The next day, I go back to the runesmith to collect my gauntlets, then begin heading toward the forest.

“Hey, you! Come here,” A voice says, and I turn to see a girl waving me over. She is very pretty, so much that I’m not even sure she’s talking to me. I point to myself and when she nods, I walk over.

“You don’t have armor on you. I hope you don’t intend to go fight monsters without any because one hit from just a G-rank can give you fatal injuries.” She says bossily.

“Yes, I know,” I reply, not liking her attitude. I turn around and begin walking away, leaving her sputtering in shock at my dismissal. As I near the forest, I feel the heat of something dangerous rushing toward me from behind and I spin around, crossing my arms in front of me to form an X.

The force of the attack is strong, throwing me back and smashing me into the floor, but I am unhurt. The gauntlets work, I think as the runes on them glow and pulse severely. From the ground, I look up at the girl in anger. It’s obvious what she’s thinking. Who is this idiot who dares to turn his back on me? From her appearance, she’s clearly a noble, the type that gets fawned over by everyone in the village, and because of that she’s gotten arrogant.

“What’d you do that for?” I yell. She doesn’t answer and instead begins to chant another spell. I run towards her and just as she releases another ball of magic, I jump to the side dodging it. I reached where she stood but instead of throwing a punch, I shove her and she falls on her butt.

She screams dramatically, “I’ll make sure you regret this. I’ll have my revenge!” and I roll my eyes. Too many people in this village are assholes, as if being incompetent isn’t enough of a struggle.

I don’t wait to hear the rest of her screams and turn away, walking off into the forest. It’s not long before I encounter a jambbit, the creature I came here to search for. Jambbits are basically magic rabbit creatures with a ridiculously high nutrition level, but they’re hunted for their pricey meat and not their low grade mana crystals. They, however, are extremely hard to kill.

The jambbit turns towards me and jumps away but I chase after it and leap, landing right in front of it. It jumps high again and this time, I watch it in the air, everything playing out as if in slow motion and just as it reaches its highest point, I aim, smirk and eject my gauntlet and it flies forward and smacks heavily into the small body. The jambbit falls and doesn’t move, clearly injured, and once I land, I take its life.

I skin the jambitt, keeping the meat and fur in separate parts of my worn out backpack, and the mana crystal I took from its head in my pouch. Then, I retrieve my gauntlet and continue hunting the jambbits. I had slain around twelve before I heard a growl behind me and turned around to meet the feral eyes of a Grey wolf, the lowest of the magic grade wolf species.

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I freeze not knowing what to do. The wolf charges at me but fear has me paralyzed. I knew this forest was the Grey wolves’ territory before I came in. Of course, I did so knowing my chances of encountering one was high and prepared myself accordingly, but I did not expect to be this terrified.

The fear of dying for me is greater than any terror and so I quickly regain control of my body parts and grab its jaw as it lunges at me. Adrenaline kicks in and I swing my right arm and hit the wolf cleanly across the side of its snout, throwing it away with the help of my increased strength through the gauntlet.

I don’t know any attack spells for my magic, or any spells really, so I attempt the next best thing — mana attacks. Mana attacks allows a magic user to shoot out pure magic using their body’s mana but is an extremely weak move when compared with if an element is added.

I charge mana and, using a punching posture, fire it at the wolf that is now getting up, and it hits it in the head, making it fall on its back howling. I charge at it, charging more mana than I actually need to and it doubles the power of the gauntlet so when I land my punch, the wolf’s head is smashed in and severed from its body, blood spraying all over my body and clothes.

Breathing heavily, I take out a towel from my backpack to wipe my gauntlets that I removed and clean and skin the wolf as I did to the jambbits. Of course, I take out its F-grade mana crystal from its heart — it sells for a lot more than the jambbit crystals did — and once I’m done, I fit my gauntlets back on.

I sit down to rest for a bit and watch as the wolf guts and remaining carcass fade away. After regaining a good chunk of my mana and stamina back because holy hell, I spent a lot, I continue searching for more monsters. I kill seven more jambbits and a baby stinger before it gets late. The time is 8:18 PM when I get back to the village, tired as hell.

When I get to the merchant’s store, I bring out the spoil from my adventure, all the hides but only half the meat. I also bring out the stinger and the merchant nods appreciatively, “Ah, this is quite a good haul. How about thirty five silver coins, then?”

“Oh, thank you,” I say. The man opens a spatial ring and tossed the items in, then drops a pouch of money. When I look inside and see all that money, I’m ecstatic. This is almost half what I save in a year! I leave the shop and head towards the village guild branch.

When I enter, I see many people are still around and active, so I go to a freed up receptionist desk and pour out my nineteen G-grade mana crystals and my F-grade one as well.

“Are you a part of this guild?” The receptionist asks, looking at me over her spectacles that glinted in the lamp light.

“No,” I reply.

“Hmm. Then I’m sorry, but you can’t get the fifteen percent increase on buys.” She clarifies. “Here you are.” And she drops 27 silver coins on the desk. I put it in my pouch and count the day’s money to 62 silver coins and can hardly contain myself. No wonder people who are successful hunting small creatures can live a comfortable life here.

And so, that is how I spend my days after. I continue to hunt creatures around the place, earning about 30 to 50 silver coins each day, quite a bit of money.