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With a jolt, Avan woke from his sleep and jerked both his arms upward, trying to free himself from the restraints as quickly as possible. Avan's breath came in and out in jerks and quick gasps as he stared at his arms.

Powerless, he sank back into the sheets, his arms trembling slightly beside him on the mattress, and stared at the ceiling. Avan's breaths slowed again and his heartbeat calmed down.

What a fucking fuck... This is the second time since Haipu, and I'm really sick of waking up like this. Fuck off!

He wiped his face with the back of his hand and rubbed his eyes with both hands, followed by a short exhausted wipe over his disheveled hair that stood out clearly and distinctly silver in the darkness of the room.

With a heave, he swung his legs out of the bed and let them rest briefly on the cold wooden floorboards until his thoughts and body had finally calmed down again.

Two short inconspicuous movements of his fingers later, his black robe with its golden decorations and frames appeared on his body and in his hand a small black stretchable ring. The two hands wandered practicedly along his hair, gathering the silvery strands into a bundle, and the ring was placed in quick grips around the horse's tail like a hair elastic.

Avan took another look at the sparse room, the simple table with the plain wooden chair, the mattress probably filled with fresh straw, the linen sheets and the slightly milky glass window. An indistinct sigh escaped him as he thought of the past weeks, and something jittery spread through his chest as he thought of the near future and adventures.

I can only hope that Elisa will be okay... With my current strength, I can't do much against the organization... Please just be alive...

The door to his room creaked slightly, and Avan stepped out into the dark hallway of the second floor. To his right, at the end of the hallway, another staircase went up to the next floor, and at the left end of the hallway, it went down to the tavern's parlor.

Delicious smells, from savory to sweet, were already wafting up the stairs from below, and Avan had just woken up less than half an hour after sunrise, which he thought would be about 7 o'clock.

He greeted the tavern owner behind the counter, who, to his surprise, was not cleaning jugs this time, but busily helping to serve the wooden plates filled with food to the guests. Apparently the barmaid wasn't there yet, and he had to do it himself.

Avan let his gaze wander over the already awake guests and discovered Dani and Patris already in a corner, who had a tea and a plate of bread, spreads and fruit in front of them. His sphere of influence had already told him this before, but he didn't want to get out of the habit of seeing everything with his own eyes and senses.

Dani was the first of the two at the table to notice him, while her friend seemed to be enjoying his meal with great pleasure and was stuffing a few pieces of roasted meat into his mouth.

"Good morning you two." Avan greeted the two as he pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down with them. The young warrior with his brown stubble hair startled briefly, seemingly more than a little engrossed in his food, and sheepishly mumbled back a greeting, only to continue to grapple with his meal.

"Good morning to you, too, Avan." Came back the much more awake greeting from the slayer as she continued to sip her tea, only occasionally biting into her sandwich.

They had introduced themselves at length the previous evening, and Avan had told the others a short but mysterious story. He had grown up with his family near the elven forest, in a small unknown village, and only a year ago had moved and lived for some time in Cyntha. From there he would have gone to Haipu, but since he didn't like big cities with all the noise and smell, he had gone further south and finally decided to continue as an adventurer. And that's how Avan met the three of them.

His magic, he had explained, was based on a material conspiracy of his mana in solid or stretchable form, which also explained his coat, which only he could wear without the mana fraying and dissolving.

The idea of his history and the origin and nature of his magic had occurred to him in the tavern before the meeting with the three.

So he knew that there were other such mages, even if they were quite rare, and that he needed a combination of plant and fire magic to explain his robe and the weaving of it.

Plant magic consisted of the combination of water and earth, resulting in plant magic, while fire was needed to harden and stretch the fabric. At least that was Avan's rough understanding, if he still remembered the information from Cyntha.

Even though his explanation had been met with relative astonishment, the others had accepted it once they had touched the silky and ultra soft fabric of his robe and he couldn't help some envious looks.

The tavern owner had already seen Avan in the meantime of the greeting and after a short nod of Avan brought the same plate and again a herbal tea, which he put down with a thud in front of Avan.

So they ate the breakfast together, which consisted of two fresh slices of bread, some fried pieces of meat, fruit and a spread, while after a short time Jen also joined them with her guard in tow.

