Roy was proud of himself. Having gone from level 1 attacking only slime (though to be fair he chose that), to level 5, he was now strong enough to attack things that would probably have killed him in real life. Were he out in the middle of nowhere, probably. He was a city person so the only real danger was walking into the wrong place at the wrong time. Even then, that took effort to do since he actually lived in the suburb just outside of a large city.
The last boar made a sound very unlike the cute squeals made by piglets. It sounded heavy and honestly, from how Roy interpreted the sound, greasy. It was weird to think of the noise that way, especially because of the association of pigs with pork and bacon, but the word "greasy" felt like the perfect word to describe the noise coming out of the boar's mouth. With a final greasy and guttural squeal, the boar leaped into the air. Roy held up his sword to keep it firm, aiming to have the creature land on the point...
And then he chickened out. Something inside him warned him that trying to stand his ground and resist the weight of a hundred pounds of porcine meat and fat would not end as well as he thought. So he unceremoniously threw himself out of the way, dropping his sword to the ground.
"ARGH!"
Roy had just remembered that he had the Blink skill. Despite not seemingly involved in a very physical way like Power Slash, it still consumed SP for its activation. Luckily, his SP regeneration was enough to give him slightly more flexibility in choice. Blink was like a short-distance teleportation, the distance of which increased with higher mastery levels. However, he could actually "blink" beyond the maximum range, to a distance also limited by mastery levels. In exchange for the extra distance, he had to suffer a brutal cooldown penalty of 30 seconds. He couldn't conceive of a situation soon where he would be that desperate to use Blink in that way, and he hoped that such a thing wouldn't come to pass. And if it had to, he hoped that whatever he was escaping from didn't catch up to him.
Getting back to the matter at hand, Blink would allow Roy to disappear and reappear in time to get behind the wild boar and take a stab at it from its flank or rear. Frustrated he slapped the ground, but not too lightly lest he injure his hand on something like a rock or sharp debris. He stood up to retrieve his sword and faced the wild boar once again. The boar, now fixated on Roy instead of the field, turned around by running along a wide arc. Its anatomy didn't let it run at a tighter radius with the same amount of speed. The boar charged recklessly, lowering its head in preparation to lift Roy off the ground and into the air. When the boar entered the range Roy felt he could Blink into, he activated the skill. His remaining SP halved itself and he disappeared and reappeared a few feet to the side of his original spot. The wild boar didn't understand nor could it have reacted in time. Roy drained the rest of his SP for Power Slash, to ensure the boar would go down without fuss. It was enjoyable, having to use his skills and magic so much and to progress more in increasing their mastery level, but he didn't want to be at the farm all day protecting it from uncooked, juicy bacon.
Maybe it was just the hunger getting to him.
At close range, Power Slash didn't miss and it struck so powerfully and at the best angle that the blood that spurt out of the body splashed onto Roy's clothes.
"Yuck! These are my only set of clothes!" Roy sighed, "Ah well, it was bound to happen eventually. I just wish I had a spare set. I don't know what's more important, finding a place to stay for the night or finding a way to stay clean. Wait, how am I gonna shower? What about shampoo? Soap?" He now had a lot more worries than when he first started. Hygiene was important to him. He hated the way his hair felt upon waking, finding that taking a shower in the morning made it feel fresh again.
Roy heard the squeals of the remaining boars and he finished them off to free them of their pain.
"Thank you my fine portly friends. You will make great-tasting bacon if the farmer agrees to serve you up."
They weren't really friends and he didn't care about animals like that, as if they had much meaning beyond existing in nature. But he wanted to have a little fun to offset the stench of their blood which filled his nostrils a bit too much.
With all the boars dead, Roy left them to find Old Man Jensen.
"Hey old man, I got the boars for you! Would it be too much trouble to have you cook one of them? You can have the rest." Roy almost left it at that until he remembered something. "Actually, do you know how to make jerky out of them?"
Roy remembered that when traveling in such places or times when modern conveniences were not around, it was essential to have access to food rations. Aside from hardtack, the other famous ration was cured or salted meat. In this case, he went for wild boar jerky.
It reminded him of something he read. Something to do with cooking and boars but he couldn't remember what it was called.