I had gone hunting in the Wolfswood every day for a week straight, so I had earned some pocket money from my catches.
I mainly hunted rabbits because they were harder to hit with a bow and arrow. I always shot after startling them so they would dart around; it was good training.
I was not doing it for money; if I wanted to, I could use all my smoke bomb materials and get everything done within a month, but having enormous wealth as a commoner would only work against me.
The rabbits brought me a few small copper coins (the copper coins in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, 2,940 of which could be exchanged for one gold dragon). Hunting them and throwing them away in a place known for winter starvation would have been a waste.
Besides hunting, I had also made a few small discoveries about my Quersumby (Oak Shield) spell. This spell could not be cast on unwilling creatures. I had tried casting it on some rabbits I had killed, but it had no effect.
At first, I thought it did not work because the creatures were already dead, but it did not work on living ones either. So I tried casting it on my familiars, and it worked on both of them. They were encased in a layer of barklike armor, just like my arm, and because they were smaller than me, this armor affected a large part of their bodies. The armor covered their entire torsos, but I was unwilling to use them as test subjects.
After that, I thought the spell only worked on me and my familiars, but then I ordered them not to accept my mana. When I cast the spell, it had no effect this time either. Then I understood that the target creature needed to accept the buff for it to work.
Now that I knew, I took control of a rabbit; that way, it would accept my buff, and it did.
After I cast the spell, armor encased the rabbit's torso and head. I raised my sword and brought it down with all my strength. What followed was not pretty. The armor worked, but I could not say the same for the rabbit's legs. Its legs were crushed, but its head and torso were still safe. There was a large dent in the armor; I thought the sword had cut halfway through it, but the rabbit was still alive.
I put it out of its misery and discovered something new: when the creature died, the armor disappeared. I cut it open and examined its spine and internal organs; none looked damaged. From this, I concluded that it could also withstand blunt force. But it had not protected the legs because they were not supported by the spell. I would have to be careful when taking blows so I would not be crushed.
Another thing I discovered was... actually, discovered was not the right word. I saw a beast that did not exist on Earth.
It was called an icicle snake. It was a snake native to the North, and although it was a snake, it did not hibernate in winter. It remained active in winter too. This snake even changed color with the seasons. In summer, like now, it was light and dark brown, resembling bark, so when it was in a tree, it looked like a branch. In winter, it was white because there was snow everywhere.
It was white most of the time because it was almost always winter in the North. It was called an icicle because of how it hunted. It was a venomous snake, so it was an ambush predator.
It would climb a tree and hang down from a branch. When it was on a snow-covered branch, it looked like an icicle. It would wait for prey to pass beneath the tree, then drop down and bite it. Because of the venom, the prey would die in about a minute.
I had almost grabbed one while climbing a tree to get a better vantage point; if Bo had not warned me, I would have grabbed it and been bitten, but thanks to his warning, I saw it and cast Quersumby (Oak Shield) before it could bite me.
If I had been bitten, I would most likely have died because there was no antidote. So I decided to bond with this one. Having a venomous animal as a bond might prove useful.
After it got stuck in my arm, catching it was not difficult. I put it in a small pouch and took it back to my room. I bolted the door and released the snake from the pouch.
For a second, it seemed confused, but then it saw me and began coiling. I thought it was preparing to attack; like most snakes, it moved slowly, but because it was an ambush predator, its strike was incredibly fast.
The snake writhed in place but could not move away. I approached it and grabbed it by the head and tail.
It kept trying to escape my hands, but I was strong enough to hold it without any trouble. I sat on the floor and began moving my mana into the snake, trying to start the bonding process, but it resisted like mad.
Because it was not a baby but an adult animal, establishing a connection was very difficult. It resisted the entire way. It took about an hour. In the end, though, the connection formed, and it bonded with me, but bonding with this snake nearly depleted all my mana.
I had spent about 50 mana. I had improved at bonding, but the mana and time it cost had increased too, and I knew I had made no mistakes during the bonding process. I had been patient, brave, and unyielding, but it had still required more mana and time. I thought it was because this was an adult animal rather than a baby. So bonding with a baby was easier.
Once the connection formed, I could feel it, just as I had felt Bo and Erebus before, but it was more of a primitive sensation than a conversation.
I thought this was because snakes were not as intelligent as ravens, and I had never believed that Bo and Erebus could speak before bonding with me. Even before I became a Level 2 Druid, both of them had been far smarter than other ravens.
My hypothesis was that ravens were naturally intelligent creatures. Therefore, they could communicate basic information among themselves, which was a fact, so Bo and Erebus could not distinguish between raven calls and conscious speech.
If my thinking was correct, then over time, this snake should be able to learn to speak and become more intelligent, or perhaps it was because of the mana: when I reached level 2, the mana in the training space became the same as in the Godswood. So I no longer needed to go there.