The meal flew by and apart from some jokes and laughter, everyone was busy with their meal until Avan sat patiently, tea in hand, waiting for the next steps.

"So, in case you didn't know. Red wolves love and crave blood. Hence the name, and hence the red tones in their otherwise relatively gray fur. They can smell blood hundreds of meters away into the wind, and their victims are usually relatively bloodless, which is why they are called Vounds in the common population. Vampires and hunting dogs in one, so to speak." Dani explained first, when it was clear that everyone was finally done with breakfast, even if Patris attempted a few times to order another plate, much to the amusement of all involved when Dani hit him on the back of the head.

"So we need to stop by the marketplace and get some leather bags full of animal blood from the local butcher. But the bags must be of high quality, so that nothing of the contents leaks out and the red wolves smell the blood beforehand. At the same time, Avan, you should urgently get yourself a backpack or travel bag, and perhaps look for a wand that can guide your mana better than with your bare hand when casting spells. And while you're at it, don't forget to identify EVERYTHING so you can draw your skill to silver as well, so you can finally see more information!" Dani finished, giving him another annoyed look as she remembered his story from the night before, where they had gotten to know Avan and his general skills better.

To everyone's amazement, Avan admitted that his Identify skill was still on Bronze 9 and he hadn't thought to level it up yet.

He just nodded at her and kept the secret that he had scanned and identified everything within a 250 meter radius using his sphere of influence the night before, which had already shot his skill up to silver 9 in record time.

 

Passive Skill: Identify

While some are learning this skill early as infants, you managed to watch a fruit for minutes. Congrats, monkey brain.

You can now identify objects and living beings if you concentrate on them and are in range. Each level of identify increases the distance, and higher tiers could give you more info on your target.

[Bronze] You can now perceive the level of your target up to +10 above your own.

[Silver] You now get a sense of your opponent's strength and most of the properties of identified objects are no longer hidden from you.

 

So he had also finally learned about item properties, which integrated magical properties into objects from enchantments with the help of runes, or that all three in his group were not only no problem for him in terms of level, but also that the guard of Jen with his level 160 was more dangerous than the level suggested.

Avan had become acquainted with countless enchantments through his mass identify, but here and there he had actually encountered unidentifiable properties, which were displayed in the form of question marks. The higher his identify had shot the night before, the more question marks he could decipher, and everything that remained hidden was simply only visible to him at level 200+.

The hunting bow, for example, which was leaning against the bench at Dani's side, had some interesting properties.

 

[Hunting Bow of the Silent Hunt]

*self-repair

*All actions and shots are completely silent

 

The four, or five if you counted the silent and still stoic guard, meanwhile marched through the cobbled streets of Tria and soon landed in the small but already well-attended marketplace. The small town had a blacksmith, a leather maker, an alchemist, a magic tool merchant, and a few smaller junk stores, while in the square itself traveling merchants had set up their stalls for a fee.

Jen said goodbye to the group and wanted to stop by the small church to pray again to her goddess and maybe get some temporary buffs in the form of blessings, while Dani and Patris took care of the hunting utensils and Avan went once again to the leather store for the backpack and to the mage store for a magic focus in the form of a wand or something similar.

They had agreed to meet at the end at the south gate, in about two hours, and from there to follow the first clues together, where the red wolves had been seen last.

So Avan strolled through his second marketplace on Aorus and looked around with interest to the left and right, inhaling the various smells of the spices, processed materials and scents, while he first paid a visit to the leatherman for a backpack.

Inside the store he was greeted by a variety of acid and vinegar smells, accompanied first and foremost by the typical smell of various leather, fur and skins, which hung down from the walls and ceilings near the walls everywhere. In the back of the small store, there were also some armor racks, where various harnesses, boots, gloves and headgear were displayed, while the Leatherworker himself was immersed in a piece of leather armor at his counter.

Only when Avan came to a halt just a few steps in front of him, his heavily worn sandals clacking loudly on the wooden floorboards, did the inconspicuous-looking man with his glasses look up and smile broadly at him. "Ahhh, customers! Welcome, welcome. What can I do for you?"

