Riding along in the cart soon became very boring. I no longer had anyone to talk to about learning the language, and I didn’t really have anything else to do. Eventually I started playing around with enchanting, trying to make my own version of a walkie talkie, but I couldn’t figure out how they had done it. Runes were based on the meaning you wrote into them, and I couldn’t think of anything I could make into a pictograph that would get across the idea of wireless communication aside from a cell phone, and that would just look like a rounded rectangle.

The rest of the day passed with me having no luck with making my own set of walkies, and I set up camp, along with a very handy tool I’d bought after having it carefully explained to me by Lilya. Apparently, if anything got within what I approximated to be a forty foot radius of me, it would start blaring an alarm. Larger groups wouldn’t use it, as they would sometimes go off for no reason, waking up everyone, but for people who were traveling alone like me, it was invaluable.

It took a few days to arrive at the small little outpost I planned on hunting out of. It was where I had found the second wyvern, and I was hoping that where one had been, I would be able to find more. I got myself a room in the inn that seemed to house all of us hunters, and put my wagon in their yard, taking the key that was more like a wireless activation system than an actual key, and putting it into one of the sections of my backpack.

The night passed in silence, and the hunting began.

Each day, I would go out exploring, searching for wyverns, and never seeming to find any. During what was left of the day, I would read some of the many books I had stashed on my cart, practicing the language, though I was sure that my pronunciation would surely be odd due to learning from text rather than from speaking.

Eventually, I started to stay out for two days, then three, and so forth, constantly trying to find wyverns, but to no avail. I eventually started to travel between different towns, asking around at the taverns for any information I could find on wyverns, and having very little luck. By chance, I eventually heard about a place that was supposedly filled with wyverns, a small mountain range a few weeks travel to the east. I considered for quite some time, I’d become quite comfortable staying in this little outpost, but I needed to get stronger, and the only fast way I could think of was to hunt more wyverns.

Checking that I had enough chips to pay for my travels, I hopped on my cart and departed the city. The travel was mainly along stone roads, likely made by earth mages, and all along the way I continued to read the books I’d brought with me, being able to bring quite a few now that I had more than just my little backpack. I was occasionally attacked, even at night, but the alarm system Lilya had introduced me to came in handy, and I always made sure to sleep with my revolver right beside me.

Every time I would come across a small town or outpost, I would stay for a day, making up for the rest I would lose on my travels. I made a decent amount of chips from the cores and bodies I would bring along on my cart, and by the time I finally arrived at the city I was hopefully going to be hunting out of, I could be said to be pretty rich. Buying some clothes would no longer come even close to breaking the bank.

The city itself looked more like a fortress from the outside rather than the city it supposedly was. The walls were massive, seamless, and covered in different runes that would likely protect it from anything that would dare to attack. Walking in through the massive metal gates, something that would be unthinkable to move without the added strength from merging with cores, I saw the city proper. Everything seemed to be made of stone, with only slightly slanted roofs, each tier of the city slightly higher, and the flatter middle of the roofs were surrounded by walls.

The city was a perfect fortress. Even if enemy soldiers managed to make it through the walls which were comparable to the great wall of china, they would be facing defenders on every roof, shooting from the high ground at all times. Contrary to the fortress like construction, the streets of the city were filled with bright colors, banners in front of tens of the street stalls which littered the wide streets. I slowly walked along, the crowded street making a constant background noise of chatter and footsteps.

I slowly made my way along, asking one of the stall owners for directions to the nearest inn after getting some skewers, as I was still exhausted from my travels, needing some place to rest until I would start my hunting. I followed the directions to a place that seemed to be doing good business, the cart parking on the side nearly filled. I brought my cart over, parking it in one of the few empty spots, and headed into the tavern portion of the inn, a sign overhead naming the place as “Flower’s Inn and Tavern”.

