Chapter: 2

Jay walked faster thinking about the possibilities, excited about becoming a powerful swordsman and having legendary adventures.

No more was life going to be mundane, making money as a butcher to get by.

After Jay’s father moved to another village to start a second butcher shop, he took over the business here in Losla. There was little contact between Jay and his father, who may as well have been dead since Jay never received as much as a letter from him; part of him felt abandoned.

Jay cast these sad thoughts aside and kept walking, each step bringing him closer to a new life.

The muddy road to the adventurer association curved up around a hill which overlooked the village, dodging rocky outcrops as it led to the adventurers association gate.

There were a few other people walking up the dirt road too. Some spoke to each other and walked together, but most kept to themselves; the dark weather suppressing any chance of a warm conversation.

The hill was large and the path was long, causing Jay to start sweating slightly as he started to pant.

“I’m pretty unfit” he thought as he started huffing.

“I should’ve started training or something… oh well.” he shook his head.

Suddenly, a deep man’s voice called out from behind, startling most of the young adventurers on the road. A large bulky man clad in armour was riding a horse ahead of a carriage.

“Make way for nobility!” he called out, his raspy voice had the airy authority of a war-torn veteran.

With a short sword strapped to his waist, he rode on a black glade-horse ahead of a luxurious carriage as he continued to call out; the man didn’t even turn his head towards Jay, expecting anyone to move at his call.

The safety of the young noble was clearly his only priority.

The knight was overqualified for his position – anyone could tell that the knight was bored just by looking at him, yet he still emitted a kind of dangerous pressure when he came closer.

As he rode past, a trail of steam followed him – his sword’s sheath releasing steam when droplets of rain landed on it.

“Must have a ruby gem. Heh, must be nice being rich.” thought Jay secretly, not risking to say it out loud.

In this world, gems gave weapons attributes. In this instance, there was a ruby gem socketed into the short sword, which gave the sword +3 fire damage. A passive effect was that it felt warm to the touch.

When drawn, the sword would glow red-hot, able to carve through flesh like paper and only leaving a cauterised wound behind. A wound such as this would block instantaneous healing abilities. One would have to cut off the cauterisation before even attempting to heal it.

It was common to see these gems socketed into larger objects, but to put them into smaller objects like swords required great skill.

The fire attribute had to be channelled into the blade and not into the handle, lest it burn the wielder. This is what made the weapon so expensive; generally the smaller a socketed object, the more expensive it was.

Jay did his best to move to the side of the path, getting out of the way of the rich knight.

The hill was steep at the edge of the road, it had been built up to make a slightly wider path, though over time it had degraded.

Standing on the edge of the road to give way to the carriage, Jay realised that he didn’t have enough room – but it was too late to do anything about it.

Having no choice but to dodge the oncoming carriage, he stepped backwards towards the edge. Suddenly the side of the path crumbled and he started to slip – the rain helped in making a bad situation worse as it was all turning to slippery mud by now.

“Shit, ah!” Jay attempted to plant his foot firmly on the ground, but the mud caused Jay to just slip further down.