Alex ran towards the village. He actually didn't need to run since he had plenty of time, but Alex just couldn't control himself after arriving in an area without an overwhelming number of trees.
'I can run so fast!' Alex thought with exhilaration.
As Alex ran down the hill, some birds living in cold climates flew above him. They were searching for prey, but there was not much prey during the cold.
The winter was slowly making way for spring, but spring wasn't completely there yet. If Alex had to put a month to the current weather, he would say it would be the end of February or the start of March.
Alex ran for about fifteen minutes, and he arrived at the village far too early.
In a sense, Alex had wished to run more.
'I can always run more later,' Alex thought with a smile.
As Alex came to the village, he noticed that there were no guards.
There were also no pedestrians.
In fact, there was no one.
Alex blinked a couple of times in confusion.
'That's weird. I was sure I saw some people walking around.'
Alex looked around the abandoned village and thought of something.
'Is it me?' Alex thought.
Alex looked around the village. It was currently in the middle of the day, and all the villagers should be working.
"Who are you?!" someone suddenly shouted.
Alex looked to the front and saw a burly, middle-aged man walking past a house.
He had a spear and wore some simple leather armor. His hair was brown, and a long and scruffy beard adorned his face.
Alex immediately associated that man with a smith.
He looked like the typical smith one would find in movies and shows.
"Hello, I'm… Shang," Alex said nervously. He had nearly wanted to say his original name again.
"What do you want?!" the man shouted aggressively. "We don't have any money, and we are protected by the Northern Wild!"
Alex smiled in embarrassment. "I think you misunderstood me. I'm not here to do anything to you."
"Lies!" the man shouted. "You charged at our village! Speak the truth, or I will kill you myself!"
Alex scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "I ran because it felt good."
"It felt good?" the man asked in surprise.
"Yes," Alex answered. "I've been in a forest for the past six months, and this is the first time I'm at a place not filled with trees. Running down the mountain and feeling my new power after my trip just felt too good."
The man eyed Alex suspiciously. "Is that why you are dressed like a thief?" he asked coldly.
"Like a thief?" Alex asked in surprise.
Then, Alex looked down at himself.
Alex's body was surrounded by the cloak made out of Stalker hide. Even part of his head was hidden inside the black cloak.
Alex immediately felt like an idiot and quickly pulled his badly sewn hood down, revealing his black hair.
"Oh, sorry. I wasn't thinking," Alex said with a bitter smile. "Honestly, I'm not here to do anything to you."
The man relaxed a bit, but he still spoke to Alex from several meters away.
"Then what do you want?" he asked.
"I'm here to earn enough money to pay for an entrance exam in that warrior school in Warrior's Paradise," Alex said.
The man got surprised, but his eyes quickly narrowed.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"I think I should be 15," Alex said. "I didn't really count."
"You don't look 15!" the man shouted. "You look more like 30!"
Alex was taken aback by the man's words.
Then, Alex sighed. "Let me just take my cloak off. Maybe I look too intimidating with that cloak."
The man didn't answer and only looked at Alex warily.
Alex quickly pulled his cloak off and threw it to the side.
The clothing beneath his cloak was absolutely disgusting, dirty, stinky, full of holes, and old.
Not even beggars would wear something like that since they could find better clothing that had been thrown to the side of a street.
The man looked with disgust and pity at Alex. Surprisingly, his hostility lessened.
Bandits would normally wear quite good armor and good clothing. After all, their job was to rob people.
No bandit would wear something like that.
Additionally, the man noticed that Alex's body really looked like the body of a teenager, just far more muscular.
Teenagers had different bodies from adults. This was simply because they hadn't fully gone through puberty yet.
When asked, most people couldn't explain the differences, but with enough life experience, one would immediately see that Alex was a teenager, not an adult.
It was just a feeling.
When the cloak was removed, the man also saw Alex's sword.
Alex's sword looked weird.
