“So Jacob what are your plans for tomorrow?” Aurelius asked as he walked to the side of Jacob

“It’s simple really, we are gonna burn the kobolds. We will burn them so well not even their bones will remain. That's all I’ll say for now, go and rest too. You got the short end of the stick for night watch. So the sooner you sleep the better.” Aurelius face turned into one of contemplation during Jacob’s reply. He had not explored outside of the City of Nativis so he thought that Jacob had a fire skill up his sleeve, with that misconception in his head he joined the other two in sleeping.

While the three was getting to sleep, Jacob thought back to his three best friends. Morg, Bedi and Donny he had no time at all to wonder if they were safe at all. Only survival was on his mind, running from the now dead giant tiger, going to save the group and fighting those floaters, not to mention others of its race could be capturing even more humans and well Jacob did not want to finish those thoughts. Those kobolds too there were way too many of them and they have mages and those extra large kobolds.

Morg and Donny are resourceful and much more capable than Jacob so they should be thriving or at least surviving, however little Bedi someone who was even shorter than Jacob and afraid of even harming ants. Bedi might already be dead or worse...he could be getting tortured right this moment, just thinking about it sent shivers down Jacob spine. Once he got out of this tutorial, he would try and find someway to obtain news about his friends and if they were hurt or even worse dead. He would rip whoever hurt them to pieces and then he would feed the pieces back to the culprit. For the killers, well nothing good would happen to them too.

Once the moons began setting did Jacob got out of his dark musing, seeing that he already missed the time to wake up Aurelius. He let the gold giant continue sleeping, instead he decided to spend the time wisely and began absorbing the essence still swirling around his core. However, as he began to meditate snores echoed through the house. Wondering how he managed to miss the snoring during his shift, Jacob decided to move out of the house and sat by the pavement right by the doorway. Before that he took a quick look to see who was snoring, he arched his eyebrow surprised by the person snoring.

He got into a comfortable lotus position and began his meditation with the stone wall in between, the snoring was reduced enough for him to sink into meditation.. After Jacob was able to properly sink into his meditation, the process of condensing the swirls of essence went smoothly. He was able to grow his core once again, the Suzerain mentioned that there would be limits on the size of the core.

If Jacob wanted to break the limits, he had a few choices to choose from. But he would have to do it before moving on to Grade 2, as the core would be sublimed after going through the Grade advancement from 1 to 2. It would continue to grow stronger but the size would no longer increase, so his capacity would be a lot lesser too if so.

However, at least for now Jacob still had not felt the core reached its limit yet. Jacob finished condensing his core and now with nothing to do and a long way till sunrise, Jacob decided to practice what he had seen from Aurelius swordsmanship. His swordsmanship was different from Jacob wild and clearly untrained swings and cuts. Each single swing from Aurelius that Jacob had seen, carried something Jacob could not place words on. Something similar to conviction it was not just the fluidity of the motion that shone through, Aurelius never flagged while he carried the sword.

As Jacobs thoughts churned, the moons quickly set and made way for the three rising suns. As the heat of one sun shone down on him, Jacob quickly hid and went back into the house as if he was a nocturnal animal allergic to the rays of the sun.

Somehow Aurelius did not wake up on his own throughout the night. Only when Jacob moved to wake them up together did he awaken, Jacob was mildly surprised by that as he could operate on lesser sleep as his vitality and endurance grew. Aurelius however despite a robust body and most definitely high points in both stats managed to sleep through the night.

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As Jacob moved to wake them up, the smell finally hit him. All four of them, Jacob included reek of blood, sweat and grime. If they moved to assault the kobolds, without even seeing them the kobolds would have smelled them from miles away. He recoiled a little from the smell but as none of them had awoken naturally, Jacob could only move closer to the stench and not further.

He quickly ran as fast as he could to where Aurelius and Brian was sleeping gave the both of them a swift kick in the butt before he shuffled off to where Riley was sleeping with mouth wide open.

