That day, Boran’s patrol of the city outskirts yielded seven magical beasts.
With each absorption, a current of addictive power flooded his senses. It was a dizzying, dangerous thrill, the kind of ecstasy that could swallow a man whole. The thought that he would one day reach his limit and lose this feeling was almost a disappointment.
Of course, devouring the beasts offered more than just primal satisfaction.
By the fifth beast, his magic power was already half again what it had been before he met Batyr. At this rate, he could theoretically become dozens of times stronger within a few months, but…
It won’t be that easy.
The growth from absorption diminished with each attempt. Relying on weaker beasts for power became increasingly inefficient. Moreover, hunting in one place for too long would simply deplete the local population.
It was for this reason that powerful nobles sometimes undertook great pilgrimages, searching for beasts worthy of their strength.
With this in mind, Boran captured two of the weakest creatures alive. Their power was too insignificant to be worth absorbing. One was a squirrel with a tail five times its normal thickness, which it brandished like a club. The other was a large badger whose fur shifted colors to match its surroundings.
He brought them, bound tightly in rope, to the City Hall. The official on duty stared, his eyes wide with surprise.
“Two of them?”
“Yes. They’re unharmed, aside from a knock on the head. That should be a bounty of twenty-five Salung, correct?”
“Hmm, well…” the official began, his voice trailing off as he prepared to haggle. But when Boran fixed him with a sharp glare, the man’s resolve crumbled. He quickly counted out the money.
“Here you are.”
The simple pleasure of earning coin was another new experience for him, one he’d only discovered since descending from the hill.
He pocketed the twenty-five silver pieces and returned to the inn, where the waitress greeted him with a bright smile.
“Hey, handsome! Made it back in one piece, I see. Staying for dinner? The usual bread and soup?”
Boran was about to order the cheapest thing on the menu, just as he had that morning, but he paused. If he could earn money this easily, perhaps it was time he found out why expensive food was expensive.
“I’ll have the most expensive thing you serve.”
The waitress’s eyes widened. “Wow, someone had a good day! I’ll let the chef know right away!”
What Boran hadn’t anticipated was that the inn’s finest meal took nearly an hour to prepare. When it finally arrived, however, he knew it had been worth the wait.
There was freshly baked bread, soft and savory, served with a tangy fruit jam. A roasted chicken glistened with a sweet glaze. Pork ribs came topped with a thick layer of sizzling, melted cheese.
For Boran, whose entire life had been a rotation of gamy lamb and thin grain porridge on a barren hill, this was a feast beyond imagination.
He tore into the meal, a whirlwind of biting and chewing, and in what felt like an instant, the table was bare.
“…Did someone steal it while I wasn’t looking?”
“Of course not! But for someone so thin, you sure can eat, handsome!”
“It’s rare to see someone enjoy it that much,” the chef added, having emerged from the kitchen. “I’m glad I had the chance to prepare it.”
It seemed the dish was not a frequent order. Regardless, Boran now understood the joy of a good meal.
Three days later, Boran had hunted more than thirty magical beasts. Only five of them qualified for bounties, but even that small number had earned him over a hundred silver coins. He exchanged some for gold to make them easier to carry.
His remarkable success was largely due to his growing proficiency with Detection Magic. Through experimentation, he learned to track a creature even when it was outside his range by searching for its traces. If he were hunting a specific monster, for instance, he could set his Detection Magic to find something like “droppings of a raven larger than a child” and simply follow the trail.
While Boran flourished, Jochi’s crew seemed to be foundering. They wore grim expressions and complained constantly. At this rate, they’d soon be unable to afford their room.
One evening, as Boran headed upstairs to rest, two of Jochi’s men followed him. They blocked his path, raising their fists in a clumsy attempt at intimidation.
“Hey, skinny.”
“Heard you’re rolling in it lately. How about you share some with your fellow hunters?”
Less than a minute later, both men were tumbling down the stairs, nursing their bruises.
