Chapter 3:

Daniel sighed as the Cleaning Cantrip scoured the goblin blood and guts from his hands, leaving him with four small blue crystals and an ear. He left their weapons alone since they were rusty, short, and just not all that great. He could have fixed some of that with magic, but it just wasn’t worth it. His spear would be enough for melee while keeping some range and the crystals opened up a lot more opportunities.

The crystals were Monster cores. Crystalized chaotic mana that ran through any Monster's body. Far more volatile than the mana in magical plants and animals.

For those without magical classes, they sold well on the market. For those with a magic class, they could be used for powering all sorts of things. The only real limit was that they should only be used for external magics, lest the unstable nature of the mana cause problems. In his case, though, they would be very useful for ritual casting and some minor enchanting.

Overall, very useful.

The goblin ear on the other hand… Well it was useful as well, or else he wouldn’t have taken it, but not nearly as much. It was also far more disgusting. While the Cleaning Cantrip had gotten rid of all the dripping blood, it was still a green severed pointed ear. Even with all his adventuring, he still disliked stuff like this a lot. But he did need it for what he had planned next, so he stuffed it into his pockets along with the Monster cores.

With that taken care of, he had one more thing he needed to do before he could leave. He needed to decide if he should take one of these goblin heads with him as proof of there being Monsters. That there were things far different here than the people back at the camp were used to. Because one of the biggest issues they had in the original timeline was simply not being cautious enough.

They’d thought the worst thing they could encounter out here would be a bear, which wouldn’t have reason to attack such a large group of people. Instead, they got Monsters that were not only eager to attack their large group but able to do a lot of damage to them.

So breaking them of their false sense of security was a must.

The only question was, did he really want to convince everyone with a Monster head like this? Even if it was enough for them, he didn’t doubt that walking into camp with a bloody goblin head would not endear him to anyone. Especially not to people who were used to living on Earth instead of this world. They’d think of him as a psycho.

Granted, it wasn’t like bringing around a severed Monster head in most cities of this world wasn’t strange. However, no one would think the one doing that was a criminal or psychotic for it. Just messy and too lazy to wrap it up.

But what other options did he have?

He wasn’t the only one to encounter Monsters in the original timeline. One of the scouting groups was lost to some most likely, and the group Joseph led came back with stories of having driven off a freaky-looking bear as well. The problem, though, was that they had assumed they were just animals.

They just hadn’t encountered anything actually monstrous. At least not Joseph’s group who survived. And while they had scheduled a night watch, in case of overly aggressive animals, they’d only scheduled two people at a time. Not nearly enough for what happened.

The few guns in their little group of fifty had also been a bit problematic. Not that guns weren’t effective, as they could kill E and weak D-tier Monsters with relative ease. But they’d made people feel too safe, and they assumed that anything in the forest could be driven off with them.

They hadn’t planned for Monsters to attack and be undaunted by the death and noise. Nor did they expect to be attacked by so many that they ran out of ammo.

So it was either bring the head back and hope that made people wary enough or… he could take care of most of the Monsters by himself ahead of time. It would hopefully help him level faster, which would be useful in the future, and he could even let a few goblins or something get by to attack the camp. Just enough to cause a scare but not kill anyone.

Then the people would get the warning they need, and he wouldn’t need to look like a psycho to them.

Normally he wouldn’t care that much, as he didn’t have great memories about the people he had been brought to this world with. But he wasn’t callous, and aside from one person in their group, he wanted them all to live. He may have other things he needed to do, but he needed to get strong enough to do them first, so he might as well spend the time making sure everyone lived this time, as well.

And to do that, he needed them to not balk at his suggestions, or think of him as a psycho to be ignored or feared.

Daniel supposed another option would be to reveal his magic to them, and show that he can scry a way to safety. But that could cause a similar problem by making him stand out and be strange. It could also make people jump to incorrect conclusions. After all, if they were in another world with magic, wouldn’t the one person in their group who already knew magic be working with whoever brought them here?

