Chapter 9: 1.4

He could see several groups of people in the distance as he left the town but none of them were in the direction he was heading, which he was grateful for since he still didn't want to have to deal with any of the groups quite yet.  He found his tree without too much trouble and walked further into the forest once more in an attempt to find some prey.  As he walked around while trying to be as stealthy as possible, his mind shifted through several subjects to alleviate his boredom and ended up drifting towards classes.  

He had gathered that the amount of classes were almost as numerous as the amount of species but most had some kind of qualification or prerequisite that needed to be filled first.  He hadn't done too much research on classes yet but that was partly because he wasn't entirely what he wanted to go for and mostly because he didn't intend to pick up a class until he'd leveled up his species as much as he could first.  If things worked the way he thought they did based on what he had learned so far then that would also give him a chance to get access to even more class choices as well.  The real question, though, was what kind of class should be try and aim for the most?  

Some kind of magic class would obviously be beneficial by enhancing his magic, giving more skill slots for what was already taking up the most, and synergising well with what his species seemed to already be geared towards.  The downside to that was that his species was already geared towards magic of sorts and he still wasn't entirely sure if he wanted that to essentially be a lifelong focus, which was how he would feel with a magic class. 

Another option would be to move more towards something that felt normal and familiar.  He was already mostly using a revolver for most of his leveling endeavors so aiming towards some kind of gunslinger style class could make for a good focus while letting his racial and general skills take care of magic and everything else.  That, of course, let him the problems of how many skill slots he had available and how split the focus would be without enough generalization.  

Then there were the options to aim towards completely new directions.  A class based on stealth could help him stay out of trouble and avoid the eyes of those who would likely be quote against his current species and skills.  In a similar vein, some kind of class based on defense or personal healing would help him survive encounters that he wouldn't be able to avoid. 

At the moment he felt that either stealth or gun slinging was his best option since even though a healing or magic type class would have some trait bonuses, getting syringe faster or avoiding trouble altogether seemed like it would be better in both the short and long run.  He wouldn't pick them up, but Wyoming to try and naturally learn some stealth and shooting skills seemed like another decent short term goal to add to his list.  Having decided that, he shifted his focus back to the real world and tried to actively see as much as possible wroth his Detect Life skill while merely in mind to be as sneaky and stealthy as possible. 

It didn't take much longer than half an hour to find a rabbit, or this place's equivalent, that was hiding in a nearby bush.  He might have missed it had he not been paying more attention to his detection skill than anything else.  Feeling some satisfaction in the use of his skill, he quickly drew and opened fire, missing the first 3 out of 4 total shots, and killed the rabbit.  He reloaded his gun as quickly as he could, thinking that having only two shots left wouldn't be nearly as helpful as a full cylinder, and waited for a few moments as quietly as he could to make sure there were no creatures or people that he could hear or otherwise detect coming to investigate.  As certain as he could be that he was in the clear, he moved over to examine his kill and briefly lamented at all the spilled blood that was now wasted. 

He sighed and picked up the headless body, only giving the mess that was once a head a glance, and used his blood manipulation to help keep himself clean as he drank the corpse dry.  The blood wasn't quite as good as what he had drunk from the deer but it was also from a smaller creature that he had left bleeding out for some time so he couldn't be sure that it wasn't rabbit blood itself that he found less appetizing.  It was, somewhat to his dismay, still much better tasting and more filling than the bread he had eaten for breakfast.  He looked at the corpse for a while, trying to decide what he should do with it, and ultimately decided that even if he could sell what he hunted that a desiccated rabbit corpse would likely be worth next to nothing.  

Tossing the corpse into a different nearby bush from the one he was standing near, he resumed his walk while trying his hardest to split his focus between being stealthy and using Detect Life.  He soon came across another rabbit hiding in a bush and tried to aim more carefully before firing this time.  It only took two shots to take the rabbit down and he decided to not waste the blood this time.  He quickly moved over to it and righted its body as he leaned it against a tree so that the gunshot wound to the head was pointing up.  Some blood was still coming out but he figured that it was still little enough that he could ignore it for now.

He began using his blood manipulation to pull the blood out of the bullet hole and carefully draw a circle.  He decided to stick with using the blood needle since he was already used to that spell and wanted to get better at his fine manipulation and drawing the circles before he started expanding his repertoire of skills.  His first attempt was a failure and caused him to have to scrap the whole circle and start over.  He got off two good shots after that and was halfway done with the circle for a third when he suddenly heard a deep voice behind him.

