Duskbound

"It\'s an honest enough mistake. That boy is entirely self-taught, from what I can tell. No instructors, no professors, no trainers. The spear isn\'t my weapon of choice, but I\'ve never seen a fighting style like his. I think he just went out into the woods when he was a child, picked up a stick, and started beating on monsters. It\'s a miracle he\'s even still alive."

"Guess that unique class he\'s supposed to have was good for something," Jensen pointed out. He wasn\'t bitter or anything, but it was frustrating to think what he could have done with something like that, instead of a common [Tracker] class.

"I think there\'s more to it than just the class," Torwin said. It was clear from the look on his face that he was a million miles away, lost in thought, but he still slipped through the undergrowth with an easy familiarity that Jensen couldn\'t hope to match. More than once, his master had started to drift ahead despite his seemingly casual pace, and Jensen had been forced to call him back.

"Like what?"

But Torwin just shook his head. It had something to do with that cracked orb, but Jensen didn\'t know what. Torwin refused to talk about it, too. He just kept saying he needed to take it back to the guild to have it properly appraised, thus the return back to the frontier towns. They\'d already discussed the plan once they got there. Jensen would be sent out to run patrols near towns for levels and skill training, and Torwin would run back to Cravel, a trip he assured Jensen he could do in three days if he ran the whole way.

Which is insane. How many points does the old man have in physical to move that fast? It\'s got to be over a hundred. Having [Ranger] as a class probably helps him with long-distance travel speed, but that can\'t be all there is to it. I wonder if he\'s got a skill for it, too.

Most hunter-type classes favored speed and endurance in their physical stats, and [Ranger] was a rare one. Jensen had no doubt the class could do everything his own [Tracker] was capable of and plenty more besides. But to cover what had to be better than four hundred miles in three days was ridiculous. Or was it three hundred? How many days were we with that caravan before we peeled off?

"Jensen! Pay attention, boy," Torwin hissed at him.

"Huh?"

He blinked and looked over at his master, who was glaring at him impatiently. What did I miss?

A moment later, he realized he could hear something moving through the trees a few hundred feet ahead of them. The brush was too thick to get a good look at it, but they\'d trained exhaustively with relying on other senses to pick up details they couldn\'t gain with their eyes.

It\'s big. Heavy. Four legs? Or maybe more. Can\'t tell unless it starts running. Something crunched, probably a branch, but so loud that Jensen expected it was the width of a sapling. He held perfectly still and listened, not just to whatever was in front of them, but for any sign that it had friends.

Two minutes later, the creatures had meandered out of their way and Jensen relaxed. "What do you think it was?" he asked his master.

"You tell me."

"Well, you didn\'t set me to hunt it, so it wasn\'t a monster. It was pretty big, judging by how much noise it made. Maybe a bear?"

"You don\'t sound certain," Torwin remarked.

"Let me go get a look at the tracks it left and I\'ll give you a better answer."

The old [Ranger] snorted. "Alright, fair enough. Come along then."

Jensen\'s guess proved to be correct, though he was impressed at the sheer size of the paw prints. Each was the size of a dinner plate, and some quick approximations told him that the bear was probably better than twelve feet tall on two legs. He glanced at the trail it had ambled off down, now littered with broken twigs where its bulk hadn\'t quite fit through.

"You\'re sure that was an animal?" he asked.

"I am," Torwin said. "Didn\'t have the right smell for a monster."

How the hell did you smell it from so far away? Jensen mentally boggled at the old man\'s nose.

"It\'s the mana," Torwin went on, seeing Jensen\'s expression. "You\'ll eventually need a way to detect mana once you get to the higher levels, especially if you want to hunt monsters."

"Why waste a skill slot on it, though? Why not just get a mana compass like that other guy?"

"They\'re not cheap, for one thing. For another, they can be lost or break. Besides, using one during a fight isn\'t a great idea, and sometimes you need to be able to sense your prey\'s mana."

Jensen was skeptical of that first point. He opened his system store menu and almost immediately found a compass for ten thousand decarmas. That\'s not bad, he thought as he bought one. It popped into existence in front of him, startling Torwin and earning him an incredulous glance.

"Why?" the old man said simply.

Jensen shrugged. "Wanted to see how they worked. I don\'t have room for a mana sense in my skill slots right now, but if they\'re that important, I should probably get familiar with them, right?"

"I… suppose," Torwin said, sounding almost reluctant.

Come on, you stingy bastard. Give me some credit for showing initiative, if nothing else.

Praise remained as elusive as always, but Jensen was used to it. After a few minutes of silence while he attuned the compass to himself, he asked, "How does this thing work?"

* * *

Torwin couldn\'t quite suppress a twinge of jealousy as he watched his apprentice fiddle around with a mana compass he\'d apparently bought on a whim. He didn\'t even seem particularly interested in it, like it represented an idle curiosity to pass an hour\'s time before being promptly forgotten.

He had to admit, though, Jensen seemed to have a better intuitive understanding of the device than Torwin had expected. After a brief explanation, no longer than the one he\'d given to the Black Fang, his apprentice had already figured out a few things Torwin himself hadn\'t known.

"So, this must control the radius the compass detects out to," Jensen muttered as he adjusted the compass\'s controls again. The rune it was set to use shifted in shape, though Torwin couldn\'t tell what the different squiggles meant. It meant something to Jensen, and that was good enough.

"Right, and so that\'s a lower range, probably good for using as a monster ambush detector if you only care about things within a hundred feet. If I take this back out the opposite way… Thought so."

Once again, Torwin was struck by how wrong [Ranger] as a class seemed for the boy. [Explorer] would fit him so much better, or perhaps even something esoteric like [Artificer]. His family would never allow either of those, of course. Those were peasant classes, and Jensen\'s father demanded he evolve his current class into something that was at least rare-grade.

Perhaps there\'s something for him that could combine all those interests together. I think I\'ll do a bit of research while I\'m at the guild. If I can present his family with a clear alternative path toward an acceptably respectable class, he might be able to convince his father to let him pursue it.

"How do you know what the runes mean?" Torwin asked.

"Hmm? Oh, I\'ve seen them before on other devices back home. There\'s a whole armory full of stuff like this I used to get into when I was a kid."

"So, you\'ve had a lot of time to experiment, then? You never had any tutors or anything?"

"No," Jensen said. He glanced up from the compass he was playing with and asked, "Why?"

"I\'m just impressed at your knowledge on the subject," Torwin told him honestly. "If I\'d known you were so proficient, I\'d have asked you to explain the compass to our local friend. You would have given him a better lesson than I did."

"He\'ll figure it out. It\'s not that hard," Jensen said, apparently not realizing that Torwin himself had never \'figured it out\' in thirty years with the Hunters Guild.

Well, it was never a question that he was smart enough. It\'s just his lack of ambition and his allergy to getting up with the sun that are the problems.

The pair walked in silence, Jensen too absorbed in figuring out the compass\'s many functions to properly pay attention to the world around him. Torwin wanted to chastise him, but, just this once, he bit his tongue. He was witnessing something unexpected, and he didn\'t want to interrupt Jensen.

The monsters, of course, weren\'t so courteous. Five minutes later, a pack of worgs picked up their scent and Torwin was forced to shift his apprentice\'s attention to his next lesson.