Or maybe even be the one who brought them all here?

Though perhaps he could just make up a lie about their having been magic on Earth. Some kind of urban fantasy masquerade type thing.

The thought made Daniel laugh, but he dismissed it. It was still rather suspicious, and he was fairly certain only one person in their group of fifty would trust him if he revealed his magic. Better to just keep that to himself, and guide things from the shadows as best as he could, while keeping everyone safe.

It would probably be frustrating but ultimately the better option.

He’d just have to figure out how to get them to go where he wanted later. Because they would not be going towards the County of Caminus this time and right into Count Caminus’s hands.

That cultist bastard was not going to get his hands on any of them this time around. As for where they’d go… He needed to think about it more. There were really only two options, though both had drawbacks.

But for now, he had things he needed to do. He had no idea when the second scout group ran into trouble in the original timeline, but hopefully, they would be fine until he got there and hadn’t already run into trouble.

Part of him felt bad for letting them go ahead, instead of joining them, but without the time to prepare, practice, and gather supplies, he wouldn’t have been nearly as much help as he could be once he prepared.

He just needed to make use of some of his Monster crystals first and then he’d be on his way.

—

Daniel ran through the forest at a fast jog, not trusting himself to move any faster in his younger and weaker body. The ritual cast enhancement he sacrificed one of the Monster cores for only increased his overall speed and strength, but not his perception and dexterity. Despite that, though, he made little sound or trace of his passage as he followed the direction the enchanted stick was pointing him toward.

That had cost him another Monster crystal, as well as a stick from a mana-rich tree and a hair from one of the members of the second scouting party. Thankfully they had left after Daniel had remembered what happened to them, and he managed to snag a hair from one of them without anyone noticing. He may not have any Rogue skills anymore, but he could still do minor slights of hand like that with relative ease.

As he traveled through the forest, he would occasionally stop to hold the stick in his palm and cast a cantrip to float it. It would then point towards the scouting group, and he would continue on, quickly gaining on them.

When the buzzing from the stick started to grow in strength to indicate they were close, he finally slowed down and used his Shadow Blend again to hide. Then he crept through the underbrush.

It ended up taking him only less than a quarter of an hour to find them, despite it being hours since they left. That was due to both his enhanced speed, along with his familiarity at moving through a forest quickly, along with their caution and unfamiliarity with their surroundings.

The first member of the group he spotted was a young man with bronze skin and curly black hair. He carried a makeshift wooden spear in both hands. Daniel didn’t really remember him from the past, which made sense since this should be the same group as the original timeline, and thus he never made it back from this.

Thankfully, the young man didn’t look worried. There was caution in his pose, but not anything more than being careful in a potentially dangerous place. Which meant Daniel had made it in time.

Carefully, he crept around the group, able to keep up with them easily since they spent the extra time leaving a trail for themselves. The other three members of the group were two other guys and one young woman. Only the young woman had a makeshift spear as well, while the other two men went without. Foolish since he didn’t see any other weapons on them.

One of the guys was a dark-skinned bald man, probably early twenties at most. The other was a bit older looking, with brown hair and tanned. The only woman in the group was a redhead with her hair in a ponytail and pale skin.

Like the first guy he saw, they all looked relatively alert, but not overtly afraid. So they definitely hadn’t encountered any Monsters yet. That left him with a lot of leeway. How exactly should he interfere? Obviously, he planned for all of them to come out of it alive, but he would like to hide his presence if possible.

Then again, maybe he should find out what Monsters might be in the area first before he made any decisions. They never did find out what happened to this group, so it's possible the Monster is something unusual or powerful. If that was the case, he’d need to make them leave instead. However, if it was weak and obviously supernatural, perhaps he would let them encounter it after he injured it.

Still crouched in the underbrush and allowing himself to fall behind the slow-moving group, Daniel pulled out another Monster crystal. Using Minor Earth Shaping, he flattened the ground in front of him, then drew out a ritual diagram quickly and precisely with a stick. It was easier and a bit faster than when he’d done this for the body-enhancing spell, as he’d unlocked the Basic Ritual Casting skill after successfully casting with a ritual.

