Alan was enjoying himself, there were no two ways about it. America's military wasn't the best in the world without reason. Sure, there were units in other countries that could compete against the best the United States had to offer, but what the stars and stripes bearing armed forces had was the same thing that made the country great, diversity.

If you wanted to invade a country, send in the Army. You needed to capture this town, this valley, that hill, bring on the Marines. An unassailable enemy fortress, can you say Air Force! Then there were the elite forces, and boy were there a lot.

You need intel deep behind enemy lines, how about Force Recon or Army Rangers. Instead of capturing a village, do you need to sneak in and take out the local warlord? Sounds like a job for the Navy Seals or Delta Force. Rescue hostages, storm a compound, you could almost close your eyes and throw a rock to pick a group.

Now if instead of conquering a town, destroying some infrastructure, or taking out the various leaders of a terrorist organization, you wanted to get the locals to do the work, or better yet, turn those potential enemies into friends, then everyone please stand for the Quiet Professionals, the Bearded Bastards, the Soldier-Diplomats, it's the Green Berets.

Could Seal Team Six come in and take over a village, sure, so could a lot of groups. But would the village want to stay theirs, or would there be insurgents working to drive them out? And what if you didn't have a team, what if you only had one guy. Not ideal, but if you were gonna choose someone, Alan knew which barracks he would go to. In short, Alan was made for his current role.

That didn't mean he could simply walk into an area, declare himself a badass and everyone would fall in line. No, but it did mean that he knew how to do the work. The first step was intel. As he and Tamee had discussed, he just didn't know what he would be facing. If this was back on Earth there would be a whole department behind him feeding his team information. Here in the tutorial, he was on his own. Mostly.

When the barrier to the next tier dropped, Alan was ready and waiting. Tamee had already informed him that this was a one way trip. Once he passed through, there was no going back until he won. Once he had the death or surrender of each of the other parties, and the role of Mayor, or that person's cooperation, then the previous zones would be open again.

He had made sure everything was ready back at his house. It had taken him most of his remaining time to finish enough dungeons to earn the points necessary to purchase the dungeon core in the store. He had also set up another attunement and empowerment circle around it. This one had to be done outside, the egg was taking up the inside of his house. He had also needed to move it a little distance away from the farm because of the low ambient mana caused by the first circle.

Two Socks was going to look after everything, and he trusted the wolf to keep the core safe. If everything went to plan, after claiming the village he would return and retrieve it. With the minimal amount of empowering he could provide, it still should have allowed the core to become stronger, able to create a better dungeon. The attunement part of the ritual would hopefully make it easier to guide the core as it created a dungeon near the village. The egg, though, was probably going to need a lot more time than the core.

Alan wasn't an expert in the field, but he was pretty sure he learned that shells usually thinned as the egg aged, especially when they were close to hatching. Everything he could feel or sense about the shell told him it was still hard and thick. He had also spent a lot of time with the egg. He felt a little guilty that he had neglected Two Socks some, but the wolf had often joined him in sitting with the egg, so that should count. Meal time had been moved inside the house so they could spend more time together with the egg.

He would talk to it the whole time he sat there, telling it about his previous life and what was currently going on. He didn't know if the little dragon inside could hear him, but Tamee didn't think it was a total waste. When it was time to leave he had to remind himself that everything was going to be fine.

The wolf got the better goodbye. He had made sure to give Two Socks a giant hug before he left. That once furry little pup had become a massive wolf, and a welcome companion in the time they had together. There was no concern about Two Socks being able to keep everything safe, either. The obelisk had spawned another boss, and Alan had only needed to watch as the wolf tore it apart, literally. It had been a large falcon with some wind abilities. Its ranged attacks had proved ineffective against the wolf's tough fur and hide, and when it had tried to dive down and attack him, Two Socks had tanked the hit, and then used the opening to latch onto one of its wings.

From there the fight was a blur of blood and feathers and he kept it pinned to the ground with one massive paw while tearing into it with his jaws. Occasionally he batted it with his other front paw when it tried to fight back. In the end it had done minimal damage to the wolf and had been completely shredded in turn. Alan felt confident that his friend could handle any of the threats in tier two.

