Yora closed her eyes and mentally scrolled down the notifications that lingered in her mind.

Alert! You have met the requirements for [Audville Hunter].

Have hunted at least 45 monsters in the woods around Audville. Have traversed the woods around Audville for cumulatively more than 200 hours. Have traded the meat and pelt from monsters you hunted with Audville's residents.

A Humble Hunter, one that has the role to protect and provide. Would you like to choose [Audville Hunter] as your main class?

Alert! You have met requirements for [Silent Striker].

Have killed at least 35 beings before they even noticed. Have killed at least 70 beings from distance. Have stayed still in one spot for cumulatively more than 100 hours.

Unnoticeable Archer. One that harmonized death and stealth. Would you like to choose [Silent Striker] as your main class?

Alert! You have met the requirements for [Woods Warden].

Have killed at least 20 parasitics being to the woods. Have permanently incapacitated 5 parasitic beings to the woods. Have traversed all areas of the woods.

Warrior of the Woods. One that both protects and is protected by the woods. Would you like to choose [Wood Warden] as your main class?

Yora opened her eyes and sighed. Still nothing good, she thought. Yora wanted a [class] that could get her out of Audville, one that would allow her to move to the city because she had enough of the people in the village.

When she was little, the villagers hadn't been much of a concern for her, she would wake up two hours before sunrise, learning how to skin a monster, how to process their meat, and any other skill her adoptive father would teach her before he eventually departed to the woods to hunt. After that she was more or less free, be it playing with other kids or sleeping all day, she could do whatever she wanted. She had no need to interact with her neighbors, and that was how she could brush off whatever bad words they sprouted out about her and endure their harassment for nine years.

Now that she had turned fifteen? She had responsibilities. She had to spend half of the day hunting and the other half of the day trading. Rinse and repeat, that was how it had been for the past one and half years since she became a hunter, and she got tired of it. Every time she went around the village to barter the meats and pelts she had with some goods she didn't, she inevitably had to interact with the villagers. The women would try to haggle so hard that she ended up bartering so much to get so little. On top of that, they would start badmouthing her the second she turned her back. The men, on the other hand, would prolong the barter for a completely different reason, they would try to get her heart by showering her with flattery, little did they know she didn't have any.

Now that the chief's second son already left the village and the chief harassment had ended, so should be her obligation to her adoptive father. Not that she minded too much to break the agreement she had made, she only worried the man would search for her and tried to bring her back. Now that he had no reason to do so, it should already be alright.

But will and opportunity weren't enough, she needed more capital. She only had little money, and if she recklessly left for the city without a proper [class], she would be stranded without a job.

[Audville Hunter] was too generic, two out of four other hunters in the village had it, and she didn't believe the [class] would be valued by a society where they had a bunch of strong adventurers at the ready.

[Silent Striker] was just as generic, one of the hunters had it, and she learned from his blabber that the [class] forced its holder to be on the location before his opponent arrived, or else its stealth ability couldn't be activated, leaving the holder half-incapacitated. That restriction alone made [Silent Striker] a bad [class] for an active search and destroy quest, the most common quest she heard to be offered to adventurers.

[Woods Warden] was quite a strong class if she judged it by its description alone, but the [class]'s heavy dependency on the woods worried her much. The potential to be a strong fighter in certain terrain implied that it had an offset if the fight took place in another.

Should I just go for it? Even though the [class] was shit? Yora pondered. She weighted the gains and losses for another hour and decided it was better to wait for something a bit better than stuck with something bad forever. After all, she heard [class] would greatly hinder or outright prevent her to get better at something else as a setback helping her master something she currently does faster.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Just like a work contract with a "no quit" clause, She thought. I still have to bid my time, huh? Even though I have gone through so much for the last [class], Yora sighed.

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[Woods Warden] was actually a by-product that Yora never intended, but the fact that the [class] appeared after she tackled so much trouble and it still wasn't the solution she needed broke her spirit a little bit. Yora got it by killing Wood Worms that were too close to the route she usually took to go back and forth to the woods. Customarily, Wood Worm was left alone, one only needed to remember their exact location and avoid them. But Yora only had one available path to go to her hunting ground, and she didn't like there were man-eating trees on the route she took, for if she were forced to flee from other monsters or simply forget or too tired to mind them, she could be murdered.

But that action of her had a consequence, she created big trouble by killing them because when a Wood Worm was killed, another one would emerge at different places in different parts of the woods. it meant she basically put other hunters in danger, for the new Wood Worm might emerge in other hunter territories, and some of them did emerge there. One hunter had been injured and another one had nearly died because they didn't notice the new Wood Worm on their route, and she had been confronted by them.

There was a boom in Wood Worms' emergence and the only new variable in the woods was her, so the other four hunters interrogated her about it, and she dodged responsibility by nonchalantly lying to them, she asked them what merit there was to her by killing the monsters, and they were convinced. For she hadn't picked a [class] yet, so her killing Wood Worms left and right wouldn't grant her any experience and levels. And the Wood Worms' body parts were inedible, unusable, and unsellable, so other than a maniac who obsessed with his [class] and went batshit to level it up, they didn't have other scenarios in mind.