As there was no doors or curtains for privacy, Riley had to make do without such creature comforts and instead slept just further away from the other two. Jacob thought to himself that sleeping like this was better than being kidnapped mid-sleep and awoke to find kobolds staring at you and the only other person was tied to a pyre ready to be burned.

Hence, Riley did not seem as uncomfortable in her sleep as Jacob thought. The groans from the two men from their butt kicked resounded across the house, as Jacob moved to shake Riley's shoulder to wake her up controlling his breathing as much as possible. Even the nicest smelling of people, after soaking through dust,grime and blood for 3 days would be left with nothing but the smell of days old piss.

However, before his hand reached her shoulder her eyes suddenly opened wide. Probably due to his face also covered in multiple layers of aforementioned dust,grime and blood it must be a harrowing sight. Riley immediately screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Riley! Keep your voice down. It’s me Jacob please keep quiet.” Jacob hissed out, as Riley was still screaming. He quickly wrapped his hand around her mouth to silence the scream, soundwaves kept hitting his palm causing it to vibrate a little. Jacob suddenly flew across the house as a wave of green essence connected with his chest.

As he flew, ‘ I’m definitely not waking her up next time.’ Jacob grit his teeth to prevent himself from screaming. As a result, an empty gasp escape him as his back made a rough connection with the stone wall. However, despite his best effort to keep the sound down. The old ruined wall had other thoughts, right where it stood it began collapsing onto Jacob. As piles of rock slammed into him, Jacob heard.

“Sorry Mi-Jacob! Sorry! Lemme get you got. Did you get hurt? I’m sorry, I used my skill on reflex. You looked just like a bloodied kobold when I woke up.” Rileys’ voice somehow penetrated through the rocks and into Jacobs’ heart wounding and bleeding him. ‘Do I look that bad? And skill? Damn’

Jacob did not move from his position as he did not want to cause the rocks to burst outwards and hit the group. With pain in his heart and a rapidly aching body, Jacob laid down as piles of rock were removed by the trio.

As the wall did not have much rock to begin with, the digging did not take long. Jacob jumped up as soon as the rocks covering his body was cleared. He landed on his feet with a Y pose as if he was a finishing gymnast. Riley instantly moved to check up on him, however that was a needless worry. His body received no lasting injury but his heart might remain forever damaged. He did not smile at all this time as he usually did that to reassure Bedi but Riley's words still remained so he did not want to look like a deranged smiling kobold and said.

“Riley it’s okay, I’m fine look nothing had happened. The scraps and bruises will heal before we even reach the forest.” Riley slightly pacified after hearing Jacobs’ words, had her face turned from worry to sheepish as she spoke.

“Uh...About the kobold thing, I didn’t mean it. You just gave me a shock thats all, once again very sorry for punching you.” As Riley finished her words, Jacob could feel the bruise on his chest right where Riley punched him and he asked.

“You mentioned a skill? What is the skill you punched me with? It packs a wallop, it even sent me flying did you recently unlocked it?” Riley readily replied.

“Its called Aura of the Wild, I can cover any object I’m holding or touching to improve its destructive prowess. I wanted to surprise you with it, when we start battling some monsters. I actually unlocked the skill right when I got my Job.” Awkward laughter escaped from Riley as she finished her words. Jacob mouth gaped a little, meanwhile he was working hard on unlocking his skills. Someone who got a Job later then he did had one. That left him feeling a bit lost but he recovered the best he could and said.

“Consider me surprised and amazed, Its gonna be very helpful going forward. Well uh lets move up, there might be others that was attracted by this ruckus.” Jacob quickly moved to pick up Flowing Water as he received pats of pity from Brian and Aurelius along with expressions of amusement. The group having nothing to pack, quickly shuffled off from the house. Jacob also promised the starving Aurelius the meal of his life.

As they reached the outskirts of the city once again, this time with Aurelius in tow. Legs that do not touch the ground, floated above the pile of broken down rocks. Words in a language that Earthlings did not know yet crossed between the 20 floating bodies. While their alien faces recoiled from the stench, they looked around for signs of life but found none. Only the lingering stench remained, however the stench leads somewhere and they would follow it.