“Huh, why do I need to stay out of the forest?”

“They found monster sign in the forest this morning, and it includes goblins, ogres, and direwolves.”

“Shouldn’t there be military patrols taking care of this stuff?”

I thought military campaigns included patrols sweeping the area. The idea of creatures as big as ogres and direwolves running around free outside the camp didn't leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling. Besides, that camp didn't even have so much as a garden picket fence surrounding it. Monsters could invite themselves into the camp for tea and we could do precious little about it.

“Yes, but they can’t be everywhere at once, and this may have been a minor scouting team.”

Something in me doubted that ogres made for good scouts. There was something bigger brewing.

Before first light the next morning, I arrived at the sparring ring to receive my daily pummelling, camouflaged as training. A serious looking lieutenant I recognised from my morning sparring bouts greeted me instead. The attack against the monster’s forest dungeon started and the knights received orders to march that morning and started to prepare to leave. The news wasn't surprising to me because all the preparation activities were evident on my way to the sparring ring. Compared to my usual quiet walk through a sleeping camp, it almost seemed that no one had slept that night.

“The commander sends his apologies. He will not be available for training until further notice and you need not spar here anymore if you wish.”

“Oh, okay. Did he say anything else?”

“No.”

I felt a bit deflated, something of an anti-climax. However, before I could walk away and if sensing my hesitation, the lieutenant quickly added something on his mind.

“I know our men really enjoyed your sparring sessions and personally I hoped you would see fit to continue sparring with the cadets and knights looking after the camp.”

Now, how could I say no to someone asking as nicely as that? If I said no, not only would I look extremely selfish, but I might also loose kudos points with some of the knights, undoing my attempts to network with the kitchen. I couldn’t take that chance, so I agreed to come back the next morning at the same time. There was one more question from my side.

“How long will it take the knights to attack the dungeon?”

“We’re only planning for three days at most, hopefully we’ll be back before that.”

Since most of the knights left on their campaign to destroy the forest dungeon, they would be away for a few days which meant the amount of sword sharpening work dropped, although I was roped into helping Grenfell sort out horses and cart related work. It was a first for me, but I learned a lot and had ample opportunity to learn about blacksmithing and horses. Most of the horses brought in for work needed their tenders to hold them securely while we worked on them and carts could be dropped off while we repaired them. After a while, Grenfell had me focus on the carts since handling the horses took a bit of experience.

I asked Ara to continue reciting the rest of the Botany book like an audio player while I hammered and shaped various parts for the carts. Of course, my transmutation skill came in very handy. One merchant came in complaining about a strange shimmy he had on the front wheels. He was nearly ready to pack and leave later that day but thought it safer to check with us first. Although I initially didn’t see anything, a quick appraisal, followed up with a low-level use of my transmutation skill, picked up that his iron wheel axle was badly stressed and was about to break. The merchant was obviously unhappy to hear the unwelcome news but was super happy he didn’t decide to look at the problem later. Unfortunately, an axle would usually cost him at least a day of repairs but we offered to do it within his timeline if he doubled the repair fee. Of course, Grenfell knew only too well that with my transmutation there was no need to even remove the axle, I could simply reforge it in situ. By that time there was no danger of me setting the cart on fire with a red-hot axle because I was able to cool the area around axle so that it didn’t affect the wood at all. We completed all the work within the hour. The largest part of the job was positioning the cart so that the axle lined up properly. To do that, we jacked up the cart. I cut the axle in half then we lifted each wheel to until the axle properly aligned. I confess it may have been less hassle to remove the axle first because aligning those wheels to match the two separate axels took up most of the repair time.

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A satisfied merchant returned about three hours later to a fully repaired cart. To allay his suspicions, especially since we completed a job that normally took an entire day, I left a rough looking weld mark on the shaft to mask the true repair below. After showing him the weld underneath the cart, I stood up and slapped my hands together as if dusting them off. Grenfell stood to the side quietly observing my interaction with the merchant.

“That should last you a while.”

I said.

“Are you sure? That work looked pretty rough. I’m concerned that I have paid too much for this.”

I sensed that the merchant was trying to negotiate himself out of paying for the work by saying my axle work looked shoddy.

“Are you saying our workmanship was lacking? Do you know what it took to have this ready for you in time?”

He sensed my hostility and immediately backed off while waving his hands dismissively.

“No, no, no. I’m sure the work is just fine, I’m just a little unsure about the cost, that’s all.”

Grenfell, sensing where I was going with the conversation, stepped forward.

“I’ll tell you what. If this weld fails, you can speak to the commander of this camp. Let him know of our poor work quality, since it was him who personally invited us to come to this camp. I’m sure he will investigate the situation thoroughly.”

I had to stop myself from laughing, it was a move of sheer brilliance. Not only did he put the merchant firmly in his place, but he also expertly threatened him by using his relationship with the commander. Grenfell embellished a little when he used the word invited, it was more of an instruction, but who was concerned over little semantics?

“No, no, no. It’s fine. I’m sure there’ll be no problems. Here’s the money, please don’t worry about it.”

And that was the fastest I ever watched a seedy merchant leave our tent.

Since there was less work that day, Grenfell and I sat down while relaxing on our chairs, watching the quiet sunset and the going’s on in the camp. He seemed to remember something to tell me.

“Oh, by the way. One of those two cadets were back again and wanted to meet you at the sparring ring before you started sparring again tomorrow morning.”

“Okay.”

I was tired of their constant badgering to spar with me. Ever since I started sparring with the commander in the mornings, I seemed to have developed some notoriety particularly amongst the cadets for some reason. They badgered me constantly to spar with them and it was getting to me.

I seriously needed a distraction and decided to ask Ara to read another botanical session to me, something about some lesser-known weeds with interesting healing characteristics. One grassy weed, found in forest openings, called Swine Plantain was particularly good at healing open wounds. The elves had a lot to say about it and studied it to death. I previously warned Ara to be selective about the information because I didn’t want to spend an entire night listening to some plant’s snail-paced breeding characteristics, as enthralling as it might be. I was being sarcastic if anyone battled to understand that.

I battled to focus on Ara’s lessons because in the back of my mind the presence of monsters in the area concerned me. Up to that point there was no mention of the patrols finding any monsters, I assumed they didn’t want to be found which suited me up to that point. Perhaps it was the control freak inside of me, I felt I should somehow be able to see trouble coming, even in the dark. Another bright idea suddenly occurred to me.

I gave up, it wasn’t worth arguing about.

I mentally shrugged my shoulders.

I could think of a host of functional skills off the top of my head, most of them uninspired and unashamedly plagiarised from the anime and web novels I knew. Off the top of my mind there was the storage skill, which would be so cool, and I couldn’t help but salivate at the obvious advantages of a transdimentional gate. Let us not ignore attack skills like throwing lightning bolts, flame balls, water jets, lava and wiping up vast swathes of enemies with the quintessential tornado as attack skills. Then there were shields, body strengthening and even flying to consider and so many more. And what about…meteor strikes?