It basically had no handguard, and the blade itself was way too straight and uniform. Swords usually went from thick to thin, thick at the hilt, thin at the front.
Yet, Alex's sword was just incredibly straight, except for the tip where the sword suddenly narrowed down into a tip.
However, the man could tell that the sword was very good.
Alex's story made a lot more sense now.
He truly looked like someone that had lived in the wild for a long time.
"Why have you lived in the wild for so long?" the man asked.
Alex released a sigh of relief when the man calmed down. "To become stronger."
Silence.
Then, the man put his spear away. "That's quite some determination," he said. "Can I see your sword?"
Alex simply took out his sword and threw it over.
The sword slid on the ground, and the man looked at Alex with surprise.
The man walked forward and lifted the sword.
However, the sword was far heavier than he had thought, and he had to put more strength into lifting it.
He managed to lift it with one arm, but he couldn't possibly swing it, not even with both hands.
The man looked at the sword and then at Alex.
"Why did you throw your weapon over to me?" the man asked.
"To prove that I don't have any bad intentions," Alex said.
The man furrowed his brows as he felt the weight of the sword.
He had seen how Alex had easily thrown it over with one hand.
It had been like the sword weighed nothing.
"Would you need this sword if you had bad intentions towards the village?" he asked slowly.
"No," Alex said with a smile.
"Then what worth is this display of yours?" the man asked.
Alex sighed in frustration and rubbed the back of his head.
"Hey, listen, I'm getting a bit annoyed here," Alex said in a relaxed manner. "I don't want to play these stupid games. Obviously, you now know of my strength. If I wanted to do anything to your village, I wouldn't be talking with you. I would just do whatever I wanted to do."
Alex was honestly getting annoyed at the constant suspicion.
The man looked at Alex for a bit longer.
Clank!
He threw the sword back with both of his hands, but it didn't reach Alex.
"You said you wanted to earn money?" the man asked.
Alex walked forward and put his sword away again.
Why had Alex thrown his sword towards the man without hesitation?
One reason was to show that he didn't intend to do anything bad to them.
Another reason was to show his power as softly as possible.
The last reason was that Alex wouldn't need a weapon against these villagers if they attacked him.
Alex wasn't helpless without a weapon.
"Yes, I want to earn money," Alex said.
The man walked closer. He had already put his spear away.
By now, only two meters separated them.
"How do you intend to earn money?" the man asked.
"One of the guards over there," Alex said as he pointed towards the Duke's garden, "said that your village might need a warrior to take care of some beasts. He told me that you don't have much money, but he also told me that you have Ice Wood. I am supposed to offer my strength to you in exchange for Ice Wood."
The man eyed Alex with an evaluation gaze.
Then, he looked at Alex's coat and then at Alex again.
"Did you kill the Pest Cat yourself?" the man asked, pointing at the cloak.
"Pest Cat?" Alex asked as he looked at his coat. "They are called Pest Cats? I always called them Stalkers."
The man looked with a weird expression at Alex. "They are called Pest Cats because they are all over this land. There's a lot of them, and they often hunt our livestock. No matter how many we kill, more come. That's why they are called Pest Cats."
"You can kill them?" Alex asked in surprise.
In his eyes, the man didn't look that strong.
The man sighed. "If we create a hunting group with about five men, we can, but someone will always die. Most of the time, a team of soldiers from the Northern Wild come here once a year to thin out the population."
"What's the Northern Wild?" Alex asked.
pᴀɴdᴀ nᴏveʟ The man looked weirdly at Alex.
"The nearest town. You're not from around here, are you?" he asked.
"No," Alex answered. "When was the last time they were here?"
"Six months ago. They come in the fall when all the Pest Cats have finished procreating. It would be bad if two Pest Cats had offspring just a couple days after the hunt," the man explained.
Alex scratched his chin.
"So, you're saying that I can earn some Ice Wood by killing some Pest Cats?" Alex asked with interest.
The man looked at Alex.
"No."