The carriage bounced violently over another uneven section of road, sending Damian several centimeters off the wooden bench before gravity rudely deposited him again.
Thump!
Damian gripped his blackwood staff with one hand and the side of the carriage with the other.
"So much for magical civilization..." he muttered.
Rosewood had disappeared behind him more than an hour ago.
The carriage was currently traveling northeast along a packed-earth road toward Otter Village, a farming settlement roughly twenty-five kilometers away from town. Compared to the floating levitation carriage Damian had seen yesterday, his current transportation possessed neither magic nor luxury.
It was just two horses dragging four wooden wheels with hard seats that had absolutely no concern for the passenger’s spine.
Still, the scenery made up for some of the discomfort.
Fields stretched across the gently rolling countryside, broken occasionally by forests, streams and isolated farmhouses.
Rosewood’s walls had vanished beyond the horizon, leaving Damian with his first proper look at rural Valoria.
More importantly, his Adventurer Guild card currently displayed his first quest.
[Quest: Vermin Beneath Otter Village.
Description: Livestock and stored grain belonging to residents of Otter Village have suffered repeated attacks during the previous eight nights. Tracks, bite marks and recovered remains suggest the presence of a colony of Feral Giant Rats operating from somewhere near the settlement. Their increasing coordination suggests that a nest has formed nearby.
Objective: Locate and eliminate the Feral Giant Rat infestation threatening Otter Village.
Rank: Copper (F)(Mandatory Introduction Quest).
Reward: 5 Copper Coins per confirmed Feral Giant Rat slain.]
Damian had not chosen the assignment randomly, as Agnes had recommended it to him personally.
When Damian arrived at the Guild that morning and began examining the F-rank Copper missions, the older receptionist had rejected three of his initial choices before pulling this one from the board herself.
Feral Giant Rats were among the weakest creatures that even qualified for Guild extermination contracts, barely above Unranked.
Damian opened the Bestiary function on his Guild card, and a translucent image of an oversized brown rat appeared above the card.
[Name: Feral Giant Rat.
Creature Type: Beast.
Typical Size: 60–90 centimeters excluding tail.
Typical Weight: 15–30 kilograms.
Challenge Rating: 0 — Non-Challenge.
Known Traits: Disease Resistance, Keen Smell, Burrowing, Swarm Behavior.
Threat Notes: Individually weak. Dangerous primarily through numbers, disease transmission, confined environments and attacks against livestock or sleeping targets.]
The creature was essentially a rat enlarged to roughly the size of a small dog.
It was ugly, aggressive, and surprisingly intelligent for vermin, but despite that, it was hardly something requiring a heroic warrior to defeat.
The Challenge Rating entry had interested Damian considerably.
According to the Guild Bestiary, Challenge Rating (usually abbreviated as CR) was a standardized estimate of the danger posed by an individual creature under ordinary conditions.
It was not the same thing as quest rank, because quest rank judged the entire assignment.
A single weak monster inside a populated village could produce a more difficult quest than a stronger monster standing alone in an empty field.
Challenge Rating instead attempted to answer a simpler question.
How dangerous was this specific creature?
CR 0 creatures were considered Non-Challenge monsters.
A healthy adult armed with a proper weapon could reasonably kill one.
After that came fractional ratings such as CR 1/8, CR 1/4 and CR 1/2, representing creatures beneath the combat standard of a proper Level 1 adventurer but increasingly dangerous to ordinary people.
CR 1 represented a monster expected to pose a meaningful threat to a newly awakened Standard-Class combatant in a straightforward confrontation.
Above that, ratings increased according to observed combat performance rather than simple biology.
A CR 5 monster was not necessarily Level 5, but simply possessed enough combined offensive ability, defense, intelligence, supernatural traits and battlefield advantages to be considered a threat around that general combat bracket.
As with all worlds and power systems, numbers were necessary for measurement, but they complicated everything.
