The giant chicken ran past Noah and Ayden, leaving behind nothing but a small cloud of dust and a gust of wind rushing past their faces. For some reason, despite them already having seen two moons in the sky, glowing flowers, as well as game-like windows floating in front of them, this was the weirdest thing they had seen so far.

The two young men stood there, weirdly perplexed, as a boy ran past them. He seemed to be around 12 or 13 years old. The boy stopped roughly in front of Noah and Ayden, breathing heavily from running after the chicken for so long.

“Awe shucks!” The boy yelled out with his hands pressed into a fist.

“You need any help?” Noah asked with a wry smile. The boy immediately turned his head toward Noah, “What’d ya think?! It look like I need help?!”

“Yup. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked, bud.” Noah replied bluntly, taking a step closer toward the boy. The chicken stopped in the middle of the road, a fair distance away from the boy, as if trying to mock him.

Noah lightly grinned, “How about this... We’re new here, travelers, you know? If I can catch that thing for you, you show us around. Does that sound fair to you?”

The boy looked back with a smirk, “Hah! I’m the fastest runner in the village! If I can’t catch that chickadoo, then ya definitely can’t!”

Curiously, Ayden looked at the giant chicken with his brows raised, "So it’s called a chickadoo... Do you know about chickens as well?”

Confused, the boy looked back at these two young men he didn’t know, “What kinda question’s that supposed to be..? ‘Course I know ‘bout chickens.”

Ayden slowly smiled, ‘So normal animals are still a thing... good.’

“Urgh...” The boy groaned loudly, distracted by the chickadoo, walking back and forth in the distance. It would start running away again the moment that the boy started moving, so he was getting quite upset, “Fine! If ya think ya can catch it, I’ll show the two of ya ‘round the place!”

“It’s a promise, then.” Noah smirked. He took off his light jacket and handed it to Ayden. The young man stretched a bit and then started jumping up and down to make sure that his body felt alright.

Then, Noah slowly squatted down and took up a runner’s starting stance. He was the ace of the track team at his high-school; of course he knew how to run!

“Ah, by the way...” Noah asked, “How do you hold a chicken properly?” He turned his head toward Ayden.

“Hold it from above, with its beak and legs possibly away from you. Make sure to press its wings to its body so that it can’t flail around too much.” Ayden explained quickly and without hesitation. With a quick nod, Noah prepared to start. Meanwhile, the boy already felt ridiculous in even having asked Noah to help.

However, before he knew it, Noah kicked his body away from the ground and started sprinting toward the chickadoo. The moment it realized what was going on, it turned around and ran away from Noah. The boy just stood there, perplexed at how fast Noah was running right now. The only thing going through Noah’s own mind was that he wanted to catch this giant chicken.

He was chasing it through the village, right to the center of it. Soon, they were both standing in the center of the small marketplace set up there. A handful of stalls with different veggies, some eggs, bread, and crafted wares that the people living here made surrounded them.

Under any other circumstance, Noah would have loved to take a look around here, but right now, he had to complete his ‘mission’. Luckily, all the stalls were made of proper wood, like small huts, so they were rather sturdy. Noah moved around the area until he had the chickadoo where he wanted it, and then quickly ran forward.

The chicken ran through the gap between two of the stalls, while Noah ran directly at one of those. He jumped onto a chair, then a barrel, and then climbed right onto the hut. With one strong jump, Noah was flying over the chickadoo and dropped down right onto it. He twisted his body to the side so that he wouldn’t crush it but still held onto its back with both of his arms and lifted it up.

Noah was now lying on the ground, holding this giant chicken above him. It was flailing around and trying to escape, but Noah’s grip was firm enough to make this impossible.

While the men and women that had set up the stalls gathered around Noah, with Ayden and the boy soon catching up as well, Noah himself saw a new emerald green window appear in his sight.

---

[You have met the requirements for the Class!]

[You can now start the Class acquisition quest!]

---

“Eh? That easily..?” Noah muttered, surprised. It’s not like this seemed to be a particularly useful class for him. Still, the fact that he only had to catch this one chickadoo... was interesting.

“Could one of y’all help me out here?” Noah asked with a wry smile, and quickly, a man walked up and took the chickadoo from Noah so that he could stand up properly.

He patted down his now dirty back a bit before Ayden came over and helped him out with that. Once Noah wasn’t too dirty anymore, Ayden gave him his jacket back, and Noah turned toward the boy.

“So, are you gonna show us around the village for now?” Noah asked with a grin on his face while the boy looked up at him with wondrous eyes.

“You’re awesome!” The boy exclaimed, “How’d ya do that?!”

“Do what?” Noah asked, a bit confused before the boy smiled broadly.

