Lunch was quite a quick affair. They simply returned to Silver Grove and had a short meal of wild boar. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but was quite filling nonetheless. And then she was on her own. Ada had left as soon as she finished eating, and headed back for the clinic. That just left Quinn with half-eaten food sitting in a tavern surrounded by strangers. She pulled her sagen tighter around herself as she finished the pieces of boar.
After her meal, she stepped out onto the gloomy streets and headed for the northern gate. Its palisades stood barely over the tops of the houses, allowing her to have a fairly easy time navigating from the tavern. Ada had helped her out before she left and told her to go to the north side for the forest. Apparently, a river ran to the south East of Weildenbach and was home to many farms. The north side was untamed by comparison. The only man-made structures up here were small logging and mining camps.
A few rugged people covered in wet silver dust walked in the same direction as her. When she got lost in the maze of similar buildings, she simply followed them in hopes of getting to the right place. Thankfully, they were headed to the gates too.
Two people stood at the open gates. Each held a spear and was covered in what looked to be leather armor. Their sagen were up, warding off the rain just like everyone else. Unlike the others, theirs were lighter gray. Not quite silver, but leaning in that direction. They looked like bandits that came straight out of the fantasy games she used to play.
The guys in silver dust easily passed through the gate with just a few words exchanged, but she was stopped immediately by one of the guards. “Halt!”
She paused and looked up through the depths of her hood. “Sir?”
“Aih ain’t seen you before, stranger. Who are you?” One of the guards asked. Now that she was closer, she could see he had a thick mustache and several teeth missing.
“You… must be that mystery girl that saw Sir Alwin?” The other one had sunken eyes that looked as if he was severely drugged out. The severe emancipation of his cheeks didn't help the vibe he was giving off. The sharpness in his voice and eyes told a different tale.
Quinn shakily nodded her head as she looked in between the two. “Um, yes I am…” what did they want? Was it just a simple check? But did they really have to pick the two scary-looking guards to sit at the gate? One's face sunk so much he looked like a corpse, and the other looked like a rip-off supervillain.
The one Quinn associated with an undead produced a clipboard from his belt. He leaned on his spear as he grabbed a feather quill tipped with ink. “Name?”
“It’s uh, Quinnzel.”
The man with the bushy mustache glared at her. "Will you be returning?"
Quinn was quite taken aback by the apparent hostility in his gaze. "I - umm think so? I mean, yes."
“Alright, you’re free - to go on, I mean.” Corpse face said as they both moved out of the way. “Oh, and if you come in another gate, tell ‘em Bernd sent you.”
Quinn briskly walked through the rain-shrouded gate and out onto the outside of the walls. Thunder crashed overhead, nearly causing her to jump out of her skin. She nervously glanced back to the safety of the walls. Although the guards were scary and the walls were just made of stone, she felt so much safer inside the town than she did now. And she wasn't even thirty steps out.
She unslung the bow around her shoulders and grabbed onto her quiver as she stepped into the tree line not far from the wall. She had gone off to the right side of the path that the silver-coated group walked down. The trees around here looked to be about what she would expect from a northern forest. They were tall and covered in dark green needles. She wasn’t an arborist, so she didn’t know what exactly they were. Pine was her best guess, but they looked slightly off from the pine trees she had seen before.
She walked a little way in and then stopped next to a rather large tree. Using the arrowhead, which was surprisingly made of metal, she gouged a rough circle in the bark. She made several smaller circles inside of it until a rough target appeared. Taking a step back to appreciate her handiwork, Quinn ignored the obviously oval shape that she had drawn.
She had decided upon this course of action while she ate lunch. Since it had been a really long time since she last went shooting, she decided to practice first. It wouldn’t make much sense for her to instantly go hunt down an animal if she couldn’t hit it with an arrow. At best, she would miss entirely and be able to retrieve her arrow. At worst she would piss off an animal that could run her through.
That, and she wasn’t very confident in her muscles. She was ninety percent sure that she would be eaten if a monster were to come across her, so she wanted to stay close to the village. Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry about losing the village as the black-roofed tower was quite a landmark.
Quinn set her feet at a ninety-degree angle with her right foot pointed toward the target and her left foot pointed out sharply in the same direction as the rest of her body. She slid her right foot forward a couple of steps and shook out her already tired arms.
The black recurve bow was held up with her right arm and her left hand held the string. She fiddled around with the string, struggling slightly to notch an arrow. She finally got it lined up and used three fingers - two on the bottom of the notch and one on top - to pull back the string. Her weary muscles tensed harshly as she pulled back as far as she could go, which was only two-thirds of the way.
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She released her hold on the string while making sure to keep her right arm stable. The string launched forward as the whole bow snapped forward with a sharp twang. The arrow flew from the bow, falling just barely inside the outermost circle. It had been a while, so she was quite rusty. She didn’t have near the precision and power that she had when hunting in the past, but she wasn’t as far off as she thought she would be. With a soft sigh, she pulled another arrow from the quiver and fired it.