Of course from the bottom of her heart, Yora didn't care if another hunter was killed because of her, for they also had endangered her by giving her the deepest hunting territory in the woods, which had the highest encounter rate with dangerous monsters that weren't even on the game list. So there was that.

But Yora needed to find another way to get rid of the Wood Worms or else other hunters might one day learn the truth, so she came to Hilda and nagged her about potion knowledge, not that it was the first time she bothered the healer. She didn't specify what she wanted to know in fear that Hilda would figure her crime out and told the hunters, so it took four months before she could make a potion that incapacitated the monster. It was basically just a downgraded Vulture Viper's venom, Yora smeared her arrows with watered-down venom so it was still deadly enough to rot the monster's organs and muscles but not enough to kill them. Of course, catching Vulture Viper and extracting its venom was another problem altogether, but Yora got it done with tricks and patience.

The Wood Worm impaled by her poison-smeared arrows would rot to the point where their attack's speed was evadable. Though, they would eventually die from it, the rate of Wood Worms emergence per month would be drastically lower than before, and it would greatly calm the other hunters down and prevented them from investigating her further.

Wood Worms being a parasitic monster to the woods was something she only knew when the notification popped up in her mind. How and why she still didn't know. She could only lament all the efforts she had put and still got nothing good.

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The sun was about to set and Yora leisurely walked down the usual path to go back. With three dead Roaring Rabbits on her back, she planned to kill the thought about her not-so-bright future by bartering the hunted game with a river of ale.

Ah, the happiness of getting wasted. She smiled to herself. When the excitement of burying her anxiety away started to fill her head, she stopped on her track. She carefully took three steps back and kept her eyes on a silhouette fifteen meters ahead.

It was about two meters in height, with fur that was painted black, two standing legs, elongated arms, and a wolf-like head. Yora instantly recognized the monster, for its appearance had been told by every villager. Werewolf, a mighty monster that brought nothing but death and destruction, and its ghostly green eyes were locked on her.

Yora wrecked her head, thinking hard about what should she do next, for it would highly likely be her last step. Flee or fight? I can't fight it, that's for sure. I was told that in the past all hunters and gate watchers in the village had engaged it in ten to one battle and they still lost. Flee then? I give no fucks about hunter's oath, I can run to the village and shake the beast off my tail by giving it plenty of other prey.

But can I even outrun the Werewolf long enough until I reach the village? The old man told me that back in his adventuring days, the most common blunder people make when engaging in a battle of death is assuming their opponent will move as fast and strike as hard as they do, whereas the opponent's actual speed and strength are two-fold or more than your own, and I hold it true. The Werewolf had once outmatched the combined forces of hunters and gate watchers, I am just a [class]less hunter.

I can't fight and I can't run, what can I do? I have a little pouch full of Vulture Viper's venom on my waist bag, but even if I smear it on my arrows and shoot them with my bow, with the Werewolf's speed, I doubt I can get a hit. Is there nothing I can do except accept my death? Yora pondered. It wouldn't be her first death, but anyone -even the suicidal one- would try to preserve their life when faced with an unwanted threat. After all, who didn't want to go out on their own term?

The only certainty that I have right now is the monster will maw me down... it will bite my neck, wouldn't it? Yora immediately threw all her belongings to the ground. Bow, arrows, the death Roaring Rabbit she hunted, everything, except the little venom pouch. She held the pouch with her left hand and pinned it to her neck. I hope I am right. Oh well, I am either will win or suddenly it is not my problem anymore.

Yora had made her move, her sudden motion had triggered the monster to make its own action. It was fast, the monster swiftly closed the fifteen meters gap in but one second. Either unwilling or unable, its prey gave no reaction, It opened its maw wide and brought it down on her head.

Yora made a last-ditch maneuver, just a tiny bit of movement, to redirect the attack to her neck instead of her entire head. Once the Werewolf's fangs and sharp teeth were buried her flesh deep, and half-swallowed her left hand and neck, Yora motioned her wrist to shove the pouch down the monster's throat. The pouch was successfully swallowed, but the Werewolf wasn't immediately poisoned.

It strengthened its bite and crushed the bones in her hand, and Yora screamed in pain. It drank the splashed blood, just like a human squeezed the water out of fruit with their mouth. The Werewolf kept chewing out her flesh and bones, and Yora started to lose the feeling in her limbs. As her consciousness was fading, the Werewolf dropped her and fell down. Its body was convulsing before finally stopped moving.

Yora collected the last bit of her will to take a potion out of her waist bag and poured it down on her mangled hand and neck. She waited, and hoped, for the potion to do its work. As she fought the coldness she felt so she would stay awake, the wounds were gradually closed. Her left hand was still mangled, and the bone within was still crushed, but at least the bleeding was stopped.

Yora still needed help, she grabbed the monster and placed it on her shoulder, and started to walk home.