The skill came with knowledge he already knew, though it did refresh his memory and keep it much clearer in his mind. More important for the moment, though, was it aided his setup speed by giving him back some of the muscle memory he’d lost and hadn’t even realized until he’d tried setting up the ritual for Minor Body Enhancement.

He was probably going to want to advance that Skill when he had better equipment and reagents. Ritual casting made it a lot easier to cast spells at the expense of setup time. It was also the safest way to use monster crystals to power spells aside from enchanting. With his mana control as poor as it was now and his mana pool still so small, he’d be relying on rituals for some time to make up for that.

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Once he was done, Daniel placed the Monster crystal in the center and started the ritual, pushing his mana into the diagram and closing his right eye.

Slowly, a ghostly eye, almost imperceptible, appeared inside the circle. At the same time, Daniel's vision changed. One eye still saw the world around him from his perspective. But from his other eye, his closed one, he could see out of the ghostly eye as it floated up into the air and moved around.

The dual vision was a bit confusing and made all the more so without some of the more helpful mage skills, but it was still manageable for him. He was very used to the Scrying Eye, as gathering information and keeping hidden were some of the specialties of an Arcane Shadow. And while it was possible to ward against this kind of spying, and some skills could reveal it, there were still far more opportunities to use the spell without restraint.

Like in a Monster-infested forest far from civilization.

There were some Monsters that could detect such things too, but Daniel doubted anything like that would be around here. And at worst, it would just alert such a Monster that something was around, but not what or even where.

The eye floated to just below the tree canopy and sped off to catch back up with the scouting group. Daniel himself had to stay put next to the ritual, lest he break his connection to it. He still kept his other eye on his surroundings, though, to prevent anything from sneaking up on him, even as he paid more attention to the eye’s vision.

Once the eye caught up, he scanned around quickly to search for any immediate dangers. There weren’t any, so he sent it in a spiral search pattern, looking for any signs of Monsters. Hopefully, he’d find something before the scouting group left his range. It had a range of several miles, and he could end the spell early to move to catch back up. But each casting of the ritual would drain the Monster crystal a lot more than just maintaining the spell.

And with how few Monster crystals he had on him, he wasn’t too eager to use them up. If that wasn’t the case, he could have gone for another spell to find the general location of all monsters in the area and then sent the eye ahead to take a look. That would have been much faster with no risk of them getting out of range.

Though given their speed, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue regardless. It was doubtful they would travel several more miles in this forest at these speeds. Not when they’d probably needed to start heading back soon if they wanted to get back before dark. It was noon when they all arrived here, and already several hours had passed. Heading back would be quicker, but not by that much.

It didn’t take Daniel long before his eye found something of note. The eye could move as fast as a small bird and was incorporeal as well. And while he did need to slow it down a bit to make sure he didn’t miss anything, it still was able to cover a large area very quickly. It also helped that his mana sense extended from the spell a bit too, making it less likely for him to miss any Monsters he couldn’t see.

It was a large mother boar with a couple of baby boars following it around. While still potentially dangerous, even back on Earth, Daniel didn’t think they would pose much of a threat. They were headed away from the direction of the scouting group.

And while he could sense a bit of chaotic mana from the mother boar, it wasn’t enough yet to cause it to turn into a Monster. Instead, the mana felt like it was on the verge of coming under control. So unless the boar wandered into a newly formed dungeon, it wasn’t going to be transforming into a Monster any time soon. More likely it may gain some kind of magical ability instead, going from a normal animal to a magical beast.

So he left it alone and kept his eye searching. He encountered several more animals over the next half hour, but none of them were Monsters. Some were predatory and potentially dangerous, but none were headed in the direction of the scouting group…

In fact, they were all headed away. From both the scouting group and where they’d been summoned. None were too rushed but they did look agitated. And there was a surprising lack of Monsters in the area. They were pretty far into Tarnith’s southern frontier, if he remembered correctly, so there should have been more monsters.

