Turns out being a guard wasn't all sitting around eating and sleeping, well, not that he did much sleeping. No, even though there were a few weeks before the caravan moved out the Guild members were required to keep monsters away from the logging camp.

Chuck fired an ice arrow at one of the cat-like critters, it was the size of a large dog. The creature screeched in pain and high tailed it out of the area. Less than a minute later Mellas came running up.

"Everything okay over here?"

"Yeah, I chased away some large predator."

"Well, come on, we gotta go finish it off, if it's wounded it won't have gone far."

Chuck followed the trail of the creature, Mellas following behind him. The blood started to dry up and Mellas noticed this as well.

"Hold, up," Mellas said, holding his hand out.

Chuck stopped, looking around while he had his hand on his sword. He could see where the trail led off into the jungle. He heard a rustling off to his left and activated stealth, fading into the shadows.

The angry cat creature came barreling towards their location. It seemed super confused when it burst from the undergrowth and nobody was there. Chuck hit it with a mud blade as it looked in his direction.

The creature screeched as it tried to shake the mud out of its eyes. Chuck took this time to manipulate an ice arrow, causing the spell to double in size. He released the spell, slamming it into the creature's neck. The extra weight slowed the spell down but it had enough force to cause the creature to stumble backward.

Mellas chose that opportunity to stab the creature in front of its rear legs. The man leaped back again before the creature turned to try and swipe at him. Chuck ran in, slashing the creature across the neck. He wasn't quite fast enough to back up as the beast smacked his side with its large clawed hand.

Chuck grunted in pain from the strike, spinning to the ground. The creature still struggled with clearing the mud from its eyes, allowing Chuck the time to scramble back to his feet. He winced in pain as he stood, looking down. There was no blood but he could see a dust mark and furrows in his leather armor from the attack. When he looked up he saw Mellas standing over the corpse.

"You good, kid?"

"Yea," Chuck wheezed, "I think it just bruised a few ribs, my healing spell should be able to take care of it."

Mellas nodded, "You did good, Vermots are dangerous creatures. You wanna try your hand at skinning it?"

"Sure," Chuck replied.

After a quick use of his healing spell and a lot of hackery and corrections from Mellas later, Chuck managed to skin the Vermot.

"What about the meat?"

"Leave it, it's poisonous."

Chuck cleaned off his dagger and rolled up the hide. They headed back towards the camp. The caravan master would buy some items from them at a reduced price but that was fine. It beat having to prep the pelt to keep it from rotting since they couldn't leave the camp until their contract was completed if they wanted to be paid.

Chuck waited to check his skills until they returned to the camp. All of his new skills had reached their final level, leaving only stealth, multitasking, and mana manipulation with levels left to train. He had a feeling that that unknown skill book would open when he reached level five of mana manipulation or so he hoped. He checked to see how his remaining skills were progressing.

Short Sword: 71/150TP to level 2

-------------------

Multitasking: 37570/80000SP to level 4

Mana Manipulation: 13090/15000SP to level 5

Stealth: 980/8000SP to level 4

Mana manipulation should finish by this evening, he was glad for that. He was kind of looking forward to a few weeks of not worrying about training skills. Sure it was lost time but not much he could do about that. He may pick up a few common skills along the route, he was hoping that the skinning today would have unlocked one. Apparently, he didn't do a very good job because he didn't unlock the skill.

From his experience, you needed some sort of understanding to unlock a skill. With his sneaking and tracking skills, he knew that hiding behind a bush and following footprints respectively were important. He would talk with the guys tonight and ask them about it, perhaps they could shed some light on the issue for him.

Chuck's group sat down for dinner, the other team was out patrolling. It was the perfect time for Chuck to ask some questions he had been wondering about.

"Do you guy's know how one earns basic skills, like tracking and sneaking? I thought I would have earned a skill for skinning the Vermot."

"That's probably my fault," Mellas replied. "You are usually better off trying to do something completely by yourself if you want to earn a skill for it."

"Who determines that," Chuck replied in exasperation.

Erwin shrugged, "the gods have their own rules. Who knows what their criteria are."

"Speaking of gods, how many are there?"

The man laughed, "how many stars are in the night sky? I'm no theologian, Sha would have been a better person to ask, gods, rest his soul. I can name the main ones. Firon is the god of life, light, and the sun, sometimes he is referred to as the maker. Niros is the god of death, darkness, and the night, some call him the breaker. Zirax is the god of magic and the bringer of skills. There are many more gods but I forget their names."

"Isn't that blasphemous?"

"Only if you're a follower."

"The gods don't care if you worship them?" Chuck asked in confusion.

"As far as I know they don't care one way or another. Sure there are stories of divine miracles from the many churches but I have yet to see these with my own eyes."

"Okay, so why worship them at all?"

"Become an apostate? No, that would be dangerous, not from the gods' mind you but from other people. Safer just to pay lip service, it costs nothing and doesn't harm anyone."

"What about wars based on religious ideology?"

"There certainly have been wars in the past fought on those principals. I'm sure there will be in the future as well. Humans are human, and that doesn't even include the other sentient races. Not everyone agrees on even the names of the gods, let alone the ones that are thought to exist."

"What other races?" Chuck asked, remembering he had forgotten to bring this subject up previously.

