Roman had taken a while to rest, and it was already afternoon before he realised that he was starving.
He decided to visit the restaurant to fill himself up, considering the fact that he might be hunting again tonight.
Roman had barely stepped out of his space before he heard footsteps approaching from the direction of the main path.
"Roman."
He turned. Norman Kons was walking toward him with that same unhurried composure he seemed to carry everywhere, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, eyes already reading the situation before a word had been exchanged.
"Master Norman," Roman greeted.
Norman stopped in front of him and looked him over once, the way someone does when they already know the answer but want to give you the chance to explain yourself first.
"You went into the valley last night," he said. It wasn't a question.
Roman held his gaze. "I did."
Norman was quiet for a moment, then nodded slowly, like he had decided something internally.
"Where are you headed right now?"
"The restaurant," Roman said.
"Walk with me," Norman said.
They fell into step together, moving through the narrow paths of the outpost as the afternoon activity around them slowly picked up. Norman didn't rush into whatever he wanted to say, and Roman didn't push him. He had already figured out that this conversation was coming the moment Norman had called his name.
"How was it?" Norman asked after a while.
"Good," Roman said. "Better than I expected."
"Mm." Norman nodded again. "That's usually how it goes the first time. Which is exactly what makes the second time dangerous."
Roman glanced at him, his face asking for further explanation.
"The valley doesn't give you the same night twice," Norman continued, his tone unhurried but deliberate. "The first time you go out there and come back breathing, you start to believe you understand it. That you have a read on it. And that belief is the thing that gets people killed more than any monster does."
Roman's chest tightened, but he said nothing and let him continue.
"The Head barely blinked when we told him two rookies had gone missing overnight," Norman said, his voice dropping just slightly. "You want to know what his first question was? He asked what your Academic Standards were. When I told him, he was clearly more worried about one than the other." Norman paused.
"That should tell you something about how much urgency there is around here when it comes to people like you and that girl."
Roman's jaw tightened quietly, but he kept walking.
"I had two friends," Norman said after a beat. "Both of them good people. Both of them solid fighters for their level. They went out one night in their second week, convinced they had found the pattern of the valley, convinced they knew which zones were safe after dark."
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"They ran into a Dire Wolf Boss near the northern ridge. Big, fast. They thought at first glance it was an Extraordinary ranked monster, and called it in as such when they reported back." He stopped briefly to let a group of rookies pass before continuing.
"Turned out it was Ordinary. The hunting party that eventually went back to clear it confirmed it. A Level 75 Ordinary Monster. Just sitting there in the dark doing what high level Ordinary Monsters do."
He looked at Roman. "They were both gone before anyone even knew where to look."
The weight of that settled between them without needing any additional commentary.
Roman knew where this was leading.
"Ordinary doesn't mean simple," Norman said. "It never has. The rank tells you what category a monster belongs to. The level tells you whether you are going home or not. And most rookies find that out too late."
They had nearly reached the restaurant entrance by now, the smell of whatever the chef had going drifting out through the open doorway and mixing with the cool afternoon air.
Norman stopped walking and turned to face him properly.
"I'm not telling you what to do, Roman. You are not a child and this is not the academy. But I am telling you that the valley at night does not care about potential. It does not care about determination. It does not care about what you are going to become. It only cares about what you are right now. And right now you are an F rank rookie in a struggling outpost that nobody is going to drop everything to go looking for."
Roman met his eyes and held them. He took a moment to digest everything before he finally decided to respond.
"I hear you, Master Norman," Roman said. "And I mean that genuinely. Every word of it."
He paused for a moment, not to find something to say, but because what he wanted to say was already clear and he wanted to give it the right weight.
"But I also know what I am capable of. I know what I felt out there last night. And I know that staying inside these walls and playing it safe isn't going to close the gap between where I am and where I need to be."
He looked at Norman steadily.
"I'm going to be fine."
Norman studied him for a long moment, the kind of look that belongs to someone who has heard those exact words before and knows that sometimes they are right and sometimes they are the last thing a person ever says.
Then he nodded.
"Alright, Roman. I'll just wish you the best of luck," he said quietly.
He gave Roman one last look, then turned and went his way.
Roman watched him go for a moment, then turned and stepped through the restaurant entrance.
It wasn't as if Roman didn't understand him. In fact, he had just learned something valuable. Sometimes two people might not be enough to take out a Territory Boss, because if numbers alone were sufficient, Norman's friends wouldn't have died to the Dire Wolf Boss.
That stuck, and Roman intended to carry it into his next hunt.
...
He had taken quite a while to fill his stomach before leaving the restaurant, and what Roman had in mind next was to visit the blacksmith again.
He had decided to craft a weapon from the Blade Queen's Mandible Shard, and he planned to do that before entering the valley again.
"If I can craft a sword as sharp as the blade of the Blade Ant Queen, it could be really something."
He had once learned that the mandible of the Blade Ant Boss was one of the sharpest materials an Entrant could ever come across, and that the blade of the Blade Ant Queen was considerably sharper and more lethal than the best sword in the real world.
That alone kept Roman's hope up.
He was on his way to the blacksmith shop when a couple of guys suddenly approached from nowhere and surrounded him.
Roman immediately recognised that they were rookies like him, and whatever this was, it was not looking like a friendly approach at all.
He stood his ground, composed and unbothered.
Then another figure approached.
Roman caught a glimpse of him and almost laughed. It was the same guy who had approached Rena back in the restaurant on their first night.
Arnold. The second rookie with the highest Academic Standard in the outpost. He had the same standard as Rena but had been edged out by just one COS unit.
Roman was genuinely curious about why he was being surrounded.
Arnold wasted no time.
"I'm going to keep this friendly," Arnold said, his voice low and calm, a relaxed smile sitting on his face that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Stay away from her. That's all I'm asking."
"Who?" Roman asked. He didn't look confused. Just calm.
"We both know who I'm talking about," Arnold replied.
Roman looked at him for a moment without responding, and Arnold took the silence as an invitation to continue.
"I like you, man. I genuinely do. No hard feelings, nothing personal. I'm just letting you know early so there are no misunderstandings later."
He tilted his head slightly. "Next time I bring it up, it won't be a conversation."
"It will be something far harder than that."
With that, Arnold walked away, and the others followed, each of them throwing a stern look of warning at Roman as they went.
And of course Roman knew exactly who Arnold was talking about.
He was talking about the girl who had already asked to be his girlfriend!