7 Adventure token

He was back at step one, except maybe new he may be a tad stronger. He looked around him and he noticed his iron bow on the floor with a note. As he picked up the note he saw 'Our parting gift, I hope you don't forget the time with us'. Well, he had a weapon and now he had to figure out where he would get his food from, wait for food. He had just realised that he had not eaten for 5 days straight, strange he thought to himself. The magical formulation must have kept him fed, either way, now he had to find a food source.

He started walking through the town, the town was still bustling with activity, he bumped into someone every few seconds. He walked down the stone road and saw stalls around him. After a short while of walking on the stone road, he found what he was looking for. "Adventure guild" he saw on a sign and decided to enter. He room was a large inn, to his right he saw a wall filled with quests. There were three stories to the building, he thought the other levels were rooms you could rent and sleep in, he had seen other inns who probably served the purpose. He saw two windows and that gave a small light to the room. The room was desolate, he thought that all the adventurer must be out right now. He saw the barkeep cleaning the counter.

Jake walked forward to the counter and the barkeep looked at him.

"Hey," Jake asked.

"Hello," the barkeep barfed.

"I want to sign up to be an adventurer"

"Sure, 10 silvers" the barkeep lazily said.

"I don't have the money" The barkeeper looked at him as he finished the sentence as if he were saying he shit on the floor, pure unadulterated annoyance.

"Right, I can offer you a contract, you would get the adventure token now and every Sunday you pay 1 silver. If you would be thrown in jail for a few days, then when you get out you keep paying".

Jake thought about it for a while. As he had no money he decided to accept the deal as it was. The barkeep took out a paper, which he promptly signed. Then the he got a silver token with a sword embedded into it. F

"I would advise you to start with the rat quests" the barkeep said.

He already knew what he had to do but it would take some time before he could meet his friend. He knew his friend loved drinking, so he was certain he would be at some inn but that would be later in the day not in the middle of the morning. He walked out of the inn and started heading towards the forest. He eventually saw the gate which was large and made out of stone at the front stood two guards one on the left, the other on the right.

"Why are you going out"

"Adventure"

"Do you have an adventure token"

Jake then showed them his adventure token and they moved aside and opened the gate. Jake walked through the gate to the forest. There was a dirt road going deeper into the forest. He decided to follow the dirt road, he kept on walking for a full hour without seeing anything, so he decided to venture off. He decided to go left and stick with it. The trees were lush and green, but there was quite a lot of room for him to walk. He could hear the birds singing. He loved found it nice but he could not find anything to kill.

Then suddenly he saw a shadow from his right running.

He jumped to the right, pulled out his bow and readied it for a shot. Sadly it did not matter shadow was on the ground already, he could hear heavy breathing. Maybe you could not call that breathing, instead, it was exhaustion in its physical form. It was a horse, but instead of a normal horse head, it had the top of a skeleton. The skeleton was badly injured with blood coming out of the horse part, there was an arrow stuck in it seeping blood from it. Its jaw was dislocated and multiple of its chest pieces were gone. Whatever had happened to it, it happened bad.

He walked over to it and inspected it, its eyes were blue flames that were staring back at him with resignation. He took out his bow and aimed it at his head before realising a shot and killing the creature. The sensation he got then was the best thing he had ever felt. He got on his knee with a scream of joy, the type of scream you make when you get gifted a car. It was so good he almost had an orgasm. The feeling disappeared as quickly as it came. He stood there and simply looked at it unsure of what to do.

Shortly after he heard a voice, he looked towards it and saw a party of 4 adventures. All of them seemed to be in the same skill range as Jake.

"That's our kill" the person leading the pack said.

"Okay, I just got surprised and shot it"

"No problem, we only want the corpse"

"Take it"

"Where did you find the skeleton"

"There's a skeleton fortress not too far away and we like to hunt around its perimeters, these things usually patrol it."

'Skeleton fortress sound pretty cool but, these must be weaklings in that case compared to what's in there. If something were to come out these people would be toast'.

"Hey, do you want us to walk with you back to the town, these areas can be pretty scary at night time."

He was correct, the sun was setting but he still scoffed at the notion of this area being dangerous. He had walked for "who knows how many hours" without seeing anything, maybe he had just been "lucky" but he doubted it.

"I am fine thanks," Jake said.

He then decided to keep on adventuring, he wanted to find a safe place to sleep. He had already seen what happened to freeloaders at the city and he did not want to repeat the same mistake. He could hitchhike of his friend but he did not want to be a leech, he never liked "friends" who would want things from him for seemingly nothing back. He had grown a personality where he would almost never ask for help from his friends. The party looked at him as if he were crazy and started marching back towards the city.

Jake walked towards the mountains he saw in the distance, maybe he could find a cave he could stay the night. After a solid 3 hours of jogging, he got the wall of the mountain. He started following the wall of the mountain, then he saw it, he saw a hole 30 meters up.

He decided to climb up and after 10 minutes of climbing, he made his way up.

He activated "predator's eyes" and decided to go in, the cave went on for quite a while, then he heard it, he heard snores but the snores sounded weird. Immediately, he started walking ten times slower. He thought that it must be a bear, the closer he got the more he started doubting his previous thought, it started sounding like multiple caves. When he got to the end of the cave he saw it and it was no bear. 'No, of course, it had to be complicated, he thought to himself'.

The creature had the body of a bear but the head of two cobras, who seemed to be enjoying their sleep. Before doing anything Jake surveyed his surrounding, the way in here was tricky to say the least with many stones on the floor he almost tripped on. He thought about the scenario, if he were to get close up he would surely die if he awoke the beast and then tripped on the way out he would also die. He would get one free shot, and he was sure he could take the bear out with this one-shot. The issue is that he did not know the bear's autonomy. He had a hard time deciding. He opted towards taking the risk.

Now he had to decide where to shoot the bear, he could shoot it in the stomach, he would surely damage its organs and kill it in a few hours but for a short time it would be as if it were not injured, but he did not have that time. He could shoot off one of its legs and kite it. He could also shoot off one of the cobra heads, but he thought that as the dumbest option until he did not.

In his head he thought of a plan, that was highly idiotic but to Jake, it felt like a master plan. He would walk over close to the bear, then he would shot one of the cobra heads of, before jumping on and wrestling off the other one. If he could kill both of the cobra heads the only sense the bear would have would be touch, then he could simply disengage and shoot it. He walked over to it, he took out his bow and started loading the arrow with black magic.

The snakes suddenly opened its eyes, he could see a yellow sliver in its eyes.

Jake flinched and the arrow went straight into the bear's main body, the bear was enraged and stood up. The two cobra heads hissed and started looked at jake, he was frozen stiff. The plan had gone terribly wrong.