Chapter V

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It took us quite a long time to organize everything in the camp, mostly because of the distractions we had. For example, Jeanne got very excited when she found a lot of money in the leader's room and started to count all the profits.

In my case I started to check the hut where they were moving everything and I found several items that I began to absorb with the axe such as ropes, chains and various minerals. All of them gave me new weapons but it was the chains that were the most important.

[Conditions met:

Chain Axe.

Abilities locked: equip bonus: skill "Chain Bind".

Special effect: hook.]

Switching to it I saw that there were chains around the handle connecting to the axe head, and as I tried to think of how to make the "hook" work the axe head detached from the handle, getting hung up by the same chains. This in itself was an interesting thing to try but I moved on to check out the new skill.

"Chain Bind" I fired the skill at an object near me and it was wrapped in chains that came out of the ground.

I could feel the frustration coming to me, this skill could have been very useful against the bandits, but no, I got it after all the mess. My damn luck! Before getting angrier I checked my other weapons to keep an eye on them, and in that I saw the series of weapons I got from the bandits at the entrance. It worked just like the semi-human series but for humans, though I couldn't help but notice that I didn't need to absorb the parts individually, I had gotten them directly. Maybe the weapon was helping me with it?

Anyway after checking my weapons I realized I had leveled up to level 17, I was expecting more but it seemed the bandits were not as high level as expected. I decided to leave the strengthening method aside for now, I was going to need to relocate them so it was better to wait.

By the time we had finished gathering things we arranged the bodies of the bandits to be burned, it wouldn't be a good idea to attract so many scavengers so close to town. Using a fire rune I lit the bodies and we set about dividing up what we would take and what we would take back to the town with the wagon.

"How come you didn't use fire against the bandits? It would have been useful." commented Jeanne as we worked.

"Well, it's just that it's not really useful for doing damage." As an example I used the same spell in front of her. "If you touch it you will understand."

She did it a little skeptical by putting her hand over the flame, and upon learning that she felt almost nothing she put her hand directly into the fire. At that I stopped the spell so as not to run out of magic.

"It just feels like a nuisance." she said annoyed.

"Yes, as I said, it does no harm. But well, I can explain better another time, let's get this over with, I don't want to keep smelling those bodies burning."

Nodding we sped up the process and soon we had the loot divided, we put several things in the cart to leave it to the townspeople together with what we had, I could use these materials for several useful things. In the middle of that I took some cloth I found and wrapped the axe in it to hide the gem, that was a mistake that contradicted my intention to stay hidden, hopefully this would help to show it as a normal axe.

Of course, I got some weapons from other materials we found.

[Conditions met:

Filolial meat axe.

Filolial nail axe.

Filolial feather axe.

Filolial axe.]

I got the whole set of weapons from these monsters and although the meat, nail, and feather gave me strength, attack, and agility respectively, the Filolial axe gave me growth adjustments for these monsters. With that weapon I could make them become more powerful as they leveled up with me, and although I had no intention of raising one of them I would accept the axe for its "Mounting Ability" anyway, it would come in handy in the future.

After making sure the bodies were properly burned, putting out the fire in the process, we tied the filolial to the wagon and set off to the town to arrive before dark. Although the filolial's enthusiasm for pulling the wagon struck me as odd at the time, strange creatures.

"Should we use the wagon to return to the city?" Jeanne asked as we were on our way.

"Is this wagon already ours?"

"Who will tell us otherwise?" she replied with a chuckle, with me joining her for a moment. "What do you plan to do when we get back?"

As I was about to answer that I wanted to go and try to level up I was stopped by the look Jeanne gave me, it was obvious that she was waiting for a good answer so I started to think. What were my priorities at the moment? After a while I answered her.

"I'll take a few days off I guess, I need to learn to read, I want to try to do something with the materials we got and resume my training, I neglected it completely after coming here."

"Very well," she nodded, satisfied "and don't worry, I'll help you with whatever you need, it's my fault we came here."

I wanted to say that I would have picked a fight somewhere anyway but I refrained and said in a mocking voice:

"Won't you take responsibility for harassing me while I was taking a bath the other day?"

"Pfff, you wish." Of course I couldn't help but laugh at that.

