“Then I lost consciousness, before finally waking up here” Ken finished his recounting. To his disappointment, the woman had long lost interest, probably since the part where he ran away from the boar. He only finished the story because stopping halfway would leave a bad taste in his mouth, like having a good steak along with a glass of apple juice.
Ken took the woman’s silence as a cue to start asking his own questions.
“um, do you mind telling me your name?”
“You can call me Lev”
The woman answered non-chalantly. Ken took it positively, as the woman seemed like she was not disinclined to respond to him.
“Lev is it? if I may ask, where exactly are we?”
This time, the woman had a change in expression, pity was seen in her eyes. Slightly shaking her head, she said.
“You are unlucky, of all places, you ended up here. This jungle is far separated from any civilization, with me being the only exception. If you want to go to any human civilization, you must at least possess strength equal to a Level 20 Human Warrior, and even then, you have to be lucky to survive the journey.”
You have received a new quest.
Find a human civilization in 1 week. 0/1
Reward: 10000 Experience, +5 free attribute points.
Failure: -2 All Attributes
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Tooltip: 0/7 days remaining.
Ken had no time to respond as his new quest suddenly popped up.
I got to do something about it suddenly appearing in front of me.
Lev noticed his eyes went elsewhere as he read the quest prompts.
“What’s the matter?” she asked
“I just received a new quest. I have to find a human civilization within a week, otherwise I would receive a penalty of a decrease of all attributes by two points.” Ken truthfully answered, slightly perspired after realizing the difficulty of the quest.
Then Ken remembered how he Lev healed his injury within a day, which meant that the woman before him should possess a quite significant prowess. He also noticed that there were no other beast that dared to approach or even stay close to this cottage when he was escaping the boar yesterday. Although he was embarrassed to ask for more help from the woman after she had saved him yesterday, he forced himself to ask.
The woman obviously noticed the way he looked at her, then softly shook her head.
“I am bound under a contract to never leave this forest. There was a barrier surrounding 20 kilometers radius from this cottage which can detect me once I passed it. Even the closest human town I knew was about 70 kilometers away. I can help you pass the 20 kilometers, but that will not make much difference as the stronger creatures stayed outside the barrier. The one you should be wary of were those that knew better to stay away from me.”
Sadly, that was all he got from her, no matter how he tried to play around the situation. The fact was that the system, or the Omniscient Whisperer as Lev call it, knew enough about his circumstance and provide the quest with Lev’s barrier in consideration. Ken also noticed how Lev implied that if not for the barrier, she could easily help him, as the creatures outside were no match for her.
Knowing there was no other way but to finish the quest by himself, Ken changed the topic toward how to improve himself. To which Lev simply told him to push keep pushing his limit. It was vague, but the concept was familiar to him.
The one-week limit was quite generous, if he were to quote Lev. When he inquired further, she explained that he only needed at most two days to travel the full 70 kilometers, which would be even faster if he invested in strength and dexterity. That left him with 5 days to improve himself and prepare for the journey. Thus, his first day of training began.