Rebirth: From Nothing

Chapter 13: Fledgling Warrior

A year has passed since Cassius was killed. I'm 10 years old now. While I'm technically older mentally, age is nothing more to me than a reflection of my body's maturity. I don't know how old I am mentally, I long forgot that.

Age is weird from my perspective on this planet because years are longer. Days are roughly the same length, maybe 30 minutes longer at most. But a year on this planet is 390 days. Well, the position of the planet relative to the sun is obviously different.

Anyways, I have gotten stronger. I am much stronger now than I was a year ago. Still not nearly as strong as Marcus. But I am slowly making progress. My muscles are more toned now, and my magic capacity is increasing. I have slowly started to begin puberty. I Honestly that kind of sucks.

Today is a special day. Due to a combination of throwing my weight as a noble around, and successes beating low level fodder. I have obtained a class 5 adventuring license. So far class 6 monsters have been well within my capabilities.

Class 6 monsters are all near the level of the Crystal Bear Cassius and his brother fought. There are some monsters within the class that are quite a bit stronger. But none of them are out of my league. Apparently, the average warrior in this world is in the class 5 range of monsters. The range itself is quite wide. One class 5 warrior could be 5x stronger than another. But you can expect the largest number of warriors to be within class 5.

For someone my age to be as skilled as a lifetime warrior would be unfathomable. So, despite being there in prowess, I had to use my sway as a member of nobility to actually move up there. Thanks to that, I have just accepted a quest to slay a mid-tier class 5 monster, an orc. In this world orcs are about 5 times the size of humans. Much faster and stronger than the average person, but none are capable of magic, though they are fairly resistant to it. Most skilled adult fighters would stand a chance, but it is rarely a monster taken on alone. I am planning to do that.

Octavia pleaded not to go, or to let her join me. I don't plan on doing either. I need to go in order to get stronger. If I win because of her support, then nothing would have changed. I brushed her off and ordered the guards not to let her out of the estate when I am on this mission.

I departed with 5 days' worth of food, two daggers, Cassius' usual battle clothes, a cloak, magic reinforced rope, a large waterskin, a javelin, and a leather bag. Brennos wished me luck when I went out and soldiers from the garrison once again asked to accompany me.

It is autumn, leaves are falling from the trees and the nights are cold. But I can manage the cold, and the falling leaves look pleasing. I retrieved a horse from the garrison outside the walls and rode it all day long. Horse riding was something I learned over the last few months from the soldiers.

Camping out is difficult when traveling alone. Many adventurers have died from monsters sneaking up on them in their sleep. I decided to sleep high up in a tree. There are few flying monsters in this area, and almost none of them have one-shot kill capabilities.

The stars are different in this world, there is even a ring around this planet. I wonder what the view is on one of the moons of that ring. I would have loved for Cassius to see that. Perhaps he would bring Octavia or Julius with him there. I drift off to sleep wrapped in my cloak.

The next morning, I set off again, I stopped at a river to refill my waterskin and then headed off to the ruins where the orc was staying. The ruins belonged to a civilization that was here long before even the Aeneas Republic existed, let alone the kingdom. The ruins appear to have withered away for thousands of years. The ruins are of a former military encampment.

The orc was in one of the major open areas, there was the corpse of a crystal bear laying near it. Monsters don't need to eat, but many of them like to. I went and sealed off one of the underground areas on the other side of the encampment to sleep for the night. Before that, I tied up the horse on a river nearby, giving it some food to hold it off for a day. Then went to bed once more, it was hard to sleep with an orc above me.