Town of Myrem

It had been a couple of days since Kayn obtained his adventurer's plate. During this time Kayn mostly explored Myrem in order to get used to the new environment so that he could find his way around.

He discovered, that due to its location near the Great Forest and being a fair distance from any other settlement, the prices were fairly low as opposed to the information he read before coming here. Though, in all honesty, Kayn's view on money in this world was still skewed.

He paid a total of 5 coppers a day for an inn aimed towards adventurers as well as 2 coppers for each meal he ate at a local tavern. Since he didn't want to reveal his face in public, he would typically pay 1 copper more to have his meals packed up so that he could take them back to his room at the inn.

Kayn hadn't made any money yet, and although he wasn't anywhere close to running out, he wanted a way to make money besides doing adventurer missions.

Kayn thought it was time to initiate part two of his plan. During his exploration of Myrem, Kayn found that there was indeed a local healer who lived in a medium sized building near the center of town.

Due to there being no other towns or villages in a close area, and plenty of adventurers, the healer was busy on a daily basis and Kayn assumed she would appreciate the help.

On the morning of his third day in Myrem, Kayn wore his normal clothing and snuck out of his room in the inn through the window of the 2nd floor. Once he reached the ground, he began to walk towards the healer's house and place of work.

…

Arriving at the house, the door wasn't open, indicating that the business wasn't open yet. So, Kayn knocked on the door and waited for the owner to show herself. As the door opened, an older woman who seemed near the end of her life appeared in his sight with a slightly irritated look on her face.

"Can't you see I'm not open for business yet kid? What do you want?"

Kayn was slightly surprised at the bluntness of the old lady, and even though he was now close to 1.77m(5'8") tall now, she was right that other than growth he hadn't developed many of his adult traits yet. Calling him a kid was accurate enough since he was only 14, but he still felt a bit put off by it.

Cupping his hands together and performing a small bow Kayn replied. "Hello Elder, my name is Kayn and I would like to discuss a possible business deal with you. I have seen how busy you are the last couple of days during my stay here in Myrem and I would like to offer my help. In exchange, I would like to rent a room here if there is one available. I will help you without taking your profits as long as I have a place to stay."

"First, my name is Loren, so Elder Loren to you. Second, that's a very straight forward way to get into a lady's home now isn't it young Kayn?" Elder Loren smirked while raising her eyebrow at Kayn.

"All jokes aside, I don't know how much help you could be at your age. You must have just formed a mana core recently due to your young age and I'm not taking on apprentices."

Kayn didn't want this elder to know the actual stage of his core or his abilities so he decided to tell her partial truths.

"Elder Loren, I have mastery of many tier 2 healing spells and my diagnostic spell was created by a royal healer. I can work for you today and you can judge me based off my performance." Kayn answered in a short and concise way.

"Hmmm a royal healer you say? Tell you what kid, you can be my assistant for today and I'll ask that you perform the minor jobs that spells at or below tier 2 can solve. As you said, based on your performance I will decide the next steps. Deal?"

Elder Loren answered in a positive manner since this all sounded too good to be true. If the kid was able to actually assist her and was really trained by a royal healer, she would be more than happy to accommodate him. If he couldn't, then she could just kick him out before the lunch hour even came.

"That sounds like a good idea Elder. You will not regret giving me this chance." Kayn responded in excitement.

"I'll believe it when I see it. I'll open the shop soon, but you caught me in the middle of breakfast. Come inside and have some for yourself, growing kids need food after all."

…

Kayn assisted Elder Loren throughout the day and she was more than happy with his performance. He was able to heal even fairly severe lacerations and his spells followed methods that she had never even seen before.

"Young Kayn, you are more than qualified to be my assistant healer, so let me tell you what I'm thinking for your accommodations.

"I will provide you with a room to stay here in my house and you'll have access to the kitchen to make your own meals. I will provide you this for free on the stipulation that you work 4 out of 10 days a week. You will not be assisting me, but will have your own separate area where you'll see patients. Which days you choose to work will be up to you.

"30% of your gains will be given to me, the rest you can keep, and what you charge is also your choice. I won't provide you with food and if you steal mine, I'll be sure to give you a good smack upside the head.

"Does this sound acceptable?"

Kayn was stunned by her proposal. This deal sounded incredible! He would be able to make money, have a room rent free, and practice his spells on people who probably wouldn't know any better.

"I look forward to working with you Elder Loren, and thank you for your generosity." Kayn once again bowed while he said this.

…

Another couple of days passed and Kayn already moved to Elder Loren's home, but he only worked one of them. He still had things to take care of before he could begin a steady lifestyle.

One of the things he took care of was to visit the town hall and purchase an identification token listing "Kayn" as his name. This cost him another silver coin, with everything he had purchased he was down to around 40 silver and a few copper coins now.

He ended up spending that day shopping for things he may need, including purchasing a few sets of clothing since he had only brought the set from his father and two other casual clothing sets. Kayn enjoyed the feeling of good quality clothing and since he could now walk around town as himself, he didn't want to be seen in shabby clothing as he was now a proud healer for the town.