After all, twenty CR 0 rats charging through a narrow tunnel were obviously not equivalent to one harmless animal.
Which, therefore, explained Otter Village.
One Feral Giant Rat could be stabbed to death by an angry farmer with a pitchfork, but a lot of them raiding livestock pens every night were another matter entirely.
The low difficulty also explained the miserable reward of five Copper Coins per rat.
A successful slime extermination could pay several times more, and even goblins were significantly more profitable.
Agnes, though, had made it very clear that money was not the point.
"You are massively overqualified for this quest on paper, Damian. You possess a Standard Class, proper equipment, three Cantrips and several Level 1 spells. All the rats have are teeth, claws and their ugly faces," Agnes had told him bluntly.
Damian had been unable to argue.
She had then pointed one finger directly at his chest.
"The question is not whether you can kill them. The question is whether you can clear the infestation without getting bitten, burning down a barn, killing someone’s livestock or accidentally setting a farmer on fire. If you cannot manage that much against Non-Challenge monsters, then take several days, find a training range and learn what your spells actually do before accepting another combat mission. Better yet, join a proper party."
Her words were harsh, but reasonable.
After all, Damian had never fought a monster before.
Technically, he had never fought anything more dangerous than another man in an occasional workplace scuffle.
Having supernatural power did not automatically give him combat judgment, and that was what today was for.
Finally, the rumbling carriage slowed as Damian looked out through the open side and saw a cluster of buildings beside a glittering lake.
Otter Village.
The settlement was considerably healthier than the word ’village’ had made him imagine.
Around sixty or seventy homes surrounded a broad central road, most constructed from stone foundations and heavy timber. Fields extended outward from the settlement in neat sections of gold and green, while livestock pens occupied the western edge.
The lake dominated the northern side, and several women stood knee-deep near the shallows washing clothing against smooth wooden boards while children splashed nearby under half-hearted supervision.
Other villagers sat beneath cloth shades gossiping loudly enough for Damian to hear bursts of laughter from the road.
The able-bodied men worked farther away within wheat and hay fields while the others had apparently taken their midday break beneath a large tree, where several farmers ate from wooden bowls while two older men aggressively moved pieces across some kind of board game.
Damian was pleasantly surprised.
He had half expected his first quest location to resemble an abandoned horror village with blood smeared across the doors and one suspicious old man claiming everything was fine.
Instead, Otter Village looked like somewhere people genuinely lived.
The carriage stopped near a wooden sign.
Damian stepped down, paid the driver to wait for him, and immediately attracted several curious looks.
His black-and-gold Mage robe made his profession obvious, while the Guild card hanging from his belt identified him as an Adventurer, but nobody panicked or seemed overwhelmed.
After all, villages this close to Rosewood Town regularly saw merchants, adventurers and travelers moving through.
Suddenly, a young lad came jogging toward him.
He appeared around sixteen or seventeen, with sun-darkened skin, messy straw-colored hair and the broad shoulders of someone who had spent childhood helping on a farm.
"Oi! Oiiii!!! Are you the bloke to solve our vermin problems?" the boy asked eagerly.
Damian raised an eyebrow at the relatively familiar accent. "Is it that obvious?"
"Well, yea! You’ve right got a staff, them fancy robes and that shiny Guild card. Unless old Rosy Town started sending those grimy tax fellows dressed as Mages, I figured you were ours," the teenager replied with a grin.
Damian chuckled. "Not bad, kid. My name is Damian Baines, and yes, I’m here to slay some rats."
"Name’s Kellan, noble mage sir! My granpap’s the village chief. Come on, I’ll take you to him!" the boy introduced himself then offered enthusiastically.
Kellan began walking before Damian could answer, forcing Damian to shake his head with a soft smile and follow.
Unsurprisingly given his nature, the young man talked nearly the entire way.
He explained which farmer had lost chickens, how Old Mother Brenna had chased three giant rats out of her cellar with a broom, and how one particularly fat specimen had supposedly escaped after eating half a wheel of cheese.