Though then again, as he thought about it, the monster attacks had gotten worse and worse as more days passed in the original timeline. Perhaps something about the summoning ritual chased most things out of the region temporarily. But if that was the case, why had the goblins still showed up so early?

As Daniel continued to search, he did end up spotting a single magical beast. It was a Shadow Fox, but it slipped away almost as soon as he spotted it. Not that it mattered all that much. A small fox-like that, despite its abilities, was hardly going to attack the scouting group.

But then, what did? Perhaps it was actually the goblins that Daniel had escaped from originally? And now that he’s dealt with them this time around, the scouting group was already safe?

…Or maybe not. Yes, definitely not.

The eye finally found some Monsters. Three Monster wolves to be exact, each one probably tall enough to reach Daniel’s waist while on all fours. They were rather large, their eyes glowed red, and the chaotic mana inside them made their nature obvious. Not too strong though, low D-Rank at best. Something a decent level 10 adventurer should be able to take on. Or a level 3 Mage with far more experience than he should.

Which was good since he definitely needed to take care of them.

Despite whatever had chased most of the Monsters and animals out of the region, they were headed straight for the scouting group. Much faster than the humans were moving. Probably using some kind of magical sense, as they weren’t following the trail left behind by the scouting group either.

Now Daniel just needed to make his decision on what to do. They were Monster wolves, so it was something that the scouting group could justify to themselves as just wild animals. That meant it wasn’t super needed for them to encounter the wolves. But, it probably would help if one more group ran into something strange to break people from their disbelief.

Then again, could he risk letting one of the wolves get close enough to the group? They were low D-Rank at best, yes, but he still didn’t have enough mana for anything all that major. He’d probably have some trouble taking these things out if he had to worry about keeping the scouting group safe as well.

And that wasn’t taking into account his desire to avoid revealing himself. Which meant that he only had one real option.

Mind made up, Daniel did one more quick sweep at the range he found the wolves, then got up and picked up the partially used Monster crystal. The vision he was getting from the scrying eye disappeared and he started in the direction of the wolves. Quickly, he cast another Cleaning Cantrip on himself to mask any smells, and pulled his mana tightly to his body, just in case.

There was still some time before they would intersect with the scouting group, so he could afford to hold back on his speed to maintain his stealth. Even still, he was moving quite a bit faster than the scouting group had, and also carefully carving a simple magic diagram onto the partially used Monster crystal with the Cutting Cantrip as he went.

He still couldn’t use much offensive magic, and physically he was much weaker than the wolves. Minor Body Enhancement closed the distance a bit, but not to the point he wanted to get into melee with a pack of Monster wolves. At least, not while they were at their best and without any tricks. So he needed to be smart about this and take them out as quickly and efficiently as he could.

Once he was done with the half-empty crystal, he took his final full Monster crystal out and did the same thing to it as well. Probably not the most optimal use of his final crystal, but it was the best he could do at the moment. He no longer knew exactly where the two groups were, so setting an ambush with a ritual cast spell might be risky.

And he just didn’t have enough material to use, nor the mana control needed, to make use of the final Monster crystal in a more sophisticated way.

So rough and slapdash it was. Evelyn would be so disappointed…

Daniel forced that thought away and focused on the here and now. He needed to focus. He was far weaker than he had been in a long time, and he’d only spent a couple of hours recovering his abilities. He’d needed a lot more time before he could fight something like these wolves distracted.

Once he thought he was getting close to the wolves from his estimates, he slowed down considerably and cast Shadow Blend again. He also used the cleaning cantrip once more to hopefully mask any smells. He really should have had a scent masking spell in his repertoire, but he had had a Rogue skill in the past that covered it. And he hadn’t been their group's utility magic user anyway…

Damn it, focus!

Daniel took a quiet breath to focus, then pushed all other thoughts away as he snuck forward, slowly and carefully, not making a sound.