"Well, there are the elves, the dwarves, beastkin, and shortfolk. Some would include the monstrous races like goblin and orc as well but I have yet to see those species create anything other than small tribes. Can hardly consider them sentient.

"So you've met people from the other races?"

"A few, I met an elf in the forest once. It didn't like me messing with the trees to make a fire and tried to turn me into a pincushion," Erwin said with a laugh.

"Dwarves are more common in the larger cities, they trade ore and some of their less desired weapons and armor for gold. Beastkin are a toss-up, their temperament is as fickle as the beast lineage they sprang from. A goatkin might be highly reasonable where a bearkin may just rip you apart on principal if you annoy it. I traded with a few over the years. Shortfolk make up halflings and other smaller species. They tend to be highly mischievous, making good thieves and pickpockets. I learned a few tricks as a kid from them." Erwin added wistfully.

"What about the monstrous ones you mentioned?"

The smile slipped from Erwin's face as he talked about these, "The so-called, filthy races. Goblins, and their lineage, including hobgoblins and others like them. They can't be reasoned with and are killed on sight. Orcs might be able to be reasoned with if you catch them on a good day but it's usually safer to just kill them."

"Why is that?"

"Even if they deal fairly with you, they tend to double-cross you as soon as they have the upper hand."

"Good to know," Chuck said.

Chuck was bursting with curiosity to meet some of these other races. It made him glad that this world wasn't just humans. Maybe this would help keep humans in check.

Chuck thought of another question to ask, "what about half breeds?"

The group laughed, "You looking to bed an elf woman? You may want to think twice."

"Wha- no," Chuck stammered, his face going beet red.

This caused another round of laughing before Erwin replied again. "Sure there are mixed breeds, half-elves, quarter-elves, etc. I even saw a few half-dwarves. Not sure what would drive a man to sleep with a dwarf though," Erwin added, contemplating the thought.

Chuck recovered from his earlier embarrassment, "why not a dwarf sleeping with a human?"

"I guess anything is possible, although, the ones I've met barely tolerate humans enough to trade with us. As for Beastkin, you would be an insanely foolish or insanely brave man to try and wrangle one of those into your bed. I could see the appeal of trying though, I suspect I have met a few offspring of the couplings. Their mainly human appearance is starkly different from the bestial variety."

Chuck was going to ask a logical follow up to this when Erwin cut him off. "Then there are the half-orcs and half-goblins. The results of women being captured and raped. The lucky managing to escape their tormentors before they are killed and eaten. That is until they give birth. Most of the half-orc children are cast out. The goblinoids are killed, along with the mother."

Chuck looked horrified at the thought.

"It's for the best," Erwin added, "Goblinoid or half-goblin's tend to tear their way out of the womb. If left alone the child devourers the woman while she is still alive."

Chuck put his fork down, no longer hungry after the information.

"I- I will keep that in mind," he replied woodenly.

The others nodded solemnly, slowly finishing their meal.

Chuck decided to distract his mind by practicing. He whipped his muscles through the sword forms faster than he had ever done before. It helped to banish the images floating around his head. He lost track of how long he was practicing when he messed up the form. He decided it was time for a break, and looked at his skill to see how far he progressed it today.

Short Sword: 95/150TP to level 2

Over twenty level's no wonder he was starting to lose focus. He also noticed his work had finally gained him a point in dexterity. This brought it up to fifteen. He decided this was a good time for a break. Chuck sat down on a hill, overlooking the camp. He was off duty until the morning so he had some time on his hands.

He pulled out the magical theory book to finally take a look at. Chuck flipped through a few pages before realized he only knew one in ten words. It was wishful thinking on his part to think he could skip ahead.

Chuck put that book away and pulled out the children's storybook again. He had only read a handful of the tales within the book. He struggles reading some of the words, others he had to spell out before he got a general understanding of what they meant.

He was glad for this world's system and enhanced intuition, without it he would not be making this much headway in learning the language. It's not like they had dedicated schools of learning like back on Earth. Most people were self-taught, or if you were rich enough a tutor was hired. Chuck guessed that Erwin and the others were his tutors.

Chuck was halfway through another short story about Firon when someone plopped down beside him. When he looked up he saw Kalina.

He smiled, "Hello, what brings you to my sunny hillside?"

She looked at what he was reading with a quirked eyebrow. "What's with the children's stories?"

"Oh these, helping me to learn Nurese."

"So you came from another country? It's hard to tell, you speak common quite well."

Everyone in Nur just called it common, even though it wasn't common outside of Nur. "I assume I came from another country. As for the language, I learned from Erwin and the others and from speaking to people in Lionoss."

She just grunted at this, laying back in the grass.

"So is that the only reason you came to visit?" Chuck inquired.

She shrugged, noncommittally but Chuck swore he saw a blush creep into the woman's tanned skin. "I see, well I'm free."

She smiled and both of us headed towards the tent.

Chuck had to leave a few hours later to go on patrol. They didn't spend the whole time entwined, Kalina actually helped him read some of the stories in his book. Chuck figured she got a bit of a kick out of teaching him.

Chuck looked at his skills and verified that mana manipulation had finally hit level five. He retrieved the skill book from his bag in anticipation.

Chuck rubbed his hands in anticipation, as he attempted to open the book. There was a weird resistance but it opened. The skill flowed into his mind. His vision went black and then the pain started, he screamed.