Walking inside, I was hit with a sweet smelling smoke I’d never smelled before, and weaved my way through the patrons drinking various forms of alcohol and eating some sort of stew that smelled absolutely mouthwatering. I came up to the bar, which was covered in stains from spilled alcohol and food. Waving my hand at the proprietor, I asked for a room and food, and traded some chips for a key. I enjoyed the stew, which seemed to be steel boar meat, and some sort of starchy vegetable that I recognized from other times I’d eaten, but still didn’t know the name of.

Heading up to my room, I was greeted with a very simple bed and desk, windows covered in shutters rather than glass, and a small rune powered lamp. Tossing my backpack to the side, I locked the door, and immediately passed out on the bed, exhausted from my travels. I woke up in the early morning, the sun just rising, and I grabbed my backpack, traded in my room key for breakfast, a tradition that seemed to be everywhere in this world, and left the inn.

I exited the city on the opposite side I’d entered it from, and in the distance, I could see mountains rising to the sky, like fingers trying to grab the heavens. I rode my cart towards them, the stone road making a clattering sound under the wheels of my cart. Occasionally, I would hop off, walking alongside my cart to stretch my legs. It wasn’t until the mountains started taking up the majority of the horizon that I saw what had to be an outpost for hunters.

The walls were large, though not as much as the city I’d just come from, but unlike the city, they were crawling with people.l Some were soldiers with a bright yellow tabard over their armor, others clearly hunters from their mismatched weapons and armor. Nobody bothered stopping me as I trundled in on my cart, and I soon found the only inn at the place, simply having the word “Inn” above it in the language they spoke here. I’d found out a while ago that the term for the language would roughly translate as “common”, which made sense considering that there were multiple worlds connected to here, and they needed a common tongue.

Heading on in, there was none of the smoke from the last inn I’d been to, and I took a seat at the bar, sitting on a rickety looking stool, which was unusual considering most furniture was clearly crafted from one piece by people who could shape it in the same way I shaped my weapons. I waited for the innkeeper to get to me, and ordered some food and alcohol, a steel boar steak that I’d become rather sick of ever since the incident back at the camp I started my hunting career at. I ate it regardless, and it was actually quite good, rubbed with some sort of spicy powder.

Once I’d finished my meal, and started on my drink, I asked the innkeeper about wyverns. He made a tapping motion on the counter, and I handed over a couple chips, figuring I would get better information if I paid for it. I soon learned that the mountain range a day’s travel away was completely filled with them, and that this particular outpost was actually here to deal with the wyverns that leave it. I felt a cruel grin slip onto my face as I think about the wyverns I’m going to be killing in order to get strong enough to be useful in the war against the Tesser.

The innkeeper ignores my crazy look as he turns to the other patrons, and I got a room before ordering some more drinks, wanting to drown my thoughts that had resurfaced after I’d remembered my goal for coming here. I went to bed stumbling, and woke in the morning with a slight headache, thankful that hangovers affected me far less than before I’d enhanced my mana with wyvern cores. Trundling out of the outpost on my cart, I headed straight to the mountains. I was going to stick on the outskirts for now, but once I grew more used to it, I was going to push as far into the mountains as I could.

The first few days were simply day excursions, the mountains always visible as I walked through the rolling hills surrounding them. There were quite a few monsters, including some ram like animal with curling horns, but I didn’t see any wyverns. After a few days of nothing, I decided to give up on staying close to the outpost and traveled closer to the mountains. My first day of traveling was quite empty, rolling along in my cart, weaving between the massive foothills of the mountains that seemed to grow ever larger the closer I got to them. There were a few of the ram like things, but after taking their core and horns, I left the rest to feed the other creatures.

As the mountains approached, I eventually found my goal. A wyvern was sunning itself on a massive rock that jutted from the earth like the prow of a sinking ship. Getting off my cart, I took a very deep breath. I checked over my sword in its sheath, grabbed my shield from the cart, and took my rifle from it’s slung position on my back to in front of me. This particular wyvern was the smallest specimen I’d seen of them, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I didn’t have Lilya, Iosio, and especially not Dmiyo or Alya to back me up.