“Catch the chickadoo! She’s the most bothersome in the village! It sometimes takes hours to catch’er! And you did it in just a few minutes!” Excitedly, the boy started jumping around Noah.

Noah looked at Ayden with a wry smile, but he just laughed back at him. While the boy still didn’t leave Noah’s side, both Noah and Ayden briefly introduced themselves to the villagers. None of them knew who they were, so it was a bit of a necessity, even if they just said their names and that they were ‘travelers’.

After briefly explaining that they were guests of Charles, most of their suspicions disappeared. Everyone here seemed to significantly trust that old man, which both Noah and Ayden understood immediately. He did seem pretty trustworthy.

Either way, first, the tour around the village with the boy as the guide started. And the more they looked around and the more people they met, the further Ayden’s initial suspicion that this was a medieval world was deepened.

‘On the other hand... This could just be some kind of Amish-type deal, where this village was the only one still living in the past while the rest of society advanced’, Ayden thought to himself. He figured that this would be important to figure out going forward.

At the end of the brief tour through the village, where the boy basically just gossiped about the other villagers, he brought them out through the gate. And there, in front of Noah and Ayden, vast fields spread outward, right up to the forest surrounding the village.

And at the side of one of those fields, currently taking a break, was the elderly village chief. He was rubbing the sweat off his forehead with some cloth. When Charles saw the two young men, he showed a bright smile and waved them over.

They quickly approached him, and before either Noah or Ayden were able to say anything, the boy beside them loudly exclaimed, “Chief! Noah was able to catch Princess just a minute after trying! Ain’t that amazing?!”

Charles turned his head toward Noah with a light smile. That he was able to catch that bothersome chickadoo Princess was rather impressive, to say the least. Noah scratched the back of his head awkwardly since the boy had been telling every villager they met about this.

“Of course, of course, that’s quite impressive! But I had expected nothing less from a boy such as him.” Charles smiled brightly. However, Ayden looked at Charles and asked something that he wondered the whole time, especially after the village tour.

“Excuse me, Charles, but is there a library in this place somewhere?” Ayden inquired. Charles looked at Ayden a bit confused, “A library? I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”

“...You... what? A library. A place with a lot of books in there.” Ayden replied with a shocked tone, and Charles slowly raised his brows, “Ah! I see! So it’s like a storage building specifically for books?”

“...Mhm... Something like that... So I guess you don’t have that here?”

“Haha, of course not. We barely have a handful of books! Why would we need a dedicated building for them? It’s not like any of us can read them anyway.” Charles laughed as if it was utterly apparent. Noah slowly turned his head toward Ayden, who stood there wholly shocked.

“Don’t worry, man. We’ll find you some books, you nerd.” Noah said as he placed his hand onto Ayden’s shoulder, “Anyway, would it be possible for us to read those books? We’d like to find out some stuff ‘bout the area. Maybe those can help us while y’all are working.”

“Oh! You two can read? How wonderful! The peddler who gifted those books to us told us that we should give them to the next people that could read who came here! What a wonderful coincidence!” Slowly, Charles stood up and started walking back toward the village gate, while Noah and Ayden followed him. Noah didn’t think much of it, but Ayden was even more confused than before.

Considering that even Amish people could read and write, he figured out that this was really a world of medieval times, where literacy was incredibly low. And during a time like that, where books were hard to create and most likely incredibly expensive... Why would a peddler leave a couple of books in a village where not a single person could read, leaving them for random people who could.

Peddlers were on the poorer side of merchants, so gifting such books must have been a huge monetary loss.

Suspiciously, Ayden kept thinking about possible reasons, but he really couldn’t come up with any. Except for one, which would make this situation a lot more complicated than before.

They stepped into Charles’ house again before the elderly man grabbed a wooden box from his room and carried it into the main space. After opening the box, he pulled out five expertly leatherbound books. And not just that, two of them were overly decorated. It made Ayden worry about the possible contents of the books just that much more. They seemed rather expensive, after all.

However, while Ayden was worrying, Noah picked up one of the books. And the first one he picked up was one of the two shiny, pretty ones. He flipped it open and looked at the first page, reading the book's title, “ ‘Diseases, Ailments, and their Cures’. Seems like we can read it without an issue... Good news, right?”

“Hm?” Ayden let out a surprised sound. It was just a book about medicine? Without hesitation, Ayden picked up the other decorated book.

‘The Common Beasts of the Forest’. This one didn’t seem forbidden either. Not like something that one had to definitely get rid of, at least. And from the titles of the other three, those weren’t anything important either. One of them was a thin book about the geography of ‘Magia’, the country that Noah and Ayden were apparently in right now. Another was about elemental herbology, while the last was about simple history that anyone should know.

These were books that one needed if they traveled through an unknown country all on their own, basically. As if they were left here specifically for Noah and Ayden.