The carriage ride was surprisingly comfortable, and the best part was that Aria decided she needed to take a nap, which meant Velik didn’t have to keep her entertained for the first few hours. He spent some of that time going over his fight with Giller in his head again, trying to pick apart her fighting style to figure out where he’d made mistakes.

It was obvious that she had plenty of experience battling against other humans, and he suspected it wasn’t just from duels, either. That move where she’d taken advantage of the rules to maneuver him into a disadvantageous position was too ruthless to be something she’d picked up doing sport fighting.

At the same time, if he’d made better choices earlier in the fight, she wouldn’t have been in a position to use that trick. The simple truth of it was that Velik spent his time fighting things that were far stupider than him. Even the most cunning animal was still just an animal in the end, and very few monsters had anything approaching human-level intellect either, no matter how high their mental stats were.

The few people he had been forced to fight had been overwhelmed simply due to things like level disparity, lack of a combat-oriented class, or subpar equipment. He’d never learned to fight somebody with weapon skills because it had never been necessary, and he was thinking that if he planned on fully abandoning his life as a recluse, he might need to do something to correct that deficiency.

Even without any sort of personalized training, he could already think of four or five spots in the duel where he’d made poor decisions and given Giller an advantage. More practice would be a good start, but where do I find a sparring partner who can keep up with my strength and speed? Worse, I need to train both with and without my regular weapon, so it needs to be someone with the capability to match me while I’m fully kitted out.

The guild probably had a handful of gold- or platinum-ranked hunters who fit the bill, but those people were busy with their own lives, and the instructors and trainers for combat were laughably underqualified to serve as sparring partners. He could probably learn a few tricks, but practicing them at the speeds he worked at was another story.

He cast a speculative glance at Aria, who was leaning up against the inner wall of the carriage and drooling into the shoulder of her dress while she snored softly. She was gold-ranked, and presumably wouldn’t have much to do besides keep an eye on him. Maybe he could convince her to go a few rounds so that he could get a bit more practice fighting someone around his level.

[Apex Hunter] didn’t seem to be able to get a good read on her, other than to be sure that she was definitely over level 40, maybe as high as 45. The skill didn’t seem to think she was that dangerous, even when he deliberately let his thoughts linger on attacking her. Normally, he’d think that meant she was weak for her level—perhaps a bad class—but in this case, he had a strong suspicion the truth was that she had a high mental blocking his intuitive appraisal of her skills.

Almost as if she’d known he was looking at her, her eyes cracked open to meet his. With an indelicate snort, she said, “Kid, I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“You have a dirty mind,” Velik told her bluntly. “I’m not interested in you or your sex life. What I am interested in is how good of a hunter you are.”

“Better than you.”

“Maybe.”

“Gods save me from stupid teenagers,” she muttered. “Let me guess, you want to fight about it?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a friendly spar,” he said. “Maybe this evening when we stop for the night.”

“We’re not stopping. This carriage is going straight through the night until we get to the Harclovi Swamps. There’s a town perched on the north end that’ll be our base of operations while we’re there.”

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“What’s it called?” Velik asked. The briefing he’d received from the guild master had covered the hydra itself, the terrain, and what kind of problems he could expect. It hadn’t mentioned the human settlements in the area at all, and had in fact left him with the impression that nobody lived there.

In hindsight, that made no sense. If there were no people living in and around the swap, there wouldn’t be anybody to care about a hydra showing up there. Well, maybe that’s not true. People still care about big, threatening monsters that are a hundred miles away, just in case the monster decides to head in their direction.

“Hell if I know,” Aria said. “Starts with a ‘G,’ I think. Look, here’s the important part. You want to pass this thing? Make my stay here as pleasant as possible. Don’t get anyone killed. Don’t do anything that reflects poorly on the guild, and bring me back proof you killed the fucking hydra. That’s it. I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care about your technique. I just want to sit in my room at the inn, pretend I don’t smell the overgrown mud puddle down the street, and then leave in a day or two once you’re done.”

That’s shockingly irresponsible, but then again, so what? It works out in my favor. And after all the shit the guild has already pulled in the last few months, I don’t much care about them anyway. If this is all I have to do to pass this trial and get access to the information I want, then fine. I can do that.

“Deal. You stay out of my way. I’ll go kill the monster, and we’ll both go home happy.”

“That’s the spirit,” Aria said with a wide smile. “Now, as I said, the important thing here is keeping me comfortable.” She raised a bare foot and dropped it down on his knee. “Tell me, how are you at foot massages?”

Velik gave the offending foot an incredulous stare and shoved it off him. “You couldn’t pay me enough decarmas.”

“Feh. You say that, but everyone has their price.”

How, by all that the gods hold holy, is this woman a gold-ranked monster hunter?

* * *

Eldmyrk, which definitely did not start with a ‘G’ like Aria had claimed, actually reminded Velik strongly of the towns on the frontier. The houses were shaped a bit differently, and they were made with a different kind of wood, but it all had the same kind of hardiness he’d known his whole life. The walls were stone on built-up earthen embankments that were studded with thousands of sharpened stakes, all pointed outwards, and locals kept a careful watch on the screen of trees just beyond their borders.

The carriage had rolled on all through the night while Velik silently watched the world roll on by. He was sure he could have made the journey faster on foot, but he had to admit that it was nice to reach their destination and not be sore from running several hundred miles without a break. The company left something to be desired, however.

He couldn’t make heads or tails of Aria’s behavior, and was more than half-convinced that she was just screwing with him. The problem was that he couldn’t tell if it was a way to amuse herself or if she was actually taking her role as his evaluator seriously and was testing him to see if he could remain professional in the face of her antics.

It was now sometime around noon and they stood in front of a sprawling, single-story building with an abundance of windows made out of something that clearly wasn’t glass, but which light passed through anyway. It wasn’t unique to that particular building, either, but Velik had no idea what it was. Aria noticed him peering at it curiously and said, “It’s called veil stone. It’s popular in warm climates because it’s cheap and tougher than windows, but it’s sensitive to cold temperatures, so you won’t see it anywhere that gets a lot of snow in the winter.”

Huh. So she’s good for something after all.

“Alright, I’ll go get us a pair of rooms. The driver will take care of the carriage, and that leaves you to get started. Don’t feel like you need to wait for me.”

Recognizing the words as a clear dismissal, Velik walked away from his evaluator. His first task was to find whoever was running Eldmyrk and get an update on the situation with the hydra. If there were no new developments—the posting was already two months old, so it was entirely possible something had changed—then he’d see about getting the lay of the land and then going out into the swamp to search for it.

Best case scenario, he’d find it just as the sun went down, hit it hard while at full strength, and drag back a head or two as proof of its demise. Nothing ever worked out that perfectly, however, so he was sure there’d be a complication or two before he reached the last step. Hopefully, Aria wouldn’t hold it against him if it took longer than a single day to find the monster.

From the way she’d talked, just finding the hydra would be an issue, but the swamp was small enough that he was sure he could scour the whole thing in a single night. Hydras were huge and aggressive. It couldn’t be hard to find one with a bit of work.

Killing it, on the other hand… That might be a challenge.