What a beautiful moonlit night. Good evening everyone, this is Lance Chevalier speaking and I may or may not be taking too many detours to check out interesting monsters.

Right now? Right now I’m following a troll to a cave. Funny thing about trolls, aside from stinking a lot, they also have an outstanding regenerating ability.

… The cave is clear aside from the troll, let’s set up a few enchantments to avoid being interrupted.

Now, you may think that what I’m doing is cruel, but honestly, after killing a bunch of stuff for food for the last five days, I’ve grown mostly desensitized to hurting non-humans. I actually started enjoying the feeling of stalking and ambushing prey. Although what I’m about to do still makes me a little queasy, I’m still think it should be worth it.

I send three heavy force cuts to his two arms and his left leg.

Now, I hide again, and start observing. During these last few days I came up with a couple spells to help analyze a third party’s magic, It’s similar to diagnosis but with more focus on the target’s mana.

I’ll spare you the details, but after ten minutes, the troll’s limbs are halfway regenerated, so I cut them off again and send a force smash to its head, to knock it out. Now I try to heal his limbs myself. Kinda weird to heal limbs I cut off myself, but who am I to judge myself?... I’m pretty sure ‘who am I to judge’ isn’t supposed to be used like that...

The feeling of regrowing a limb reminds me of growing plants with magic. Well, that’s as much as I’m gonna learn without human trials. I destroy the troll’s brain and start casting a few detection spells to see if there’s anything interesting in this cave.

Oh? That’s a pretty big crystal, let’s start mining then.

Crystals are great with enchantments, a big one should allow me to make interesting things.

With that done I decide I might as well sleep in this cave for today, but I need to clear the troll remains first, fire magic is good at cleaning things.

~~

Okay, I admit I might be wasting too much time chasing monsters around, but it’s their fault for looking so interesting!

Right now I’m climbing a small mountain to try and catch one of those gigantic bats I saw on my first day here.

I almost killed it earlier, but it had something like a magical echolocation so it managed to detect me and run away.

So I did what any young gentleman would do and made an enchanted net so that I could capture it, wound his eyes and study his echolocation.

This should be close enough, I cast detection spells to find it.

Uh-oh, there’s just too many of them in that cave. Let’s just leave echolocation for next time then… Huh? What’s that?

There’s a big dark-gray wolf sneaking behind some bigger rocks. It’s pretty good at stealth, I almost didn’t detect him. But that’s not important right now.

If that dumbass spooks the bats, I’m screwed too!

I need to kill it silently so that I’m not notice- And the wolf just lunged at a bat that was flying out of the cave.

Yeah, no, I’m running away.

Three seconds after I start running away, a flood of bats start flying out of the cave. It was at this moment the wolf knew, he fucked up.

Although I say bats, one needs to remember that some of them get to the size of cows and have claws large enough to kill horses. I’m already halfway to the woods, so I take a glimpse behind me.

Would you look at that? That wolf runs really fast. Unfortunately, the fucker is leading the bats straight to me. Oh no, you don’t. I’m not dealing with your shit for you.

I take a few shots at the wolf’s legs but the cheeky bastard dodges, that’s ok though, that was only a distraction.

When the cheeky bastard is about to pass by my side I jump at his back and grab onto his fur, he tries to bite me for a moment but realizes that if he stops to do that, he’s fucked. I’m too small compared to him for him to get rid of me easily.

With that solved I turned back to the ba- Holy crap, TOO CLOSE! Force push! Force push, Force push!

That bought me some space.

Fire bomb! *Boom*

And that took care of a few of them. It didn’t kill many, but wounded around ten of them enough for them to not fly anymore. Ten down, a couple hundred to go.

Don’t look behind you, stupid dog! Keep running!

I can’t waste mana on a horde of bats, there is no way I can kill all the bats before I run out.

I look around as the wolf runs, maybe there’s somewhere I can hide or something.

Nope, but I can see a tree with dry leaves.

I charge up in mental power and express my desire for something in that direction.

The wolf ignores me, the cheeky bastard. I bombard him with manipulation for him to want to go there himself. Finally, he follows.

As we pass by the tree with dry leaves I send a fire bomb at it. The fire spreads and I make sure the tree burns like a torch. This should at least buy us some time as they dodge or maybe even scare them enough so that they don’t chase us anymore.

