I certainly didn’t expect Jimmy to be waiting out the front of the Monster Hunter’s Guild as I approached.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were working,” I said.

“After you came back to Carl’s place yesterday and he heard that you were having a training session with Lance, he decided that I should probably come along and see if I could join in. Is that okay with you?”

“If Lance is as full on as you and Carl made him out to be, then maybe it’d be good to have someone to share the training session with. I don’t mind at all Jimmy. The more the merrier.”

“Great! Let’s head inside then.”

I quickly finished the last of my coffee, and it really was a testament to Quinn’s coffee making skills that there were no rogue grounds wallowing around in the bottom. It was smooth and delicious from the very first sip all the way to the last.

When we entered the guild Ben Ironside was there waiting for us. He looked down at the watch on his wrist with a raised eyebrow. “I was wondering whether you were going to show up today Jackson, but I didn’t expect that you’d bring a friend.”

Before I had a chance to respond another person walked out from the back of the guild and he was just ridiculously handsome. He was dressed in armor, and I’m not talking modern military tactical armor here, I’m talking plate armor like a knight from a fairy tale.

He was tall, taller than my new body, and he was literally the most handsome man I had ever seen. He had a chiseled jaw, piercing blue eyes, blonde hair that flowed over his shoulders like he was in a hair product commercial, and a smile that could make women faint.

He looked exactly like you’d expect a Prince Charming to look in a Disney movie.

“Good morning Jimmy, I thought this was going to be a solo training session today, but I should have known that you’d find a way to come along too. How have you been? Have you been working on your defensive skills?” Lance asked.

Jimmy laughed awkwardly. “Not as much as I would like to, I’m sorry. I’ve been doing lots of hours at the shop, doing lots of heavy lifting so I guess technically I was doing weights? But I’m really trying to save up for my own truck. So there’s not a lot of time for anything else, but Carl knows that I really want to advance my skills, and when he heard that Jackson was going to get a training session from you directly, he said that I should try my luck and come along.”

Lance laughed, and it was one of those booming confident ha ha ha kinds of laughs that just made you feel like you wanted to laugh along with him.

“I admire your tenacity, Jimmy. You’re not afraid to go after what you want, and that is a trait to admire. So, you must be Jackson. You are Joseph’s grandson, are you not?”

“I am indeed. Thank you for taking your time to assess me today, it’s very much appreciated.”

“I wouldn’t be doing my civic duty if I allowed the new owner of the farm to stay out there without knowing the danger that he’s in,” Lance said conspiratorially.

I was in danger? That was news to me.

“I don’t really feel like I’m in danger out there, but I did kill a few slimes yesterday.”

“With the threat of monsters in our world, no one is ever safe. You may think that you are, but then one day you might wake up and find that a mimic has decided to move in and turn itself into a perfect replica of your bed. You lay down, thinking that your pillow feels a little strange, and your blanket is heavier than normal, and then when you lay down to sleep, chomp! You’re gone, just like that!” Lance clapped his hands together for effect.

“Don’t mimics normally turn into treasure chests and stuff like that?” I asked. The only thing I knew about mimics, if they were indeed the same here as in fiction from my world, was that they usually disguised themselves as treasure chests to eat any adventurers that came along in search of riches.

“Mimics become anything that they know a human will try to interact with. The legends say that they were once often known to turn into treasure chests, but that is only because at one particular time in human history, adventurers would delve into dungeons specifically to look for treasure. But now you must be wary of everything. If you find an unexpected package waiting for you on your porch, stick it with your sword first just in case it’s a mimic waiting to ensnare you!”

“You seem awfully concerned about mimics, is it something that I should be worried about?” I asked, then gave a worried glance over at Ben Ironside.

“You should always be worried about mimics,” Lance continued. “I knew a man who once thought he'd found a lovely abandoned picnic basket, so he sat down for a fortuitous surprise luncheon only to have his arm completely bitten off. The mimic knew that the human could not resist the allure of a free lunch and then placed itself by the banks of the Yuca River. The perfect location for a picturesque lunch!”

Ben was smirking as Lance waffled on about the dangers of mimics. I could tell he wanted to say something, but it was difficult to get a word in edgewise when Lance was talking.

