In the yard behind my house, hidden away from prying eyes, I trained my body with magically shaped stone dumbbells, bars, and kettlebells. The shagloth had been a strong foe but was within my means. The similarly ranked, dungeon-evolved griffator had been a different story. The giant dinosaur-panther beast, infused with the unnatural dungeon core energy, had far and away been my most dangerous battle, and my young body still didn’t have enough strength to directly confront enemies like that.
I initially started training my body for the slow trickle of experience it provided me at a low level, and kept it up for general strength and fitness reasons. In a world where so much of one’s abilities came from skills and skill points, I wasn’t sure how useful weighted resistance training actually worked compared to advancing combat skills. Even though I used magic as my primary weapon, having a fit body with the endurance necessary to maneuver or escape was incredibly useful. I limited how heavy I allowed myself to lift while I was prepubescent, but still tried to work up a sweat daily.
I mostly did dynamic, full-body movements and compound lifts. I wasn’t trying to be a bodybuilder; functional fitness was much more practical for a life of adventuring. Not that I was mad about growing larger and more shapely muscles. So long as my second body grew up healthy and strong, which would be easy with healing magic, I should end up in much better shape than I had been as an adult in my first life.
I grunted and dropped my stone weights, touching each and collecting them all back up in my inventory as I finished my workout. I pulled a waterskin out and drank deeply, and opened up my inventory menu in my metasystem to look over my collection of items. I had lots of meat and beast parts from my hunts; a whole collection of stone weapons, projectiles, magic circles, and utility items that I pre-prepared with magic and banked for later use; my waterskins and other leatherworks like my magic circle belt and bowie sheath; a collection of prepared potions and unprepared flowers, herbs, and medicinal plants with which I could brew more; my cleaver and blades; a small collection of coins; and a number of other odds and ends. I had spent most of the coin I had earned over the past few years from selling meat to Bosh, the local butcher, on the cleaver and blades: a bowie and an all-purpose hunting knife.
I grimaced at my paltry savings. Fortunately, it was spring, which meant it was time for the rocky shieldbacks to come to shore to lay their eggs, and they made for easy hunting despite their relative strength for the area. Shieldback meat sold for more than most other meats so I would be able to bring in some income soon. I was a high enough level now that I wasn’t expecting much in the way of experience from dispatching them, but I would also be able to replenish my collection of stone shieldback shells from the beasts, many of which had been damaged and discarded in the dungeon.
Even more importantly, I would be able to collect the beasts’ magic crystals, which were an ingredient I used to make higher-recovery MP potions, a skill I gained after studying under the local magic shop’s proprietor, Belat. Only certain naturally-evolved beasts contained magic crystals, and I had yet to find another source or figure out how they came to be. In addition to potion-making, Belat had also taught me the theory behind enchantments, but I hadn’t been able to acquire the skill without being able to work metal to prepare the engraved magic circles that were a key component of enchanting.
In order to learn skills in this world, it required the acquisition of knowledge, the means of accomplishing the skill, and–maybe most importantly–the skill points to pay the price. I had knowledge from my former life which could help, but as a child, my means to do things was incredibly limited. Skill points were normally earned from leveling up. I pulled out one of the skillfruit I had collected, and looked it over again. We had collected 33 of these fruits, but I had yet to try to use any of them. When appraised, the only information I gleaned was that it was “a rare fruit which can only grow where magic has concentrated” and that it “enhances skills.”
I wanted to try one and see what effect it had, but I wasn’t sure if I would ever encounter any more, especially now that the tree was destroyed. I didn’t know how these fruits worked and I didn’t want to waste a resource now that could be more useful or powerful later. I reluctantly put the fruit back in my inventory. I would, eventually, eat one and see what happened, but not yet.
In the meanwhile, I had beasts to hunt and money to make. I headed towards the beach to see if the shieldbacks had arrived.
* * *
“Big haul,” Boshan the butcher grunted at me as I handed off a pile of packages of shieldback meat to the huge, hairy man. He collected some coins from a small chest he kept tucked away below the counter and handed them to me.
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“Yup,” I said, tucking my hand with the coins into my pack, where I secretly dropped them into my inventory. “I should have some more for you soon. Say, you know anything about a beast called a shagloth?”
