Chapter 148 - Slip up
After hearing the adventures voice, Candy and Tuffy were wondering how on earth he was able to see them. The two of them were very confident in their stealth skills and they had approached the area when Ray was busy fighting the intermediate beasts.
Ray didn't have time to worry or look around in the swampy area to notice them. Of course, the reason why Ray had spotted them was because of his dragon eyes. It allowed him to see right through the tree they were hiding behind. Ray didn't worry about them as their auras weren't strong.
Suddenly, Tuffy decided to come out from behind the tree and immediately bowed down to Ray.
"I'm sorry we didn't mean to spy on you, we were going to help if you got into any kind of trouble sir."
Ray looked at Tuffy standing in front of him. At most the kid looked about 12. Ray was surprised that kids this young were out hunting in an area like this.
"What are you two doing out here?" Ray asked
Candy's heart started to beat faster as she was still hidden behind the tree. She was wondering if Ray knew she was there, and now it was quite obvious he did. Candy also then quickly came out and bowed down.
"We were out here hunting some basic tier beasts; we were completing a quest for our guild." Candy said. "Suddenly, the beast we were hunting ran away and we heard a loud roar come from this direction."
Ray didn't know much about how guilds or the human world worked. He had taken a different path than most, going straight from his home town to being schooled in an isolated town, to finally ending up at Avrion.
This wasn't the typical route for most kids. Candy and Tuffy's parents were incredibly sick. They had no choice but to join a guild to complete some quest in exchange for some coin but their skills weren't great and at best all they could do was be careful and hunt basic tier beasts.
Ray then looked at his status screen. From battling the intermediate beast Ray managed to obtain around 10 intermediate crystals and he had defeated around 20 beasts. Meaning that 10 crystals still remained inside the beasts he had slain.
Ray then looked at the two kids in front of him. They weren't well dressed and their weapons and armour looked like they had been taken from a junkyard. Without realising it, Ray started to stare at Candy for a while.
Candy quickly hid behind her brother thinking that the adventurer was planning to do something to her. Ray then snapped out of it and opened up his endless void.
A space portal opened up next to Ray and he reached in to grab some equipment for the kids.
"Here take this." Ray then gave Tuffy a sword while also handing Candy a dagger. The two of them without hesitation accepted the items. This made Ray worry a little as they were too trusting even though they had just met him.
The equipment Ray had given them was from the martial arts hall. Ray had obtained many different weapons from there during the fight with the Dark guild, he had originally planned to sell most of it but it wouldn't be a big deal for Ray to give away a couple of basic tier weapons.
Tuffy was busy swinging about the new weapon. It was lighter and a lot sharper than the sword he was using before. While Candy immediately went to thank Ray.
"Thank you, sir."
"Don't worry about it, Amy."
"Amy… but my name's Candy."
Ray wanted to suddenly go crawl into a hole. He tried his best to avoid an awkward situation and started walking away from the two to carve out the crystals from the beast.
"Wait!" Tuffy called out running after the man. "We can't just take these things for free, let us help you."
Ray looked at all the beast's corpses around him. Carving a beast and taking out its core took a while and Ray didn't even know which ones contained a core or not. Even with the help of his clone, it would take some time.
"Fine, but you can only keep ten per cent of the cores you take out."
Candy and Tuffy's eyes lit up. They were actually offering to help for free and never expected a reward but this was something that they couldn't turn down. With their strength, they would have never been able to hunt down intermediate beasts unless it was already wounded from fighting something else.
The two of them got to work and went looking for Crystal cores as quick as they could. While Ray was busy carving one of the beasts, he was wondering why he was being so kind to them. Ray instinctively usually treated everyone he met as a danger but perhaps because these kids looked so powerless to him, he didn't feel any threat what so ever.
Just like how Human's saw ants. It was something he could deal with any time, so if the ants wanted to help Ray instead of hurting him, he would let them. Then Ray noticed that he kept looking in the direction of Candy.
He thought back to his slip up he had made earlier.
"Amy would have looked like her at that age."
Once they were done carving out the crystal cores the two kids handed Ray all of the crystals they could find and then Ray threw one of the cores back to them.
Tuffy couldn't stop staring at the shiny crystal core.
"What are you going to do now mister?" Candy asked.
Ray had enough crystals for himself to evolve but he needed more for Noir. The Dragon's roar buff had ended long ago and he could only use the skill once a day.
"If you want, we can lead you to some more hunting areas." Candy said, "We grew up around here so we know the area pretty well."
Although Ray had his dragon eyes skill it would only allow him to see so far and currently, he couldn't see any life around him.
"We have to be careful though," Tuffy suddenly said, "We need to make sure we stay out of the Mud Carb's territory."
"Mud Crab?" Ray said as his interest grew.
"Yeah, it's the strongest thing in this area."
Ray thought about the kid's suggestion for a little while before agreeing to their proposal. Ray needed to get stronger as quickly as possible and who knows how long it would take him to search the swamp for intermediate creatures.
The three of them then decided to move deeper into the swamp. While the kids wanted to do everything they could to avoid the Mud Crab, Ray had a different idea.