I had to blink away a couple tears at that, but my determination to get strong enough to be useful in the fight against the Tesser simply burned brighter in my chest, a flame that had gone from the white hot feeling of rage to something ice cold and sharp as a blade. My mind focused, and maybe a little broken from everything that had happened, I took aim at the lounging wyvern, which seemingly felt no threat from the small being that I am. I decided to target one of its limbs, as I didn’t think I could hit it in its vulnerable eyes form this range.

Slowly pulling down on the trigger, the crack form the sound barrier being broken was matched by a splash of ice and blood appearing on the wyvern’s arm. Apparently this wyvern was weak enough for my bullets to get through its scales, which disappointed me, as it meant that its core wouldn’t give me nearly so much strength as I was looking for. Pulling back the bolt, I loaded another bullet into the chamber, and fired again, targeting the same wing and arm mishmash. The wyvern finally found me, and let out a massive roar, but I simply ignored it, firing yet again. I’d filled this particular clip with nothing but ice bullets, as they made the wyvern scales far more fragile. My third shot hit it right where the first bullet had, and I see another splash of blood, not enough to seriously harm it, but enough to have made it even angrier.

With its wing wounded, it wasn’t able to fly in my direction, and somehow it seemed to know that, so it simply started charging me at a ridiculous speed. With it facing me, I started to target its face and body. While I wasn’t able to hit it in the eye, I left quite a few patches of ice on it, and I had a target for when it got into melee range. Firing the last bullet in my magazine, I threw my rifle onto the cart, and stepped away so the cart wouldn’t be crushed. I pulled out my revolver, waited until it got a bit closer, then fired all six bullets right into its face.

One even managed to hit less than an inch beside its eye before exploding, and the rock shrapnel shredded it, blinding it on one side. The wyvern, missing chunks of flesh from the bullets, as it wasn’t nearly so tough as the first one I’d faced, was soon up in my face, and I readied my sword, and used all the mana I could muster for body strengthening. It went to bite at me right away, wanting to crush the being who had dared to wound it, but it was easy enough for me to step to the side, and I slammed my sword down with all the force I could muster onto its neck where one of my ice bullets had impacted. It left a deep cut, but didn’t hit anything vital as the wyvern switched tactics from trying to bite me to trying to claw me.

The wyvern scales covering my shield held off the claws, though my arm gave a bit, even with the strength I’d gained from enhancing my mana along with body strengthening magic. Swinging again into the wound I’d just left, blood started to pour out. It wasn’t spraying, so I had either only nicked an artery, or cut a vein, but I still jumped backwards. I started to run in circles around the wyvern, keeping out of its range and blocking all of its wild swings with my shield. Each time, I was knocked back a bit, but this one was far smaller than the first wyvern I’d hunted, and not even half as strong, so while I would be knocked back a bit, my arm wasn’t instantly broken from the impacts.

As I continued circling the wyvern, staying close to the arm I’d hit with a few freezing bullets, as that arm had far less power from the flash frozen muscles, I let the beast slowly bleed out from the deep wound I’d left in its neck. It took far longer than I was comfortable with to bleed out, but eventually it collapsed, and I very carefully made sure it was dead, stabbing into its unwounded eye. Once I’d confirmed the death of it, I got to the bloody work of taking what I needed from its body. Even though it was far smaller than the first wyvern I’d hunted, it was still too large for the cart, and so I began butchering it on the spot.

The first thing I got from it was the core, and I held onto that for enhancing my mana in a place where it would be safer. After that, I looked to my steel boar bone sword, and saw that it had been quite badly dulled. While I could always sharpen it again, if I was going to be hunting wyverns, I needed something that could cut through their scales more easily. Thinking that wyvern bone may end up being more useful, I slowly cut out a few bones from the monster, along with its claws and teeth. I also wanted to test the mana conductivity of the different parts of the wyvern. If they ended up having a good mana conductivity, I could actually upgrade my gun. Well, I could upgrade my gun when I had access to my workshop back on Earth.

The next two days were spent traveling back to the outpost, and once there I secluded myself in my room, and took out the wyvern core.