“What’s that look for,” I asked Ben.

Ben chuckled to himself. “Oh don’t worry about me, I just think that it’s funny that Lance has such a fixation on mimics. He’s a great monster hunter, but sometimes he can get a little carried away in doing his mimic checks.”

“You only think my mimic checks are superfluous until I find one, and then I guarantee that it’ll be a very different attitude!”

Ben waved the comment away. “Anyway, let’s get to the business at hand, shall we? I asked Lance to come here today so that you wouldn’t be killed on your farm before you had a chance to make a good go of things. Lance, I need you to show Jackson the ropes. Give him enough information to stop him from dying, okay?”

“But warning him about the dangers of mimics is doing just that,” Lanced argued.

Ben Ironside grunted and rolled his eyes. “Just get on with it, will you?”

Lance gave a little huff, then that charming smile came back with a vengeance. “Of course. Now tell me, Jackson, do you have your own set of wheels? The type of training we need to do cannot be done in town.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yeah, I just had my grandpa’s old truck serviced. So we should be good to go. The only problem is that it's only got a single tray of seats in the front, and it'll be a little bit squishy.”

Lance crossed the room and wrapped his arms around Jimmy and me in a fierce, warm embrace. “Then we shall all be fast friends by the time our journeys have finished, wouldn’t you say? Close proximity forges bonds that cannot be broken!”

“Yay,” I said a little sarcastically.

Three full-sized men squeezed into the front of a pickup truck was not the most comfortable way to drive. Lance was determined to sit in the center, which meant that there was a massive, armored blockage right in the middle of the car. Steel is unforgiving. It might be good at stopping monsters from killing you, but it also made turning a car that had no power steering pretty difficult as well.

“Ah, I do love an adventure. We are heading out to the plains where there are an abundant variety of different monsters. You see it is very important to approach the different monsters in different ways. Each of them requires a certain technique to kill them well. Many different things will work, but if you want to remain un-chewed-upon, you should follow my advice. I have been bitten and scratched and kicked many times so that you may learn from my mistakes.”

Lance had put a bag full of different equipment in the back of the truck, and I tied it down with some elastic bungee cords. It looked like a big sack full of weapons of different types. There was definitely a sword, a pair of axes, a bow and a quiver full of arrows, and a massive two handed hammer. Lance appeared to be able to carry them all with ease.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that different monsters are going to need us to use different weapon types to hurt them properly, right?” I asked.

Lance turned his head towards me with a strange look on his face. He tried to seem amused, but I also felt like I’d taken him a little by surprise. “I thought you said that you had never been monster hunting before.”

“That’s right, I’ve never been monster hunting before, but I read a lot of books. Fantasy is my favorite, and there are different monsters that always have different kinds of weaknesses. When I killed those slimes out on my farm the other day, this really sharp sword that my grandpa left behind cut through the membranes holding them together like a hot knife through butter. But I bet if I had used a hammer to try and kill them, that the hammer would have just squished them and they would have bounced away. But if we are going to come up against a turtle monster, we probably won’t be able to use the sword to kill it. We will probably have to use a hammer to crack its shell or something, right?”

“Well that is the gist of what I was going to teach you today, but I’m not going to consider this a wasted effort. Because practical application of theory is an important step to becoming a true Monster Hunter!” Lance said, and thrust his fist into the air like he was giving a speech on a battlefield.

“It's all good. I can understand the theory side of things but I still need someone to show me how to practically apply it, so don’t feel too bad. This is good,” I said.

“Oh, I never feel bad. Every day is an adventure, and as long as I’m here to experience it, I will make the most of every single one of them. Ha ha!”

This guy was way too upbeat and positive, and I had the feeling that he probably had some kind of tragic backstory which made him the way that he is.

Toxic negativity is definitely something that you want to avoid in your life, but nobody talks about just how damaging toxic positivity can be as well. If you’re positive and upbeat about absolutely everything in life, and you are completely oblivious or in denial about the frankly crappy reality actually is, it’s just as bad.

