Chapter 36
It was the morning five days after they’d successfully hunted Great Boars with the newcomers. Allen went to fetch water. Usually, now that Rodan had recovered, Rodan went, but today Allen said he’d go instead.
At the six o’clock bell, he brought out two large buckets. A line of serfs had already formed.
"Good morning!"
He greeted them loudly. It was important to make sure everyone turned to look at him.
"Oh! You’re Rodan’s boy, aren’t you? Morning."
He recognized a few of them. They were serfs who’d gone on the hunt.
"You coming again tomorrow, kid?"
Another serf called out to him.
"Yes, I’ll come every time. Someone tell my dad to let me carry a spear, too."
He put on a dissatisfied expression, as if to say he was having trouble because his father wouldn’t let him join the hunt.
"No way. If we said that, Rodan would beat us up."
Laughter broke out at the water station. One serf joined in, sounding envious.
"Must be nice, being able to join the hunt."
"What are you talking about? You should come along instead of just butchering all the time. I hear we’re adding two more newcomers tomorrow."
He added that Rodan’s son came along to watch.
"My wife’s pregnant, so I can’t go off doing anything reckless and leave her alone."
The first round of training newcomers with the Long-Spear Method, as Allen had named it, had ended successfully. Based on the results, they’d keep the first two newcomers and recruit two more. They would add two new participants at a time and help them level up.
Other serfs who weren’t taking part in the boar hunt agreed that they couldn’t join for the same reason. Boar hunting was a matter of life and death. Allen had seen Great Boars over three meters tall himself. There was no guarantee anyone would make it back safely.
"That’s true. I hear we’re hunting once every six days this year. If you want to join later, let me know."
"Yeah, got it. We need the meat for my wife. Our field’s small, so even just getting more carcasses to butcher would help."
(I see.)
Hearing that, Allen spoke to a serf who only helped with butchering.
"Excuse me, sir."
"I’m not that old, you know. What is it?"
"There’s something I’d like you to help me with."
In fact, this was why Allen had come to fetch water. He asked the man to come to his house at nine, then carried the buckets of water home.
It was nine o’clock. One of the serfs Allen had spoken to that morning arrived at his house.
"Oh, hello! Thanks for coming."
"Sure, no problem. So, what did you want me to help with?"
As the serf said this, his gaze fell on something hanging beside the irrigation channel.
"Oh, those? I just caught them a little while ago."
Two Alba Herons were hanging there. The man seemed a little put off by the sight of the carcasses, with blood still dripping from their necks. Allen invited him to come this way.
"W-What is this...?"
There were countless Alba Herons there.
When October began, Allen had resumed hunting Alba Herons. He’d told Rodan that he’d focus on hunting them instead of working in the fields until November. Rodan hadn’t objected. Allen’s help was useful, but he didn’t count on it.
In the afternoons, Allen played knights, so he caught between one and three Alba Herons every morning. There was always a fallow field somewhere among Rodan’s fields. Last year’s fallow field had been planted, so he was using a different one.
He’d perfected his method the previous year, so hunting Alba Herons was no problem. But the butchering couldn’t keep up. One after another, the birds piled up without being butchered.
He’d thought about asking Rodan to help butcher them, but Rodan had his fieldwork and, whenever he had a free moment, was away training the new recruits. Rodan was even busier than Allen.
And that brought things to the present. Of the twelve Alba Herons Allen had caught over the past five days, only five had been butchered. He wanted help with the remaining seven.
"I see, you want me to help butcher them."
The serf seemed to understand what Allen was asking.
"I’ll give you two chunks of meat for each one."
"Huh? Are you sure? That’s a lot to give me."
Allen said it was no problem at all.
The other day, Allen had spoken with a butcher in the residential district about buying his meat. He needed to earn fifty gold coins. Since he wanted to make money, he was asking a butcher to buy it, rather than a salt or firewood shop.
The butcher had told him that if the meat was already butchered, they’d take forty percent. If they only bought it, they’d take twenty percent. Unlike bartering, they charged a fee; otherwise, the butcher wouldn’t make any money.
Allen decided to have a fellow serf who needed meat help with the butchering. The payment would be the same as the butcher’s twenty percent. It would also be easier to take the meat to the residential district once it was butchered.
(So if I sell one, I get six silver coins. Or I could butcher it myself and get eight silver coins.)
Since leveling up was important, it was better to outsource the butchering and have someone help.
Back when he was Kenichi, he’d done nothing but level up, immediately selling every item he obtained. He’d never used those items to brew potions or craft weapons. He’d focused entirely on hunting. If he needed something, he could just buy it from someone who played as a crafter.
"The Alba Heron has a delicious liver. If you butcher five of them, I’ll give you one."
"R-Really?"
The organs spoiled too quickly to sell. Allen planned to catch enough that his family could eat them and he could share some with Krena’s, Dogora’s, and Peromus’s families. He’d share some with the person helping with the butchering, too.
"That’d be a big help," the man said, readily agreeing. Allen explained how to butcher them.
.........
