Up to this point, I'd never fought a monster. I'd fled when my original home in this world was destroyed, long enough ago I don't even remember what the name of that village was. After that I spent most of a decade in a City in the Sky, and then I'd found the area around Hialeah to be extremely tame, much more so than I'd been led to expect the surface world would be while I was in Virtue.

One thing it's impossible to be unaware of though; I am still a lower level than most adults, lower level than many children even. Another thing that it was impossible for me to be unaware of is that, even though I had yet to assign any of the attribute points I'd acquired for those levels, everything in this world, from the trees to the earth to yes the humans, is significantly tougher than what I was accustomed to on Earth. Even myself, as evidenced by my willingness to jog from town to town despite the often vast distances between them.

But that inherent toughness lends itself all too easily to recklessness. Considering how long it had been since I'd laid eyes on a monster, it shouldn't be a surprise that I was surprised when I ran into a monster on the narrow road leading to the port city of Shagon. Several, actually.

It was somewhere around 2 in the afternoon on my second day running. I'd been jogging almost nonstop since waking up, only slowing to a walk to occasionally chew on some jerky or drink some water, and by this point I had a light sheen of sweat covering me from head to toe. Back on Earth I'd been a fantastic runner when I was in my prime, I'd run as much as 25 kilos in a day and then decide to start my workout. That level of activity did catch up to me eventually, but the point is that I was in great shape. But here? There's just no comparison. I'd been trotting all day and well, like I said. I was sweating a little bit.

My eyes were focused on the road in front of me, and my mind had long ago zoned out and focused on the act of running in the way that people who run often will do. I was practically on top of them when the shadows on the sides of the road finally registered.

As I was thoroughly surprised, I wound down my run trying to stop quickly rather than try and put on a burst of speed and run through them. I would've been better off if I hadn't been so completely and utterly shocked, because I was already too close to avoid them entirely, so trying to quickly push through them would have been the better call… But, that's not what I did. I stopped. Which of course gave them time to surround me.

My mind was still trying to reel itself out of the runners' high, and I couldn't be certain of the count, but there were about 10 shadows in total, each of which was about 3 meters tall and retained a vaguely humanoid shape, but with elongated limbs and phalanges. The shadow closest to me lunged forward with its fingers clawed, and I certainly had a sense that if it struck me it would be fully capable of cutting into me as though it really were a real claw rather than a shadow.

With an attack on the way, my mind finally snapped back into focus and I jumped back, smoothly dropping my backpack and grabbing for my pistol right after. Regular kinetic dependent firearms are of limited utility in Grendel; they are mostly used by and against people who are objectively weak by this worlds' standards. For the most part, at low skill levels charging weaponry with Aether is reliant on touch, and anything outside of your touch will have the excess Aether dissipating back into the atmosphere at a much faster rate than if contact were maintained, though there is also the issue of charging up the ammunition with Aether being time consuming when you have to do it for each bullet. You get more effective at charging at range with higher skill levels, but no matter how good you become, the closer a thing is to touch the better you are able to manipulate it.

Using Aether in fights is essentially a requirement no matter the weapon, ability, or range. You have to if you want the thing that you are doing to stand a chance of causing real harm to the monsters of this world, many of whom would be completely impossible to fight without the use of Aether. In firearms, the Aether loss is exceptionally high due to the ammunition requiring more Aether to infuse due to a lack of direct contact, Aether bleeding back into the environment even before the ammunition leaves the barrel, and for some reason Aether seems to dissipate more quickly when applied to a bullet compared to an arrow as well, though it's hard to be certain I'm correct about that last part, and I don't have any good theories on why that might be the case except that it might be mass related.

The point though, is that the act of supercharging your weaponry beyond their conventional capabilities simply doesn't work as well when the delivery mechanism is a gun. Which is to say that my pistol, which is probably fairly comparable to a Beretta M9 back on Earth, even on earth would have had difficulty being effective against a 3 meter tall opponent who lacked any particular defensive mechanism. Being as I am not on Earth, this is a strictly inferior weapon choice for this situation compared to even the sharpened wood spear I'd made with a rock back when I was trying to learn smithing from Sol. Relying on firearms when they are available over other forms of weaponry it turns out was a bad habit that I hadn't yet fully trained myself out of.

