After the success of my first hunting trip, I took part in every consecutive hunting trip thereafter. Although I didn’t manage to get the finishing blows in any of them anymore, I still played a vital role most of the time and my combat and hunting skills improved by leaps and bounds.

What made me confused though was that I didn’t hear the voice of the Man who acknowledged me as a Ranker anymore.

It was probably because I hadn’t been responsible for any of the deaths of the rest of the Beasts we encountered.

I contemplated the implications of me being a Ranker often, during the remainder of the time I spent traveling with the Tribe.

Although I still didn’t believe it I still went through several what-if scenarios. If what the man said was true, I was honestly pretty disappointed with how lackluster it felt.

Even though my Battle with the Evolved Clan members almost resulted in my death not one of the three men I killed felt strong enough to be a Ranker.

This feeling mostly came from the fact that I myself felt pretty weak. I didn’t think I was much stronger than a common Adventurer.

If I had truly become a Ranker, did that mean that Rankers weren’t really that special, or was I just lucky?

A popular saying amongst the citizens of Volunterra was that the lowest Ranker was equivalent to one hundred armed soldiers or ten gunners.

That meant that the lowest Ranker should have the ability to take down one hundred foot soldiers or ten men with common guns. Whether that saying was accurate or not was up for debate but almost nobody would question the strength of Rankers.

But after hearing the man’s voice I found myself doing that often. In the end, I discarded the notion that Rankers were weak and came to the conclusion that my Elemental Slingshot was just that strong.

In hindsight, I barely got to see how strong the Evolved Clansmen truly were because the Slingshot discarded them faster than they could react.

The strength and speed with which the big-handed man Biras, threw the spiked ball was indeed impressive, but there too the Slingshots power saved my butt.

After taking all of that into consideration throughout the rest of the journey I would take time to prepare and train in several combat scenarios.

I realized most of my strength came from the magical power within the slingshot and the ammo. The strength and effect they had were of really high quality and power.

I hadn’t had the expertise before to know to what extent but after upgrading my knife and blade to magical weapons I realized how much stronger the Slingshot was compared to even their magically improved versions.

I had decided that in my journey for self-improvement I was better off avoiding relying on the Slingshot except for life or death situations.

Even if I could face higher-level experts because of it, if I ranked up solely relying on the Slingshot the day I ended up without it I would be screwed.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make but the centered and calm tempered Guso of today was much more calculative than the Guso of yesteryear.

After the Hunting expeditions, I often trained with the Warriors of the Tribe in their combat arts with my knife and blade. Even these Warriors felt like they were stronger than me a supposed Ranker.

I stopped dwelling on it and continued training and preparing for the day I would depart.

Through the participation of the hunts, I had accumulated quite a bit of stuff as my reward. A lot of it was dangerous like a container full of King Culebra venom.

It caused a lot of damage to the flesh but what truly made it terrifying was the amount of pain it caused. It would incapacitate anyone who wasn’t mentally strong.

I had decided to make weapons and tools of whatever resources and knowledge I had available to me.

From the beginning of my journey that was always something, I had clear to me, the better equipment I had the better chances of surviving.

I planned on working hard to accumulate a good amount of wealth and buy the appropriate items necessary for a Ranker. But it was almost a year since my journey started and I was still in the wilderness with the Nomadic Tribe.

I didn’t know when I would have access to Ranker-level items and it would be a while before I would even visit another town or city to buy regular items.

I was starting to realize relying on premeditated plans dependent on a developed society and civilization was not the Ranker Way.

The best I could do was make do with what I had now. I had already upgraded my knife and blade through the village’s blood bathing method.

I had come to find out the method was not as simple as it sounded it wasn’t just Magical Beast blood they used, they also mixed it with a mix of a special plant called the Bright Plant, clay dust, and charcoal.

The mix would make it so that the magical energy wouldn’t disperse and rather bind itself to whatever item was placed inside of it.

I had also learned that different types of blood from different magical creatures resulted in subtle differences in the type of magical damage that was caused. If someone was injured with a weapon that was bathed in blood that mostly came from the Wily Scorch Fowl, the wound would look like a spreading burn.

