Al gingerly stood up from his chair in order not to upset his half-mended muscles. He'd fallen asleep right after finishing the carving but, as expected, Yuly hadn't woken up... 'Wait, I didn't put the figure between her arms did I? She...she woke up right? And I slept right trough it!? Haaaaaa..'

Al stretched his muscles once again as he went downstairs, arriving just in time for lunch. He told Koro and Misty, (though Caexiu thought it was just the former) the good news regarding Yuly as they enjoyed a hearthy red bird stew it, was probably made of the red birds he caught, and having finally done something to contribute made him feel a bit less uneasy about leeching off the old hunter as his wife.

The birds were also apparently called Kon-yan, which literally meant Bird-red. 'Yeah, I'm sticking with Red Bird.'

It was also funny how they didn't have a name for their own language. When Al asked Caexiu what the language was called, she showed a confused expression and said "What do you mean language? I just speak like a normal person, ask that to a philosopher." 'Something tells me she didn't get what I meant at all.'

It might have been because they simply all spoke the same toungue, so it really wasn't necessary to name it, but it sure felt weird. 'I guess I should probably stop abiding by Earth's logic so much, huh?'

Al checked his Status and found that his debuffs had been mitigated to a single point in Strength and a couple in Dexterity, so it shouldn't be too long until he was once more in peak state.

'I hope this doesn't affect my growth...well, if I turn out to be an eunuch at least I'll be more compact and harder to hit. I'll leave that issue to future me.'

Al went out, with Caexiu's permission of course, and headed to the forest to vent a little and polish his skills while he was at it. When he reached the edge he found a small wooden cart, with only two wheels and tho handles, to be pulled from the front.

'I recognise this inverted, wooden, giant wheelbarrow. It was in front of the house when I went out that one night... well, it makes sense, I still haven't talked to Baolao, the man who found us, but he's a hunter. This must be his cart to bring back the prey. Let's see if I can find him...'

Al weaved through the forest at speeds much faster than normal humans could ever hope to go, but for him this was going slow. 'I don't wanna strain myself too much while I'm healing, after all.'

Meanwhile, he was marking his path by throwing spines at the trees he passed to his left, aiming for specific spots to improve his [Piercing Throw] skill, and it actually leveled up after barely two minutes of this.

[Piercing Throw] Skill has reached Mid proficiency. It will now optimise muscle usage to allow for stronger throws.

'Just what I hoped it would be!'

As he tried out his new improvement by almost making his spines bore straight through the tree trunks, when he heard with his mana enhanced hearing someone stepping on dry twigs.

As he got closer he found it was Baolao, and he knew because he had seen him sleeping on the sofa the night he went out. He called out to him to get his attention. "Hey! Baolao!"

He turned around with a flustered face, and it turned into an extremely surprised one when he saw who was calling him. "I-it's you! Al, right? Caexiu told me all about you! Sorry we couldn't see each other these past few days, but I had to hunt as many beasts as possible because this time of year they're all coming out of hibernation, so I couldn't stay with you all... Sorry, I ended up rambling on, haha."

Al chuckled and said "Don't worry, I wanted to meet you, but this is more important. In the end I decided to come here and try to find you, since helping you out with hunting was the least I could do to start to repay my debt. Plus, I wanted to thank you in person."

Al took a knee as he put his right hand over his heart and lowered his gaze to the ground. It seemed to be this world's equivalent of dogeza, from what Al had learned, though it resembled much more the way a knight would prostrate himself in front of a king in medieval Europe.

In this position, Al said "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving my and my comrades' lives. We would not be alive if not for you, and I'll be sure to pay you back in full."

Baolao seemed to become a bit flustered at Al's words, but eventually managed to say "P-please stand up, Al. You don't owe me any great favours. I'll just ask you to stay with me and my old wife for a couple of months, maybe more if you'd like. You see, we didn't mamage to have kids, and something like this would help us move on."

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As he stood back up, Al couldn't stop a smile from forming on his face at Baolao's words. 'Seriously, this guy's way to wholesome.'

"Then I'll be happy to respond to your request. Should we call you father?"

Baolao scratched the back of his head. "Wha? Well, maybe in the future if you feel comfortable with that, but please don't force yourself."

"Ok. Well, should we continue hunting? I have some skills that Ikm sure will be pretty useful," Al said as he threw three spines in quick succession, making them all hot exactly the same spot and impale the first one further in, making it poke out through the opposite side of the thick tree.

"Wo-wow, well I guess I'll take you up on your offer, Al. Shall we do some hunting?"

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'Wheeew, home sweet home...' Al thought as he plopped down onto the bed. 'Baolao had some really nifty tricks and techniques for hunting. Despite the dramatic power difference, he would probably catch more prey than me on an even playing field. Well, what else can you expect of a family that have been hunters for generations...'