I quickly fired off three rounds before it sunk in that shadows are in fact quite impervious to standard pistol fire, not a surprise but there was too much pressure for me to care overly much about how effective my offense was going to be, and I quickly jumped further back to avoid another lunge from both the first creature to have attacked me and one of its companions who was coming at me from the side, before needing to do a side roll to avoid the grasping fingers of a third shadow who'd maneuvered themselves behind me.

Realizing that I would have at most a few more seconds of life if I continued trying to fight at all, much less fight as ineffectively as I had been up to this point, I infused some light Aether into my next round while charging forward at an angle towards another of the monsters who seemed content to ensure that I wouldn't try to flee. Well, I did intend to flee, and when he leaned down and forward to grab or slash me, I shot him in the knee, somersaulted forward and underneath the arm opposite to the knee I'd just shot, and took off at the fastest sprint I could manage, with the rest of the shadow monsters hot on my tail.

I might be able to run fast, but so could they, and in less than 3 seconds I had to juke to the side to avoid another slash. Being thoroughly annoyed with these monsters, annoyed with my own personal performance, and annoyed with the fact that they had better reach and were faster runners than I, I resumed my sprint but this time as I ran I focused on and hardened the air in front of my feet, essentially using Aether to create "air stairs" to run up.

Unfortunately the shadows were still faster than me, but being able to incorporate a third dimension gave me enough wiggle room to, after a very frantic 20 or so seconds hopping and diving and rolling from one hastily constructed air platform to another, eventually get out of the reach of their arms, forcing them to jump, and a few seconds after that I made it clear of their jumping range as well.

To say that I was glad they didn't seem able to fly despite appearing as shadows is an understatement, because I had precious few options left to me if I couldn't even escape to the air.

I wouldn't be able to support myself standing on air like this indefinitely; there's a reason I haven't been flying or really using Aether for anything except attribute training and maintaining bodily health while traveling from one location to another: My skill levels have been kept intentionally low, so the Aether costs when using even relatively simple abilities are high, and I would probably only be able to hold my body suspended in the air on one of these impromptu platforms for another 5 minutes or so. Maybe that would be enough time to escape the rest of the way, but maybe it wouldn't too, and if I were forced back to the ground due to a lack of Aether while they were still below and waiting for me…

I holstered my pistol and pulled my rifle from my back where it had been secured using the sling, then I steadied my breathing as best as I could and filled my next round with as much light as I could compress into it, before shooting one of them approximately where its collar bone would be if it were a human.

I was actually aiming for its head, thinking I'd have a decent chance of hitting it there since I was essentially looking down at it, but headshots are harder to achieve than a lot of people realize, and that becomes many times more true when you're gasping for breath and your opponent knows you are there.

In general, people do not like to be shot, so even though I would have preferred a headshot, the bullet hitting in the approximate area of the collar was more than acceptable, to be honest shooting at the head is only something I even tried under these circumstances was because of how much more likely it would be for a miss to hit something important anyhow. The angle was absolutely fantastic, I just missed the shot because he'd been moving around too quickly.

The arms and legs of the shadow spread wide and its head tilted back in a shockingly convincing rendition of a completely silent howl of rage or pain. After it was given the opportunity to perform its dramatic little howl for another second or perhaps two, my second light bullet arrived, and this time the bullet landed where I'd wanted it to land. Thanks for the theatrics, shadow guy, that made it MUCH easier to hit you!

The damn thing was still alive, but it fell over on its back due to the force of the blow, then scrambled back to its feet and took off running, and its companions soon followed.

I wouldn't have been able to stay in the air for long no matter what I did, so even though those bullets meant I would have to come down that much sooner, any creature with even an instinctual level of intelligence will know that it's a bad idea to stay somewhere that a person can hurt you but you cannot hurt them. I knew I would run out of Aether within a few minutes, but did they? I'd gambled on them knowing little more about me than I knew about them.