Secure in the knowledge that he had done everything he could back at the farm, Alan had entered the new area warily. If he encountered an entire party of hostiles as he stepped in, there was a good chance they could kill him. His fears proved unfounded as he didn't see anyone at first. After scouting around for a few hours he did spot a party of five of those Nivex things, but between the distance and his phantom class, they never spotted him.

It took him most of the first day to find the village they were supposed to fight over. It looked capable of housing several hundred people, but as he watched, he saw more buildings going up. There was one major road, but several smaller ones were branching off of it. The road also didn't really lead to anything. It was well beaten down in the village limits, but after that it was just grassland, the street simply ending and the long vegetation beginning. There were some signs of the ground starting to get packed down, maybe there were some people who occasionally passed through, but it certainly wasn't a real path.

Once he located the village, Alan had scouted the area around it, not wanting to try infiltrating it until he knew what was here. There was a good sized stream that flowed next to the settlement, they had even built a mill pond and a water wheel. The water wheel just spun in place, not attached to anything, that was curious.

Following the stream had led to a barrier. This time the tutorial wasn't trying to disguise it as a waterfall or cliff. Physically, it acted like a solid wall, placing his hand against it he could feel it, and it resisted his attempts to move it or deform it in any way. Visually, it was like one of the filters that they had on virtual meetings. He was able to get a vague idea of what was beyond, but it blurred to the point where he couldn't really see anything.

This barrier was quite a distance away from the village and Tamee let him know the details. This would prevent all recruits from traveling beyond the area ceded to the village they were tasked with, but it was invisible and completely permeable for the residents the Network had brought in. That would allow them to trade with other settlements.

This was the 'real world', these people weren't dungeon dwellers with all of the control and protection that entailed. These were actual self-aware people who had chosen to migrate to the tutorial, becoming true residents of the planet at the conclusion. If they were killed here, they were dead, finito, no more. They were also completely free willed, there was nothing subtly guiding their thoughts or blocking their senses.

To be able to function they needed to be able to roam freely, to travel from one settlement to another. That had given Alan an idea to infiltrate the village. After killing a few low leveled animals wandering around the surrounding area, he made himself a nice meal that night. The benefit to his fire runes over an actual flame was that they produced heat without nearly as much light. You could still see the glow of the mana flowing through the runes, but it wasn't a beacon in the night like a fire would be.

Without any kind of shelter, Alan had chosen to stay up all night. He checked out the forest near the town, looking at what kind of flora and fauna there was. The environment in this tier was much more like what he thought of as natural. If he had been dropped in this forest at the beginning of the tutorial, he would have thought he was still on Earth.

In the morning, Alan made his way into the town. He had made sure to place all of his weapons and gear in his nipple ring. It was the storage item he could hide the best. The necklace and ring were placed in a pouch. Just a normal pouch, as you couldn't place spatial items into other spatial items. He still had his spatial pouch, but it looked the same as a normal one, so he left it on his belt with the others. Tamee had let him know how rare it was for serfs to have a storage item, unless it was part of their job, so he didn't want to flaunt the fact that he had one. As this was a tutorial it was even more unlikely people would have them.

As he walked into town, there were a few people about. It was just after sunrise and it seemed like most people were still in their homes, getting ready for the day. Scouting around a bit, he found the Town Hall. It was one of the buildings he would have needed to erect to upgrade Amthraxia to a tier one village. In front of it had been a large sign board with papers on it. Tamee told him to go check it out, and he had found a list of quests.

She told him that what he was reading sounded more like bounties, but the two terms weren't all that well defined. Generally quests were tasks given directly by the Network, and bounties were more like missions you could get from such town boards or adventurer guilds. Whatever they were, Alan took a little time to memorize all of them. Completing these jobs would likely improve his relationship with whoever was issuing them and give him some small rewards.

While he was studying the papers, he was approached by a man that he identified as the Mayor. Between his higher skill level with identify, and his new talent Soul Probing, he was getting quite a bit of information on the residents. Probably because they didn't have any classes and this kept them from leveling up their skills. When identifying, it seemed that the relative skill level played a part in the information gleaned.

