The Pub

Arthur wondered if he should knock on the door, but the place was too ruined to be inhabited. The windows were broken, and vegetation covered most of it. The contrast of what he had seen only a week ago and what he saw now gave him a feeling of melancholy. It was the feeling you get when you realize how much time can change things, for better or worse.

The door creaked as Arthur opened it, and he heard the familiar ring of the bell. As he looked inside, he confirmed that no one lived there. Dust filled the place, and there were some bird's leftovers littering the tables, probably ones who entered through the broken windows.

Arthur walked to the counter that fronted the dining hall, and his finger slide over it, making a line through the dust. Bottles of liquor and alcohol were safely bolted to the wall behind the counter, and Arthur found most of them to be unharmed. 

As he wasn't a drinker, he left them at that and went toward the door next to the counter. As he got inside, he found himself in a kitchen. Most of the stored food has rotted by now, and even the canned food was expired. 

As he opened the faucet, some water came out, but it was yellow. After emptying what the pipes had left, the water stopped. Arthur expected this and sighed before leaving the kitchen, as the smell of rotten food was unbearable. He headed upstairs and found two doors in a hallway. One of them was a bathroom, and the other one was a bedroom.

Arthur entered the bedroom and found a king-sized bed with a wardrobe inside and a storage room to its side. As he studied the bedroom, Arthur found that most things were here. 

Portraits, books, laptops, and other personal items were placed around the room. It felt heartbreaking that Joe didn't leave this place because he wanted to, but it was abandoned. He wondered what happened here.

As Arthur went into the storage room, he found it filled with armors and weapons. Most of them, just like his sword and armor, were of primitive grade. He didn't find anything of higher quality, but he made a mental note to use some useable armor as previous battels ruined his armor.

Arthur left the pub for now, and he found the wolf still there, waiting for him. This sight reminded him of Joe's mount that was also a wolf, only a much smaller one. He walked toward the wolf, and he patted its fur. 

After all that happened, he trusted the wolf now. He knew animals weren't that intelligent that they could plot against you, and the wolf had more than one chance to kill him.

"Do you want to stay with me?" Arthur asked, not expecting an answer. The wolf looked at him for a while before he licked his hand with its giant tongue. Arthur laughed at this and shook his hand to get rid of the saliva. 

He didn't know if the wolf was agreeing, but he doubted it would leave his side any time soon. As he looked at the pub, Arthur found his next resting place.

***

Arthur spent the rest of the day cleaning the pub. First, he got rid of the rotten food in the kitchen. He then tended the tables of any bird leftovers. He found some transparent plastic sheets in the kitchen and nailed them to the windows, closing them but still allowing light inside. He then started wiping every nook and cranny of the pub to get rid of the dust.

By the end of it, it was still one of the worse pubs to live in. However, it was a lot better than living in caves and whatsoever. He then took down the bell hanging by the door and started making an artifact. 

He used a primitive mana core to have the bell imprinted with the Detection-I rune. As he made it, he also tried to think of the condition: anytime a new lifeforce of primitive or above rank enters the detection range, this bell would ring.

It seems his ability was a lot more flexible than he thought, as he applied the conditions to the bell. Arthur felt excited by this as this meant he could make the artifacts work in specific requirements.

He hung the bell in the middle of the house and looked at it with pride. As he was thinking of testing it, the rune glowed, and the bell rang in front of his eyes. Arthur was stunned before he ran to the door. A giant wolf with a rabbit in its maw was sitting in front of the pub.

Arthur laughed at this as the wolf never brought anything but a rabbit, and he wondered if it thought Arthur only ate rabbits because of the first time they ate together.

After finding some skewers and two iron poles for the skewers to be placed upon, he took them out and had the rabbit skewered after cleaning it and skinning it. Although he never gutted or skinned a rabbit before, it was similar to a chicken, and he worked his way around it. Arthur looked with expectation at the wolf, who yawned and blew at the rabbit, roasting it.

***

The following five days were uneventful, except for Arthur's strength rising. After he changed his armor and used runes to strengthen it, he started his hunt again with the help of the giant wolf. 

After much thoughts, Arthur decided to call the wolf Kira. It was the name of a character he once read about in a comic, and it sounded cool. There wasn't any deeper meaning to it, but Arthur thought that most names weren't those of a deeper meaning.

Kira and Arthur started their adventure of hunting primitive monsters of all kinds. As the forest Arthur lived next to was filled with unranked monsters, he had to go a bit deeper to find the primitive monsters. However, with Kira's speed, all he needed was a few minutes to get there.

The first time they tried to hunt together, Kira killed the monsters with one blow. In Arthur's rough estimates, Kira was a peak-mid-tier monster, something he couldn't even hope of defeating. Having it around was much safer than Arthur hunting on his own. 

However, since it was much stronger than these monsters, Arthur had it simply watch as he took care of these hunters. For five days, Arthur's stats changed a lot.

[Scholar Guardian's Legacy]

[Level: 9 (35%)]

[Strength: 41]

[Agility: 45]

[Stamina: 33]

[Perception: 26]

[Mana: 30/30]

[Abilities: Beginner Runes Wordsmith (7%), Useable Runes: 7]

[Skills: Lesser-Mana Breathing Skill (F), Poison Strike (F), Camouflage (F)]

However, his luck was not that good as he didn't gain any new skills. Although he hunted some monsters with skills, they didn't give him any. Arthur thought that this was due to his bad luck, or he needed to hunt more monsters of the same kind.

Now that his mana was 30, he felt that his runes were too few. He was depressed by the idea that his growth was not as fast as it used to be. Although it was a lot faster than ordinary people, he was still weaker than neo-rankers. 

He was trying to leap from being a normal person to an awakener in less than two weeks as he wanted to have the same starting line as others.

From his estimates, being a full-fledged neo-ranker would mean he would have a stat of 50 or above, with the others having a small gap from that. However, that was just what he knew. He couldn't be sure if his guess were wrong, as he has never done a power assessment.

His legacy has stopped giving him runes. He realized that each time he gained a rune was either by direct knowledge or by achieving something new. 

The first three runes were when he first got the legacy, the legacy rune was when he first killed a monster, the protection rune was after his first time hunting in a dungeon, and he learned the force rune by himself, and the final stamina rune was when he first killed a primitive monster alone.

From what he learned about Legacies, they had the wills of their owners. That means they could reward him as the legacy's owner saw fit, and that explained the irregularity of the pattern he received runes.

Nonetheless, Arthur's strength increased tremendously. However, the feeling that his body was reaching its limits struck him. His strength was rapidly growing, and he felt like his potential was getting squeezed out by force, making it more difficult for him to get used to this new sensation of power.

Today, he decided to rest and try some new things. He still had a vivid memory of when he got attacked by the monster in the underground tunnel. Although its lifeforce was similar to others, it knew how to utilize mana to strengthen itself. Arthur wanted to try just that. 

He took his shirt off, revealing the scar that has now covered his chest, and he sat down outside the pub. Kira was just by his side, sleeping on the ground. Arthur looked at his new friend with a smile before he tried sensing his mana for the first time.