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Quinn wasn’t sure how long she had been shooting for, but she was beat. Even just forcing her muscles to pull out the arrows caused a light groan to come from her. Sweat soaked every part of her and she was covered in pieces of bark. She desperately needed a bath and to wash her clothes.
She slung the bow back over her shoulder and looked at the fruits of her labor. Ten arrows were embedded into the bark of the tree. Five of them were within the bullseye range, one of them was on the line, and the other four were scattered about. That was the best she would get with her arms as tired and shaky as they were.
She glanced around, as she had every couple of seconds since coming out here, and then moved to grab her arrows. Her muscles were mostly numb, so she didn’t feel the excruciating pain as she ripped the ten arrows from the tree and returned them to her quiver. She did, however, feel the trickle of blood flowing down her finger from where the string had cut her hand. Shooting so many times had really taken its toll on her.
She used the rain as a makeshift shower, allowing it to wash the wood chips and sweat off while somehow not getting entirely soaked in the process. Quinn sat down against the tree, letting the rain wash off the blood on her hand. Her sagen was wrapped around her in a way that protected her lap from the rain and allowed her to sit without soaking her trousers.
She sighed as she looked around the towering trees. Her dad would have really loved this place. He loved the rain dearly and would always be smiling brightly under the gloomy skies. He would always laugh and joke that rainy days were the light of his life before he met her mother. And the magic and unknown here would have inspired him greatly to go out and adventure. He wouldn't have struggled with this fear of monsters that she was having but would've happily moved towards bettering himself to take them on.
‘Dad…’ A tear fell from her face, easily blending in with the raindrops. She still missed him so much. She had been told countless times that the agony of loss would get better, but it never did. It was still just as painful as the day she put him in the ground. Quinn took a deep breath and calmed her emotions. He would be disappointed to see her still moping around after seven years.
She shook her head and focused on her weary left arm. Quinn had been meaning to do this since she first used Cleanse, but had been quite busy. Her arm still felt oddly light, as if it had been filled with helium while the rest of her was lead.
She focused on the light feeling. She moved her army up and down a few times, feeling it displace the air. It was faint, but she could feel a slight tingle on her skin as something moved through her arm with each passing motion.
Quinn held still. She could still feel the tingling. Focus. She needed to focus. Every thought was gone from her head and she closed her eyes. The tingling grew slightly as she could feel a suction in her arm. It felt as though her arm was absorbing something from the air.
But then where did it go? Out. The absorbed substance simply left her body without settling. Quinn tried to move the substance, which she recognized as most likely being mana. No response.
Just how had Ada done it? How did she freely manipulate the mana to cast Cleanse? A worry began to grow in the depths of her heart. Since she came from a mana-less world - as far as she knew - would she be able to even use magic now that she had access to mana?
‘Just move!’ She was beyond frustrated as she tried everything in her power to forcibly move the mana flowing through her arm. She fell back against the tree and let her arm sag. Was she doing something wrong?
She thought back to her lifetime of playing fantasy games and reading books. Maybe something from them would help her out? She thought about it deeply before coming up with a new idea. Maybe it wasn’t that mana had to be forced to move along, but lightly manipulated?
She decided to try something new. She closed her eyes once more and focused on the faint feeling in her arm. Instead of forcing it, she envisioned the mana settling in her arm instead of just going out.
She patiently kept at it for a minute as she felt a result. Although it was minute, she felt a warm pulsation in the middle of her arm as a tiny dot of mana paused for a quarter of a second.
She wanted to jump for joy! She had actually done it! As soon as she got it, her excitement overpowered her patience and she lost control and it dissipated like usual.
Her excitement was soured as she heard a loud Ding! She stood up, collected her stuff, and quickly made her way back to the town. It had gotten quite dark at some point, so she was very thankful for the constant ringing of the bell leading her back. She stepped free of the tree line and saw the stone walls of Weildenbach.
She got through the gates easily enough. Corpse face and d-rate villain recognized her instantly, allowing her through without much hassle. She then made her way back to the clinic. She got lost a few times, but there was always a passerby on the move for her to ask for directions.
She opened the door and stepped into the clinic, feeling the rain cease hitting her body for the first time in hours.
She found Ada leaning on the doorway of one of the closed rooms. She wasn’t talking to anybody, just frostily staring. “Ada?”
Ada turned towards her with a grimace. “Hey, Quinn. I know what we’re doin’ tomorrow.”
Quinn looked over her shoulder and into the room. “What the-?” The room was almost entirely coated in dirt. Grass was growing out of some of the dirt, forming what looked like a bed of sorts. She could definitely smell the faint scent of freshly watered grass coming from the room.
“Last time we let that guy stay here…” Ada sighed as her shoulders drooped. “We’ll clean it up tomorrow. Night, Quinn.” She walked off to her room and up the stairs.
Quinn shook her head as she looked at the room. That was going to be a pain. She returned to her own room and took off the bow and quiver. She leaned them up against the wall and lay down.
She tried to manipulate the mana again, making tiny progress in retaining it. Earlier she could hold a single grain’s worth, but now she could absorb just barely a half a grain more. Perhaps she should ask for advice from Ada tomorrow. She closed her eyes and her weary body fell fast asleep.