The temporary camp was all but abandoned by the time Jensen made his way back there. He’d spent most of his night in Beldrit, helping refugees get settled in. It was somewhat ghoulish to slot people into the homes left behind by the victims of monsters in this town, but that was how it went. He still thought it made more sense to send them back to Deshir, but given the state of the town, he could see why the people who were supposed to be living there weren’t eager to return.

Besides, there was safety in numbers and Deshir had been devastated enough that a regular old monster horde coming out of the forest would wipe the rest of them out. He wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the town ended up abandoned before winter set in. Really, he supposed it depended on exactly how many more monsters his master and Sildra found in the other towns.

I hope that innkeeper isn’t a monster. I liked the food there.

With any luck, he’d get another night’s sleep in a warm bed and a hearty breakfast before Torwin got them heading back south to civilization. Jensen could admit that he wasn’t looking forward to that, not because of the walk, but because of the confrontation that awaited him at the end. His father was not going to be pleased that he’d deviated from his instructions, no matter how good the class he’d earned ended up being.

[You have completed a quest: Save the frontier from the source of the corruption.]

[Reward: 7500 decarmas, Grenadier’s Flask]

“Hmm?” Jensen murmured. “What’s this now? They must have finished with the other towns.”

The decarma value was nothing, but he supposed it helped offset some of the money he’d spent blowing up that house. Jensen promptly ignored that part of the message and focused on the other half, the [Grenadier’s Flask]. He’d seen some made by the combined efforts of alchemists and enchanters, but to the best of his knowledge, it wasn’t a piece of gear available through the system store. Then again, it would take years to read everything the store could offer, and not a single piece of it was worth the truly outrageous asking prices.

The flask had the ability to fill itself with a volatile, highly explosive agent, and was enchanted so that, when thrown, it would shatter, leaving a swath of destruction wherever it landed. The cap of the flask would then start to regrow a new bottle over the next week or so, which would slowly fill itself again. Depending on the strength of the enchantments, it could be anywhere from ten days to two months between uses.

If it’s a quest reward, I’d hope it skews more to the short end of the spectrum. He’d have to ask Torwin to use [Identify] when he saw his master again to get the exact specifications. They’d probably be back soon, since apparently, they’d wiped out every single corrupted seed bearer in the area already. Knowing the speed Sildra moved at and considering how tired she had to be by now, he figured it’d either be two to three hours if it was just Torwin or more like six to eight if it was both of them.

Either way, Jensen was taking a nap while he could.

* * *

The mana compass still pointed to monsters with a lot of mana in them, but Velik didn’t go out of his way to hunt for them. There’d be plenty of time for that later; it wasn’t like the champions were going anywhere. For the moment, he just wanted somewhere safe so he could properly rest.

It had been two days of non-stop running after he’d caught a few hours of sleep. He was tired, sore, and hungry, surviving mostly on his high physical stat and the occasional pieces of fruit he snatched up as he moved. The terrain was somewhat familiar to him, making it a bit easier to recall good foraging spots that wouldn’t slow him down much. When he did finally return home, he pushed the door closed, gave silent thanks that [Mending] kept all his clothes clean, and dropped face down onto his bed, where he immediately passed out.

It had been noon when he’d gone to sleep, but it was just after dawn when he woke back up. Lost a whole day, he thought to himself as he stretched. Worth it.

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Though he was lacking a considerable portion of his strength at the moment, Velik wasn’t afraid of what he’d run into this close to the edge of the forest. He headed out without fear, then stopped to look around. At first, he thought something had gone wrong with [Apex Hunter]. All of his sensory abilities were folded into it and he relied heavily on them to lock down the locations of nearby monsters without having to manually search every square foot of the forest.

There was nothing within half a mile of him. Or, if there was, it was too quiet and stealthy for him to detect it passively. That only happened after he’d personally killed every monster in the area, though, and unless he’d started hunting in his sleep, that hadn’t happened.

Is it over? The source of all the monsters was probably Chalin’s dungeon, and that’s gone now. But that couldn’t have rippled all the way to here yet.

After a few minutes of consideration, he decided it was probably Torwin’s fault, or possibly his apprentice. The professional monster hunters had had a few days to work clearing out the area while Velik traveled and then slept. If new monsters weren’t pushing in anymore, then it was possible that this was just what the forest looked like now. Another month or so to take care of any strays wandering in might finally see the region at peace again.

And then what? he wondered.

He was leaving. He knew that much. The problem he’d caused so many years ago was finally fixed, and he didn’t owe anything to these people beyond that. His conversations with Torwin and Jensen had clued him into the fact that there was a lot to life he knew nothing about, and he thought he should probably take a few steps toward fixing that.

The first one would be to sell the champion seeds. No, the first one would be to go back into the deep wood and finish harvesting the rest of them. He was level 38 now; maybe that task would push him up to 40 and open a new skill slot. Even if it didn’t, he needed to work on [Savage Rhythm] and [Dread Lance]. He suspected he could fold the former into [Spear Warden] at some point, but he needed time to figure out the skill’s intricacies.

For today, he would survey the frontier and see how things really stood. Just because there were no monsters here did not mean there were none anywhere. His normal circuit would take a few hours and would serve to familiarize him with the current state of things. Then he needed to find Torwin and offload his dubious quest reward. Hopefully, the older hunter would know why he’d even been credited with completing a quest in the first place.

Smiling to himself as he started thinking of what his next concrete steps would be to begin a new life somewhere else, Velik started to run through the trees.

* * *

It turned out that Torwin was just as eager to find Velik as he was to find Torwin. Somewhere between Beldrit and Celarut, they noticed each other and immediately veered off course to join up. The old monster hunter looked the same as always, though there was perhaps a touch of sadness softening his face that hadn’t been there before.

“So, you survived,” Torwin said. “We’ve noticed the monsters flowing into the area slowing down already. I’m guessing that means you had some measure of success.”

“If you could call it that,” Velik told him. “I don’t really understand a lot of what happened out there, but I think the threat is ended.”

The two started walking to Celarut at Torwin’s insistence. More specifically, they headed to the Raven’s Nest for lunch. The time spent reaching town was filled with updates about what had happened, Velik describing the strange cave he’d been trapped in and the monster he’d found at the bottom of it. Torwin told him about the massive death toll the corrupted seed bearers had inflicted on the frontier, about the infestation that none of them had noticed despite it probably having been ongoing for a year or more.

“Sildra found them?” Velik asked in disbelief.

“More like she was the instrument of a god’s will,” Torwin said. “The quest came from him, no doubt. She spread it to us when we aligned with her purpose and helped her achieve what Morgus wanted.”

“I didn’t know gods could influence the system.”

“Only in specific ways, if the priests are to be believed. Granting quests is one of the big ones.”

Another example of things I don’t know that I should.

He knew it wasn’t his fault. He’d spent most of his life living in the woods killing monsters, and he was good at it. It was doing everything else that he was struggling with. Hopefully, Torwin would have some good advice about where to learn all the things a normal person was supposed to know by the time they were an adult. Velik had plenty of decarmas; it wouldn’t be a problem to pay for tutoring or classes.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, earning a curious glance from Torwin. “I kind of need some advice about the future.”

“What about it?”

“I’m leaving the region as soon as I’m certain the monster threat is truly resolved, and I could use some input about what to do next. I don’t really even know what my options are.”

“Ah, that’s good. I wanted to talk to you about the exact same thing. I’ll tell you what, let’s get a meal in our bellies first, and we can discuss what the world outside of your little corner has to offer.”