We got to town pretty quickly, as Jeanne said, the place was close by. Several locals approached upon seeing us arrive and, once we confirmed that the mission was completed, we handed them the supplies we had gotten. They thanked us, of course, but it seemed to be a more common practice than I thought, but we had enough of what we had set aside anyway.

"Hey, boy!" said the innkeeper once he saw us enter. "I heard you made it, I'm going to give you a discount to celebrate."

"How can I refuse that, I expect plenty of beer with my meal."

"Me too, it's time to relax." Jeanne added.

It was quite a fun night, I even felt that I had become closer to Jeanne as friends during this, she was even the one who convinced me to go to sleep when I was already getting drunk.

When I got to my room I just lay down on my bed without thinking about anything else, I would leave the worries for another day.

*****

The next morning passed very quickly without much notice, after eating and saying goodbye to the innkeeper we took the wagon and set out on our way. The most I did on the way was to make sure I mastered the most important weapons, like the Chain Axe which I had done during the night, the human axes and the filolial axes. I tried Chain Binding on a monster that appeared when we stopped to eat and checked my levels.

Of course, I redistributed the strengthening method points I had, along with the ones I gained with recent levels, and decided to put more emphasis on my defense than on my magic, putting my attack and vitality as priorities, of course. With the conversations I had with Jeanne the time flew quickly and by the time it was getting dark we had reached the city. We hurried to the inn to get some sleep, if I was lucky I would have busy days soon.

*****

"Wilson, this group is done!" I shouted carrying with me a small box of swords that I just made."

"Oh right, the customer will come tomorrow, just leave them over there."

I put them in a good place as he said. In the last few days I've been helping Wilson create swords for the big orders he sometimes has, mostly to keep my blacksmithing skills up and running. I made sure not to neglect learning to read but I was making pretty slow progress in that regard.

"How's that going?" I asked, approaching Wilson.

"Pretty good, you've got some good skills and ideas kid. We just need to add the enchantments."

"Thank you. At least my part is ready, I will use it when we go out on a mission, Jeanne should get one soon."

At that moment we were talking about some armors that I had made these days with the materials we got from the bandits, but as I had no idea what changes there would be when it came to creating objects I asked Wilson for help. Luckily I got the hang of it pretty quickly, it was just that my inexperience with the magic of this world didn't let me enchant the armors properly. That's where my deal with Wilson came in, he would teach me and help me enchant armor in exchange for helping him with some requests.

"Adam!"

"Speaking of the devil…" I whispered as I heard Jeanne enter.

"There you are, good. We have a new mission but you need to do something first."

"Something?" I answered, approaching with Wilson at my side "There hasn't been any problems with the little missions I've been doing."

It seemed odd to me that out of the blue I had a problem in the guild but Wilson spoke up and cleared my doubts.

"It's because of his rank, isn't it? - Seeing Jeanne nod he continued explaining to me "Most likely they need some insurance that you can go with Jeanne on the mission without ruining it, she has a good reputation that gets her missions with good pay."

I could understand that reasoning, I knew I could deal with it, these days mastering weapons had increased my stats, but they had no way of knowing it, I was someone new technically. It was Jeanne's supposed reputation that was the reason to even get a chance actually.

"All right, what's to be done?"

"They'll only test you in one battle. For now just get ready quickly, I'll explain about the mission on the way."

Just as she said I prepared myself by putting on the same armor I went against the bandits with but repaired, I wanted to finish the details of my newly made armor before using it, Wilson would take care of that though. Saying goodbye to Wilson I followed Jeanne.

"Well, to sum it up, it's about investigating the area where the last Wave took place."

That made me pause for a moment. Where the last Wave took place? From what I had learned so far the holy heroes were only in a queendom while the other seven star heroes were around the world dealing with the Waves in their respective territories. And apparently news of the previous axe hero disappearing were already circulating, which meant one thing.

"There was no hero to deal with it, I presume."

"That's right." she answered seriously. "We know, of course, that at some point it stopped, but not before the town near the site was destroyed. The mission is about dealing with it."

"I see." I took the opportunity to ask something that had made me curious. "But why did you get the mission? Don't get me wrong, you're pretty skilled," that was an understatement "but normally they would send higher level people."

