Ch-21.3

The air was starting to get warm and the road was starting to become crowded. People looked at them cross-eyed as they walked down the road. Both of them were wet, drenched, and covered in mud. Girls looked at them twice. Mannat had a slender figure that made him look weak under clothes, but his wet clothes stuck close to his muscles and exposed his perfectly toned physique and the strength hidden behind them.

Pandit’s lips twitched as he looked around. “We are getting too much attention,” He said.
“Do you not like it?
Pandit let out a snort. “All the girls are looking at you. What’s there to like?”
Mannat looked around and saw that his friend was right. Only men paid attention to Pandit, and for some reason, it brought a smile to his face.
“Are you going to talk to the Witch?”
“--and say what? Mannat shrugged his shoulders. “If I complained she will laugh at me and ask me what kind of man can’t catch a rabbit?”
Pandit found himself smiling. “Seems like you have found your match,”
This was it. Pandit was worried about his wise friend, believing he might have trauma from the thing he committed back at the field. However, the boy was still the same. He hadn’t changed. It was a good thing. He could finally relax.

“Look to the left.” The whisper pulled Pandit back to reality. Was there danger? He didn’t sense anything. Mannat continued softly. “There is someone looking at you.” Pandit followed his sight and saw a girl --someone he knew-- watching them intently. It was Soman, Pathar’s sister. She was wearing a long dull yellow skirt with a belt of hand-carved flowers of various colors and a tight-fitting grey top.

She was looking at him? No, her sight was below his face. It was not his puffed chest she was watching and neither his toned abs. Down--
Suddenly, she raised her head and their eyes met. A sly grin grew on Pandit’s face while Soman blushed red. She looked away. Mannat did notice her scratching her hand. It was a sign of embarrassment.
She was not a particularly beautiful girl but had sharp features and big eyes -- kind of like a fish. However, Mannat liked her long and thin fingers.

“You should hurry. Or she might slip away.” Mannat said.

Pandit missed the rare pun from Mannat but knew exactly about his chances. He shook his head. “If I go looking like this, then not only will she slip away, but also dive deep and never come back to the surface.” He didn’t miss the pun then, or maybe it was a coincidence. It was a rare occasion that Mannat couldn’t read his loud-mouthed friend's expressions. “Unfortunately, she’s of the age of marriage and good two years older than me.” Pandit kept silent for a moment before getting sick of the quiet and asked, “Anyways, what are you going to do now?”
Mannat didn’t think about it. “Now that this business is over I can finally go back to my routine. What are you going to do next?”
“Me?” Pandit grinned and laughed. “I’m going to boast about my accomplishment. Share a tale and get some love. What else is there to do?”

They said goodbye at Pandit’s home.

Mannat went straight home. He took a bath, changed his clothes, and then went to the smithy to help his father. All his tiredness seemed to have grown wings and flown away with his head in its grasp. The rest of the day, he felt like water moving in a channel. He calmly flowed in the direction the channel took him.

He returned to the clearing in the evening and found the Witch waiting for him at the edge of the garden on the other side of the fence. This time she didn’t even try to hide her presence and looked eager to meet him.

“You took your sweet time to return back?” She greeted politely. Everyone has a level of politeness. Mannat was respectful; his father was loud; Pandit would grow quiet when he was being polite, and the Witch toned down her sarcasm.
“You lied to me,” Mannat said directly, not politely. He was frustrated. “You said it was a rabbit.”
The Witch smiled slyly. A corner of her lips curled up and up until it could no longer move. “And it was a rabbit. Was it not?” Mannat tried to refute her wayward claim, but she didn’t let him speak. “Tell me,” She said bending her torso over the fence. “Did you get the Experience?”
“What experience are you talking about?”
The witch frowned. “You didn’t get the message? That’s impossible.” She shrieked as if she had lost something important.

Only then did Mannat remember that he had actually received a system message like the one she mentioned. He told her in the hope to calm her down, but she started acting weird.

“You don’t know what experience is, do you?”

