Walking into the Dancing Goblin Inn, Mark immediately saw Donny sitting by the bar talking with Joe who was tapping his fingers impatiently. Walking over he sat down next to the boy. At this point, the inn was almost empty with only a few late drunks stooping over their half-finished pints. More sleeping than drinking really. He guessed Joe would throw them out soon.
Seeing the young man walk over Joe filled a mug for him and walked over to the other clients to slowly get them moving back home. It seemed that he was just waiting for Mark to come. He also gave him and Donny some space to talk in private.
“You came back, finally! I have been waiting here for hours already. I was thinking that something happened to you, you know? So, eh... what do we do now?”
“We? Are you intending to follow me around now?” Mark asked surprised. He didn’t know the boy that well. And though he did think briefly of training him to take care of the bandits, now after seeing their base he thought it could be too much to ask of the boy. They would be much tougher to take out than he initially thought.
“Well, I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t know what to do, I was never outside our home that much, only when I was hunting or we needed some shopping done in Pharia.”
Mark sighed, he guessed that was the burden of a savior, you help someone out once and it is expected that you would continue to do so. He thought of it for a while. If he wanted to go to the Capital he would need more power that’s for sure. A very good way of gaining it would be through self-improvement. Gaining levels, stats, and skills. As of right now, he was already more powerful in terms of rough strength and speed than he was at his peak on Earth. This world seems to have a very high potential for improvement with this weird tattoo thing.
But power could also be gained through other means. Like his Young Miss, she was no powerful assassin or an unmatched warrior, but she was powerful in a different meaning of the word. She had hundreds of loyal subordinates willing to die for her whenever needed. That was also a form of power.
He guessed that there were other incredibly powerful beings on his current planet, taking under consideration how fast he has improved so far, there was no way the natives of this world didn’t strive for power also. That meant individual power wasn’t something he could attain enough of to grant himself the ultimate safety.
So he had to gather other kinds like knowledge, subordinates, wisdom, magical artifacts, and wealth. All of those however boiled down to one thing. It required him to have people under him. Train warriors, for security, get administrators to run businesses, and all in all set up a powerful enough organization so that nobody would even consider messing with him.
Everything had to start somewhere, and taking under consideration that the boy before him already had nothing to lose, was saved by him, and was young enough to still be malleable enough to train him into someone capable yet, he could just as well start now.
The boy was slowly starting to grow uncomfortable under Mark’s silent judging gaze.
“Very well boy, you can follow me, but… You always follow my commands no matter what I require of you, you always stay near me and don’t talk when we are meeting other people unless I say so, if you have any insight, you share them only after I finished talking with the people. Understood?”
“Yes, I will follow your orders.”
“Good, in that case, I will train you from now on, if you can’t follow I will leave you in Pharia, you can become an adventurer or something I don’t care. Tomorrow I will see what you can do and we will go from there. You will also have to show me your wrist page.”
The boy looked at Mark confused for a second and only seemed to understand a moment later.
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“You mean the Heaven's Mark?”
“Yes, your heaven's mark.” Mark said looking unmoved outwardly, while internally committing the name to his memory. Donny was still a kid so he wouldn’t question Mark on not calling the mark by its name, but he would have to be more careful with his questions around older people. They could become suspicious of his apparent lack of common knowledge.
Donny slowly, hesitantly rolled up his sleeve, he was thought since he was a baby to not share his mark with other people, it was a secret only for the wielder of the mark to see, but he was in debt of the young man before him, and he intended to follow after him from now on. Also, he just heard the rules and didn’t want to instantly break them and have Mark leave him alone in Pharia, he would follow orders.
On his wrist, Mark saw a table similar to what was on his.
Name: Donny Clearspring
Class: None
Level: 8
Experience: 87/1280
MP: 20 SP: 33
Strength: 12
Agility: 17
Constitution: 11
Intelligence: 10
Skills: Novice Bow Mastery LVL 6 EXP 13/320, Precise Shot LVL 5 EXP 31/160, Sprint LVL 4 EXP 53/80, Forest Stride LVL 5 EXP 97/160, Animal Handling LVL 6 EXP 143/320
He could also see a couple of new skills which he didn't have himself.
Forest Stride
The art of moving efficiently through a Forest.
Animal Handling
Learned how to handle animals.
It was strange, he was walking through a forest from the first moment he got here and he still hasn’t received the Forest Stride skill, was there something more to gaining them? Maybe there was a method to gaining skills that the natives knew about but he didn’t. If so it would be difficult to ask about, but maybe he could ask the question in a way that wouldn’t seem as suspicious.
From the description of the skill, it looked very useful. If used together with Stealth in the forest he could practically disappear from the face of the earth. If it worked as he thought he could move without the worry of disturbing any foliage or branches. Absolutely silent and unseen, it sounded truly tempting to him.
The other one seemed interesting too, he guessed that knowing how to handle animals would be essential for a livestock farmer. And taking under consideration the weird sense of friendship between Donny and the big white wolf Mark sensed in the clearing, he seemed to have a talent for it.
Taking in the boy's stats he could see that he has trained a little bit, but not nearly enough for Mark's standards, he would have to run Donny through some exercise routines and get him up to some more respectable numbers.
He would also try training the boy in stealth, he would leave the daggers for later. He didn’t have much time at the moment, so he would see how good the boy was with his bow and maybe get him the Double Tap.
Mark was also interested in what his stats looked like at the moment, but he would have to wait for morning to do that. He was also very curious about the thing that happened when he filled his arrow with energy, and if it would manifest in the form of a skill in the system.
Now that he thought about this whole system or Haven's Mark, it seemed very inconvenient, he wondered why it was happening this way and didn’t change instantly, letting people keep up to date with their statistics.
And why did it show him Stealth and Stab straight away after the fight with his first goblins? It ain't make any sense.
He probably wouldn’t know any time soon. He had to get his hands on some books from this world quickly.
Leaving this thought in the back drawer of unanswered questions in the corner of his mind Mark turned his attention back to the boy, he let him cover his wrist and turned to Joe.
“Hey, Joe do you have another room?”
“Yea, there should be, you wanna rent 'nother one?”
“Yes, the boy had enough for today he should go rest a little.”
With that, he took the key Joe passed him and handed it over to the boy.
“Go sleep now, I will wake you up early morning we got to start building you a new daily exercise routine.”
The boy grabbed the key looked at the number, and without delay went up the stairs in the back. He seemed very tactful for his age, and for what happened to him but hours back.
“He a good kid. Been talkin with'im, when he came. A tragedy for one still so young. I hear ya takin care of the fucktards? I hope you do them good, let them feel the pain they deserve.”
“Will try my best for sure, you got that guaranteed”
“Good, good.” The barkeep said in a deep voice his eyes lit with fire. Mark was sure that if this man had a combat class he would no doubt have started hunting the bandits already.
Paying the tab for himself and Donny, Mark too retired to his room. Tomorrow would be a very busy day.