Chapter 87 Awe

The next morning, before dawn had fully broken, Xia Nan was already standing outside the White Chickadee Tavern in full gear.

He felt alert, rested, and ready to move.

His improved Constitution had its advantages. Even after only a few hours of sleep, his body and mind had recovered almost completely.

His preparations, however, were another matter.

Weapons and armor were fine.

Supplies were not.

Everything had happened too suddenly. It was still the Midsummer Night festival, and the shops in town had closed early. Even if Xia Nan wanted to stock up properly, there was nowhere to buy anything.

In the end, he gathered what remained from his previous jobs, then paid the tavernkeeper, Chapton, for some portable food that would keep for a long time.

Only then did he consider himself ready.

Tap.

Tap.

Slow, crisp footsteps sounded behind him.

A cold breeze brushed past.

Xia Nan looked over.

At the far end of the street, dawn was beginning to spill across the horizon.

Brilliant clouds burned beneath the rising sun, warm light washing over the quiet town.

Against that glow, a burly figure emerged from the fading night with cold wind curling around him.

The man’s prominent brow cast shadows over his eyes.

Those eyes glimmered deep blue, like ghostly flames.

Forgan glanced at Xia Nan waiting by the roadside.

A barely perceptible nod.

Then he kept walking.

No greeting.

No explanation.

He simply headed for the town gate.

Xia Nan tightened the straps of the heavy pack on his back and hurried after him.

As he did, a strange expression crept across his face.

Normally, Xia Nan considered himself a fairly careful adventurer.

Before leaving town for a job, he liked to carry enough supplies to last two or three times longer than he expected to be away.

Forgan had never said how long this trip would take.

Still, the barbarian was only passing through Rivervale Town and stopping briefly to rest. Even if he intended to teach Xia Nan a combat technique, he could not stay for long.

With that in mind, Xia Nan had packed as much as he could without compromising his mobility.

Enough food and basic supplies for seven days in the wilderness.

If he rationed everything carefully, he could probably stretch it beyond ten.

Forgan, on the other hand, looked almost absurdly light.

No heavy canvas pack.

No bedroll.

No visible bundles of food.

Just a handful of small hide pouches hanging from his body, barely enough to qualify as storage.

Xia Nan could think of two possibilities.

Either Forgan owned some kind of storage-type magical item…

Or he simply traveled like this.

Considering the man’s barbarian background and everything Xia Nan had seen of him so far, the second possibility somehow felt more likely.

…

The two moved through Rivervale Town in silence, one behind the other.

The sky brightened steadily.

Buildings thinned along the road.

The familiar route soon gave Xia Nan a fairly good idea of where they were going.

The Misty Forest.

While they were still inside the human settlement, there was no need to stay as intensely alert as they would once they entered the wilderness.

That gave Xia Nan room to think.

And the more he thought, the more he realized he had overlooked something important the previous night.

Several days ago, while they were on a job together, Wood had explained a crucial detail about gaining a class level.

It was not enough to learn three combat techniques and train one of them to Mastery, Lv. 5.

All three techniques had to belong to the same class.

Only then could someone advance successfully.

Otherwise, the advancement would fail.

There was also an almost impossibly tiny chance of accidentally qualifying for some obscure niche class, but Xia Nan was not reckless enough to gamble his future on that.

The problem was [Spinning Slash].

He had already trained the technique to Lv. 5.

But he still had no idea which class it belonged to.

If he chose another technique from the wrong advancement path now, he could waste this entire opportunity.

[Maybe I should ask.]

As if catching the thought from the air, Forgan spoke from ahead.

“Hai’an said you’ve already mastered one combat technique.”

Xia Nan’s eyes lit up.

An opening.

He immediately took it.

“Yes. But I don’t know exactly which class it belongs to. I’ve only heard that it might be from either the [Warrior] or [Paladin] class.”

Silence.

Forgan kept walking.

No answer.

No reaction.

The conversation ended there.

Xia Nan stared at the broad back wrapped in wolfskin.

His mouth opened.

Then closed again.

A trace of frustration crept into his expression.

[Why bring it up if you’re not going to say anything?]

…

…

The Misty Forest was not unfamiliar to Xia Nan.

He had already completed two jobs inside it.

But following Forgan through the forest turned the journey into an entirely different experience.

An unforgettable one.

Even a little shocking.

Forgan seemed to have decided on their destination before they ever entered the trees.

And once inside, he followed a brutally simple rule:

The shortest distance between two points was a straight line.

So he went straight.

Through everything.

Thick thorn bushes that had once forced Xia Nan to stop and hack for minutes at a time barely slowed the barbarian.

Forgan did not even reach for the obsidian handaxe hanging from his waist.

He simply walked into them.

Crack.

Snap.

Branches and thorny vines folded beneath his body like reeds beneath a breaking wave.

He made no attempt to hide the noise of their passage.

He showed no concern about drawing monsters.

In fact, the farther they traveled, the faster he seemed to move.

To Xia Nan’s eye, Forgan was merely walking briskly.

Yet Xia Nan had to jog to keep up.

And despite all that noise, the entire morning passed without a single monster appearing.

Not one.

Even the snakes, scorpions, and other venomous pests that usually hid in the undergrowth had vanished.

The reason was obvious.

Forgan’s presence alone carried the danger of an apex predator.

To animals that survived by sensing threats before they appeared, that aura was a warning far more effective than any torch or repellent.

Like a beacon burning in the dark, it announced the presence of something near the top of the food chain.

Anything too weak to qualify as prey had already fled.

With a high-level class holder like Forgan walking beside him, the outer reaches of the Misty Forest might actually be safer than Rivervale Town.

At least the forest did not have taverns full of drunk class holders looking for a fight.

Xia Nan followed closely behind, taking in the forest from an entirely new perspective.

This was a place that had swallowed countless low-level adventurers.

Yet with Forgan here, it felt strangely empty.

Then, without warning, the barbarian’s aura dropped.

The overwhelming pressure around him receded.

Even his presence seemed to fade.

Xia Nan noticed immediately.

He was curious.

But Forgan said nothing, so Xia Nan kept his questions to himself.

They walked another twenty minutes or so.

Forgan gradually slowed.

Then the trees opened onto a small wooded slope.

A cave sat partway up it.

Xia Nan smelled the faint stench before he had taken more than a few steps closer.

The crude stone-and-earth entrance looked unpleasantly familiar.

He recognized it at once.

“Goblins?”