As the bats near the burning tree I send two stun bombs towards them, just to demotivate them further.

It works, the bats fly around a little bit before heading back home.

The wolf also notices, but when he tries to bite me I’ve already leapt away onto a tree branch.

I send a stun bomb straight at him, he dodges but it doesn’t matter, the stun bomb sends a bright flash and loud shockwave in all directions, affecting anyone nearby.

While stunned he tries moving but trips and falls, I throw the net I made for a bat onto him.

This wolf may be dumb, but he is very good at running and even knows stealth. It should save me a lot of time if I can tame him. I’m not some kind of taming master, but the carrot and stick approach isn’t complicated.

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When the wolf recovers from his stunned state, he moves to bite the net, so I hit him with a disruption bolt.

Then i make a lot of fire and keep it floating above my hand while using mind magic to make him feel fear.

Incapable of running or retaliating, his choice is only death or submission.

After a few moments of staring, the wolf lowers his head and makes his body seem smaller.

I grab some smoked meat from my backpack and throw it at his feet. After he eats it, I slowly remove the net, prepared in case he tries anything funny.

Since he stays still, I give him more food.

Now that I look at him calmly, he’s a pretty scary bastard. I’m pretty sure he’s big enough to carry an adult, much bigger than dire wolves.

I slowly approach him, I would never do this without wearing armor. He still doesn’t move. So I climb his back.

I use mind magic to emit desire towards a wounded bat that can’t fly. The wolf starts walking towards it.

There, that ought to save me some time.

Arriving there I blind the bat and study how its magical echolocation works, but not before giving another piece of meat to the wolf.

Something of his size should take a lot of food, but should help me travel, hunt and carry stuff, so it should balance things out.

If things don’t work out or he tries something funny… Well, I won’t give him a name unless he can behave while living back in the castle. If he needs too much food, I’ll just let him go, but if he attacks me, he’s dead.

~~

The wolf eats as much as four or five adult men would. But since he runs so fast, it’s worth it to keep him around, so i took break from traveling to make a saddle of sorts out of leather from our prey.

I also made reins so I don’t need to use mind magic to direct him all the time (and I’m not sure how to do it any other way), but I didn’t attach it to his mouth, of course, I set it as a collar, it works well enough.

By the way, I only need about as much food as a single adult man, I don’t get as hungry as my first day here anymore.

When we hunt something big, I take a break of travelling to preserve the meat and stuff it in bags on the saddle, but we compensate for the lost time by not having to hunt for food.

I also stored some monster honey I came across in a wooden jar as a souvenir for back home.

A monster territory of this size has a great variety of monsters, to the point where many of them are unnamed, like the wolf I’m riding. I think this wolf’s parents were just bigger than normal dire wolves, but this fellow was born with a magic bloodline similar to Eleanor’s giant bloodline.

I bet he needed too much food to survive and was driven away by the rest of his pack. Pack hunting animals are great at taking down prey bigger than them, but they always need to share the food, so there is a practical limit to how big they can get before they need too much food. Either they have a large number of small hunters, or a small number of large hunters.

If you are wondering, ‘Are humans with a magic bloodline just the human version of monsters?’ the answer is: Kinda, yeah. The big reason we don’t call ourselves monsters too is simply that humans aren’t changed too much by these magic mutations, while most other animals can have some drastic changes.

Similarly to how humans often develop magic bloodlines related to strength and fire, certain kinds of animals have tendencies of their own. Pretty much everything has tendency for strength, but, flying animals for example, would also have a tendency for telekinesis, gravity and maybe even lightning.

Most monsters develop a mutation that enhances some aspect of their lifestyle, a snake for example, may simply become bigger and stronger, or maybe become able to hide better, or to shoot their poison from a distance. One rarely finds a snake spitting fire, although it’s still possible, there’s even a record of a fish becoming able to wield fire.

The monsters I’m most interested in are those that are able to use their mana in interesting ways, and they are somewhat of a rarity when compared to the more simple ‘snake but able to lunge really fast’ or ‘mountain lion but as big as a tank’.

Right now I came across a goblin tribe fighting a tribe of gnolls and I’m hidden while watching both tribes’ shamans. Since they don’t know runes, they need to use raw magic for everything, and while most of the time they do things in a directly inferior way, sometimes they demonstrate glimpses to interesting ideas.