Since the plan was to lay low and gather intel, Alan had decided to pretend to be mute. He was fluent in several languages, but he doubted any of them were the same as what Mayor Roger spoke. The Network would auto translate for everyone, but he wasn't sure if it would be a tell that he wasn't from around here. He had noticed a few times where the translation feature didn't work properly. Sometimes it sounded like someone had used an older version of google translate and, while you could figure out the meaning, it just sounded strange. An added benefit to pretending to be mute was that if people thought you couldn't talk, they were more likely to discuss sensitive things while you were around. For some reason the idea that you could still hear didn't occur to them.

The mayor had suggested that he should try and get work in the farms. The job appealed to Alan, but it wouldn't let him gather much information. Instead he spent the day traveling around the village, checking on what type of shops and crafters they had. It wasn't a very big place yet, so it didn't take long. For the rest of the day he decided to complete some bounties.

As a 'resident', he wasn't supposed to have a class or weapons, so he figured that he should stick with the simple gathering quests. With his high perception, and his herbology skill pointing to the best places for things to grow, he made short work of them. When he had returned to the town hall to turn in the items, he had met the mayor again.

After pulling all of the items out of a backpack he had purchased, the mayor gave him a strange look. Alan felt a tingle on the back of his neck. Thanks to Tamee's outside knowledge, and some recent experience, he knew that the man had just tried to identify him. With his seeker class upgraded and his soul having improved after leveling up to opal, he could now sense when people identified him.

After one dungeon where he was constantly being identified by the denizens, Alan had gained a new class talent. It also corresponded with getting his inquirer class up to twenty percent. The talent was called Soul Block, and it was a common enough spirit skill that Tamee had been able to give him some information about it.

He already knew that identify used a probe that interrogated the person's soul. Soul block helped shield his own from such attempts. Between his relatively high identify level, at least compared to serfs, and his talent, anyone trying to get information about him would be out of luck. There were different mechanics for how their skill would be blocked depending on more variables than Tamee knew. The most common way this would work for a total block, is that his name wouldn't show up and there would be little or no information about him other than his race. If it hadn't given anything then the person would know that he had a way of blocking them. This way they might just think there wasn't anything to know.

The next day had him searching for the other parties. Along the way he kept an eye out for more bounty materials. He had more luck with collecting items than he did with scouting, but toward the end of the day he actually found both the Nivex and Bodarian parties. They were engaged in a fight with each other and Alan watched from a distance as the largest insectoid managed to take out one of the large, muscled Bodarians with a blast of fire. The person had already been covered in burns, evidence that this wasn't their first exchange. The most recent blast came at close range and melted the solid looking fighters face off.

Seeing one of his party members fall, a two-handed hammer wielding Bodarian started swinging his weapon recklessly. It cost him several serious wounds he could have otherwise avoided, but it did result in him burying the head of his hammer in the thorax of his opponent. The insects took the death of their comrade differently than the Bodarians.

Where the giants had become enraged by the loss, the Nivex had briefly frozen in shock. It was only for a moment, but it was long enough for another insectoid to have their head chopped off. The bug leader had apparently had enough and called for a retreat. Alan thought about trying to keep the fight going, or following the Nivex to take advantage of their losses, but he figured it was too early to take such a risk. He would learn more before engaging one of the recruit parties.

The Bodarians tried to pursue briefly, but it was clear that all of their muscles came at the cost of speed, and they were having trouble keeping up with the nimble insectoids. They soon gave up and returned to the site of the battle. Alan had briefly had visions of looting the scene of battle, but sadly it wasn't to be. Some might see stealing from the dead as dishonorable, especially when he was only an observer, but this was war. He wasn't going to start casting meteor on crowds of civilians, but there was truth to the saying 'all's fair in love and war'.

Alan watched as they buried their own party member and left the fallen Nivex behind, after taking all their stuff, of course. It seemed that they had a reverence for the dead, at least their own. He only followed them long enough to get a rough sense of where they were going. Their path was in generally the same direction that the Nivex had fled. It looked like there might be another battle in their future.

It would have been informative to follow them around for a while, but he also wanted to get more information about the village. Even if all of the other recruits were killed, he still had to do something with the settlement. Alan didn't want to linger in the town exclusively, there was still another party of beastkin out there somewhere that he wanted to get eyes on, so he tried to split his time. Everytime he returned after scouting he brought back more bounty items.

