2 Hunt

It was dusk in the forest as the sun had already set, water droplets had started materializing on the leaves and the sound of the wind was the loudest thing you could hear.

As time passed, the sound of something breathing on top of a tree became more prominent.

Suddenly the sound of a bowstring being pulled reverbed in the forest as an arrow quickly struck something resting on top of the tree and soon what followed up was a loud thud of something heavy falling on the ground.

"I GOT IT!" Noah Rejoiced just to get his mouth covered by his father instantly.

"Sshhh Noah, did you forget what we talked about? Don't be loud."

After that subtle interaction, we were greeted by a nine-year-old Noah crouch walking towards the object that had fallen after being struck by the arrow.

Soon, it came into vision. It was indeed a bird they were trying to hunt, but this time around, instead of a normal bird, it turned out that they had shot down something unexpected.

"Noah, you messed up again, I had to use the wind to redirect the shot again- Wait a second, is that a Redbeak Vulture?"

"Huh, but Pa, didn't you say we were hunting a newborn Sparrow?"

"Well, that was what it was supposed to be, this is odd."

'Hmm, I don't know how my mana sense could be misguided unless there was some disruption.'

'Wait a second It could only mean-'

"NOAH QUICK COME BACK!" Nelson yelled out towards Noah as he quickly got in a stance.

But Noah had already half stretched his hand towards the body of the vulture, so when he suddenly heard his father call out to him, he couldn't help but freeze in one place.

'Did I do something wrong? I thought we were not supposed to be loud otherwise we would attract the unwanted Magical beasts.'

Just as Noah started thinking about his father's reaction, something weird happened. The body of the vulture in front of him just vanished completely from his vision, it was as if the body just straight up shattered out of existence.

'ILLUSION!'

Even though Noah was 9, he had spent a lot of his time reading. He knew some stuff about magic, which was enough to tell him how fucked up of a situation he was in.

'The only monsters that can use illusions are above D Rank.'

Suddenly Noah felt alert and his survival instincts had started tingling, something was wrong, this was the first time he was experiencing something like this.

Of course, by no means was Noah a newbie in hunting. He started out after reaching the age of 7 and was always accompanied by his father. Usually in these hunt's his father would just guide his son with the use of Mana Sense where he would tell Noah about what monsters are present where and how strong they are.

Most of the time, the decisions of what monster to hunt were made by Noah himself as Nelson wanted his son to learn critical decision-making skills and thinking ability. But sometimes, Nelson would pick up a Magical Beast's presence with his Mana Sense which would force him to interject in Noah's hunts to keep his son safe.

During this time skip, Noah guided by Nelson, trained his body to increase his stats while also working on his weapon handling skills. Even though he was limited to using simple weapons such as a bow and different one-handed swords, he had started reaching a point where he could actually completely hunt independently only requiring his father's help to locate monsters.

The father-son duo usually tried their best to never venture too deep into the forest as Nelson feared that they might end up catching the attention of a Magical Beast they couldn't handle and this had shown results as well because all this time they had never had to fight against a magical beast and had succeeded with avoiding dangerous battles.

Today though, was a bit different as this was the first time that Nelson's mana sense was disrupted and he wasn't able to dictate if they were fighting a normal beast or a magical one.

*****

All of a sudden, Noah heard the sound of the ground cracking, and before he could react, there was a gust that followed right after directly behind him.

'It really is a magical beast!'

All his thought process halted as something or someone pushed his back with enough force to make him fall on the ground far from where he was standing previously.

As he turned to look at what was happening behind him, he could see his father with one of his hands stretched out towards him, this, of course, meant that he was responsible for pushing Noah.

As for why his father had pushed him out of the way, he could tell from the large spike that grew out from the ground and impaled his father's lower abdomen. This created a strong image in Noah's mind as he could see his father's blood starting to ooze out and cover the spike.

If his father hadn't pushed him out of the way, this spike would have perfectly impaled Noah's head, killing him in one blow.

But unlike what Noah thought about his father's situation, Nelson was calm-headed as he had already started thinking about why this incident was happening in the first place.

'That are only 2 monsters this deep into the forest that can create illusions and control the earth, It's either the Three-Eyed Psychbear or it's an Illusionist Hobgoblin... But it still doesn't make any sense, they are both Rank D monsters that aren't able to disrupt the mana flow to such an extend. Hmm, This only leaves one possibility.'

