I took a week off, working out in my home gym and training archery on the roof. Kara only sent me a message saying she was too busy with work, processing all the heads I brought. I had no idea if that was the truth or she was just using it as an excuse to not see me. I think I screwed up the date, right there at the end. To keep my mind from going out in a spiral, I trained and trained until my SP plummeted to zero. Then rinse, repeat.

Without armor and weapons, I had no business walking outside of town. And since the armor I commissioned was custom-made, it took time.

Wearing a boiled leather cuirass and piecemeal leather armor, I went to the Guild Hall after that week of relaxation and hard training. I entered and heard Alice's voice from the tavern. The tables were all lined up and the Guild Master stood with her back to the wall. An illusion of a combat scene was covering the wall as she gave a class on party tactics and coordination. It wasn't anything new for me; I attended that class when I was nine.

And yet I went and screwed up with the bandits. I still felt that my scouting mission was a failure. Surely, the official outcome was that I helped the Guild Master rescue twenty-five people including some minor nobles and defeated a bandit group more than a hundred men strong. And they weren't wrong. But my wounded heart… maybe that was the problem. Though it would take a lot of soul-searching to figure it out, it was in that moment that I had a glimpse of the real emotion behind my frustration. Pride.

I had to do better. Inside the city, it was always safe and I could play and dream of being a hero. But out there? It was life or death. Taking stupid risks was out of the question. I wasn't meant for praise, nor to be the one who went into the fray, fought the good fight, and emerged victorious. I was a Scout. My duty was to get near the enemy, gather intel, and then report back. no more, no less. Taking targets of opportunity was fine. If I had retreated after killing the first batch of bandits, then I wouldn't have been captured.

My focus returned to the room. Standing still in the middle of the Hall wasn't the best idea. I came here with a purpose. Setting my sights on the target, I went to the quest board. I studied each slip carefully. Quests were ranked according to an ancient system that was said to be passed down by the Gods. Each received a rank range, from G to A, with G being the easiest and less rewarding ones, and A the hardest with the big awards. Then there were the elusive S-rank quests but those never made it to the board. They were directed to Adventurer teams who proved themselves capable.

Most likely, the quest my father undertook with the Guild elite to kill Liliane Fade was a S-rank quest. No. I shouldn't linger on that.

Pushing dark thoughts aside, I took note of the extermination quests on the board. They were the most common ones, followed by escort, exploration, and finally general services. Escort quests ranged from your average caravan guard to protecting a noble's scions while they went into the wild or a Dungeon to earn levels. Exploration quests were issued when someone wanted a place cleared of either hostiles or treasures. Some forgotten crypts, an abandoned mage's tower, or an ominous cavern complex. Everything that demanded an Adventurer's expertise but didn't fall under the first three was a general service. Patrolling the sewers, herding lost sheep, retrieving the blacksmith's lost hammer, and even scaring away crop-stealing hordes of rabbits.

Finally, Extermination quests demanded the Adventurers to go to the reported location and kill the monster they found there. These were the most common and most dangerous. The intel on the monster location could be wrong by miles, the number of monsters reported was often less than what it really was, and the award sucked. Whoever posted the quest never wanted to pay a fair price. Fortunately, by law, the monster's corpse and whatever treasure found in the monster's lair was property of those who slayed it. The loot often helped offset the loss from the quest reward. From a simple monetary standpoint.

Killing monsters was often its own reward. The Experience and the chance to advance one's Skills was always welcome. But monster hunting was an expensive activity. Potions, ammunition, armor and weapon repairs, and the ultimate cost of one's life had to be balanced against those rewards.

The life of an adventurer was hard. Often, one became an adventurer because the job was romanticized to the nines in bard's tales. But those who stayed on the job shed pieces of themselves, physically or mentally, over the years. The elite only remained because of the ideals of freedom and adventure core to the lifestyle. Most were seduced by offers of great prestige, honor, and money by Kings, nobles, or powerful organizations like mage cabals and merchant houses.

But all of them had to deal with dead companions, permanent wounds, emotional damage, and the nightmares.

I finished my notes and stowed my notebook away. I went around greeting the receptionists, exchanged eye contact with Alice, and went out of the city. My idea was to visit the locations for these quests, scout them out, see if the reports were accurate, and provided an updated report.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Why?

To gain more power, of course. My Parallel Progression stated that I gained stats every time someone killed a target based on intelligence I gathered. I worked with the bandits; it could work with these quests. My hope was that, by offering significant better information, I would gain Attribute points from these quests.