"What is your name?" The snake raised its head, approached my arm, and began coiling around it, then slowly crawled along my arm toward my neck. It basically became a necklace around my neck.
"Are you male or female?" The snake's thoughts began flowing into my mind. It was male.
"I'll call you Im." The moment I named him, I could feel the mana in the air begin swirling around him and flowing into his body.
I had not felt this when naming Bo and Erebus. My becoming a Level 2 Druid had to be one reason.
Along with that, I had become more proficient at controlling and sensing mana; that had to be why I could feel it now.
So this was how they learned to gather mana; when I named them, it was like opening a floodgate, and then they began gathering mana themselves, but from talking to the ravens, I learned that gathering mana became easier when they touched me while I replenished mine.
Just as when I bonded with the ravens, I could feel that I had gained a new buff.
Even with my eyes closed, I could see heat; was this what a snake's heat sensors felt like?
It was not like the Predator vision in the movies; it was more chaotic. I could tell that Erebus and Bo were behind me, and I could sense them as heat sources, but I could not make out their exact shapes.
They were like blobs of heat, but when I turned my head, they became clearer. It was like looking at a very low-resolution screen, and I could tell they were birds.
Something occurred to me, and I immediately connected with Bo, then began looking at my face to see whether I had pits like a snake. It was a relief; I had no pits like a snake's sensory organs, so this was entirely a magical buff.
Moving around with this sense while my eyes were open felt a little strange. It would take some time to get completely used to it, but I could not wait to hunt with it, and the upside was that turning this sense on or off did not cost me any mana.
After using up my mana, I went to bed. I slept for five hours, and when I woke, the sun had risen.
Today, I did not want to go straight to the Wolfswood; I wanted to train with the other squires during the morning training session. So I got ready, went to the castle kitchens, broke my fast, and chatted with Bris for a while.
She was a good woman; I hoped she could start a family again. It was such a shame that she was alone in this cruel world.
I chatted with her from time to time so she would not feel lonely, but after her husband died, she had closed herself off and stopped getting involved with other men.
I thought he had been dead for four years, but she still seemed to miss him terribly. Sometimes I saw her looking at a wooden whistle carved into the shape of a bird; it was the last thing he had given her before going off to war, but he had never returned. I hoped she could find happiness again.
"How are you today, Aunt Bris?"
She looked at me affectionately and said, "Oh, I'm fine, dear. How is your training going? Are the noble children treating you well?"
"Not bad. I don't care what they think or do, as long as they don't get in my way. I don't have any problems with them."
She glanced around nervously, then rose and sat beside me.
She said in a low voice, "Dear, you shouldn't say that. In the castle, the walls have ears. Lord Stark may favor you now, but as a commoner, you should never truly trust nobles. To them, we're expendable. Don't get me wrong, Lord Stark is one of the most honorable and trustworthy men I've ever met, but he's still a noble. He wouldn't mind sacrificing you for his greater cause. He may value you today, but if you force his hand, tomorrow he can cast you aside to maintain his balance."
She had a point; nobles did not consider the sacrifices of commoners, only their own interests. That was clear from their wars.
Lord Stark was no different in this regard. How many commoners died in every battle? Did anyone write songs for them? No, but if a noble died on the battlefield, or a noble family was slaughtered? There would be epic tales of them. I could understand her pain at losing her husband in the nobles' struggles.
"If you're going to work for nobles, it's best to serve House Stark, but don't give them your hundred percent."
Aunt Bris had a mind like a steel trap; if she had been born on modern-day Earth, I would have bet she could become someone important. After chatting with her for a while, I got up and went to the training yard.
When I arrived at the training yard, all I could see were hostile stares. It felt like prey had entered a hunting ground.
I was paired with a fourteen-year-old squire who was full of aggression, as though he held a grudge against me. We began sparring, but I did not intend to use my buffs because he was only 0.3 points stronger and 0.3 points faster than my base stats. If I used my buffs, he would not be a challenge.
He immediately charged me; it was a fast but controlled attack. He was not moving without a plan. When he began an overhead slash, I saw it and prepared to deflect his sword to one side, but just as his sword slid past my side, he released it and tried to tackle me.
I had not expected that move, but he was not the first person to try to throw my nine-year-old self to the ground. He wanted to turn this into a wrestling match, so I went along with it.
I released my sword too, slipped beneath his left arm, grabbed that arm, turned, and began a judo throw. I used all his forward momentum to slam him onto the ground.
I felt a little different today. If this had happened yesterday, I felt I could not have done it so quickly. It was as though I had better dynamic vision and better reflexes.
"What's your problem, man!"
"You... you're our problem, Mr. Perfect."
After him, I fought three more guys around thirteen to fifteen years old and defeated them all, but they were extremely aggressive toward me, just like the first one. To defeat the fifteen-year-old, I had to sacrifice flesh to take bone. I had to block one of his blows with my right arm to strike his chest. Tomorrow, that spot on my right arm would definitely be black and blue.