'There is a C or higher Rank monster nearby, their presence alone is creating this disruption. Fucking hell, we need to escape as fast as possible.'

Even though Nelson wasn't the smartest he still understood when he had to back out. The problem wasn't the D Rank monster that had attacked them or even the presence of Noah who he needed to keep safe.

The actual problem stemmed from the disruption in the mana flow, This much disruption could only be caused by monsters above the rank of C. Just to put this into perspective, Nelson can't even kill a high-tier D Rank monster, while this was a C Rank.

This only left him with one choice which was to escape with Noah as quickly as possible. Right after deciding his course of action, Nelson quickly used his second hand to unsheathe his sword and break the earth spike in half, just leaving a piece of the spike stuck on his chest to make sure he didn't bleed out.

He then grabbed Noah by the arm and placed him over his shoulder, with all that done, he started running towards the village without second thoughts. Honestly, the presence of D Rank monsters this close to the village was a problem in itself and morally Nelson should have finished them off but right now Nelson couldn't give a single fuck as to him his family was more important than the village.

'They can figure this shit out themselves.'

As he got some distance from the crime scene, he started using his mana to create minor wind blasts right under his feet to boost his speed.

It looked as if Nelson flying in the air without placing his feet on the ground. These were the perks granted to him by his class advancement and his measly mana pool.

It didn't take him long before they reached the Village's entrance and spotted the guards, who had also started looking alert after noticing the well-known head guard of the Adventurer's Guild full sprinting towards the village with a child over his shoulder along while having his leather armor soaked in blood.

"Is that Nelson?"

"I think it is, it seems like an emergency, I think it's Noah that he is carrying and he himself is bleeding. Quickly go get the priestess."

"Okay, I will do that, you take care of the situation here."

The guards discussed something among themselves as one of them left. As Nelson was quickly approached the gate he saw Ben the guard put out his hand to signal him to stop.

"Hey Nelson, Reigh has gone over to call the Priestess but you know the deal. I can't let you in until you explain what happened. Did some adventurers decide to rough you up or someth-"

Ben the village guard froze, he noticed an earth spike stuck to Nelson's body. But even he knew that it shouldn't have been enough to make Nelson look this pale, something felt immensely wrong.

Nelson wasn't your everyday guard, he was one of the few people in this village with an advanced class. He should have enough vitality to survive through such things blissfully.

It is even said that if you had enough Vitality stats you could live for eternity or survive even after getting your organs blown apart.

"Ben there is mana disruption in the border of the forest you need to go inform the town hall quickly!"

Ben suddenly got the chills, if what Nelson was saying was true then that means that there was a monster that could massacre the whole village nearby. This also explained the reason behind Nelson losing all the color from his face so he had no reason to stop him from entering the village.

Soon they both entered the village, as Ben started sprinting towards the town hall, Nelson quickly put his son down on the ground to check his condition. With just one glance Noah was able to dictate that Noah was fine.

What Nelson didn't realize was that even though the boy was physically okay, the boy's mental condition had gone down the shitter, still, Nelson couldn't be blamed as he had low intelligence in that regard and wasn't able to understand emotions to a great extent.

For Noah though, he was the incarnation of the saying, sometimes intelligence is a curse. As a kid who had just witnessed his father get stabbed by a shard of earth, he was scared. All types of red flags went off in his head as he started imagining how his father could have just died because of his mistake.

*****

Name: Noah

Race: Human

Class: Non

Strength: 6

Agility: 7

Endurance: 4

Vitality: 5

Intelligence: 8

Charisma: 8

'He could have died there, he was almost going to die trying to protect me, I couldn't even help in a little bit, I hate being so weak, I hate myself.'

Noah's brain was going off all sorts of thoughts and anger towards himself for his inability to help his father.

He felt as if he was a burden to his father and only led him to get hurt. Little did he know about the Mana flow disruption that his father had felt. Honestly, he couldn't really be blamed as he was a nonclass holder and only had good stats because of the repeated training routine that his father got him to do when he was younger.

As a nonclass holder, he wasn't able to detect the mana presence and the change in its flow, this was a difference caused by the difference in class, in any case, Noah would be required to have at least his first class before he starts to feel the mana around him.

'I- I am never going to let this happen again.'

Unbeknownst to Nelson, a change had taken place in Noah, the kid that hated going outside and working on himself had started feeling the need to get stronger.