This brought his total money to 35 silver coins. Fine clothing cost a lot of money relative to everything else here. He wasn't a snob, but he liked to be comfortable and look good. He was blessed with his mother's and father's looks; it would be a shame to do them a disservice by dressing down.

Since he was now an adventurer and would soon hunt rune beasts, Kayn decided that he should learn how to field dress animals first. This was also an opportunity to provide himself with food and learn how to cook.

He left the town and found an area to change into his appearance as Shin. He decided this was also a good time to complete a couple of E-rank herb gathering quests for the guild.

Kayn hunted deer and rabbits for most of the evening using only two elements, earth and water in its deviant ice form. Each time he killed one he would hide it up in a tree while draining the blood to practice his field dressing later in the evening.

Before the sun went down, he noticed something peculiar. He could affect the shadows that he saw using his mana.

'Could shadow be its own deviant form of the dark element?' Kayn thought to himself as he decided to test his new theory out on his next few kills.

Kayn had to concentrate and use quite a bit of mana, but he was able to manipulate the shadows to snare a rabbit, which made it far easier to finish with an ice spear that he formed into the shape of a small needle with a lot of concentration.

Once he killed two more rabbits and a deer, he returned to where he stashed all his kills. This now totaled three rabbits, two squirrels, and two deer so he set up a small camp in a nearby cave he discovered and began perfecting his field dressing technique through trial and error.

…

Kayn ended up staying the night in the cave. He prepared and ate the rabbits and squirrels. While there wasn't much meat to the squirrels or rabbits, their fur would fetch him a couple coppers in total if sold to the right people.

Kayn attempted to use Analyze on the corpses since it didn't work on living things, but all he got back was that they were corpses. However, after he finished the field dressing and separated their fur pelts, he got different results.

[Rabbit Fur Pelt (common grade): Can be useful for clothing or warmth.]

[Squirrel Fur Pelt (common grade): Can be useful for clothing or warmth.]

Ever since he had reached what he dubbed a rank 3 mind, he was able to see more details about items. The important aspect that Kayn noticed was that the Analyze skill started "grading" items, though he had only seen two grades so far.

Items that seemed above what he could Analyze would show up as saying that it was unable to be analyzed and just showed as the base item such as a ring or sword. Kayn could only hope this would change as his skill continued to evolve.

The deer were a different story. Their meat was more highly prized than their hides. He started out making a sloppy mess while trying to get the good cuts of meat, but by the time he was finished he had almost 45kg (99lbs) of meat to sell or keep.

Not to mention the hides he obtained. But unfortunately, one was ruined due to his sloppy skills at first.

[Deer Hide (common grade): Can be useful for clothing or leatherworking.]

Even though Kayn's original life as Carter was spent in the United States using the imperial system, Kayn always preferred the metric system, luckily weight and height were calculated similarly to the metric system in his current world.

Kayn carried everything back to the village where he sold all but 10 kg (22lbs) of the meat, the hide, and pelts which netted him a total of 30 copper coins. It didn't seem like much with the way he had been throwing silver coins around, but 30 copper coins was a lot to the average person, especially for just a day of hunting.

Kayn then turned in his herbs to the guild and was rewarded with 15 copper coins for four missions, which he thought was a slightly pathetic reward. But in comparison no hunter typically hunted as much as he had in one night as it was simply unnecessary.

After studying Lydia's book, he knew the herbs were probably worth more than he sold them, but he didn't mind as long as he could rank up in the guild eventually.

He needed to complete six more missions and his rank-up mission before he could become a D-rank adventurer. He ended up asking for his rank-up mission while also registering for six more gathering missions as they were quite easy.

The receptionist wasn't too thrilled to give him a rank mission without him even doing his 10 E-rank missions first, but after Kayn bribed him with a few coppers, he relented.

Kayn didn't really enjoy bribing an official, but the only other way to rank up fast was to group with another who was a higher rank in Myrem. The higher rank would then vouch for their skills and attest that they successfully helped in completing a high rank mission, and this wasn't something Kayn wanted to do.

Kayn received a mission to search the forests near Myrem to find and exterminate an E-class two-tailed wolf pack that was led by a D-class alpha. The mission was classified as a D-rank mission and it was recommended to be completed by either a group of four or more E-ranks for their rank-up or for a pair of D-rank adventurers to team up. The mission was also posted for anyone to claim the bounty.

The receptionist expected Kayn to look at the group finding board before he left the building, but instead he watched as the mysterious adventurer walked out without looking back. Kayn ended up immediately leaving the village, but that was only to change back to his normal clothing and re-enter town.

He went back to his room after telling Elder Loren that she could use any of the meat he brought back and placed it into her frozen chest. She was more than happy that she obtained some free meat from the young man.

Kayn immediately went to sleep even though it was just after the lunch hour, he was exhausted and wanted to be at his peak before he embarked on his rank up mission alone.