As the day ended, Avaln noticed a few changes.

First, on their way back, Rei called to his attention the presence of an incredibly large amount of hooves tracks. She told him those tracks were probably a day old, or so she thought, given how the leaves that had been stomped hadn’t yet lost their green color.

The tracks were a little off their way, which is why she hadn’t noticed them when they departed for the stream. Avaln praised her survival skills, to which she blushed and just dismissed it as the tracks being too obvious. Rei also pointed out that precisely because of that, it meant a large number of demon boars had rushed southwest of where they were for some reason, and they might not find many if they were to depart for Gale.

He reminded her they still didn’t know in which direction Gale was, and it could be very well precisely southwest, which made her expression pale. Avaln knew it might have been insensible of him to point it out, but he felt she needed to lose a bit of her sense of security if she was to remain alert and survive through their ordeal.

Despite the strength he had recently gained, he was still far from strong enough to protect her if the situation turned sideways.

The second change he noticed was the way in which Rei treated him. At first, she had been very shy and cautious, not daring to trust him too much as if she couldn’t quite figure him out. However, now she was quite open with him, smiling and shying away like any girl her age. When they arrived at the cave, she even offered him a seat as if the place was her humble home, and then served him the satchel for him to choose something to eat. She even cooked some mushrooms for them outside while Avaln kept watch, then sat to watch him eat and didn’t start herself until Avaln almost begged her to do so.

It was like having a personal maid. And it was quite awkward for him.

At the beginning Avaln had all the intentions of asking her to stop, but when he inquired about why she was behaving like this, she answered, “My mom always said one should repay the debts they owe, if financial, with work, and if what was saved was one’s own life, with respect and servitude. All while still keeping one’s own integrity intact. The world is harsh, and generous people are rare, so one should watch out for hidden intentions: see if the person acts on their word, see if the person is sensible and kind, see if there isn’t a mask that falls when you are not near. If these conditions are met, that means the person is trustworthy, and repaying grace should be done ten-fold.”

“Master Avaln said he’d heal me, and he did. He said he’d guard me while I slept, and he did. He said he wouldn’t peep and he didn’t.” Her cheeks turned red from embarrassment when she said this. “So that means Master Avaln is a person worthy of my trust.”

Her pretty smile silenced any complaints he could have left. Avaln understood she was serving him out of her own free will, and if asking her to stop would trample over her principles, then it would be far better to respect them.

“Mom? I thought you were an orphan.” He inquired then.

It was custom to add a surname to orphans that reflected the place they came from, rather than one that belonged to a family when they were left without a name to refer to. In fact, Avaln should be surnamed “Of Greenleaf”, but the city was the exception to the custom as it was called like their leading Guild, so instead the rule was to take the name of their job, after being taken as apprentice when they turned sixteen. For example, if Avaln had been able to find one at the forge, he’d be surnamed “Smith.”

Rei’s face visibly sank. “My mom died when I was ten. Since then I’ve been living in Gale under the care of an uncle, but we’ve never been close… and due to some circumstances I don’t use her surname anymore.”

Avaln nodded, and didn’t pry. “Your mom must have been a person with great character. I wish I could have met her.”

Rei nodded as well, her smile turning gentle like a wish upon a spring. “I think so too.”

As for the third change, it was something he expected to happen at some point, yet not so soon. It was already late, and only a few rays of orange sunlight could be seen to breach through the leaves and enter the cave, when Avaln’s seventh sense was stirred by a dark mass of essence moving towards them.

A demon boar.

It seemed to be alone, and by its behaviour, it hadn’t noticed them yet.

So Avaln went and stood in front of the entrance, right in the middle of its view.

“Master... are you sure this is alright?” Asked Rei from the cave depths.

“Don’t worry!” He replied with much more confidence than he felt. The beast would enter the cave sooner or later at the pace it was going, and it was a good opportunity for him to test some of his theories.

Besides, if the fight was inevitable, it was better to kill it where no other beast of its kind could be attracted by it.

The demon boar noticed him soon after, and with a squeal, began charging straight at him. Avaln didn’t waste any time, and quickly ran inside, spear in hand, and stopped half way through, readying his stance.

The beast came in like a tempest, hooves striking the ground like thunder because of the cave’s acoustics, fast and defiant, yet Avaln stood in place, waiting...

Ten steps away, the demon boar’s red eyes shined with surprise, its speed suddenly falling.

The slow rune Avaln had carved, activated. It had a three steps radius, and it managed to surround the demon boar entirely.

However, and as Avaln expected, a rune powered up by his Nascent Essence second stage wasn’t enough to keep the beast for long, and after three breaths, it broke free and resumed its charge, gaining speed once again yet lacking it’s explosive acceleration from earlier.

Next, the freeze rune activated, with the same radius as the last one. Another shine of surprise could be seen in the beast’s eyes as it crossed the area it covered, yet his speed didn’t decrease in the slightest, and the only proof of even being affected was the sudden squeal it released.

Three steps later, the final rune was activated. This one, slightly smaller.

A painful squeal suddenly bounced throughout the cave, as the demon boar’s movement was almost halted by a powerful invisible force, its eyes this time darting around out of fear.

It was then when Avaln pierced.