The coins he was earning weren't impressive, all together it was probably only ten gold so far, but the mayor seemed pleased regardless. It was hard to get a read on that man as he always had a smile on his face. Alan could tell that it was usually fake, but he wasn't able to divine what emotions were hiding behind it. It seemed more like a politician's smile, just always there regardless of their current feelings. After one of his trips, the mayor offered him a job that made him hesitate to turn it down. He still hadn't found the beastkin recruits, so he didn't want to be tied down, but this job seemed like a golden opportunity.

After the mayor talked with the owner of the local tavern, he had been offered a job as a busboy. While it was scut work, it was also in a location where people would talk. He would be able to gauge the mood of the village and possibly determine ways to either undercut the mayor or ingratiate himself with the man depending on how everyone else felt he was doing. There also was a chance he could learn some more cooking tips from the chef.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

What seemed a lifetime ago, Alan's mentor Dracon Mazus, explained why he still needed sleep. Technically, with his increased stats his body didn't really need sleep, but when engaging in mentally taxing activities it would exhaust his brain, making him tired after all. Clearing tables and getting the occasional lesson from Cook was not much of a challenge for him. Listening to the patrons while he worked also wasn't causing him mental fatigue, so he found himself not needing to make use of his room much.

Instead of resting, he would go out after the tavern closed. The sun had set long ago, but it was still before midnight, and he would complete more bounties while keeping an eye out for other recruits. The nights were fairly standard, but his second day working in the tavern had a bit of excitement in the village. The group of three insectoids he had seen earlier, tried to come in, but they were still wearing their gear, despite the sign saying no adventurer equipment.

He had heard the residents talking about those silly signs. They were there because of some deal the mayor had needed to make with a roving group of adventurers that were not recruits. Alan had heard one of them was an Aristocrat which did not fill him with the warm and fuzzies. The group in front of him, and half the residents of the village, was not nearly as concerning. The mayor was trying to let them know that they just needed to put their gear away before coming in, but they weren't hearing him.

There was a tense moment when it looked like it might come to blows. Alan was afraid he would have to reveal himself to prevent it from becoming a massacre, but the bugs blinked first and they left. He couldn't follow them now, his alter ego of the mute busboy was supposed to be working still, but he made note of which direction they took.

After his shift he snuck out of town, a trivial task even without his skills, and managed to follow their tracks. The lack of a proper path actually helped, because it meant there were fewer footprints to follow. The rain shower in the morning had also helped soften up the ground, allowing their hard chitinous feet to leave deep impressions.

It was also nice that the wet clouds from earlier in the day had moved on, leaving the moon to shine down on the ground. It didn't take him long to catch up to the Nivex. They were at a small pond that must have been fed from below by a spring, or just some Network magic, because there was no other obvious source. Seeing how this area, unlike tier one, behaved more like the world he was used to, he was leaning toward the spring.

The group of insectoids had made a camp next to the water. They were scooping frogs out of the pond and eating them whole. Frog legs had never been of interest to Alan, but the thought of horking them down whole, and live, made him throw up a little in his mouth. It was still too early in the tier for him to try and take out his opposition. He should spend more time on reconnaissance first, learning the strengths and weaknesses.

However, after watching their interaction with the town mayor he had already drawn a couple of conclusions. The Nivex were not good at social situations. Despite the mayor's obvious attempts, they just couldn't see past his words to the barely veiled meaning. The insectoids also seemed incredibly arrogant and xenophobic. Part of their lack of understanding of social cues could be attributed to them not seeing the other residents as real people.

Tamee had told him that it was a common failing of insectoids. Not all bug races were like this, there were even some insectoid residents in the town who functioned just fine, but more than fifty percent of the insect races thought of others as lesser. This group seemed like it was going to cause trouble, and there was little chance of getting them to work with him.

If he thought they might be open to an arrangement, he would probably give talking to them a chance first. Because that seemed unlikely here, he decided not to take the risk. It was better to hit them hard and fast before they knew he was there. Three on one were not great odds, even if he had managed to defeat a Nivex before. He had also watched them lose one engagement so far, but still.

Alan debated whether to use identify or not. Information would be useful, but it could also alert them to his presence. In the end he decided not to risk it. If any of them had a spirit class and had leveled it to opal, then there was a good chance they would be able to sense the probe like he could. It was worth going in blind to maintain surprise.

