"The benefits of high level meat compared to cuts from lower levelled versions of the same creature is a contentious topic. While the mana density of the meat itself is slightly higher, the difference is minor enough that without skills specialized around eating, there is no tangible difference in nutrition, while taste is far more reliant on the recipe and chef responsible for cooking it.'

-Excerpt from an interview of Jayden 'Gourmet' Hodge

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With a timeline and a new tool to improve our efficiency, we trekked into the forest once more, following the now familiar route to the coyote den that we had been using as a campsite since we fought them. Even though we had been hunting in the same area for the last few hunts, there was still a lot of wildlife nearby as we were the only hunting group that went there and had already eliminated the biggest local predators. After depositing the box freezer in the den, we spent the remaining daylight hunting whatever we could, the animals notably less flighty now that they were no longer a lower level, though still unwilling to fight when outnumbered.

The three days passed rather uneventfully, though we did split up once more since even with Amy's [Tracking] skill, our hunting rate as a group of five was still much lower due to everything running away or avoiding us. As the groups were the same as last time, with Jordan and Arnold going with me and Amy with Roxy, I was able to talk with Jordan about his kids and check on Arnold's mental state. Whenever he talked about his two kids, two girls both under 10, Jordan's face lit up and he radiated happiness, the tightness that had been on his face since we met finally lessening, though I could still see flashes of stress whenever we talked about the future. Arnold, even after being seriously injured, the large scar across his stomach serving as a reminder to all of us how dangerous our new profession actually was, seemed more confident and lively than before, his stutter all but gone as he no longer hesitated to speak up when the group was discussing things, even meeting Amy's eyes when she talked with her perpetual glare, which I was now absolutely sure was just her resting face.

Our routine was more or less to go in a random direction and attack whatever we saw in hopes of it fighting back instead of running, as even Arnold was unable to sneak up on them enough to do a true sneak attack, every animal seeming to share the skill that warned them of our attacks even when they seemingly hadn't noticed us, meaning that we actually had to fight them instead of just shooting a spike from afar. Without any other apex predators or other interesting finds, the hunt was rather boring, if fruitful, as even though the level 11 animals were much stronger than their level 10 counterparts, we only targeted lone or pairs of animals so we had the numerical advantage, Arnold always hiding at the start of a fight so that our foes would think there were only two of us. By the end of the three days, we had managed to mostly fill the box, the standard bear I used for transport now struggling to pull it rather than doing so with ease, and after storing around half of our quarry in our various houses and freezers, we took the rest to sell, gaining 400 contribution points each, plus 1,100 EXP from the actual hunting itself, bringing me up to 5,890 out of 6,050, close enough to taste the next level, sadly unable to get the last one or two fights I needed before it became too dark to safely hunt and unable to convince the others to extend our trip by another day, though we planned on only spending two days in town before going on a longer hunting trip anyway, so I hadn't tried too hard to convince them.

After dropping off the box filled with corpses, we all split up to spend the rest of the day relaxing, all of us agreeing when Roxy remarked about her excitement for a warm bath, as the runes that produced hot water were unfortunately unable to shoot it out with enough pressure for a shower. Nevertheless, it was still a far more enjoyable way to clean yourself than using a rag and cold canteen water like we had been forced to while in the wild. Getting home and submerging myself in the warm water, once again thanking all the gods I could think of that magic was able to replicate many of the comforts I had gotten used to as a modern man, my mind drifted to the current state of the town, as the looks that we got as we sold our box of corpses painted a worrisome picture about the food situation, as while I had seen what seemed to be the start of a few fields in the clearing between the town and forest, most of them didn't seem to have any seeds and even those that did had barely sprouted, and I doubted that they would be ready to harvest anytime soon even with the assistance of skills or classes.

I just hope that the mayor will be able to stabilize the lack food before the town collapses into a free for all from starvation. After an hour or so of enjoying my bath, I went to our groups building to relax by helping them with some of their more menial tasks, as without the internet to occupy me there wasn't much to do at home. Since my dad worked at town hall rather than the building we cleared, I instead went to my mom and chatted with her as she tended a few herbs she was growing, mostly ones with medical uses that the town was paying her to cultivate, and I managed to learn about what the town was gossiping about when I was too busy hunting or training, though it was naturally mostly about food. Over the course of our conversation, I learned that the heightened food prices were causing a lot of worry amongst those without combat classes, and those who had taken combat classes in the tutorial but not reached level 10, or were otherwise unwilling to fight. I also learned that while there were about thirty or so children that joined their families, there was also around the same amount who appeared as a group in front of the town hall when the countdown ended, presumably orphans. The youngest of them was apparently only five while the oldest was 14, and the mayor had quickly cleared out a building to use as an orphanage for them, but nobody really knew how to deal with them in the long term, since everyone was more focused on making sure that they and their families would have enough food as opposed to worrying about strangers, children or not.