"What are you doing?"

He froze immediately and pushed his mind into overdrive to try and figure out his exact situation and course of action.  The voice came from a slight distance behind him and the dead rabbit along with his work was in front of him.  With any luck, the owner of the voice hadn't seen him firing off the previous spells and couldn't see his current handiwork either.  Hoping that was the case he determined that he should try to nonchalantly erase his work in some way unnoticeable way.  Finalizing his thought on the matter, he slowly stood up and turned around as he used his blood manipulation to erase the circle he had been working on and spread the blood over the ground in patches, hoping it would look like a blood splatter from the shot.

"Hunting rabbits?"

"I can kind of see that.  I meant what were you doing right now after that, though."

The man was short, probably under a meter tall, but had rippling muscles visible through the thin clothes of his short sleeved green shirt.  The only other thing he could see the man wearing was a set of green pants of a slightly darker hue his shirt and what looked like a leather bracer with some strange metal pieces attached to the outside of it.  His head was bald and shaved so cleanly that it was actually shining from what sunlight filtered through the trees while his thick and bushy eyebrows and slightly forward brow shaded his eyes and made them hard to see.  His bear was equally thick and bushy but still had the appearance of good grooming to it.  Everything about his appearance seemed to scream that he was the epitome of what those from his world would call a common dwarf other than the fact that his skin and hair were both a pale white.  Somehow, even with the strange color scheme that looked like a monochrome person was wearing colored clothing, it didn't make him look sick and unhealthy or incredibly old.

[Dwarf][Hunter]

"Umm...practicing magic?"

"Magic?"

"Trying to, anyways.  I'm trying to learn dark magic.  Why?"

"Where's the rest of your group?"

He thought about how to answer that question for a brief moment.  He could be honest and say he didn't know or that he ran away but that would likely cause this man, who was most likely another mentor, to drag him back to that woman whom he wanted nothing to do with.  There was a slim possibility that he was just curious about the noises that had been coming from the forest and was willing to leave once he had his answers but placing bets on that kind of optimism would easily backfire and put him in a situation where he was still dragged back.  He could also try to lie but he wasn't sure what kind of lie would make this dwarf go away and leave him alone, not did he particularly trust his lying skills.  The last option he could think of, and the one he liked the least, was to try and threaten the dwarf in some way.  There was no way he would be able to win in any kind of fight and trying to run away was pretty much the same thing but if he respawned at the temple every time he died then maybe he would have a chance to escape before the dwarf could catch up to him there.

He settled on his decision, whether it was truly the best or not, and moved his arm faster than he likely had ever done before, regardless of which world or life he considered.  The man seemed to shift a little at the action but only raised his brows slightly in the end.  He was now facing the man with his revolver pointed at his own head while squinting.  He wanted to make sure the man realized he was serious while watching for even the slightest twitch in movement.  This was a bit of a gamble in whether the man with a likely incredibly high level could move fast enough to stop him from pulling the trigger or not if the need came.

"Ya.  I'm not going back to that psycho bitch.  I have no plans to be under a mentor if that's what mentorship means around here.  So, what now?"

"Honestly, no clue.  This is a new one for me.  It's not like killing yourself will actually change much, though.  Come on, I'll take you back and help you figure out how to fit in with your group again."

"No.  Like I said, I refuse that option.  I will not be threatened into into changing my race, skills, role, and class according to someone else's whims.  If I have to go to extremes to live my own life freely, then so be it.  You can fuck right off."

"Now hold on!"

He saw the man move towards him and decided not to push his chances on speed versus speed.  There was a loud bang that rang in his ears briefly as he pulled the trigger and everything quickly faded to white.  He thought he heard the man cuss one last time before the white began fading away once more to reveal him standing in the middle of the domed room in the temple where all of the new salients had appeared a couple days ago.  He took no more than 5 seconds to make sure all of his possessions were still on him and ran out of the room in a full sprint.  A priest was walking along the corridor just outside of the doors and called out to him.

"You seem troubled, child.  Can I help you in some way?  Perhaps that was your first experience with death in Aeon?"

He slowed down as he approached the priest and recognized him as the friendly seeming one that had welcomed them originally.

"Um, no!  Well, not really.  Anyways, is there a back way out of this place or somewhere I can hide?"

"Perhaps you should tell me what the problem is first, child.  I sense your urgency but know that no harm can come to you in this place."

"Look, there's not really a lot of time and I don't want to get dragged away from this place where harm can be done afterwards..."

