Duality - 12 Waking up

*Bzzz* *Bzzz*

“…”

*Bzzzz* *Bzzz* *Bzzzzz*

“Hmm?”

John woke up to the annoying sound of flies buzzing around and a rotten smell in the air. Opening his eyes, he found the source of the smell being Tom’s dead body.

“Urgh.” He groaned before getting up.

“What the hell. Where am I? Wait…” It took a few seconds for his memories to fully get in sync.

‘That’s right, I died and was reincarnated.’ He recalled his conversation with the old man who called himself Chronos.

To John, it all seemed much harder to believe now that he was calmer, as at the time he was about to die and not in his right state of mind, but he simply couldn’t argue with the facts.

Just looking to the side, there was the body of a gigantic boar. ‘Wait, what was it called… oh, that’s right, a Great Boar.’ In his memories, he was able to kill such a massive thing with just two shortswords.

Besides this, he still had the knowledge about mana and spells and something called cultivation. He couldn’t help but think it had something to do with agriculture.

Looking back down at the dead body, he recalled the ambush and fight he had and was impressed with himself.

‘Even without my training from my past life, I was still able to make use of psychological attacks and cause him to abandon reason, making it much easier to kill him. Not bad for a 10-year-old…’ It was then that it finally dawned on him.

John used his hands to feel around his face. There were no hairs. He checked the forearms, his legs, even inside his pants, and it was the same. There were no hairs anywhere. He really was only 10 years old in this world. A child.

John had grown up in a mostly civilized environment and although he had been trained to kill, that was as an adult. He couldn’t help but find it wrong that a child was fighting and killing.

‘I must be careful, this world is much more dangerous than my previous one.’ He thought and began to move.

He first had to take a look at his wound, caused by Tom’s throwing knife. Pushing the armor to the side, he saw that the wound wasn’t too deep, with the leather armor stopping most of the blow. It would heal on its own as long as he didn’t move around too much.

After this, he checked his left hand that had been hurting since he woke up. He easily found the reason, as there was something pierced in it, with only the end sticking out. Pulling it out, he found out what it was. A tooth, which must be from when he punched Tom in the mouth.

John flicked it away and the went to retrieve his weapons. The first one was by Tom’s side, but the other was still stuck on the Great Boar. Now rested, he was able to pull it away with some effort. He wiped both and sheathed then back.

Now he would remove the tusks from the Great Boar, check for anything useful on Tom’s body and leave. Besides the hunger and the thirst, he also couldn’t shake the feeling that there was someone watching him.

——

Dene watched her son wake up and once again canceled her spell. She had dark circles under her eyes, both from the lack of sleep and for keeping the spell for so long.

Although no Magical Beast had come close, she still wouldn’t risk it.

But despite her tiredness, she was still happy. She sent her son to the hunt in order for him to get more combat experience. Not only the goal was achieved, but he was also able to have a mind awakening earlier, becoming a level 1 mage.

‘Now that he’s up and rested, I guess I can send in a slightly harder challenge.’ She looked back towards the direction the Great Boar had come from.

——

Fallen branches, trampled ground and some broken trees.

Two black haired men, one big and the other small, were walking through the forest, slowly following the signs of destruction.

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait for him back at the town?” The small man asked. “What if we run into the Great Boar again?”

“And what if he isn’t able to come back?” The other man asked back. “He was the one carrying the coins, if he dies then we’ll get nothing. Now shut up, we don’t want that Beast to hear us.”

The duo kept going forward, always paying attention for any sign of the Great Boar when they saw someone coming towards them from the direction of the tracks.

The person wore a leather armor that covered their whole body, but judging by their figure, the duo figured it was a woman. She also had a hood and a mask that completely covered her face and hair coupled with two shortswords strapped to her back.

Both of the men were only level 3 Fighters, but they couldn’t sense the woman’s level, which meant she was at least a level 5 Fighter, maybe even higher.

Warriors are able to sense other Warriors levels, as long as they’re at most one level higher. Spellcasters, on the other hand, can sense the Warriors levels as long as they have the same relative rank.

This means that any Mage can know the exact level of any Fighter, Archmages the level of Crusaders and so forth.

Similarly, Spellcasters are only able to sense the level of Spellcasters of the same rank.

“Good afternoon Ma’am.” The big man spoke. He didn’t know how strong this woman was, so he thought it better to be respectful.

“Hmm.” Dene simply nodded back before asking. “Are you looking for the Great Boar that came through here?”

“Ah, yes Ma’am. Have you perhaps seen it?”

“I did see it, though the Beast seemed to be dead already.”

“Really?” This time it was the small man who asked. “Was there a black haired man with throwing knives and a sword close to it? He is a bit younger than us and-”

The big man stopped his brother from talking when he noticed the woman’s glare.

“Pl-please forgive my brother Ma’am, its just that we’re both very worried about our third brother, please don’t take offense.”

“Hmph.” Dene snorted before she continued to walk, ignoring the duo.

The brothers didn’t dare to speak until they could no longer see the woman.

“Do you think she spoke the truth? That the Great Boar is dead?” The small man asked in a low voice.

“It must be, she had no reason to lie to us. And if she wanted to hurt us, I don’t think we could stop her. Let’s hurry and go.”

With that, the brothers started running towards the Great Boar, without noticing Dene following behind.

——

By the sun’s position in the sky, coupled with the rigor mortis on Tom’s body, John figured he had slept for a whole day.

Right now he was checking Tom’s body and in his bag, he already had the Great Boar’s tusks which meant he could go back home and finish his trial.

But first, he wanted to search the body. The first thing he noticed was the sword, that had fallen when he cut Tom’s hand. Unfortunately, it was too big for his fighting style, and it didn’t seem too valuable so he decided to leave it.

The same for the throwing knives. Although he had improvised one as a dagger, it wasn’t as good as wielding his shortswords.

Before that battle, the only weapons he had ever used in this life were his pair of shortswords. And in his past one, he was trained to mainly use guns, with a few lessons on close quarters combat.

He would be at most average with these throwing knives, even worse than Tom himself.

As the weapons wouldn’t do, he began to look for anything else of value.

*Chink* John was feeling around Tom’s chest when he heard the chink of metal touching metal. Searching inside the man’s armor, he found the source of the sound as a pouch containing some coins.

There were 3 silver coins and almost 50 copper ones.

He looked around some more, but there was nothing else of value. John was about to store the pouch in his bag and leave when he heard a sound coming from afar. It sounded like footsteps.

He waited to see what it was and finally saw two men coming, one big and the other small. They both had black hair. The big one carried a greatsword smeared with dry blood while the small one had a battle axe.

John found the duo strangely familiar until finally realizing why. Looking down at Tom’s face, it was quite similar to the men coming towards him. It wasn’t hard to deduce that they must be related.

‘Ah, great.’ John stored the pouch in his bag before drawing his weapons.