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Impending food crisis aside, there had been some good news in the group, as it seemed now that everyone was settled and actually focused on crafting they had all reached level 10, leaving Evelynn and Jackson's mom as the only people in our group below the first threshold, something that we would have to remedy soon. It also seemed that Jason and Leo had both gotten the second classes they had their eye on, with Leo starting his work for the mayor and Jason focusing on practicing his new abilities, planning to join one of the new hunting groups that were forming. The only worrying thing was that Jackson hadn't gotten any more crystals aside from what we'd brought from the tutorial, and while he was fairly confident that his skills would work with glass, there wasn't any sand or people with skills to make glass that we knew of, so he had been using all of his materials sparingly, and while he still had some left, the supply was dwindling.

Since there were two days before we went out hunting again, I dedicated the first day to alternating between spell testing and doing the mana control exercise, as it did also help with elemental energy control, while the second I spent practicing my connection and control of crystals themselves, the low mana intensity of each activity meaning I was able to do them for the whole day, though I was unable to make any breakthroughs in either. I did see Jason at the training area, and I was surprised to learn that the class he had gotten was the rare [Meta Mage] class, its owner having apparently given up on getting a melee class and settled for contribution points, likely aiming to buy one of the few remaining class gems. Unlike other mage classes I knew, his gave him only one spellform, a basic Mana Bolt spell, but apparently rather than a skill that automatically converts his mana to a specific attribute, he got one that just made it easier to convert his mana to any meta attributes, and he got some knowledge implanted about the best ways to make sticky and bouncy mana, the latter of which he demonstrated by launching a white ball that bounced once before dissipating on its next hit, though it didn't lose any momentum. According to him, the method to make bouncy or sticky mana was pretty similar to fire mana, all three relying on your understanding of the concept in question and needing a flex of will, the only hard part being keeping it from returning to regular mana. The most interesting thing in my opinion was that his Mana Bolt spellform was apparently able to be used with any kind of mana, as mages always got a description of the spell implanted in their head alongside its spellform, and after having him teach it to me and comparing it with Crystal Shot, I saw that it was far simpler at three components, two of which were shared with Crystal Shot, and when I tried to use the spell with Crystal it launched a crystal spike that was more naturally shaped than the crystal spell, but it was weaker and slower even when I used the same amount of mana, seemingly much less efficient than a spellform with the proper energy input segment.

Even though the spell seemed weaker than the ones other mages got, the class itself seemed to be based more on combining multiple attributes for complex effects to bypass any defences as opposed to piercing through them with raw power. Either way, Jason himself seemed happy with the class, so that was good. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to encounter Leo when I was training, though I did learn about his second class when we all ate dinner together, it being an uncommon class named [Bannerman] which was focused on group buffs, giving him a way to actually use his mana in a fight. With both of them obtaining their second classes, our entire tutorial group was now all above level 10, though we were still the only ones in our larger group to achieve that, which according to my dad meant that we were in the top 10-20%, as he had heard the mayor complaining about how many people were stuck at level 10 when he was working, the few class gems that were for sale being all but gone and many people not wanting to take a useless secondary class, as most people only had classes like [Clerk] or [Student] available, both of which were less than useful with the current state of things, though it had apparently become very common for people to offer training sessions where they try to teach you their classes core skills to help you unlock it for a number of contribution points.

Other than the two new classes, nothing else important happened before it was time to meet up with my hunting group once more, this time planning to hunt for at least a week, planning to come back into town whenever our box was full before just going back in once it was emptied. We also planned to go a bit farther out and survey the surroundings a bit, as repeatedly hunting in the same area would just lead to us wasting our time once the animal density starts to drop, not to mention that there was a pretty hefty reward for anyone who found things like berry bushes or fruit trees, as while those with farmer or botanist classes like my mom weren't able to massively speed up crop growth, relocation was possible and even a single fruit tree would help.