"Good morning. I'm looking for a backpack, a sleeping roll, and maybe some new comfortable shoes, which will have to suffice for hiking long distances." Avan listed the items he needed, although he had only just become fully aware of the shoes again, so much had he already become accustomed to them.

"Hmm... That shouldn't be a problem. A mage, right? I think I have just the thing!" And with those words, any interest in the leather breastplate on the counter was blown away, and the man hurried into his back room, where Avan could see several workbenches, troughs, and other leatherworking tools through his sphere of influence.

The shopkeeper himself ran to a large wooden chest in the far corner of the back room, in which lay some leather bags and backpacks, and came running back a short time later with an almost black leather backpack, while under his other arm was a soft sleeping roll and in his hands dangled a pair of sturdy-looking shoes.

"Here, honored mage. My only item of black wyrm leather! It is 100% fire resistant and has a dimensional enchantment by nature. The shoes are simply made of sturdy oxhide, while the sleeping roll is made of sheepskin and the sheep's wool all in one!" He grinned at Avan, seemingly assuming that with such a robe and getup, he should be able to afford all this without any problem.

Avan hummed appreciatively and ran his hands over the soft surface of the sleeping roll, which seemed to have been professionally sewn together from several sheepskins, while the sheep's wool remained on the leather skin, making it a soft and warm sleeping roll.

The leather shoes were more like ankle high boots, but the inside was treated so that the leather appeared extremely soft.

When Avan came to the backpack, he looked inside with slightly raised eyebrows and realized that the description of the backpack was indeed true, even though he had not seen or held such an item before.

 

[Black Wyrm Backpack]

*Inside is three times the size

*100% fire resistance against normal fire

*Weight of contents remains unchanged

 

[Ox Leather Shoes]

 

[Sheep's sleeping roll]

 

Other than the backpack, the other two items were really well made, but otherwise relatively normal in comparison.

"How much are these three items supposed to cost?" Came the all-important question from Avan, as he took a quick look at his assets.

 

Celestial Storage

[Bronze Coin]: 8

[Silver Coin]: 60

[Gold Coin]: 35

 

"Ohhh, the things were hard to come by, and the wyrm leather is very rare! Even the sleep roll is sewn by master hand, sir!" The man began to tell a story of the items, but was quickly interrupted by his customer. "How much?"

The leather man pretended to think, but Avan had already seen a glint in the man's eyes.

"For you, and only for you, I would part with these magnificent and wonderful objects for only 40 gold coins. And that is already so cheap that I earn almost nothing from them!"

Avan, with his little more than 35 gold coins, sighed once.

"Dear sir, I don't think you are being completely honest with me here. 20 gold coins."

The man looked at him in surprise, apparently not used to much haggling by rich people.

"My lord, 39! I have a wife and children!"

What the hell does everyone always have with their wife and kids? Why should I care? Came Avan's immediate question when he heard the typical excuse for the probably much too high price.

"21."

"37 gold coins, sir! My children need something to eat between their teeth!"

"22."

"33! I can't go much further, please don't rob me! What will my family think..."

"25."

"Please, sir! 28, I really can't go much further down! Think of my wife and my two children, please!"

"25." came from Avan again, and when the man was about to open his mouth and Avan saw that he didn't want to go into the 25 gold coins, he turned around without comment and walked in slow and quiet steps towards the door.

Less than three seconds later, and just as he was about to push open the door to the outside, a brief, victorious grin crossed Avan's lips. "Okay, 25 gold coins!"

The man was sweating and had already seen his customer run away, and finally buckled, although Avan suspected that he still earned more than enough with him as a customer at the items.

Satisfied after the successful exchange of the transaction, with new shoes on his feet, the backpack with sleeping roll inside, Avan strolled through the market stalls again and bought without further problems and without extortion from the mage merchant a simple mana-focusing walking stick.

So he stood with his back leaning against the five meter high stone city wall at the south gate and played with and twirled the rooted focus staff in his hand, much to the discomfort of the two city guards who saw his somewhat practiced movements with a pole weapon.

 

[Oak staff of focus]

*Mana directed by this focus staff gathers 50% faster in the spell

 

Half an hour later, the others arrived and Avan was congratulated on his good find, and with a quick check of all their adventurer badges, they headed out into the wilderness, on the trail of the red wolves.

 

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