I watch for another 15 seconds or so to ensure they aren't waiting for me before walking myself back down to the ground, retrieving my backpack where it had fallen after I'd dropped it. Not for the first time I find myself wishing that I had the money to afford a storage ring, or even the materials to be able to make my own using my artifice skill, but realistically even if I had the materials with my beginner skill levels there's a greater than 0 chance I'd just waste them. Even if I didn't it would likely be a poor quality ring with a very limited volume. Even so, it would be preferable to risking my life's accumulations, shoddy though they may be, any time something unexpected occurred.

I confirm that my alchemy books have not been ruined, and then resume my trip. A little less quickly this time, and a little more mindful of my surroundings.

Although I'd initially expected my journey to Shagon to take a week, slowing down and exercising greater caution ended up adding an entire day to the travel time. In the end though, it was for the best that I'd slowed down, because the run in with the shadows didn't end up being the only ambush I would've run into.

Luckily, by regularly double checking my mental state and ensuring that I was remaining cognizant of my surroundings, I was able to consistently recognize when I would have been running into trouble, which allowed me to take detours around the ambush sites. Granted I wasn't a Ranger yet, but even with all of my skills being in the beginner levels, the Erudite skill included subskills like insight and detective for good reason. I can be quite observant when I realize I need to be, and the Rogue and Survival skills both had stealth associations, so as long as I realize I should be hidden I'm fairly good at it, more than a regular human at least. There is a reason that Rogues are considered more desirable by the military than bards, and their ability to safely scout through dangerous areas is chief among the reasons that they haven't been vilified to the same degree that Necromancers have been.

Honestly, I found myself increasingly annoyed by the ambushes I was avoiding. If I were stronger, or if I had allies, it would definitely be better to kill the creatures that were lying in wait, because at least that way I would get some levels out of it. Instead of gaining personal levels though, I was having to use Aether skills to avoid getting into confrontations in the first place, which served to do nothing but increase skill levels, and up to this point I've been doing my best to avoid using any skills after learning them so that I could keep my skill levels low until they merged to higher tiers. Granted I have a number of tier 4 skills and it shouldn't be a problem if I use skills associated with them, but I'm still trying to avoid using existing skills because of how much crossover there is. Take the stealth skill for example: It is used by the tier 3 skill Survivalist, as well as the tier 3 skill Rogue, and it's always possible that it's used in some other skill that I've simply not noticed, heard, or read about. The point being that just because a skill is used in one place, that doesn't mean it's not also used somewhere else, so leveling up my tier 4 related skills might accidentally end up increasing lower tier skills as well, with me only finding out when I merged into a significantly higher skill level than I'd expected.

Trying to avoid leveling up skills is not always easy; especially when those skills fall under the "beginner" levels. Even without actually killing anything, my Elementalist skill gained a skill level after my "air platform" shenanigans while facing the shadow monsters. As long as I keep my skill below level 11 this won't cost me anything even if I do later stumble upon something that Elementalist can merge into and create a tier 4 magic skill, but since I'm still trying to learn associated magical skills I don't want to preclude the possibility of being the person to discover a tier 4 magic skill.

The contemporary wisdom in this world is that the magical skills like Elementalist are capped at tier 3 because caster types are supposed to have lower attributes than fighter types, but I don't think that's likely to be true. Everything else has a tier 4 skill somewhere, so why wouldn't the magic skills? There's saint, but that one is essentially the flagship skill of the clergy.

I've played video games and the "System" here is definitely game-like, so if there's a divine style of spellcasting and an arcane style of spellcasting, and the divine spellcasting has a tier 4, there is almost certainly a tier 4 arcane version as well. I just don't know what is needed to create it.

All of the tier 4 skills have had something special that made them particularly difficult to learn, and Alchemy would be rather hard to learn by conventional standards, so I'm hopeful that alchemy will be the key leading to the upgrade of my artificing related skills, turning them into Enchantment, which I then hope will serve as the trigger to unlock a tier 4 skill. Even if I don't know what that skill might be called, or which of the other tier 3 magic skills it might merge with in creating that hypothetical tier 4 skill. It's just my best guess, and if it really does create a tier 4 casting type skill, I won't really give a crap about what it's called.