Whether all those stories were relevant remained questionable as they reached the village inn near the central square, a painted sign depicting a sleeping otter hung above the entrance.
[The Otter’s Den.]
Behind the counter stood an older man with thick white hair, deeply tanned skin and a body still broad despite his age.
"Kellan! Did you give our guest even ten seconds to breathe before talking his ear off?" the elder barked.
The boy scratched his head. "I was explainin’ the situation, grandpap!"
"You were probably explaining Brenna’s damned cheese again," his grandfather identified with a suspicious glance.
The young man was tongue-tied at being sussed out so easily.
"It... it was a big rat!"
The old man sighed. "Greetings, Noble Mage Sir. You have already met my grandson, Kellan. He’s a good lad whose mouth moves faster than his brain."
"Hey! I’m standin’ right here, Grandpap!" Kellan protested indignantly.
The village chief only rolled his eyes. "So learn from criticism then, you troublemaker!"
Damian was unable to stop himself from laughing at that.
The chief introduced himself as Garrick and guided Damian toward a corner table.
Within minutes, a steaming bowl of chicken soup had been placed before him, which had been heavily seasoned with red peppers, herbs and a root vegetable Damian did not recognize.
"Eat first. Those damned rats aren’t going anywhere, believe me on that," Garrick insisted.
Damian took a cautious spoonful, and his eyebrows rose.
The broth was spicy, rich, and excellent, easily on par with Earth cooking standards.
He had almost finished half the bowl when an unwanted thought entered his mind.
A village with a friendly chief, free food, on his first quest in a magical world.
Was this going to turn out to be some bizarre sacrifice where the villagers drugged passing Adventurers and fed them to something beneath the lake?
Damian immediately stopped chewing and mentally checked himself as well as his status.
No dizziness, no strange mana response, his Amulet of Cleansing remained inactive, and his Ring of Lesser Protection felt normal.
He even used his limited magical perception from Arcane Knowledge to examine the soup.
Nothing.
Damian swallowed the food in his mouth with amusement.
’Right, this isn’t some dramatic piece of media after all.’
Real life did not require every pleasant situation to conceal a plot twist.
Sometimes an old man giving someone chicken soup was just an old man giving someone chicken soup.
Years of movies, novels and games had clearly damaged him.
Once Damian finished eating, Garrick explained the actual problem.
The attacks had started eight nights earlier.
First grain disappeared, then their prized chickens Damian had just feasted on.
After that, two even more precious lambs had been badly bitten, with one later dying.
The rats originally moved individually, but villagers had recently seen groups of five or six traveling together, even faintly abandoning caution and becoming arrogant.
That was when Garrick contacted the Guild.
With the information given and food in his belly, Damian got up to start work, beginning with the granary.
The investigation proved embarrassingly easy.
While he may not possess the Ranger class’ Tracking Specialization, he did possess functioning eyes.
A plethora of small clawed prints covered several dusty sections near the grain storage, and a wooden corner had been gnawed open for the vermin to squeeze in.
The worst part was the large and foul-smelling fresh droppings scattered behind stacked sacks.
The animal pens outside showed similar signs, and Damian followed the direction of the prints outward.
Occasionally he lost them, but fresh soil near the riverbank made the trail obvious again.
Within thirty minutes, he reached a rocky section south of the village where the river curved around a low hill.
With the trail ending here, all Damian could see was a cave.
...of course there was a cave.
Damian approached the cave carefully while making sure to make as little noise as possible, then stopped suddenly, noticing two Feral Giant Rats that lay near the entrance.
Holy hell, were they considerably uglier in reality than on the Bestiary display!
Brown-grey fur covered swollen bodies roughly the size of terriers, long yellow teeth protruded beneath twitching noses, and naked tails rested across the warm stone.
These supposed ’guards’ were... sunbathing.
One of them had even rolled partly onto its side with an expression of lazy bliss and enjoyment!