Al had already had his fill of meat on the forest, so he fell  asleep mere moments after hitting the bed.

Over the next few days Al went hunting a couple of times as he regained his strength. Yuly finally woke up for good, but it seemed like it would take her a while to get back on shape too.  Eventually Al's Status stopped showing any defuffs, through his muscles still ached a bit.

Weirdly enough, he didn't have to exercise to gain back muscle mass, but it seemed to constantly drain a protion of his mana. It was more or less as much as his mana regeneration, so he hadn't noticed it at first.

'I guess it's because when doing physical training, the muscles destroy themselves and use surrounding mana to regenerate, and they get stronger in the process, but now that the ambient mana is much thinner, it wants to return to the original state, so it takes my own mana....'

Al then realised that this could be a serious issue for Koro, whose core had just barely reached E Grade and whose mana regen was abbysmal, so he went up to him and told him his theory. Koro did indeed feel like he was regaining his strength much too slowly, so from then on Al started feeding him some mana on regular intervals. His own muscles were already fully healed anyway, and the pain seemed to just be from some kind of after effect of the whole ordeal his body went through.

After another few days Koro confirmed to Al that the method was working, and Al was already fully healed and training his skills. Yuly could walk normally by now, but they decided not to let her use healing magic on herself, just in case there some sort of side effect when using it for this purpose. 

Al had been mostly training his [Impulse] skill, since he could use it with or without mana depending on if he used it on the floor or on the walls or air, meaning he could train it even after having injected almost all of his mana into Koro. 'Why the hell am I helping Koro like this again? Well, he'll probably turn into someone unparalelled in terms of raw strength in the future, so I'll just think of this as giving him a down payment.'

More or less two weeks after moving in with Baolao and Caexiu, trouble started popping up for Al. It seemed like the hooligans he had dealt with more than a week ago had been part of a bigger organization, and after a few days of their underlings not returning they had begun snooping around.

They hadn't found out what happened to them, but they knew the area they acted on, and Baolao and Caexiu's house was in that area. Al wasn't really worried about being found out, but he had gotten to know the neighbours a bit over the past week, and he wouldn't want them to suffer inconveniences due to Al's recklessness.

'Well, guess I'll just deal with them. I'll have to completely uproot the organization so they don't cause more trouble... I may actually have to use my noggin for once.'

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'Why do I have to do the boring stuff!?' Dankoh grunted as he lit up a Luya leaf roll and walked out of the alleyway he was in. The boss had sent him to find Yumo's squad, or their bodies, without a single lead. 

'I mean, I know I ruined a bit that woman I caught for boss, but come on!' 

This was his third night searching for the squad of four, yet the only thing he found was a scorched alleyway. As he was about to go to a pub and drink his worries away, he heard sobbing sounds coming from a nearby alleyway. "Sob...hic...sob...mom, where are you?..."

'Hm? a small kid? Pity, sounds like a boy. If it was a girl, I could probably give it to the boss to bail me out of this chore.'

Dankoh went to see it anyway, and was pleasantly surprised. "Oh, arentcha a cute kid? What a rare hair color too... "

'Hmm, a girl would be better, but there are some people who have that hobby too...heheheh, what an unexpected bounty!'

Dankoh pulled the kid by the wrist, ignoring his cries of resistance, and stuffing his mouth with cloth. He then strapped his arms and legs with ropes he always carried around. 

As he was carrying on his shoulder, he realised that he had been too forceful and strapped the ropes too tight, and he didn't want to give the boss damaged goods again. 

He undid the knots a little, and was surprised to see that there were no marks on the kid's wrists. He just shrugged, blaming it on the lack of light hindering his vision. He lugged the passed out kid on his shoulder once again, and once again headed to headquarters.

He soon reached the decrepit-looking building stuck to the outside of the wall, and knocked on the forged iron door three times with specific timing  in between the knocks.

The two guards immediately opened the heavy door and let him through with a nod, and he went down the stairs, past the several barracks, armoires, cells and other rooms to the boss' office.

He said "It's me, I caught someone that could sell for a lot inside the walls" and entered without awaiting the bosses response. But, to his surprise, the face of the boss wasn't that of greed or even annoyance, but of utmost horror. He felt something warm up behind him as he realised that he didn't have the kid on his shoulder anymore.

Then he was blasted away.

He hit the reinforced stone wall, creating a crater. As his sight turned blurry and an insane pain assaulted his whole body, he saw the figured of the child holding a giant, blindingly bright ball on top of his hand.

"The fuck is th..." Then the ball exploded, covering the whole room.