After the brief commotion died down, Jochi came to apologize on their behalf, bowing his head to Boran.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll deal with them. It won’t happen again.”
“Are you in trouble?” Boran asked.
Jochi hesitated before answering. “Yeah. We’re a little tight on money.”
He explained that he and his sworn brothers had been thugs in a city of over a hundred thousand people. Two years ago, they’d met a man who claimed to have become a wizard by hunting magical beasts. Inspired, they abandoned their old life to become hunters.
But hunting magical beasts was no easy task for ordinary men. To make matters worse, a bounty was only paid if a beast’s corpse was clearly magical on its own. Lesser creatures had to be brought in alive. As a result, they had wandered from city to city, taking odd jobs to get by, their dream of becoming hunters slowly fading.
Two years, and they’ve only caught three beasts.
It was hardly surprising. They weren’t wizards or professional trackers, just former thugs trying their luck. If they had to work side jobs just to eat, they could never dedicate themselves fully to the hunt. Boran was beginning to understand why officials treated beast hunters like common criminals. They were men chasing a phantom, gambling their lives on a slim chance while others worked honestly. It was easy to see why they weren’t respected.
“Honestly, in about three more days, we won’t be able to pay for the room,” Jochi admitted. “This city’s too small, not much work to be found. But don’t you worry. We’re not about to ask a kid for a handout. It’d be shameless, especially after the trouble my men caused.”
“Here.” Boran sifted through his belongings and held out ten silver coins. It was enough for the four of them to stay at the inn for another three days, if they were careful.
Jochi stared at the coins, dumbfounded. “What… why?”
“You invited me to join your group because you thought it was dangerous for me to be alone. Consider this repayment for your kindness.”
The code his mother had taught him was simple: repay kindness with kindness, and enmity with enmity. Jochi’s initial goodwill was worth a few silver coins. As for his men, Boran had already repaid them with his fists.
“Still, I can’t just take this…”
“If you feel that way, then give me information. Tell me about the cities you’ve been to, anything that might be useful.”
One of the first lessons Boran had learned since leaving his hill was that information had a price. Batyr had given him a broad map of the world and the locations of the great noble houses, but he knew nothing of the smaller details, the character of individual regions.
Jochi’s face lit up. “That, I can do!”
He had spent two years wandering in search of magical beasts, and he knew a great deal. He sketched a simple map of the nearby cities and told Boran which beasts to hunt there—or, in his case, which ones to avoid. With the creatures around Angkor Thom growing scarce, this information was incredibly valuable. Boran had no desire to repeat his last experience of wandering aimlessly from one town to the next.
Jochi also told him of cities built upon the ruins of ancient empires, and of wizard families who guarded their territory so fiercely that no wanderer could pass without permission.
But one detail, in particular, captured Boran’s attention: a library in a major city not too far from here.
“You’re saying it has thousands of books?”
“That’s what I heard. Never been inside myself.”
His mother had taught him to read and write, but Boran had never held a real book. Boranis Rise and the surrounding villages were too poor for such luxuries. Sometimes his mother would lament that there were stories she wished she could read to him, but the words had long since faded from her memory.
To Boran, books were mythical things, repositories of all the world’s wisdom. And now Jochi was telling him that in the city of Orem, a short journey to the northeast, there was a library with over a thousand of them.
And the condition for entry was absurdly simple.
“A wizard can enter freely…”
Jochi sighed wistfully. “Well, maybe one day. When we finally become wizards, we’ll go see it.”
A new desire took root in Boran, one he hadn’t known he possessed. It was stronger than his hunger for coin or food. It was a hunger for knowledge.
He had lived his whole life on that hill, knowing nothing. He wanted to learn what kind of place this world truly was.
“Is this worth the money?” Jochi asked, gesturing to his crude map and the stories he’d shared.
“More than enough.”
Boran had already planned to leave the city after one more day of hunting. Thanks to Jochi, he now knew exactly where he was going.