Damian stared speechlessly.
Clearly, professionalism had not reached the rat kingdom.
But quickly, his amusement faded.
This was it, huh? His first fight in Valoria.
Damian felt his heartbeat accelerate, and his mouth became slightly dry.
While yes, he possessed magic, understood his spells, and even had War Caster to strengthen his concentration, none of that changed the simple reality that he was about to deliberately kill living creatures for the first time.
It wasn’t really the killing that bothered him, to be honest. It was mostly the fact that these things would try to kill him back, and had a chance of doing so if he made a foolish mistake.
Damian slowly inhaled and calculated his battle resources.
He had about 80 points of Mental Energy, a number he put there by multiplying his INT by 10.
It was not official, it was likely not even accurate, but it was a metric Damian decided to use.
After calculating using this metric and his knowledge through his Mage Class Specialization, he estimated that <Mage Hand> cost 5 Mental Energy to manifest and another point per minute to maintain.
By that calculation, a single use of <Firebolt> cost three points whereas <Frost Ray> cost four.
The Level 1 spells were harder to calculate as they had variations and affecting factors, but even the cheapest, Magic Missile, cost over 10 points when not prepared.
As for how much damage his spells and cantrips did? There were no hard numbers for that either, as there was no such thing as an ’HP’ stat.
Hit the right place and you could one-shot a person with even a small stone, but hit the wrong place even with a Level 1 spell and your foe would still be able to hack at you.
Focusing on his targets, Damian noted that the two rats were separated by roughly three meters.
Immediately, the young man raised his staff and decided he would begin with crowd control.
Freeze one then kill the other.
Simple, right?
War Caster began providing endless value as his barely suppressed nervousness settled beneath concentration as Damian focused upon the first rat and mana rapidly gathered around the blue crystal atop his staff as if it were a sink, and a powerful magical syllable escaped his mouth.
"Glacies!"
The word was soft, yet it carried strangely as Damian’s ordinary voice seemed to deepen and echo through the surrounding air, not loud enough to hurt the ears but sharp enough that the sound felt as though it pierced directly into the world itself.
WHOOSH!
A pale-blue ray erupted from his staff and crossed the distance with bullet-like speed before striking the first rat directly in the face.
Frost exploded outward from the point of impact and froze its nose and crystallized its eyes.
Ice raced through the creature’s skull before the vermin could even understand that it had been attacked.
The rat stiffened then collapsed sideways, dead on the spot.
[Mental Energy: 76/80.]
Damian stared for half a second in shock and exhilaration.
Holy shit!
The spell had worked!
Though it was more violent than reading its description suggested, that was awesome as hell!
Unfortunately, the second rat noticed the attack not through its eyes, but because the temperature around the cave entrance had suddenly plunged, while the Frost Ray had torn through the air with a sharp hiss.
The remaining rat sprang upright, its black eyes widening with horror.
Then, it opened its mouth.
"SKREEEEEE—!"
Damian reacted immediately, fire born from mana gathering around his staff.
"Ignis!"
ZIU!
A bright orange projectile formed and launched forward with a sound akin to a lit firework. The other vermin barely began its warning cry before the Firebolt entered its wide-open mouth.
BOOM!
Flame burst from between its teeth, causing the creature to flip backward with smoke pouring from its jaws as it slammed against the cave wall.
[Mental Energy: 73/80.]
Damian lowered his staff slightly, breathing out to release his tension.
Two attacks, two kills, no injury, and best of all, no wasted movement (at least in his opinion).
His nervousness immediately fell by half, then the darkness inside the cave came alive as countless angry squeals echoed from beneath the earth and scratching claws struck stone.
One sound became five, five became ten, then too many to count.
Damian’s smile slowly disappeared as within the cave, dozens of small red eyes opened.
Clearly, the dead guard had managed to sound the alarm after all.
Damian tightened his grip around his staff, for his first real battle was about to begin!
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