Chapter 003: The Adventurer's Guild and a Stone Boar while Harvesting
Shiu finally arrived at Corell, a city on the edge of Sarouel Territory.
It was a big city because it was on the Sarouel main road. He was taught during his journey that this was the second largest city in Sarouel.
He went to the Adventurer's Guild as soon as he had entered the city.
He was nervous at first, but he'd gotten used to it by now.
It was possible to take quests after presenting the trainee guild card at the reception.
"I want to take this quest. Is that fine?"
He tiptoed and put the quest onto the counter. The young lady smiled.
"How admirable, even though you're so small."
One couldn't make a guild card until they reached adulthood at age 15. There were exceptions to this: 「I have no parents」or「I don't have a sponsor」. In short, children who would die if they didn't work could make a trainee guild card.
Shiu was 11 years old and he looked young, but it was mostly because she had a soft spot for him.
"It's fine. If it's just this much then you can leave it to me."
She probably saw my achievements on my card, didn't she? The quest was a higher rank than the ones he normally took but it got accepted, in addition:
"Do you have an inn recommendations?" He asked.
She thought for a while, then quickly drew a map and gave it to him.
"『Forest Lane Inn』. It's a family-oriented place so they're kind to children as well. And there aren't many drunkards there."
She cared about a child's emotional development.
Shiu gave his thanks and left the Guild.
Forest Lane Inn was a ten minute walk from the Adventurer's Guild.
The proprietress was kind just like the guild lady had said. She admired children who travelled while working but she was also worried about them.
She was worried about children like Shiu becoming adventurers. There were a lot of children who wanted to become adventurers because they admired them and she would meddle with those children.
He persuaded her by telling her that his foster father was an adventurer and he'd been trained by him.
Of course, I understand how she feels. Life in this world was light.
No, my previous world was the same. Shiu covered his face with his hand. It was a habit of his from a young age. That was the place that was wounded from the firebombs in his previous life.
Life was important, there were no second chances but life was taken lightly after all.
This wasn't something he should say as a reincarnated person, but he thought that life should be lived to the fullest.
He informed proprietress this while smiling wryly:
"I don't like fighting, so I won't go to any dangerous places. It's been drilled in to me to run away when a monster appears. My foster father taught me absolute defence."
She reluctantly agreed.
Even if she wanted to oppose, the only place that would take an orphan like him was the temple. There were also children who weren't accustomed to living in such places there. It was unreasonable. She probably knew these things because she ran an adventurer's inn.
Shiu mostly took harvesting quests and city quests.
He mostly worked at stores and workshops when he lived in Agatha. That kind of work branched into: Merchant Guild, Artisan Guild and Domestic Guild.
Shiu still didn't understand the meaning of 「Adventurer」, but he knew it was an occupation that allowed him to move freely.
The next morning, Shiu left to the nearby forest ―― even though it was really small compared to the forest that he grew up in ――.
He had kept the egg at his stomach so it was a little bit swollen there, but no one commented on it. Children usually hid things under their clothes after all.
The gatekeeper just looked at his stomach and laughed while seeing him off.
He entered the forest and searched for the herb.
Herba was a base ingredient in a recovery item called potion. It was a panacea that grew everywhere and there was a high demand for it because it was used in a lot of recovery items.
Herba contained a lot of mana, so it could be easily found.
Mana was the source of magic, it was a variety of energy contained in the air. When he thought about energy he immediately thought about oil depletion and electronic problems in his previous work. It seemed wasteful to use it.
Even now, he was using a type of space Magic called 《Space Perception》, this was also made with a「wasteful habit」. He had created this by just imaging spider threads spreading in all directions. It detected things like: mana, temperature and movement.
Shiu called this 《Every Direction Search》and practiced so that he could use it unconsciously. He also continued to practice decreasing the amount of MP he used for this skill in order not to know that it was detecting something.
Thanks to that, he was able to use it in his natural state. His capacity increased remarkably because he used it unconsciously and it was possible for him to parallel think. It was easy for him to use it after he had tried it once and he used it as much as possible. However, he needed to concentrate when he wanted to strengthen the sensitivity. At those times, he challenged himself by casting 《Search》.
Then he found various things while doing this.
"There's a Stone Boar in this place."
It was rare for a stone boar to be in the vicinity of a big city even if it was in the middle of a forest. It was necessary to patrol around the city and subjugate.
It was natural to exterminate monsters and demons in this world because they were very vicious. Unlike beasts, they slaughtered beings that weren't needed for eating. There was no reasoning with them, they weren't rational beings. They also liked to attack humans.
The guild always had subjugation quests. It was the duty of an adventurer to hunt them down if they found them.
Nonetheless, Shiu was an apprentice with low rank could run away.
Of course, he was obliged to report to the guild right away. He hesitated to subjugate it wilfully, because it could cause problems later. Stone boars weren't something that a 「apprentice」could hunt.
He decided to hunt it secretly even though he was worried. In short, it was fine if he didn't get caught.
Fortunately, he had harvested more Herba than he needed. He finished his harvesting and went to where the Stone Boar was loitering.
He got closer and looked at the Stone Boar, which looked exactly like its namesake.
Compared to Shiu's previous life memories, the monster was twice as big and it looked like a rhino with hair. It was over 4 metres in length. It was hard to imagine from its large build but the Stone Boar was unexpectedly nimble.
Shiu, who had found several Stone Boars in the deepest part of the forest, immediately looked them up in the space magic he'd recalled.
Shiu called it space magic but it was a transparent wall that surrounded its target. It was a convenient wall that could become a defence barrier or a separator and he often used it as a box. It was also possible to make it into a globular shape. He thought that magic was the result of vivid imagination.
Fortunately for Shiu, he never had to spend a long time hospitalised in his previous life and his hobby was reading so he had a wild imagination. So he was good at solidifying images.
The Stone Boar's neck was cut off once they were enclosed by the space wall.
It was fine to call it a Water Cutter, he had applied pressure by mixing basic water and wind attribute magic with a little space magic. Shiu simply thought of it as 《Water Cutter》, but there were similar type magic that have various uses, casting was always appropriate.
He continued to get rid of all the Stone Boars, he also drained them off their blood. Shiu, who was short, couldn't lift a 4 metres long Stone Boar upside down so he had used space magic to lift it up. Then he dismantled it with air pressure magic.
He gathered up the parts and put them into 《Wrap》, his spatial storage. Space wall was also applied to 《Wrap》and it was like an invisible wrap that was glued to his body. He didn't mind putting meat into the spatial storage.
The spatial storage was in a fixed temporal state, so everything except for living beings can be stored in there. Hot things remained hot and cold things remained cold. Plants could also be stored after harvesting. Perhaps, things that Shiu recognised as living beings couldn't be stored there.
It was useful and he could take the things out from there. He could also search for things in his mind and categorise them. He was fine with putting things in there but he was scared of something happening to those things.