"Not a big deal really," she said after a short silence "just that I already had a reputation in the guild for years. The thing is, not long ago, I decided to reset my level."

"Why would you do that?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, I had long ago gotten permission to class up," class up? "thanks to certain connections, but I did it before level 40 and since then I felt that my growth had stagnated. With this mission I will get a recommendation from the guild to get another class up."

That explained the disparity between her current level and her skills with both spear and magic. Also, after asking her she explained how normal people stop leveling up when they reach 40 and without authorization from the government where they live they would be stuck at that level.

"I'll go and let you know about your test." Jeanne said when we arrived at the guild and left.

To pass the time I headed to the quest board to keep up to date, there were a lot of adventurers who couldn't really read and write so it was easy to understand. Unfortunately there weren't many interesting ones, the same simple quests I'd been doing the odd day or two, although I did manage to get a couple of levels up with it. What caught my attention was the mention of a dragon seen on the borders of the kingdom in the last few days.

Looking around I noticed that Allison was free, so I went over to get some information.

"Howdy, Allison."

"Oh, hi Adam, are you here to take on a mission?" she replied with her ever-present smile.

"Not exactly, Jeanne is arranging that, I was coming to ask about the supposed dragon."

"Well, it's a recent thing to be honest. We only know it's been moving around different areas so it's hard to track it down."

I was chatting a bit with Allison until Jeanne arrived and took me to where I would do the supposed test.

"Keep in mind that the guy already went through a class upgrade so he doesn't expect you to defeat him, just impress him and prove you can do the mission."

"Without defeating him?" I asked, annoyed.

"Yes, without defeating him, weren't you the one who wanted to keep a low profile?"

I let out a chuckle at that. She was right, I couldn't just show up and try to defeat him. And come to think of it I wasn't even sure I could defeat him even with the stat boost the weapon offered me. As I arrived I noticed that it was literally a dueling arena. There was no one there yet so I made sure my armor was well prepared and stretched for the fight. I took special care to make sure that the cloth hiding the gem of the weapon was in place.

Soon enough we heard my opponent arrive. A guy in nice armor carrying a shield and a sword came up to stand in the center of the dueling area.

"So he is your partner, Jeanne. Well, come on, prove you're worth the mission."

I glanced at Jeanne and when she nodded I headed for the arena.

"We'll start whenever you want," he said drawing his sword "don't worry, I can handle anything you throw at me."

That comment had irritated me but I took a deep breath to relax and took my position with my axe, my opponent doing the same when he saw me. He was showing almost no openings, and it was quite possible that those openings were false, leaving me with few options. I had to make my own.

With that in mind I started running towards him, who prepared to receive me, and launched an attack that hit his shield. I expected a counterattack so I took a small leap so that the impact of the axe against the shield pushed me away. I had to stop my impulse to throw a skill at that moment.

He had been surprised for a moment, but right after that he ran towards me. I could predict a bit what he would do but he was still very fast, I barely had time to deflect his sword with my axe. Which was followed by a blow with his shield that threw me several meters.

"Oh, you're doing well, but," he said as I lifted myself up "It's not enough!"

"He said this last thing, throwing himself at me once more. I expected him to make a different attack so this time I prepared to move away as soon as I had the chance. Feinting with his sword he tried to hit me with his shield again, which I received with my axe repeating what happened the first time, but this time I started to prepare my magic.

My opponent realized it because he rushed towards me once again, but I had taken advantage of my flight to finish my preparations.

"I am the source of all power, listen to my words and understand them! Attack my enemies with the power of the earth! Stone stake First!"

After casting my spell I ran towards him. He realized that the spell would attack him from behind, and seeing me approaching he decided to intercept the stone stake with his sword while receiving the blow of my axe. Of course I didn't expect to hurt him, my plan was to unbalance him for an instant, which I accomplished by allowing myself to use my whole body to knock him down. I already had a victory secured! I naively thought so.

It was when I felt my body fall to the ground and a sword next to my head that made me realize my stupidity, he used my plan against me. I heard him laugh as he stood up, giving me my space.

"Very good," he said, extending his hand. "I didn't expect that to be honest, if I had been weaker your strategy might have worked. "

I took his hand a little annoyed, hoping it wouldn't show, and stood up. I shook out the armor and looking up I saw Jeanne approaching.