Was that a question? Mannat waited for her to bludgeon through the conversation like always, but he was up for a disappointment this time. The Witch was waiting for his answer and growing irritated with each passing second. It was not easy to get along with her.
He dropped his head and started pondering bout life. Finding nothing in his memory, he inspected himself. After all, it was a system message, if something had changed it would show up in his status.  

Lo and behold, Mannat didn’t have to look further than the first line, but the find was much-much-much shocking than a simple skill up would have been.

Turns out, the experience she stressed about was none other than the level up bracket in the status that had never once in his lifetime –or anyone’s lifetime for that matter-- ever budged! Everyone’s level was zero, and had been like that for generations, as was the percentage next to it!

He wasn’t different from others. His level was also zero a day ago, and it was still the same that day. Only, the percentage next to it had increased to twenty-five.

It was enough to shock him, however. Mannat was an intelligent boy. He easily made the connection with all the clues in his hands. He tied to speak, but the sly, obsessive grin on the Witch’s face made him speechless.

It took him some time to get his mind straight. There were too many questions and thoughts wandering in his mind. Most of them told him the same thing he said to the Witch. “I could have died.”
“That’s what you will be doing as my apprentice. Fighting monster that normal people can’t fight.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
The Witch scoffed at him. “You found it. You also brought it out of hiding. You definitely dealt it the final wound. What else do you want to do?”
“I--” Mannat hesitated. It was happening too fast. He wasn’t even her apprentice yet. Why was she pushing this monster-hunting business to him?
The witch interrupted his train of thoughts. “…because only we can find them. Only we can sense their presence.”
Did she mean to find them with Mana sense?
“Didn’t you ‘Inspect’ the demon? What do you think the phrase, ‘where there is one there are more means?” It was not a question. “It doesn’t mean there are more rabbits, but them – the monsters!” She shrieked. Her yellow eyes opened wide and stared right through him. “Since one already appeared, there will be more. They are back!”

But he was just a boy, not even a fully grown man! How would he deal with those monsters? How would he survive? It was impossible. He would die! Then who will wake his mother? Who will cure her illness? Who will--

“What are they?” Mannat said. His voice was grave, eyes vigilant. He didn’t trust the Witch, but he was ready to listen. he had something he wanted to clear first.

The Witch knew his thoughts. It wasn’t his face she was reading, but his heart. She knew exactly what to say, and how to convince him. “They are what your mother will become if the miasma inside her heart spreads to her whole body. She will start changing when the miasma starts coalescing. She’ll be reborn into one of them when it forms a bead in her head.” She said tapping her temple with her long bony finger.

Beads of sweat grew on Mannat’s forehead. He didn’t let his imagination run wild. His mind tied to show him things, but he shook his head and slapped his face to get his mind under control. The buzzing in his ear from the slap drowned all the other noises for a moment. It helped.

“So you better be ready.” The witch continued, despite his problems, his thoughts, his actions. She didn’t care how small and vulnerable the boy was. He came to ask for her help. “Or you will become one of them. The world is changing, and it is not going to stop for you. You have to grow strong; not just for your mother, but also for yourself, your loved ones, and your friends. Hurry up!”

Mannat took a gulp of saliva to wet his dry throat.

“I have another task for you.” The witch said pulling back from the fence. She was retreating. “It’s not urgent, but try to complete it as soon as you can.”

Mannat felt a headache developing. The witch was starting to show her colors. He feared many things --including being turned into a crow-- but not to be given a responsibility he didn’t know how to shoulder. However, it wasn’t all bad. He finally knew why the Witch was helping him. He had been wondering about it for a long time. Now he could relax around her.

Sighing he raised his head and looked into her eyes. “What do I have to do?” he asked. His voice was strong and confident. He had made up his mind.
The Witch also heard his heart and let a smile curl her lips.
“Don’t worry.” She said. Her voice similarly rose by a few octaves. “You won’t have to fight another beast, just find me the rabbit’s origin.”