In the time he spent comprehending, he was only able to learn one move from the Dún Scáith spear arts record. It was an attack that had all the weight of the spear wielder behind, and that could be adapted to different situations. He had chosen it precisely because it was simple and fit his plan quite well...

It was a frontal thrust called Snake bites the neck.

Avaln’s essence swelled inside him, from hip to back and shoulder, as he pierced the demon boar’s right eye, right foot forward, with merciless accuracy. The beast released a painful squeal, yet his strength was being sapped by a force it could not react to, so even if he wanted to retaliate, the few breaths of life it had left passed, as blood spilled out and bone fragments bounced against naked rock.

Avaln went back to his original stance, fast enough to cause doubt about ever having attacked, ready to thrust once again if needed, yet he didn’t. With a dull sound, the demon boar fell to the ground.

Upon seeing this, he stopped the rune’s functions.

“A-Amazing! Master, you are amazing!” Rei shouted from further inside, having witnessed everything.

It wasn’t like Rei didn’t believe Avaln when he said he had killed a demon boar, but seeing it with her own eyes, and with one strike, When her entire group had to hack at the one they managed to kill, repeatedly…

Just what was his refinement level? Why was such a master lost inside the Demon Boar Mountain range?

A drop of cold sweat ran down Avaln’s forehead as he spat “Shut your mouth! Do you want to kill both of us?”

Only then Rei realized the imprudence of her actions. The surprise had completely erased her worries and prevented her from thinking.

Demon Boars were very rarely alone. Even if the beast appeared to be, that didn’t mean its painful cries wouldn’t attract more of them. Her shout could have very well been the last drop needed for such a thing to happen.

She covered her mouth with her hands, nodding, as a tear of shock threatened to fall from her eyes.

An edge of guilt slashed at Avaln’s heart when he noticed it, yet it was feeble, superficial. He knew he was right, and even if he didn’t use the best words, immediate action was better than a careful mistake.

However, his face sank when his seventh sense picked up another dark mass of essence smelling the air right outside the cave, its eyes soon finding him near the corpse of one of its own.

It wasn’t like demon boars had enough sentience to feel the need for vengeance for a fallen comrade, but their instincts acted in favor of the species rather than the individual, so when it saw the body and the killer, its first reaction was to get rid of the latter or at least tire him out so that another could kill them.

Yet, the boar didn’t know that such a reaction was indeed in Avaln’s favor.

During the time he had spent guarding Rei while she cooked, he had an idea regarding one of the holes in his plan to set a trap. That is, with his meager Nascent Essence second stage refinement level, his runes wouldn’t be effective enough to give him a wide enough advantage over the beasts.

Runes weren’t set symbols. Even if one meant to transfer, several modifications could be made to determine other factors, like the amount, the efficacy, or if you even wanted to convert the essence to another attribute.

The same could be applied to the slow and freeze runes.

And so, when he carved them at the entrance of the cave, he modified them so that they would only activate when a creature other than the owner of the essence poured in, walked over them. But that wasn’t the most important hole that needed patching.

As he pondered over this, an idea surged in his mind.

If one could modify a rune… could they be combined as well?

He was quite sure that sort of knowledge didn’t reside in his runecasting records, so he resorted to experimenting instead, and applied all of his understanding and smarts to combine both, the slow and the freeze rune. It was easy for him to check if the rune worked, as by pouring some of his essence in, the drawing would glow under his seventh sense, a sign of being successfully activated.

However...

The result was a rune more than just capable of both, slowing and freezing, but a rune which combined boh effects in order to create a more potent one…

Avaln only poured essence on the rune closest to him, as the hooves approached him like a storm.

He finished right in time, and as the trap activated, the snake bit the eye, went through the socket slicing bone, and reached the brain.

He felt the ground shake as the corpse of the second demon boar fell.

Rei suppressed a shout of joy.

Such a feat was only possible thanks to that trap. The rune’s effects had surprised Avaln the first time because he actually didn’t know if it would work, as he only had a feeble theory of how both runes could tangle together…

In fact, his plan from the beginning had been not to rely on the traps too much, brave the storm and hope for his strike to reach and kill first.

Heat is produced by movement, that was a fact. That meant a charging boar had more body heat than a boar that was still, so when the trap combining both runes activated, it not only sapped its speed, but also its capacity to generate heat, which greatly benefited the freeze effect of the rune.

But not only that, as the demon boar remained longer inside the effective range, the trap also drained more body heat than it originally could, effectively halting his movement in such a short time it created the illusion of being chained to the ground.

As such, he called it the chain rune, for the lack of a better name.

Of course, such a thing wouldn’t last long, not more than five breaths at most, yet it was time enough for Avaln to strike the beast down. His first fight against one had been a great teacher, as it taught him exactly where their weak point was located…

And finally, Snake bites the neck was the perfect move to reach it.

Avaln’s essence circulation pulsed, as his essence swelled and contracted, causing him to feel ever so tired. Sweat ran down his face and he couldn’t help but sink a knee on the ground. The chain rune was powerful, but it required an amount of essence equivalent to its strength.

With his current level, he could prepare one at most. The only reason he had been able to use two in a row was because he had already poured his essence in the rune previously.

His essence pulsed once again, wildly, unbridled.

Rei ran to him, to which he lifted her hand to stop her.

He could feel it.

There was an opportunity in front of him, as an idea pulled at his mind, just outside of his reach.