After several moments, he finally caught sight of the wolves again. Being deadly predators born in this forest, they hid quite well, their mottled brown and black fur letting them blend into the foliage and shadows. Unaugmented by his scrying spell, his mana sense also had a hard time picking them up. It was only because of his own well-trained eyes that he spotted them so easily, and because of his spells that he could hide from them.

Even then, once they were in sight, he held still, not wanting to give his hiding spot away.

As the wolves continued to move, it became obvious that they wouldn’t be passing by where he hid. So he wouldn’t be able to manage a quick and decisive kill with his spear. At least not easily. But if he had tried that, then he might be too close to the wolves to use his crystals.

So perhaps it was for the best.

He breathed in slowly to calm himself, then took an extra moment to cast Increase Durability on his spear, before taking out the half-full Monster crystal.

Finally ready, he cast Daze on the closest wolf. Not too strong and still a cantrip. But still very useful.

The spell had no visual indication that it happened, but he could feel it latch onto the wolf, and see the beast stutter to a stop, confused.

“Hey! Over here!” Daniel called out, standing and drawing the wolf's confused attention to himself. Then he connected to the spell diagram carved onto the crystal in his hand and tossed it at the wolf.

The dazed wolf followed the crystal as it flew through the air, snapping to catch it instinctively, even as the other wolves locked onto Daniel with laser-like focus. But before either of the two other wolves could do anything, Daniel sent a pulse of mana to the crystal through the connection he forged and detonated it.

Bang!

The half-full Monster crystal exploded in the mouth of the dazed wolf, destroying a large section of its head. Its body twitched and tumbled to the ground, and the other two wolves jumped, surprised at the sound.

Not wanting to give them the chance to recover, Daniel took out the other Monster crystal and tossed it right between the two remaining wolves. The moment it got between the two, he detonated it.

BANG!

This explosion was much larger than the first, even if it didn’t do as much damage. After all, this Monster crystal had been full. And while a Monster crystal from an E-Rank goblin wasn’t that powerful, it was still enough to create quite the explosion.

Both wolves were sent tumbling apart, and Daniel charged at the nearest one, spear in hand. Using all his spell-enhanced speed and strength, he drove it straight into the eye of the wolf struggling to its feet, killing it instantly, before he ripped it out and spun to face the last wolf.

It was back on its feet, snarling, but before it could charge, Daniel threw something right in front of it, causing it to flinch and jump back.

With a smirk, Daniel charged forward to cover the distance between them, stepping over the rock he threw and speared the wolf in the mouth before it could react. It tried to bite down, but Daniel's spell kept the spear intact as he used all his strength to twist the spear and drive it up into the roof of its mouth.

The wolf died, snarling with blood and saliva running out of its mouth, held up onto its hind legs by the spear.

Daniel let out a grim satisfied smile at the sight before kicking the wolf off his spear. He’d long since gotten used to such brutal sights, and it always felt good when a plan was executed flawlessly. And it was one less Monster in the world to kill good innocent people. And perhaps he also needed to let off some more steam over his situation.

Ding!

Congratulations! You’ve reached level 4 as a mage!

Daniel’s grin grew wider at the notification. If he was remembering right, he just needed one more level to gain the skill he wanted, which shouldn’t take that long. If only it was that easy to level up at the later levels like these early ones. Then again, he was leveling rather fast, even for someone who reached adulthood without any classes. Hopefully, he could keep up the pace.

But he couldn’t let himself enjoy the victory too much. He was still relatively close to the scouting group and they probably heard the sounds of the explosions. He’d have to get away in case they decided to take a peak.

Quickly and efficiently using his mana sense, he located the Monster cores in the three wolves and dug them out. Then he took one of the wolf ears as well, before cleaning himself with another Cleaning Cantrip afterwards. Finally, he cast another Shadow Blend and snuck away. There were still plenty of things he needed to do and the scouting party should be safe now.

He scryed pretty far to find those wolves, and he hadn’t seen any other potential risk to them. And it really was about time that they should be headed back.