[Stealth has advanced to rank 7.]

Guess the coins did the trick, after all. Or maybe it was just what I was up against.

Velik no longer tried to kill every monster he could find. There were too many for that, and they were doing a fine job of attacking each other. Joining in would completely stall out his progress, so he’d opted to put his skills to use and threaded a way through instead. It didn’t always work, but he’d avoided more fights than not.

By his reckoning, he was about fifty miles northwest of Deshir, well into the deep wood where even normal animals were strong enough to threaten someone with a combat class. The monsters were all in the mid-twenties level bracket, with some of the standouts reaching low thirties. Thankfully, he’d managed to avoid the one elite he’d spotted, that being some sort of massive fifty-foot-long snake at a staggering level 38.

It was a sobering reminder of his own weakness. Killing monsters fifteen levels below him was easy. Punching up even five levels was not. He could do it, especially if there was only one monster, but they were fights, not clean ambushes like he was used to. [Predator’s Visage] gave him a bonus to damage when he struck from hiding, and he’d underestimated how important that was against opponents with high enough physical to stop his normal attacks from piercing their skin.

The silver lining was that he’d seen absolutely nothing like that wolverine from the first night in the last two days. Even enemies up to level 35 were easier to kill than that thing, as long as they were alone. Velik hadn’t risked pressing his luck with any pack monsters.

It hadn’t been like this a few years ago when he’d tried to explore the deep wood. Everything back then had been at least ten levels lower and it had taken half the time to get this far. Now, he wasn’t even sure it was going to get as far as he’d gone before, let alone see anything new. He’d brought enough food for a week, maybe ten days if he rationed things, and then he’d be foraging to survive. Considering how dense the monster population was here, that was probably a losing proposition.

The way he saw it, he really only had two options. He could stay in the deep wood and hunt monsters closer to his own level to increase his strength, or he could retreat back to the frontier where he could cull the population to keep the towns safe. The problem with the first idea was that it left the towns unprotected—the local watch could barely handle level 10 or 15 normal monsters, let alone elites—and would most likely result in them being overrun. But his backup idea was nothing more than a stall for time.

Or I could just find the source, destroy it, and solve this problem once and for all.

[Stealth] might be enough to get him there, if the monsters didn’t get any stronger. But he didn’t have an answer after that. He had only a vague idea of what the source even was, and no clue if he could actually destroy it. Figuring that out was half the point of this expedition; finding it in the first place was the other half.

He knew he could find it if he just got close enough, but the untamed wilderness was huge beyond imagining. The best Velik could do was keep following the now years-old trail from the dungeon and hope he was searching in the right direction. That would have to be enough, for as long as he could keep going.

* * *

“Is this the right place?” Jensen asked. “All these towns look the exact same.”

They stood on the road, a quarter mile south of town and surrounded by fields. The houses were all built in typical frontier style, with a lot of wood, narrow windows, and rough stone paths. They had sharply pitched roofs covered in wooden shingles, unfinished floors with a number of gaps in them that let the chill of the earth up into the rooms, and doors made of wooden planks nailed together instead of being one solid piece.

Torwin honestly couldn’t tell if his apprentice couldn’t spot the little differences or if he was just whining. Either way, it was a bad sign. “Jensen,” he said with a heavy sigh, “some days I can’t tell if you’re serious about all of this or just wasting everybody’s time.”

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“What? Of course I want my class evolution.”

“Oh, I believe you want it. I just can’t tell if you want it enough to put in the work that comes with it.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve been going out killing dozens of monsters every day, haven’t I? What more do you want from me?”

“You do it, but it’s always begrudgingly,” Torwin explained. “It seems like you want the prestige of a rare class without the actual job itself. Sometimes I wonder if this is just something your father pushed you into.”

Jensen snorted. “My father wanted me to take a merchant class. He was quite cross with my decision to take [Tracker].”

“Why’d you take it then?”

“I loved exploring the manor grounds when I was a kid,” he said. “I’d find little corners tucked away in the gardens, or behind the stables, places where no one else went, where no one else could find me. I always wanted to go out into the rest of the world and find bigger versions of those places.”

Torwin listened intently. He’d never gotten much from his student on his history and had relied on a lot of rumors and hear-say to try to fill in the gaps. “That sounds like you should be aiming for something like [Explorer] or [Traveler] then. [Ranger] has a lot of elements of protecting others in it.”

Jensen looked down at his bow for a moment and shrugged. “The Hunters Guild can help me reach my goals, and there’s nothing wrong with having a great amount of personal power to ensure my freedom to do what I want, my father’s wishes be damned.”

It sounded like [Ranger] was a compromise to Jensen, a balance between what he wanted to do and the prestige of a rare class and a high rank with an esteemed guild. It would reflect well on the Alderworth house to have a powerful scion, and it would give Jensen himself a measure of authority to ensure he was more than a pawn to his family’s political maneuverings.

Still, I don’t think he’ll ever get the class evolution. His heart’s not in it. He doesn’t want to be a [Ranger]. He just wants the power to be free. Even that’s tempered by the fact that he’s kind of lazy. I don’t think he’ll ever make it to a high level in any class, let alone achieve a rare evolution.

For all that, Torwin finally felt like he understood his student a bit better, and the truth was that he should have pushed for this talk a long time ago. He’d been tiptoeing around it because he was wary of the politics surrounding Jensen’s appointment as his apprentice, but that wasn’t doing the boy any favors.

“Alright, it’s time for some hard truths then,” Torwin decided. He was done handling this sham of an apprenticeship with kid gloves. “I don’t think [Ranger] is the right class evolution for you, but if you’re determined to shoot for it, then some things are going to have to change. You show me you’re serious about this, and I’ll give you everything I’ve got to help get you there. Deal?”

“What… kind of things?” Jensen asked warily.

Oh, kid, that was the wrong answer. You’re supposed to want it so bad that the costs don’t matter. Maybe your father was right about something like [Trader] or [Caravan Master] fitting you better. Actually, now that I think about it, that would be the perfect compromise class if it wasn’t uncommon rarity.

Despite his reservations, Torwin bulled ahead. “Your discipline is lacking. No more sleeping in every day. You need to learn to cook your own food, and to make do with what you can forage. All that gear is helping you kill monsters, but it’s doing all the heavy lifting. You need to either find stronger monsters to kill to offset it, or you need to take it off.”

“My gear?” Jensen repeated. “Wouldn’t that be dangerous to fight without it?”

“[Ranger] is a dangerous job,” Torwin said simply. He glanced at the town again. “Come on, we can talk while we walk. I have a lot of questions for the people of Deshir and I suspect getting answers isn’t going to be easy.”

“About this supposed Black Fang guy?” Jensen asked. “What’s left to learn? We heard the stories back in Celarut, and we’ve seen him fight in action.”

“I want to know how he got his class. Hell, I want to know what his class is. I couldn’t get an [Identify] off on him when we saw him, and he gave me the slip when I tried to chase him down. Why do they even call him Black Fang? Nobody seems to know.”

“And you think all the answers are here,” Jensen said, looking doubtfully at the town.

“I do.”

Jensen’s mouth firmed into a line and he nodded. “Alright then. You’re the master. Where do we start?”

Attaboy. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.