Bosh frowned and thought for a moment before shaking his head. I probably wouldn’t sell the meat to him if he wasn’t familiar with it, as it would be too hard to explain. I had pushed the limits of this relationship really far, and in lieu of outright telling him that I was illegally sneaking out of town to fight monsters, I had to toe a believable line about how I acquired the goods I sold him. The shagloth meat might be my primary food source for a while in that case, or more likely, it would be familiar food, since I didn’t get the impression the meat would be particularly delectable to me.
I said goodbye to the butcher and left the shop, walking toward the town guard station at the main gate through the massive stone wall that closed off and protected Mirut. Our seaside town was built in a large cove on the western end of this landmass, which was enclosed to the north by a huge, sheer cliff and to the east and south by the impressively-built wall. The main ways in and out of town were by ship through the port or by the road which cut through the surrounding jungle which was accessible through the large eastern gate. That was where my father, Horg, worked.
I saluted one of the young guards on duty, bringing the knifehand gesture to my chest in the manner that was custom here. He grinned and saluted back. “Hi Pilus. Looking for your pa?”
“Eh,” I said noncommittally. “I’d rather hear some guard gossip.”
The young man laughed. His name was Timur, and he was fifteen years old, the age of majority in this kingdom. He had apprenticed from ten through until adulthood and only recently started working the gate. It was hard for me, being from Earth, to see the teenager as an adult, but I treated him with respect deserving of his adulthood and position and he treated me well in return. I was only a year and a half away from needing to secure some sort of apprenticeship of my own. Children were let loose to roam in Mirut as young as five years old to figure out how they wanted to make their way in this world.
“Well,” he said, his hand stroking the few hairs of his youthful beard on his chin as he pondered. “Out in the jungle, the ratmen have retreated to the north for the season, and the ramhogs have started to move back in from the south. Which of course means the griffators are more active. The smaller critters will be breeding soon which will bring out the striking vipises as well. We’ll likely start doing more aggressive sweeps around the wall in the near future, although the older folk tell me that things have been surprisingly quiet around town over the last couple of years. Some of them worry there might be some kind of larger predator taking things out.”
That’s probably me, I thought, but I didn’t comment.
“On this side of the wall, well, not much to report. Supposed to see a convoy come to town from Roko in the near future, which is a bit of a rarity. They likely come from out east, past Gurt, if they aren’t coming by sea.”
“What’s past Gurt?” I asked. I only knew a bit of the geography of the Horuth kingdom. Roko was a hub town to the east that connected Mirut to Fespen in the north, Gurt in the east, and Taraponi in the south. The royal capital, named Horuth like the kingdom, was further north and was part of the sea route, although I gathered there was a land route that led through Fespen as well. The city of Haklan was along the coast to the south beyond where the jungle ended and the desert began. That was all I really knew about the area, as there weren’t really any maps available and few locals traveled beyond town.
Timur shrugged, suggesting he didn’t know either. It was a small world without higher information technologies, and most things that existed outside of town just didn’t matter to younger folk. I thought back over the years I had been here and tried to recall if there had been convoys or caravans in the recent past. There must have been, I assumed, but nothing immediately came to mind. Perhaps I just hadn’t been paying attention before I had any money of my own.
“Oh, yeah. I heard some kids talking about a big scary beast called a shagloth. Do you know anything about that?” I asked.
“Ho,” one of the older guards said, chiming in. “Haven’t heard talk of shagloths in a long time now. They’re from deep, deep in the jungle. Used to see the occasional one, very rarely, but they were pushed away from Mirut ages ago. Strong beasts, but not that keen on conflict, so haven’t seen one since.”
“Huh. They aren’t predators?”
“Don’t think so,” he commented, but didn’t seem to know much more.
The dungeon had been pretty far south of town, but given how quickly the shagloth moved around, if it were local to that area it likely would have roamed close enough to town to be seen on occasion. It must have been drawn, specifically, to the skillfruit tree, from further east or south. While I wasn’t necessarily champing at the bit to fight another, I needed to find stronger enemies to grow more powerful. It was difficult to get further from town and back in the same day to avoid arousing suspicion from my parents, though.
I saw my father up on the wall when he waved to me and I waved back, tossing out a salute. Horg laughed and saluted back. I thanked the guards, said my farewells and headed back into town to consider my next steps.