As if to mock the peaceful resolution, Boran stumbled upon a scene of carnage the next afternoon. One of Jochi’s men was on the ground, clutching a gaping wound in his stomach, blood bubbling from his lips with every ragged cough. His eyes were already half-lidded; he wasn’t going to make it.
“What happened?”
“A rabbit… magical beast… monster…”
“Where’s Jochi?”
The man pointed a trembling finger toward a spot where Jochi’s severed head lay in the dirt. His eyes were wide open, his face frozen in an expression of such disbelief that they seemed to burn with regret even in death. Beyond him lay two more bodies, torn nearly in half.
Then Boran saw it. A rabbit, no larger than a housecat, was chewing on something soft. It turned, and its blood-red eyes fixed on him. Its incisors were so long they almost scraped the ground, and its hind legs were corded with a grotesque amount of muscle. Without a sound, it shot toward him like an arrow.
“Ugh!”
Boran threw himself aside just in time. The rabbit, unable to halt its momentum, slammed into a nearby tree. There was a sharp crack, and the tree toppled—not from the impact, but because the rabbit’s incisors had sliced clean through the trunk.
What is this thing?
There was no time to test different approaches. Boran immediately reached for his secret weapon: the sheepskin slingshot he always carried.
The stone he loosed, empowered by magic, flew faster than sound. But the creature simply swatted it out of the air with one of its long teeth. He fired a second, then a third. Each was deflected with the same casual ease.
Boran clicked his tongue. The creature’s reflexes were unnatural. Batyr had warned him about enemies immune to physical projectiles, but he hadn’t expected to meet one so soon.
Kii-kik!
The rabbit let out a strange, chittering laugh, as if in mockery. It crouched, its powerful hind legs tensing for another leap.
And in that instant—
Kik?
The rabbit froze. Boran was gone. For a creature to simply vanish from sight was something it could not process. Even with the cunning it had gained from absorbing magic, this was beyond its comprehension. Had he fled? How? Where to? There was no scent, no trace…
While the rabbit stood paralyzed with confusion, Boran, cloaked in Concealment, slipped up behind it and drove his dagger deep into its throat.
Kiiiiieeeeeek!
The rabbit unleashed an ear-splitting shriek. Boran twisted the blade, released the handle, and threw himself backward. A moment later, the rabbit’s teeth scythed through the air where he had been, a blow that would have cleaved him in two.
It thrashed wildly, desperate to strike its unseen foe, but its attacker was already gone. Boran had used his magic to leap into the sky, still hidden from sight.
For a full minute, the rabbit rampaged, felling trees in its death throes. Finally, unable to find its enemy, it collapsed from blood loss, its energy spent.
Only then did Boran deactivate his Concealment. He landed softly on the ground and let out a long, slow breath.
“Haaaah…”
Just when he thought he had cleared out the strongest beasts in the area, he’d run into this monster. It was small and seemed to have no defense, but its speed, power, and reflexes made it more dangerous than the magical leopard he had first fought. He knew that if he were the boy from before he met Batyr, armed with nothing but his sling, he would now be dead.
When he absorbed the rabbit’s magic, the rush of power was far greater than what he had taken from the leopard.
What terrible luck.
There was no record of such a creature at the City Hall, which meant it must have mutated recently. Jochi’s crew had likely seen a rabbit-shaped beast and assumed it was an easy kill. That carelessness had cost them their lives. What would they have thought, he wondered, if they had known this rabbit was strong enough to kill a careless noble in an instant?
After a moment, Boran walked over to the hunter with the stomach wound. The man was still conscious, barely, and stared up at him in shock. He must have witnessed the entire fight.
“You… you’re… a wizard…”
“Yes.”
“Why…”
Boran saw no point in a long explanation. He simply shook his head and asked a question of his own. “Do any of you have family? Anyone who would want a keepsake?”
“No…”
A short while later, Boran finished digging in a sunny spot at the edge of the forest. Four mounds of fresh earth marked the final resting place for the men who had dreamed of becoming wizards.