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"Hmm.  Let us step into a private room for a moment then.  As long as you are not guilty of any crimes then I do not see why anyone would punish you but I believe I need to know the story."

He was shown to a simple room and as soon as he had stepped through the door he heard a shout coming from around the corner of the hallway.  The priest put his finger over his lips to indicate silence and closed the door to greet whoever was rapidly approaching and shouting.

"Father!  Have you seen a young half-elf looking new arrival recently emerged from the central room, by chance?"

"Hello to you as well, my son.  What, may I ask, is your particular business with such a person?  Are you, perhaps, his mentor?"

"No, unfortunately.  I found him while investigating some strange sounds in the forest.  He was shouting something about being threatened and abused by his mentor before he killed himself to get away from me.  I think I might have spooked him when I got surprised by what he was saying.  I wanted to try and apologize and then get the full story of whatever he was talking about.  If we got one of those rare people who like to abuse new arrivals for kicks or something then we have a serious problem on our hands."

"Indeed.  Very well.  I must insist on my presence as well as I was just about to hear the story myself.  Calm yourself, child.  We are coming in and like I said, no harm shall come to you in this place."

He backed away from the door as it opened and remained somewhat wary as the dwarf from earlier entered behind the priest.  He could actually see the silvery grey eyes of the dwarf now along with the look of sorrow in them.  A passing thought made him question why he couldn't see them when they were shaded in the forest even though he had night vision as a trait.  He kind of hoped it didn't mean he would only be able to see at night instead of in the dark.

"Hey, kid.  Sorry I spooked you earlier.  If one of the mentors is actually doing stuff like you said, though, it's kind of a big deal and I got a little surprised."

"As long as you aren't trying to drag me back then I guess it's okay?  So...threatening to murder us on the second layer if we don't change our choices isn't normal, right?"

"What?!  Of course not!"

"Indeed, child.  Such a thing is actually illegal by divine law."

"So none of the other mentors are like that?"

"Of course they aren't!  I hope..."

"It would be quite the problem if they were.  Perhaps you should explain what happened as best you can first, though.  These are quite serious accusations."

"Um, well...I'm not very good at storytelling...maybe I could...umm...hmm...okay.  I'm not super good at acting but I think it's the quickest way to explain things.  Imagine I'm an incredibly pretty woman that you know has the power to murder you just by thinking about it.  Ahem.  'You are all mistakes!  Change your species to a simpler one.  Also, these are the skills and when you can the roles and classes you have to take.  If you don't do it by the time you get to the second layer, I will personally hunt you down and murder you!  Let's go to the forest now!  Here's a bunch of random little critters I caught in a net.  Fall on them and murder them!  How dare you all level so slowly.  Stop being little bitches and go die in the forest at least so you can change your species and skills how I told you to.  You better do it be noon tomorrow when we meet right there!'  Then she ran off.  The end."

"..."

"..."

"I might have skipped over a little bit but that's pretty much exactly what happened.  Sorry about the bad acting..."

"Father?"

"There were no lies.  That is indeed what happened as far as the child is concerned..."

"Okay, kid.  Who was your mentor, again?"

"Um...Sh...Sh...Sharon?  I think?  From the Nightingale Clan?  Or something?  She's a Lunar Elf if that helps."

"Lunar Elf?  Ah, damn.  I don't suppose it was the Nightwind Clan that you meant?"

"That's it!"

"Of course it is.  This is probably going to be problem.  I'm going to call some of the others real quick.  I got a few on my friend's list and-"

"There's a friend's list?!"

"Of course there's a...well ya, of course she wouldn't teach you things like that.  Give me a moment.  Father, you might want to call all of the priests around as well and tell them to be ready in case she goes ballistic and tries to murder everyone."

"My son, you should know that daring to attack us would be the highest form of sacrilege.  I can't believe that even someone like that would stoop so low as to-"

"Father!  You didn't hear this from me, but we already know Nightwind was responsible for the destruction of the third temple.  They will stoop so low, and have already done so before.  The only question is if they've gotten brazen enough to do it in broad daylight yet.  You stay here, kid.  I'm about to pull off something fairly dangerous and believe me when I say you do NOT want your face to be remembered after this."

They both left through the door, closing it behind them.  He looked around the room for a moment and saw that it was fairly empty aside from a small table with two chair on either side.  Figuring that he was going to be stuck in the room for a while, he sat down and began alternating between practicing his mana manipulation and meditation skills.

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