One of the dungeon rewards he had earned in his last few days of tier two was a proper crossbow. He had long ago gotten a small hand crossbow, but it didn't have great range or hitting power. This new one was an uncommon weapon and was full sized. Testing it out, he had been able to punch through even metal armor from a distance. That was even before he added a rune to it.

Trying to pick something to add to his crossbow had been tricky. Adding something for heaviness or sharpness would just make the crossbow itself heavier or sharper, which wouldn't help at all with the bolts it fired. In the end he had found a way to add a speed rune to the firing mechanism which allowed it to launch the bolts at almost twice the velocity. This increased both the range and penetration power of the bolt.

Crossbows were still difficult to reload. The best he could do was around five seconds, and that didn't include bringing it back up to his shoulder and aiming. At the speeds adventurers were capable of, five seconds was an eternity. That meant he would get one shot off with his weapon. He could have tried to take out the toughest looking opponent, but he decided to go for number two instead.

Alan was more likely to get a kill that way, bringing his number of opponents down to two. He deemed this a worthwhile trade off since the larger opponent had a better chance of mitigating the attack, leaving him with a much harder fight. Plus, he planned on hitting the smallest bug with a fire bolt at the same time. Coordinating the attacks would be a little tricky, but Alan was becoming a champion multitasker.

Placing the butt of the crossbow against his shoulder, he sighted in on the head of his target. It was a more difficult shot than center mass, but he wanted a guaranteed kill and he had been practicing recently. At the same time he was starting to cast his largest firebolt. The mana was moving toward his hand and started to gather into the spell form. Alan needed to time it just right so that it wouldn't finish until after he shot the crossbow and was able to point to his target.

The spell was almost ready and it was time to shoot. As he finished exhaling, he paused for the briefest moment as he pulled the trigger. As soon as the bolt was off, he released the crossbow and aimed his left pointer finger at the smallest Nivex. Tamee would probably make fun of him for dropping his weapon again, but he was over it. As the spell completed, he activated one of his new abilities.

When he leveled up to opal, Alan had gotten four different class abilities. As his classes continued to level he also gained more abilities and talents. After getting his sorcerer class to thirty percent and trying to put a little too much mana into a fire bolt, he had gained a new class ability, Empower. He triggered it now, and in a fraction of a second mana poured out of his pool and the ball of fire hovering in front of his finger doubled in size.

Empower was a solution to a problem he had been having with his spells. Alan had learned how to both modify his existing spells, and to create new ones, but other than his meteor spell, he hadn't really found anything that did lethal damage. Or at least not on a target at a similar level to himself. At the cost of triple the mana, empower doubled the effect of the spell. It had a cooldown of a minute, which didn't seem like that long a time, but it was an eternity when it mattered.

Even as the bolt was burying itself in the head of the first Nivex, a toddler sized ball of fire streaked into the thorax of the smaller insectoid. He was aiming for center mass here because he wanted as much of the fire to hit its frame as possible, to cook its insides. The first bug collapsed, the bolt having obliterated its brain. The second one went up like a torch and Alan could hear it screaming from his position about fifty meters away.

Now that he had gotten a better handle on his phantom class and his fade ability, Alan was a much better sneak. The classes always came with a burst of knowledge, but his body and mind took a while to incorporate it into his actions. He felt that he was finally a better stalker than Two Socks, of course it helped that the wolf was now also at least three times his size.

It was only after the flaming Nivex collapsed to the ground that Alan thought about the after effects of his attack. He was in a field covered in thigh high grass. If it hadn't rained this morning it might have been dry enough that his bolt could have set off a wildfire. Switching from machine guns to magic spells would require a little more care.

Two of his foes were dead before the leader knew what was happening. To his credit, the bugman was able to follow the streak of flame back toward its source. Alan didn't think it could actually see him yet, but it was enough for the bug to race towards him. He might be able to move out of his current position and set up for another surprise attack, but he figured this was a good time to test himself. If he couldn't beat his opponents one-on-one, he needed to know that sooner rather than later. There was also no longer any reason to hold off on identifying his enemy.

Kesteryxx: Nivex[W], Zealot. The zealot class is a spirit class that encourages absolute belief in oneself and one's patron. Threat level: serious.

It was a good thing he hadn't tried to identify him before. This thing also had a spirit class and would almost certainly have detected his probe. As a matter of fact, he saw the Nivex adjust its path to head directly toward Alan's position. He must have seen the soul probe and traced it back to its source.

