After settling everything at the Adventures guild, I went to the bonfire to spend some time with Walter and Lily. But even here the thing was the same, the moment I got close to the crowd, everyone got silent. The bustling sound which was enough to be heard throughout the village was now dead silent.

Then I saw Walter standing up and waving his hands at me, “Here!”, he shouted, calling me.

I went and took a seat on a wooden bench with Walter and Lily. We started talking about random stuff, making fun of how Walter was slapped by the girl before.

Looking at me talking with them, the crowd was able to calm down a little and were probably a little less scared of me now, so they started getting back to normal again. Still, from time to time, they would peek a few glances at me.

After an hour or so, Luke's group came with a giant boar. It was double the size of a normal pig, just a little smaller than a fully-grown cow. The boar was skinned, and butchered with no organs inside.

Luke’s group put the boar on top of the fire and announced, “Time to feast!”

He was standing at the center with everyone's attention on him. He started talking about how the village would run and what the people had to do if they wanted to stay in the village.

Which did not go as planned, most of the people inside the village were students, so they did not have the confidence to challenge someone's decision in public. But there were still some students and teachers who raised their voices, “You can’t push us around, we are free to do whatever we want”, said a teacher.

The rules were actually very simple, the people had to pay tax if they wanted to live in the village. Plus, every able-bodied person had to work whether it was hunting, crafting, or farming.

But still, some people had a problem with being told what to do. The heated discussion regarding this went on for quite a long time. In the end, Luke got annoyed, “If you can’t follow these rules, then you can leave the village.”

The teacher who first raised his voice went crazy after hearing this, “Who do you think you are?”, he came running towards Luke with a metal pipe in hand.

I looked at Lily, and she understood what to do. The teacher had only taken his third step when an arrow went flying and landed a little ahead of the guy's foot. He was startled and fell on his back.

“WHO THE HELL….”, he turned his head to look in the direction where the arrow came from. Lily was standing next to me with her bow in her hand. The moment the guy saw us, he got quiet and cut his sentence in between.

Looking at me glaring at him, he got up and left the place without saying one more word.

The people who supported him also sat down. After this was settled, things were going well, it took the boar 2 hours to cook. I was not sure about eating it since it was a monster, but it looking like a boar made it much easier.

The moment I put the first piece of meat inside my mount, it melted. The taste of the meat was much richer than any meat that I ever tasted, and the ratio of fat and meat was perfect. Although the seasoning was minimum but the taste of the meat was too good to compensate for that.

We were enjoying the meal when I saw a boy walking toward us. He was probably around 12, he was trying to puff his chest out to the best of his capabilities. It looked like he was trying to look tough, but he was overdoing it, turning his all-act tough gag into comedy.

The boy came and stood in front of me, “I WANT TO JOIN YOUR GANG!”

I was baffled by what the boy said. Looking at him closely, I recalled him joining our goblin raid group.

“Gang?”, I asked him rhetorically.

He breathed in a lot of air and puffed his chest out again, “YES, I WANT TO KILL MONSTERS, And be strong.”, the guy was holding his breath while talking, making him almost run out of breath before completing his sentence.

I used Identification to check on him.

*Liam Smith Lvl 3*

Walter spoke from the side, “And why should we let you join us?”

Liam replied instantly, “I can do magic, Look Look!”

The moment he said that, he opened his palms and turned them upwards. Slowly, on top of his palm manifested a little ping pong ball-sized blue ball of energy.

“So, can I join you now?” Liam asked with an eager look on his face.

I was not very fond of adding people to the group. Actually, I was planning on going solo to hunt down the Tree Spirit. But I won’t lie, having some people by the side was much less boring, and they come in handy.

And since this kid had magic, he could be useful. Walter, Lily, and I all spent most of our points on physical attributes, Walter dumped most of his points on agility while Lily was more balanced.

After thinking a little bit about it, I decided to bring him along to hunt the Tree Spirit for now, “Alright, come meet us tomorrow”

The boy got a wide smile on his face the moment I said the words, “YES SIR!”, he yelled out loud.

We were in the village center till midnight, after which people started going back to their homes. We decided to call it a day and went home too.

***

The next morning I was up at dawn, the sun was only starting to rise at this moment. I decided to freshen up and head to train with my staff.

When I opened the door and went out, Liam was waiting outside—staring towards the door without even blinking.

“What are you doing here so early?”, I asked him.

“I did not know when you wanted me to come, so I came as early as possible”, Liam replied.

Listening to his answer almost made my jaw drop in shock, “What is your intelligence anyways?’, I asked, doubting his intelligence.

“It’s 15 sir!”, Liam replied immediately.

“Alright then if you are here then let’s train together”, I was planning on seeing his magic and was thinking of upgrading my magic defense by getting hit, if it was possible.

We both went to a nice spot in the yard and I asked him to hit me with his magic attack, which he was a little hesitant about at first.

He manifested his blue magic ball and threw it toward me, the speed and size of his attack were much inferior to the serpent's purple fireball. The speed of his magic ball was slow enough for me to dodge it with ease. But I decided to take it head-on and see how much damage it did.

The blue magic ball hit the left side of my chest, to my surprise the magic ball was powerful enough to make me take a step back and left a black burned mark on the area.

*-10 HP*

It did not level up my magic defense, so I asked him to hit me again. Liam did another 3 attacks, even after which I was not able to level up my magic defense, but Liam had to rest up since he used up all his mana.

We continued after resting, and after 2 more hits, I saw a pop-up window.

*Magic Defense Leveled Up*

We kept on doing it for 2 more hours to get another level up in magic defense, which didn’t seem that efficient.

*Magic Defense Leveled Up*

In the process of me leveling up my Magic Defense, Liam’s Mana Ball skill went from level 1 to level 6.

After finishing our training, we caught up with Lily and Walter who were also training on the other side of the yard.

After taking a bath and freshening up, we all got ready to go and check out the new shops. Liam has apparently visited both the shops yesterday, one was a general merchant store, where you could get anything from a weapon to food items. The other was a potion store.