If you are wondering about what species of animal goblins and gnolls are part of, the answer is: Probably a new one. Goblins are probably an offshoot from a offshoot from another offshoot of an ancestor to homo sapiens. While Gnolls are probably just a specific style of magic mutation, considering how there’s a kind of gnoll for any animal out there.

If you are wondering about the humanity of these guys, they don’t have much. Attempts have been made to teach them various things, but they aren’t much different from monkeys aside from their ability to use tools and make tribal societies.

Oh, and just making clear, goblins do not rape humans. They have females of their own and would much rather eat human women and men. But there is some superstition about this stuff.

~~

I’m not even sure how long it’s been since I woke up on that shipwreck anymore. I stopped looking for interesting monsters and am just rushing towards east. I want to sleep in a comfy bed, eat food made by professionals using fancy spices and talk to someone who isn’t a wolf.

I finally detect human life nearby so I rush towards them, or rather, tell the wolf to hurry up.

I think the wolf started to like me, and honestly, I like him too. I’d still be able to kill him if he doesn’t behave, but I wouldn’t be able to do it with cold detachment like before.

As I get closer I check if those people are bandits, but thankfully they are a team from the army, probably making sure there isn’t too high a concentration of monsters near the country’s borders.

Knowing that, I stop holding back my excitement, I remove my ‘Leo’ disguise but maintain my ‘normal Lance’ one. Then I shout. “HEEEY!!”

The soldiers grow alert when they see the wolf, of course they do, I’m such an airhead. I stand up on his back and wave my hand. “Don’t shoot! I’m riding the wolf!” Yes, I see you, crossbow man, drop that please.

“Halt! Who goes there!” Mr. Knight is going with the classic line, huh? I can appreciate that.

“My name is Lance Chevalier! I shipwrecked in monster territory more than a month ago!”

The knight perks up at the mention of my name. He approaches me himself and says while keeping an eye on the wolf I dismounted. “Please wait a moment, sir Lance, I sent someone to call for my superior.”

I haven’t been called sir before, only young master and kid. “And who’s this superior of yours?”

“My name is Victor Chevalier, young Lance.” Says someone else, he does have the eyes and teeth. “I’m Isabel’s younger brother, so you can call me uncle.”

I heard of you, mom says you’re a wimp. I don’t say that out loud, of course. “Nice to meet you, uncle Victor, mom told me about you.” When I say that his face cramps, does he know that mom thinks he’s a wimp? “Do you know how long I have been gone?” I assume he knows of the situation down south.

“Not exactly, but if my memory doesn’t fail me, it should be somewhere around four or five months.” Damn, I’ll become seven years old, soon… Damn, I’m one messed up six years old, huh? “It’s good you’re back, Isabel insisted you’d be fine, but the crown princess reacted poorly to your disappearance.” Geh, that nerd really should get a hobby, oh wait… “What’s with the big wolf?”

“Oh, him? I found him, he runs really fast.” I pat his neck. “You think mom will let me keep him?”

“Probably, she always wanted a pet monster when she was a kid, but mother only allowed us to keep war-horses.” That sounds like mom.

~~

I would stay in the western castle for a few days, for rest and writing a couple letters.

I sent a letter back home, another to the queen and another to the orphanage down south.

While here I met my three cousins, the older two are really serious and treat me like I’m a soldier, so I don’t like them very much, but the youngest one, Michael, who is 9 years old is pretty chill.

“I heard you know how to make everything, is it true?” asks Michael.

“No way, it’s impossible to know how to make everything. I only know pottery, glasswork, sewing, leather tanning, blacksmithing, architecture-”

“What can’t you make?” He interrupts, rude.

“Uh, I can’t make… poetry? And, uhh… I don’t have much experience cooking either...” I doubt he would accept me saying ‘I can’t make some stuff that doesn’t exist’ but I keep thinking of modern things when asked what i can’t make. Oh right! “I can’t make siege engines either! Mom didn’t let me experiment with them in case I damaged the castle. And while I’ve read about making ships, I could only practice on small rivers.”

“Lance, that’s pretty much everything… Can you make me a sword?”

“What kind of sword?” I don’t really mind.

“A double-edged sword that shoots lightnin-” “NO!” “What?! Why?!”

“Because it’s dumb!” I have to make a stand here or the world might end up filled with stupid swords.