Running on four legs it held a wand and sword in its hands. Interestingly enough, the wand was in its dominant hand. Even if you favored magic over melee, wouldn't it be easier to use the wand in your off hand? Then again, maybe it was left-handed. As it closed in, it sent a streak of light shooting at Alan.

His enemy was a little far for him to be able to read its aura and see when it was casting, which meant that he wasn't totally prepared for the incoming spell. Fortunately this wasn't Alan's first fight and he was always ready for something to happen, so he was bringing up his shield to block as soon as the beam appeared. It was also a good thing that, while it was made of light, it wasn't traveling at the speed of light, otherwise it would have hit him before he even realised what was happening.

His tortoiseshell shield held up to the blast with only a tiny pillar of smoke as a sign of the attack. Alan's spewn was out and he could have responded with his own magical attack, but that empowered fire bolt had been costly. He had used up more than half of his mana, and even with his mana lode ability, it was going to take some time to refill. It was better to save it for an emergency. At least he had remembered to cast regeneration on himself before this began.

So instead of casting a spell, Alan rushed forward and tried to close before his opponent could get off another spell. He was partially successful. The Nivex didn't get an offensive spell off, but it did manage to cast something. Just as Alan reached him, a second copy of the insectoid appeared next to them. At their level it was hard to believe that it could clone itself, so it was most likely an illusion. This was his first experience with such a thing, however, so he didn't know if it could harm him, or if it was merely a distraction.

Also, Alan assumed that teleportation was a little advanced for an opal class as well, which meant the Nivex in front of him had to be the real bug while the new one was the copy. It seemed like a major issue with the spell, but maybe you were supposed to use it before your opponent got so close. Deciding to test out his theory he swung his spewn at the copy while keeping his shield between what he assumed was the real one and himself. His weapon passed right through the illusion and the fake Nivex vanished.

The 'revealed' real one hissed in frustration, but Alan's attack on its copy had at least given it another moment to react. It swung at him with its sword. It was a perfectly respectable attack, but based on that one move Alan could tell that he had faced far better swordspeople recently. Even the Nivex he had fought in the arena, what seemed so long ago, was a better fighter.

Taking the blow on his shield he retaliated with the blunt side of his spewn. The hard chitin that served as its skin would act as armor against the edge of his weapon, but the force he could impart with the mace version should be enough to crack or outright break through it. Indeed, even without Alan committing fully to the first blow, he was able to crush its arm, forcing it to drop its sword. Kesteryxx looked at his mangled limb in disbelief and Alan used the distraction to strike again at its thorax.

He could have gone for one of its legs, hoping to disable it, but he had learned from his first encounter that they were perfectly capable of moving with only three legs. It probably affected their mobility less than ten percent. The hit to the thorax, on the other hand, caved in a section of its chest and green ichor started to trickle out. Now the Nivex started getting upset.

Pointing his wand at Alan, Kesteryxx fired off three light beams in quick succession. The first and second hit Alan in the chest, but he managed to get his shield up to block the third. The torso on his HUD had briefly been flashing red, but the regeneration was quickly moving it back into yellow. His clothes had two scorch marks on them and the flesh beneath had briefly been burned away to show the ribs underneath.

They had dealt significant damage to each other, but Alan thought that he had gotten the better result. His health wasn't all the way to green, but his wounds weren't bleeding and he had full combat capability. Kesteryxx, however, was down an arm and bleeding from his chest, although as Alan watched he saw the ichor slow and the chest wound start to close. This bug must have a healer class as well, but surely he had blown through his mana pool by now.

Meanwhile, Alan had over two hundred mana now, and he briefly debated shoving his spewn inside the insectoid and casting fire bolt, but there was a reason that was a last resort measure. He was winning this fight, he didn't need to resort to extreme measures. Instead he showed the Nivex why rock beats wand.

He brought down blow after blow with the rounded egg of his spewn. Kesteryxx tried to deflect the blows, but a short wooden stick wasn't going to do much here. Each hit left a little crater in its carapace after knocking aside the wand. Alan was going for quantity over quality at the moment, keeping his opponent reacting instead of initiating.