Life is all about balance, and it's important to remember that it is a dichotomy of extremes. Some argue that happiness wouldn’t exist without sadness, just as shadow cannot exist without light. I think that it could, it’s possible, but it wouldn’t have the same meaning. You can’t appreciate the high without experiencing the lows.

It wasn't long before Lance told me to pull off onto a road that led down towards a big lake. This thing was absolutely massive, and it had a strange looking island in the center of it that was covered in old trees and crumbling ruins. The ruins really did look like something out of a medieval affair, like a castle that was built hundreds of years ago but it had fallen into disrepair.

We weren’t the only people by the lakeside, as there were about half a dozen other cars parked in a paved parking lot just before a large expansive parklands that headed down to the lakefront. There was a playground there for kids, and I saw a couple of children racing each other up the playground stairs, almost like they were in a competition to see who could go down the slide first.

“This area doesn’t look very monstery,” I said. “Families wouldn’t bring their kids down here if they were monsters or would they?”

“We’re parking at the Lake Pleasant Parklands, but that’s not our final destination. We’ve got a bit of a walk ahead of us, and you'll soon understand why the monsters can’t make it here.”

The urge to groan came over me, but I stamped it down. There were still things that I wanted to do in town today like buy some more seeds from The Burrow and head into the bank to sort all of my finances out, but it sounded like I was going to be stuck out here for a few hours at least. The worst part was that we were approaching lunchtime and there was absolutely no food in my truck.

Then I realized what Lance was going to make us do.

“You’re going to make us kill some monsters and cook them for lunch aren’t you, Lance? This isn’t just a monster hunting expedition, it’s survivalist training as well, isn’t it?” I asked.

Lance looked back at me with that same dumbfounded expression on his face. It was like he didn’t understand that someone would be able to preempt his extremely overt and not-at-all-subtle plans.

“You are quite the perceptive one, aren’t you Jackson? Yes, that is exactly what we are going to do.” Lance sighed.

“This is so awesome,” Jimmy said. “Not only are we getting a lesson from Lance the A-Rank Monster Hunter himself, but he’s also going to teach us survivalist skills? This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me!”

Lance flashed his charming smile at Jimmy. “Don’t you worry about how long this is going to take, young Jimmy. I don’t know how long Carl thought you would be gone for, but I’ll go in there myself and I’ll explain the situation. All going to plan we should hopefully return with a few monster cores anyway, and you can just make sure you give Carl the best one that you harvest.”

“Oh my gosh, this is the best day ever.” Suddenly Jimmy didn’t look like a grown young man, but instead sounded like an excited kid on Christmas Day.

That idle thought about Christmas made me realize that I had no idea what kind of customs and traditions this world had, and I made a mental note that I would have to figure all of that out. I didn’t want to let my cover as a reincarnated old man from another world get blown, so I needed people to think that I really was the same Jackson Jones that had been around before my soul plonked down into his body.

I pulled up into one of the empty parking spots and we left the car. Lance unpacked all of the different weapons that he had in his bag, and he had two small packs full of wilderness supplies waiting in the bottom of the bag as well. He handed one of these bags to me, and the other to Jimmy.

“I would have normally carried one of these myself, but this has worked out even better. Now both of you can work together and use the survival skills that I teach you.”

Jimmy nodded eagerly, and I didn’t have the heart to tell Lance that I had been camping many times before, and knew exactly how to start a fire, make snare traps, how to disguise my scent from predators, and all of that basic survival craft stuff.

I had a feeling Lance was looking forward to being the knowledgeable guide on this expedition, but aside from the monster hunting aspect, I probably already knew everything he was gearing up to teach me.

Still, I could just decide to play along, as Jimmy probably needed to learn all of this stuff anyway.

I slipped the pack over my shoulders, grabbed the two axes from the bag of weapons, and slung them through the loops on my back. Lance gave me an appreciative look, then beckoned us to follow him. We headed away from the parking lot towards an overgrown trail that was barely visible from the car.

“This is where today’s adventure truly starts. Are you both ready?” Lance asked.

I shared a look with Jimmy and felt the fluttering rush of excitement rumbling up inside me. I nodded, Jimmy concurred, and we followed Lance into the wild.