Plotting a route in my map, I ran. This was supposed to be a day trip, ending back inside the gates at night. It gave me only thirteen hours of sunlight, because the nights were longer this time of the year. I didn't want to be caught under Yolanthe's cursed gaze out in the wilds. The boost to my Dexterity helped immensely with this. I was more than half as much faster than when I set to complete Alice's impossible mission.

*

*

Precision mattered. To each quest I scouted, I added information about paths, landmarks, possible resource nodes like magical herbs, flowers, and mushrooms along the way, and adjusted the quantities. The latter could be a problem if people complained about the reward but that was a problem for Alice. She would probably ask the quest issuer to rectify the reward based on the new information or use the City funding to cover the difference. Still, it was better than to send our people to fight higher odds than they first expected.

The City paid the Guild a stipend to use on quests of public interest. Exterminating monsters around the city was always of public interest. If left on their own, spawned monsters might breed naturally or serve as food for stronger predators. It was a well-known phenomenon that lands infested by monsters started to spawn stronger and stronger monsters, soon becoming danger zones. Danger zones bred monsters faster than normal. While they could be a fantastic source of monster parts, they posed a significant risk. Unless regularly culled, such danger zones could spill out and cause a monster stampede.

It was mid-afternoon and I was already more than half done with my route. I couldn't visit all the quest spots as some of them required a lot of time, some more than a day of hiking, to reach but the closest ones were all accounted for.

The System popped a one-line window at the bottom of my sight.

> Your knowledge and experience increased your Scouting Skill to rank III. Benefit: The error in your estimates of distance, time, and direction lowers by 9% per rank.

I stopped to read and re-read the new Skill rank. Fantastic. Bloody fantastic. I looked at my surroundings and could tell the distance between trees much better. If I had to guess how far away from the city or what time of the day it was, my confidence in the number was much higher. Especially the time. A glance at the planetary ring, with the suns' light shining from behind the ring, was closer to the precision of a gnomish clock.

The reduction was linear. The error was twenty-seven percent lower, meaning that if my natural estimate of the hour was off by 20 minutes, the one adjusted by the Skill would be off by only fourteen minutes and thirty-six seconds. And at rank ten, it would go down to two minutes only.

Leveling my Skill also improved the other effects. Movement penalties in natural terrain were now 30% smaller. At rank ten, I would have the ability to pass unhindered in any terrain, even the impassible thicket back in the bandit woods. The place formerly known as bandit woods. The bonus to finding tracks also improved. And each rank would scale these abilities more and more.

With renewed vigor, I went along my plotted route, adding as much information as I could about the extermination quests.

*

*

One hour before sunset, I was on my second-to-last quest location. The quest slip mentioned wargs but I was seeing odd tracks. Wolf paw prints superimposed by rabbit prints, but those were too big for ordinary rabbits and even the slightly bigger al-Mi'raj. To boot, the wolf prints were too small for wargs, unless those were juvenile wargs.

I had an impulse to dismiss the tracks as man-made. Someone took animal paws, placed them on stilts, and went around making the prints. But... They had an almost perfect cadence for a four-legged creature. But why were the rabbit prints superimposed on the wolf prints? It was as if the creature I was tracking had the legs of two different animals.

I paused.

Chimeric creatures were a thing. I couldn't remember one that was a mix of rabbit and wolf, though. Curiosity won over caution and I went deeper into the woods, in hopes of finding this mysterious creature. Judging by the size and spawn rates, this shouldn't be a dangerous creature. As I studied the tracks, they revealed the monster's gait.

It walked on its forelegs but bounded on its hind legs. Whatever it was, the monster could jump. It meant it was a fast one. The wolf paws also had deep claw marks, signaling that its main attack mode was probably a pounce, raking with its front legs, and probably biting down to pin its prey. An ambush predator, maybe?

The tracks became fresher and crossed an older trail by the same monster. It could only mean I was close to its den. With redoubled care and intending to run away at the first sign of danger, I readied Scout's Oath and held three arrows in my right hand. If I could get a clear shot, I would take it.

What happened to just be scouting ahead and reporting the new intel to gain Attribute points? I'm glad you asked.

See, this monster must have a high rarity. And with high rarity, came bigger Experience awards for one's level. The monster was also a rare one and I was eager to get a trophy, if possible. While I would selflessly scout ahead and let others take the glory, this was a big opportunity. I could feel it, as if Fate was guiding my bow.

The thrill of the hunt was pounding in my ears. My previous caution slowly eroded, but at the time I was unaware of that. Excitement, wonder, and a supernatural influence moved me forward, deeper down the forest in the dimming afternoon light.