Seeing how useless the wand was for defense, the insectoid started trying to use his good arm instead. Alan's next blow put a stop to that when he gave it a little extra oomph so that it shattered the limb rather than sliding off. With both arms out of the fight, Kesteryxx tried to run. Alan wasn't about to let that happen. Don't leave an enemy to come back and bite you in the butt later.

An empowered gust blowing in its face slowed Kesteryxx down just enough for Alan to take out both of his back legs. Losing one leg wouldn't have been a big deal, but two was too many. The bug's back end started dragging on the ground and it seemed to cause it pain, maybe that part was sensitive. It was something to check on in the future. For now it was time to end the fight.

In a blur of motion, Alan stepped on the back of its grounded abdomen to get a little height and smashed its head from behind. This blow had all of his force behind it, a quality strike to put his opponent out of his misery. The Nivex shell was tough, but it had nothing on an opal strength class wielding a high quality enchanted mace. The remains of the former leader collapsed on the ground.

Not wanting to stick around the scene for long and risk blowing his cover, Alan gathered all of their storage items and tossed them in the pouch with his own. The weapons went into his nipple ring. They didn't seem to wear much armor, most likely trusting to their hard shells. What they were wearing wasn't suited to a human's anatomy so he left those pieces behind rather than spending the time removing them.

The next evening while clearing a table, Alan heard some patrons talking about the Nivex. Apparently the Aristocrat, Chrisly was his name, had found the dead bugs and decided to take the credit for killing them. It bothered him a little that someone else was stealing the credit, but in the end it didn't really matter.

That may have had some part in what happened almost a week after he had left tier two, though. He had finally seen the beastkin party. They were sitting at one of the tables in the tavern and he tried to drink in every detail while he cleared tables around them. He didn't dare use identify, but little things suggested their main classes.

The thicker, fluffy one that looked kinda like a hamster was a good people watcher, probably a perception class, but his bulkiness and something about the way he held his body suggested a constitution class was his primary one. The ferret man next to him had the quick movements of a dexterity build, but he also scanned the room like someone with good perception. The other two were harder to determine, but they seemed squishier than the first pair. Probably mages or straight dexterity.

The waitress, Jessica, had been very good to him while he worked here. Many assumed he was dumb because he couldn't talk, but she always treated him normally. He had been in the back getting another lesson on proper seasoning from Cook when she told him to rush clear a table for Chrisly and his party.

This was his first time seeing them up close and he was both impressed and disgusted. Their equipment was good and he got a sense of capability from most of them. There was also a tinge of bloodlust in the air around them, like they had seen plenty of killing. Alan wondered if he had anything like that himself.

What disgusted him was how petty they were. While he was trying to clear off their table, and surreptitiously check them out, they were being the definition of rude jerks. They kept throwing food off the plates at him and pulling the dishes away just as he was about to grab them. It took a large measure of restraint for him to not react.

That all went out the door when they started picking on the rabbit woman waitress. Jessica initially was a welcome distraction, finally letting him clear off most of the table. But then their boss, Chrisly, pulled her into his lap. His hands started to roam around her body and Alan heard what he whispered in her ear. Almost without realising it, his hand tightened on the weapon in his hand, a tin ladle from the table's communal stew pot.

Using all of his strength and speed, combined with a bonus from his talents hammer blow and critical hit, and possibly some extra power from fury, he brought the big spoon down on the pig's head. The clang rang out through the room and left Chrisly unconscious or possibly dead. Probably not dead, Alan wasn't that lucky.

For some reason he couldn't stop staring at the ladle. That blow had been powerful and the simple serving spoon hadn't been able to deal with it. The handle was slightly bent and twisted. When another adventurer reached out for him, he slammed him as well. That was the last straw for the ladle as it was now bent in a horrible pretzel.

It took him a moment to realize that he might actually be in danger, and it wasn't until Jessica pushed him that he realized his time in the village incognito might be over. A bonus was that the beastkin party was calling for him, offering their help. As he ran away from the village with the furry party, he considered his next steps. This group at least seemed like decent people, so he would try and stick with them for a little while and get a better read on them.

After they set him up with a 'permanent' campsite, he had surreptitiously followed them to see what they were up to. They found the town's dungeon and went inside. He hadn't tried either dungeon on the quest board yet and he wondered how they would do. This might be a good test of their skills. He settled in the long grass to wait and see what happened.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.