'The sun is as high as it will ever be, so come out of your den it's time for supper,' Elina didn't seem to care what her father had said as she stared blankly into the mess of a book in front of her, staying up till late she had read it till she fell asleep and as a result of the had drooled all over the ink words, it was a few pages around the relations of alchemy and runes, unlike before she didn't panic, she had reread this so much to the point that she could rewrite the whole book,

'Elina!, Supper!' Gour-me called again more excited than angry, 'coming' she said, going to the kitchen, her father and mother were sitting beside each other, in front of them was the red roasted limb of a deer, steam threatening to break out of the crisp skin, in a trey at the center of the wooden table, on its side was a pot of stew made of meat and the mushrooms she had foraged yesterday, she could see why her father was so fervent on calling her, however this time the usual potatoes or bread loaf were nowhere to be seen,

Taking a seat in front of them Elina reaches out for the food, her mother slaps her hand away and joins her palms together making a praying gesture.

My father and I just proceed to follow her, we are supposed to pray silently but it's been a long time since I've stopped believing in this faith, every other religion is having an awakening, where in the old times their gods lend them strength, but now is actively interacting with them as the Era of the Gods approaches, but nevermind our gods manifesting or talking to us in our dreams, the priest next door has yet to conjure a single blessing from them.

'Amen', Elina said out loud to signal the end of her silent prayer, 'why only meat?' Elina questioned, 'Is that supposed to be a problem?' Father replied, 'I like my potatoes' I said, well it seems the Duke is also fond of your potatoes' he said while breaking the skin of the deer with a crunch, steam oozing out, as he cut out portions for us

'The officers have suddenly taken almost all of the grain and stocks of vegetables this morning' he said with a sigh that blew the steam away, 'they said King Solomani has issued this order

'Why would Duke Cartel allow such a thing?' questioned Mother, 'well obviously no one would like to be the house that contributed the least for god's new children, and in all honesty, it was probably him' answered Gour-me, 'Also luckily for us they did not collect any money from us and harvest is next week, until then poultry and deer is what we have and all we need.

After we had our breakfast, things were going on as usual, Father was struggling to button up his council dress around his belly, he was summoned to supervise a matter about a mercenary, Mother was sitting by the window sowing a picture of a flower on a silk cloth and Maria, the maid was busy cleaning up our mess, I was rewriting the book, all was usual until I saw father through the room door, he was holding his precious gun, a mixture of wood and metals fortified by runes encarved by a hollow runesmith, he received it as a result of being head of hunts and never took it out casually, or at all,

When questioned he said that there was a report about an oger from outside the town, he didn't say anymore and left in a hurry, Elina went back to her room, she pulled the drawer out from her desk, it contained a single piece of paper, it was filled to the brim with words, symbols and had a single picture of a fireball,

Many people were bustling around the townhall, some went in to talk, some to stir up problems and some to settle them, Gour-me had finally reached the front entrance, with something clothed slung behind him, inside the room there were 4 receptionist desks and a big lounge area, most of the cities functions such as request posters for any of the guilds were received here and posted in a giant bulletin board, it also functioned as a bank, a meeting area and its least important function was deciding what to do, between all the heads, they functioned independently unless the topic of funds came, which was all the time, though, this time was an exception,

In the lounge, random assortments of people sat there, but a band of their local guards was glancing wearily at him one of them being Shylock, son of Bassanio the Head of Defence.

He didn't bother greeting anyone, he went up the stairs and 2 perpendicular corridors later he was in front of 2 menacing wooden doors, behind them was the round chamber, he knocked on the door and was immediately given passage,

5 people were waiting for him, 1 was standing near the door, and another was in the middle of the chamber, she was

a blond that had a rectangular iron plate with its edge rounded around her neck, signifying that she was the one with the mercenaries guild,

Gour-me looked to the seats infront of of her, the head of defense, labor, and trade were there all men with different patterns of baldness, 13 seats were left empty, handing the clothed gun to the nearby servant, he went to his seat 5 chairs away from the door, they seemed to have paused when he entered.

'You're horribly slow' said the woman, Gour-me smiled, 'and you too, couldn't catch a convict could you', the mercenary glared at him, sizing him up from top to bottom, 'well you ate him,' she said, then turning her head questioningly oh wait you are not the one I saw, she was thinner and had smaller tits' the bald men had betrayed him trying to hold their snickers,

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Gour-me coughed 'Just carry on with what you were saying' he said, Antonio, the head of trade was waving his hand, 'Dear Gour-me we have just concluded that you, the head of hunt is to lead an extermination party for a stone skinned oger from the forest of Arkansas, reports or rather the only living witness saw it at the edge around the river near Jura's tree.' he said looking at the mercenary 'Portia here will lead you,' Bassnio's shiny head budded with his ugly smile 'My boy's are downstairs, take care of them for me would you?'.

Gour-me sneered, 'I'll take care to bring their bodies back, what can men with pointy sticks do to a Stone skin. A stone skinned oger is a monster, I am a hunter, I can hunt beasts and normal animals, that's it, it is classified by the monster hunter's guild as a humanoid.'

Bassanio cut him 'yes we know, we know, rank 3, advanced class monster, yadi yada.'