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The effects of Magic were truly bizarre. I was pretty disappointed when I found out the blood my weapons were bathed in was mostly from the Mana Frog, whose blood only causes a neutral magical damage effect.

Once I learned the nuances related to Blood Bathing I tried creating my own blood mixture. I decided to hunt down as many magical beasts as I could to drain them of their blood.

They weren’t that hard to hunt since they were all small. I could even kill them with the regular slingshots I made like most of the small animals around. The problem was finding them since because of their magical nature they were much rarer than normal animals.

After some effort, I had accumulated enough blood from 5 different types of the beast. The Scorch Fowl, the Mana Frog, the Lightning Hare, the Earth Vole, and the Winded Skink. These were probably the forest’s most common Magical Beasts as well.

I separated the blood I drained from each type of animal into different clay containers. Clay containers that were made properly were the best way to store magical resources that the Tribe knew.

They did the best job at preventing mana leakage. Mana was a valuable resource in Volunterra, almost everyone wanted access to some sort of mana resource. But compared to its abundance in the United Kingdom of Magic it was pretty scarce in Volunterra. Methods for mana storage preservation and harvesting were highly sought after. Who knew clay could do the job?

I had one hundred Iron Nails one hundred Metal Pellets and twenty Steel Balls with the diameter of a gold coin. As well as 100 fangs of various kinds of non-magical beasts and 6 from magical beasts.

I had carved and straightened out the fangs so they weren’t curvy and had a straight path when shot.

The plan was to put some of my non-magical projectiles inside the beast blood. I realized most of the Slingshot’s original Ammo was too overpowered, it was great for finishing my fights quickly and defending myself against stronger threats, but to use it in every single situation where I needed to use my Slingshot was too much of a waste.

I put 10 of each, of the nails, pellets, and fangs in each type of animal blood. I was going for a lesser version of the Slingshots elementally attributed Ammo. I also dumped five of the steel balls into the Mana Frog blood. I decided to only do some of them because I figured there could be a time it would be best not to use Magic and I wanted options.

I left the magical fangs alone because they were already magical and I didn’t want to weaken their effect.

I started out with bathing stuff in the blood of one specific animal because after some experimentation I found out that depending on the ratio of the mixture of certain types of blood either of two things happened, one magical attribute would overpower the rest or the magical power would be reduced altogether.

I wasn’t a Magic expert so that was all I could notice as constants during my experimentation.

After upgrading some of my ammo I decided to make a spear fashioned after the style of the ones used in the Tribe since I had noticed I lacked range in my attacks if I wasn’t using the Slingshot.

I found Mana Frog blood worked more like an attribute augmenter than anything else when used in the right proportions with other blood so I bathed the spear in the blood Mix of the Mana Frog, Lightning Hare, and Winded Skink, as those seemed to compliment each other the best.

After 3 weeks of bathing the result, I got was a spear that felt as fast and light as the wind.

Another thing I worked on was encapsulated clay pellets that contained King Culebra Venom, these I could either use as they were or shoot with the Slingshot.

I was fascinated with all the uses I found for Clay I thought it was only good to make pottery for the house but as it turns out the possibilities were limitless.

Eventually, we hit the edge of the eastern part of the forest in the Western Wilderness. That was where I had to Depart with the Toltemic tribe, the atmosphere had gotten quite sad since I had grown quite friendly and attached to them as I had been with them for the most part of a year.

Roksuma gifted me several pelts and beast pelt pouches with which I could carry my stuff in a convenient fashion, he also gave me a sled that was portable and flexible and could be used to make a shelter after their style.

The Tribe Chief had been kinder to me than almost anybody had been to me before in my life.

Because of his hospitality, I avoided certain death and improved both my combat and survival skills to a level few commoners could claim.

I made a mental note to come and visit them and repay this favor if ever I got the chance.

After a short but heartfelt sendoff, I bid my farewell to the Toltemic tribe and set forward to continue my journey to be a great Ranker.