Then came the next day. It was a boar-hunting day, and they were now at the hunting ground in the woods. They were using the same place as last time. They didn’t change locations because there were newcomers, and they wanted to avoid the danger of encountering a Great Boar deeper in the woods without warning.
The luring team would go ahead into the woods, so there wasn’t much danger. The point was to avoid unnecessary risks. However, if there were no promising boars nearby, the plan was to go farther in.
Only the three members of the luring team entered the woods. The rest waited at the hunting ground, their designated waiting point.
The two new recruits looked quite worried. Both were commoners. They were also recruiting serfs, and several were waiting for a spot. It seemed the two newcomers from the previous hunt had spread the word after returning without a scratch and celebrating that they’d overcome God’s trial. That had done the trick.
Allen had come along again today. Since he wasn’t taking part in the hunt itself, he wouldn’t receive a reward. The Long-Spear Team, the mark of a newcomer, had grown to four members today, but their reward was about half that of those who killed the boar. Dividing the reward this way had been Allen’s idea, too.
・Hunters using 2-meter spears: 10 kilograms of meat
・Those using 4-meter spears: 5 kilograms of meat
・Butchering only: 3 kilograms of meat
For now, the newcomers would focus on leveling up. Once they’d gained enough hunting experience, the plan was to move them to the teams that best suited their strengths.
The three teams had different roles: luring the boars, surrounding them, and delivering the finishing blow. Each role required different stats.
The luring team needed Agility, the surrounding team needed Endurance, and the finishing team needed Attack.
When Allen heard that the hunt was divided among these three teams, he remembered the Appraisal Ceremony. They’d probably all been judged to have no talent, with their stats rated somewhere from C to E.
Naturally, when they leveled up, those with a C rating would gain more stats than those with an E. And everyone’s stats varied. Based on the Appraisal Ceremony data for thirty-two people, including Allen, they seemed quite random.
It would be best to assign people with C-rated Agility to the luring team, those with C-rated Endurance to the surrounding team, and those with C-rated Attack to the finishing team. Allen had told Rodan and Gerda that once the newcomers overcame the trial and received power from God, they should be assigned to teams suited to their strengths.
Several dozen minutes passed after the three members of the luring team went out.
"A boar’s coming!"
As Allen was thinking, a boar arrived.
(Oh! Here it comes!)
Pekeji, the leader of the luring team, burst out of the woods at full speed. Since all three of them had come out together today, it seemed the Great Boar had been alone.
(About time. Come forth, Denka!)
Allen did something, but the hunt continued.
The three lurers—Pekeji and the others—ran straight through the middle of Gerda’s team. Gerda’s team, the surrounding team, stopped the boar. Once it was surrounded, Rodan’s team moved in for the finishing blow, aiming for its neck.
Their movements were perfect, just like last time.
"Newcomers, get in here! Don’t stab us in the back!"
Gerda warned them not to miss their target with their long spears and hit the team instead. All four newcomers thrust at once.
In less than five minutes, fresh blood spurted from the boar’s neck. They must have pierced a blood vessel. It fell completely dead just a few minutes later.
"We made it! We overcame the trial again!"
"It’s true! So this is what it means to overcome a trial!"
All four of them leveled up, including both the first-timers and those who’d joined the previous hunt.
Then Allen checked his softly glowing grimoire.
'You defeated 1 Great Boar. You gained 400 experience.'
'Your experience reached 2,000/2,000. Your level increased to 3. Your Health increased by 25. Your Magic increased by 40. Your Attack increased by 14. Your Endurance increased by 14. Your Agility increased by 26. Your Intelligence increased by 40. Your Luck increased by 26.'
(Yes! I was counted as having participated in the battle after all. And I leveled up!)
Allen had placed an Insect H at the feet of the charging Great Boar. It was instantly crushed and disappeared in a bubble of light.
Allen’s Summons naturally had a limited range. He couldn’t summon one anywhere he could see, such as beyond the horizon, but the range wasn’t so limited that it only covered a few meters, either. He’d tested the conditions for summoning, too.
Summoning Conditions
・Within a 50-meter radius
・Within sight
Since the range was fifty meters, he could summon one high in the air, too. He could summon a bird-type Summon and have it take flight immediately. This time, Allen summoned an Insect H within fifty meters of the boar.
He couldn’t summon one inside a house that he couldn’t see from the yard. He also couldn’t summon one at the boar’s feet while its body obscured the spot. It had to appear underfoot at the instant the boar was about to stomp on it. Timing was crucial.
(I see. Even if it gets hit—or even if only my Summon gets hit—that counts for experience distribution. Judging by how the luring team doesn’t carry spears after they’ve drawn the boar, maybe I get experience just by being targeted by a magical beast?)
Conditions for Experience Distribution
・Attacking
・Being attacked
・Being targeted by a magical beast
(That about covers it.)
Allen planned to continue testing the conditions for experience distribution during this boar hunt.
That was how Allen took on several new tasks, such as getting help butchering Alba Herons and testing how experience was distributed. He’d be busy all through autumn and winter, too.