"Jairo is in's my hands. His fine, and I'm trying to do as much as I can right now, not whatever you'll have me do. It will have to wait."
Renly looked deep into his daughters eyes and saw the determined look in them. She was dead set on doing this for as long as possible.
With a nod, he finally relented.
"Fine fine, I'll agree to let you off the hook for now. Take the boy away."
Then he looked to Jairo. "But for you…I feel there is something you should know."
Jairo could feel his heart rate accelerating. "What is it?" He said in a worried tone.
"Their are young boys who've trained their whole lives to fight and even they can die within the week."
Seeing Jairos unchanging expression, he continued. "Understand this. "Whether or not you live or die depends on how how strong you are, but seeing that you're very much lacking in that category I'll move from that. For someone like you, you must scrounge through the dirt, do what you must to live another day."
Jairo understood what he meant to some degree. To live against those who are better than you, you must stop at nothing.
Ariel however was done with the long winded conversation.
"Of course, now father would you let us be on our way? Were soon to be late to make the boy strong enough."
"It was nice meeting you." Jairo said before quickly turning around. Ariel turned to him. "Did you pack food?"
Jairo looked to her. "Yes I did."
His pouch was full of dried meats prepared for the journey they were about to go on.
Ariel takes his hand as she leads him forward. "We have a far away destination to get to. I hope you're prepared."
"I always am. What have you thrown at me that I haven't done well?" Ariel began rubbing her chin area as she began to recall literally every single one.
Fortunately, Jairo had thought of a perfect plan.
Within seconds, he had ran off without her, already making distance.
As she watched him do this, all she could do was sigh. He truly was an idiot.
She then took off as well, faster than he ever could.
This journey had taken them across a good portion of the areas around their village. They had to avoid spider like creatures that lived among the trees, giant bulls, and plenty of other creatures that seemed like they could be from earth, but altered to a strange degree.
None of them looked even remotely the same and most of them were much bigger.
Two hours into the walk, Jairo was pulling into a piece of dried meat. Walking with Ariel was a part of his day that he could never get tired of.
Even creatures that he absolutely feared couldn't get in the way of that. It was unfortunate that he couldn't let his guard down for event a second or something might pop up and kill him.
He was to her right, holding her hand. He was trying to be more bold in his approaches. Surprisingly, she let him. For the first few hours after he said he wanted to kiss her yesterday,
She simply kept launching objects at him no matter what he said.
It seems things have gone on in her head for long enough, and she knows he likes her as well.
Though, just to be safe, he'd ask about relationship status after they were in a safe area. Every ruffle of leaves or crunch of a stick underfoot was setting his senses off.
All the while, he asked her: "why is it only you here today."
She turned to him. a calm expression.
"Well, it is as Harken said. nobles are highborn and thus their family probable has them attending to things they deem important.
My father was about to have me attend one of his meeting so that I might learn from his tactics, however I simply cannot. I have to help you survive as much as possible."
He hadn't even realized it, but he had begun to miss them already. Right now, having an entire group training him was more visible proof that he had people in his corner, and he wanted them there no matter how annoying they were.
His thoughts were cut by Ariel. "We're almost there. Right now.
After struggling with cardio, he caught his breath, looking towards the destination. It was unlike the rest of the forest area. It was very Rocky terrain.
Over 100 feet of pure rocky area, some piled higher than others, forming small hills. All of it sitting under a warm sun. The forest area was completely cut off from this area by a few feet of rock.
looking towards the largest one, he looked at her with a defeated expression.
"Oh don't worry, we're doing the smallest for now. I know you're lazy." His offended expression was obvious. He was half dead. And she described the hill as though being small made it easy, yet the hill was still very rocky and rigid.
Getting to the base of the hill, Jairo began cracking his knuckles as he walked up the path with Ariel.
And while that had happened, He began to ponder. A lot of his memories had begun funneling back. From both lives.
The world he was in, It was in a game he played called, Embris: battle of the fallen.
In it, around a fifth a humanity were turned into beastmen as a curse by a powerful demon. Most had no form of consciousness, mindless creatures that only seemed to wish to group up and destroy humanity.
All except for werewolves. Some humans were instantly turned into werewolves, and had the ability to change at random every night.
Some could learn to control it. Humanity managed to purge the monsters out of their lands and into the forest of monsters, But their specialized monster hunters and inquisitors patrol all streets. They investigate monsters hiding in all forms of human society.
The player character spawns in as a werewolf, who have elevated surprisingly. Still having consciousness, they were able to time when they would turn, some became wealthy merchants, others became nobles and feudal lords after decades. They were becoming more powerful.
You would have to build you're strength in secret until you could elevate, or destroy whatever was in you're path. Though the second option may get you in trouble with witch hunters a tad too early.
And even if you were strong, you now had to go up against the faith militant and the holy knights.
You were never truly safe.
However, the place he was in looked like the forest of monsters that was restricted in the games. it was said that many monsters were in a constant battle for dominance and survival. And that if they ever all united, humans would go extinct, so they never interacted with it and killed anyone or anything that left the forest.
A lot of things were still a mystery, as the lore was never fully revealed by the developers.
And for now that was all he knew. It was time to climb the base of this hill.