"So, Oscar, was that enough?" So that was his name, I hadn't really been interested.

"Yes Jeanne, I think you have a good partner." Saying that he turned to see me "I guess Jeanne already told you about the mission but I'll explain it anyway, follow me."

I followed him to the seat in the room waiting for the supposed explanation. Taking a seat he began.

"The village where the Wave took place was completely destroyed, there were hardly any survivors. We thought the monsters were going to disappear after it, but that was just naive thinking." he said, shaking his head. "In the last few days there have been reports of dangerous activities near the town, along with strange monsters attacking those who sought to loot the place. Your mission is to investigate what kind of monsters they are, and take them down if possible."

"Would they be sending just the two of us?" I asked "If we are talking about the Waves then the danger increases quite a bit."

"Exactly," - he nodded happily, for some reason "that's why there will be other adventurers willing to join you in the capital. They are new just like you, but they have earned a good reputation."

For some reason that comforted me and at the same time it didn't, but I decided to ignore that. We already had the details of the mission, we would leave tomorrow I'm sure. After finishing his explanation Oscar left, but not before saying that he hoped to have a battle with me again. Ha! I'd make him bite the dust next time.

"How the hell did you use that magic?" Jeanne asked as we left the guild "You're just learning to read."

"Easy, I didn't use your same kind of magic." At her confused look I explained better. "What I did was to copy your chanting while preparing my own magic, nothing was really going to happen just by saying it.

"Ah," Understanding lit up his face "so as to hide your magic. You came up with some good tricks, huh?"

"I try hard. Now back to Wilson."

"Shouldn't we get ready?"

"That's exactly what we're going for." I replied with a laugh.

Arriving at the store I went to the back and saw Wilson putting the finishing touches on the armor.

"You came back just in time, they are ready."

With that we could see a couple of good quality armors in front of us. The one that would belong to Jeanne was similar to her current leather armor but reinforced on the chest, arms and especially the legs, along with a small cape that would reach up to her hip.

My case was similar, but reinforcing the chest, legs and taking special care with the arms and forearms. Wilson wanted to add a cape to my armor as well but fortunately I stopped him, I always felt they got in the way. Of course I couldn't forget to add a little hook on the back to attach my axe.

"This is what you were using all our loot for? I thought you were just going to spend it on junk weapons!" said Jeanne looking at the details of the armor.

"Come on, they're not junk weapons. And well, Wilson helped me with it, but next time they'll be even better. I refuse to not pay for everything you've helped me with."

"You sure know how to spoil people!" she said smiling and giving me a little tap on the shoulder. "This will work, I did sell my old armor after all. Now move, it's time to try it on. "

And with that she took the armor and went to change. Wilson laughed at the scene as I took mine to try it on. It was pretty simple but I was proud of what I had done, a little annoyed that I couldn't enchanted it myself but soon enough that would change. I checked the enchantments while changing.

[Gladiator Armor

Defense increase, attack endurance (small), magic increase (small).]

It was a few enchantments but I expected even less actually, various materials we got from the bandits allowed me this. But the name, it had a small resemblance to those armor, true, but how did I let myself be convinced to name it that? Of course, because Wilson got really stubborn about naming it appropriately.

"It's the fruit of our labor! A real name is the best way to appreciate the art that has been made!" I could still hear him complaining.

Walking out I could see Jeanne making some final adjustments and fixing her hair in a ponytail.

"'Valkyrie armor' it's called, huh? And the agility enchantment will help quite a bit."

"I must admit it looks great on you, the glitter even matches your red hair."

"Of course, many say I look like a princess."

"Yeah, right." I snorted at her comment "Anyway, thanks Wilson, this will help us a lot."

"Don't worry kid, you guys bring better materials to work with and we'll be on hand."

"Sure!" Jeanne exclaimed, getting out of the shop "We'll finish those monsters easily and get better equipment!"

Shaking my head I said goodbye to Wilson and followed Jeanne to the inn. We had to finish preparations for the next day but it was a no-brainer. I couldn't deny that I was excited to find out what kind of monsters we would encounter. With that in mind it was time to get to work.