Bassanio never let his smile drop, ' Though I am sure the head of hunt and a iron plate would be plenty enough,' he looked at Portia 'i will put in my own statement to the guild, along with his' and he then looked at Gour-me, 'the whore won't speak' he said simply, in a soft tone.

The wooden doors flung open,

He snatched the clothed gun from the attendant, he better keep his word' Gour-me grumbled, strangely she had no weapon to grab, 'you don't hold a sword?' asked Gour-me, 'no' She simply replied, ' Though I did at my teens, my blade glowed gold back then, now I'm not sure if I would even reach a sunset blade.' 'well you loose what you don't use, as the saying goes,' he said, 'but still, reaching yellow at your teens and still having the ability to code it with aura, you sure are talented,' he stroked his beard 'when i was conscripted i was an emberling at best, so I picked up the gun' Portia said nothing in return and they went down the stairs in silence.

The band of 4 from earlier had stared at him again, and when they saw her beside him, they stood up and approached them, 'is it him?' said Shylock, she nodded and just went towards the exit, then they followed her, the band of men all had gambison and steel-tipped spears, the perfect weapon for the common people who are not born with a gift, can't use blade energy, are too dumb to comprehend magic, not enough patience or discipline for martial arts or chi and not rich enough for runes or firearms.

On their way to the south checkpoint, Gour-me noticed that Portia stuck out like a dandelion in a cotton field, she had bright blond hair, while everyone in town had brown hair, one of the guards complained, that they could have done it without waiting for another man, 'we need him to verify, that's all' said Portia. He kept rambling inaudible silent complaints to the other men, testing Gour-me's patience.

'So, did an Oger actually eat the man?' Gour-me asked, 'Yes, I was tracking him, through the southside forest, he was a poacher, hunting berri bunnies to be specific, in the king's forest, his tracks were light but still traceable for someone like me, but somewhere in the middle the tracks, they started to become, obvious, like he had dropped all his cautions and went on a full sprint, I don't think this was from the oger, they are slow and almost blind, but one way or another at the end of his path he encountered a female stone skinned oger, not an adult yet so, about 3 men in height, I saw the oger eating his corpse to be,'

The guards had already stopped their chatter, listening intently to every single detail she had spouted, 'then why didn't you kill the oger?' one of the guards asked, the other reprimanded him saying how was a single person supposed to take on an oger, 'truth be told I could have done it, but I was supposed to take him back alive, and I need people, specifically him,' she said pointing at Gour-me, 'to send in a statement to the guild, his voice already gave out long before, and he would have died soon, so I decided to come back,'

We had reached the gate, that separated us from the wilderness, the band of men had already lost their once flagrant vigor and seemed to pause for a moment before passing the iron gate, Gour-me and Portia didn't seem to be bothered, Gour-me's gun would be good enough to kill the monster in one shot and Portia would have killed the fiend if not for the fact that she needed someone else to witness,

They had been traversing through the forest for about an hour, with Gour-me tracing back the footprints, they were very light, he had to be not more than 40 kilograms, though what stranger was that he could not find Portia's footprints, the group was somewhere between the edge of the forest and the border just as she said, the light tracks switched to deep and frequent grooves, their pace had greatly increased into that of walking speed and soon reached a riverside clearing.

It was sloped downwards, bringing back the childhood nostalgia when he would slide down to the stony river banks, and it seems the man had taken the same route, Portia walked forward, and she said that this was where she stopped tracking him as she pointed towards the same stoney banks with giant mossy boulders,

Gour-me looked down behind Portia, and just as he suspected, she had no footprints, and she doesn't seem to be hiding her's intentionally, she has no weapons but doesn't carry herself as a mage, monks he thought, a mixture of martial artists and chi practitioners, there are some sects of monks that focus on stealth but her footwork doesn't reflect that, she stood like she was bracing for something, so her lack of tracks was because of her weight or rather lack thereof, a monk that uses the mountain stance and is light, only 2 possibilities existed, either a flame or wind monk, and based on her personality she was a wind monk, cold, calm and collected, Gour-me was proud of himself for this deduction

When they reached the banks there were giant footprints and smudges of blood but they seem to lead to nowhere, almost as if the oger grew wings and flew away,

Portia was vehemently looking for the subtlest of clues all around, and the lads were meekly puffing smokes, while Gour-me was just taking in the scene of the Stoney banks, so much nostalgia, though something looked different, something that he can't put a finger on, it probably was the shape of the banks, being eroded and reshaped by the river throughout the years.

As he gazed deeply at the river a giant splash was made. and then another, rocks were falling into it, sliding down from the slippery surface of the biggest mossy boulders there, the others didn't seem to notice, Gour-me grabbed one large stone and threw it against the boulder, as it impacted being carried by Gour-me's strength it turned into dust, and the boulder seemed to move a little,

'I didn't know you were that strong' said Shylock, gaining some newfound respect for the head of hunt, but Gour-me did not respond, he was staring into the boulder in front of him, Portia had also seized her investigation, she was looking at the boulder, it then started to move again, rolling backwards shoveling gravel with a head that popped out of the ground, it could not have been sleeping peacefully at such a position, the ugly face of an oger popped out, it had frog-like eyes and a big bulgy nose,

'3 men tall?' Gour-me said.