บท 22: Finally Met a Person

This time, James was lucky. Because, after walking aimlessly for 1.5 km, he finally heard the notifications he had always been waiting for.

[Ding! Detected a Peak Rank 3 Martial Warrior 100 meters northeast ahead.]

[Ding! Detected a Wind Wolf Beast, High-level Silver Rank Beast 95 meters northeast ahead]

'I finally found someone. So, there should be a city or town nearby, right?' James sighed, feeling extremely relieved.

James had once thought of the worst-case scenario: what if he were surrounded by high-level beasts with no place like a town or city nearby that he could reach unless he broke through their territory? Then he would really be fucked up.

Because his current system point could only upgrade him to Peak Rank 3, and he needed to do business to get wealthy enough to continue upgrading his rank.

Otherwise, he would have to kill a million beasts of the same level, which would take an extremely long time just to upgrade a small realm, let alone reach a high level that would allow him to leave this region.

James couldn't help but feel impatient to get there and directly ask a lot of questions to this man. But it seemed like the man was fighting with the beast, judging from the changing positions reported by the system.

James quickly ran towards the location, thinking of lending a hand for free if the man was in trouble.

Of course, if this man didn't require any assistance, he wouldn't intervene in the fight since it was impolite and could lead to a misunderstanding that James was trying to steal the kill.

When James arrived, he stayed at a distance to assess the situation first. What he saw was a middle-aged man fighting a Wind Wolf Beast.

The man appeared to be in his late 30s, dressed in a simple black and dark green robe with short black hair and a beard, and his physique was well-built, as if he trained every day. 

However, when James observed the fight for a bit, he was shocked. The middle-aged man was in a disadvantageous position, despite the fact that his realm was higher than that of the Wind Wolf.

Seeing this, James immediately asked Little Fluffy why the beast had the upper hand despite its rank being lower.

Little Fluffy then explained to James the reason for it.

Apparently, there are three reasons:

First, beasts were naturally stronger than a martial artist of the same level, so even if his realm was higher, the difference was not significant. That's why many martial artists rarely hunt alone and instead hunt in groups.

Second, this beast was a wind-type beast, which is quite rare and has a significant advantage in terms of speed.

Third, this middle-aged man was using a low-level martial skill, and his equipment was not worth mentioning. If he had a high-level martial skill and proper equipment, then the fight would be different.

"Hello, sir. I don't mean to interrupt you, but do you need help killing this wolf?" Seeing the middle-aged man in trouble, James shouted and showed himself while waving his hand and smiling.

The middle-aged man was startled since he was concentrating on the fight and couldn't afford to make a mistake while in such a disadvantageous position.

"Yes, please help me kill this beast. I will definitely repay you in the future." The man replied while still focusing on his fight with the Wind Wolf.

After hearing the reply, James immediately dashed forward to the wolf, unsheathing his sword and using his Fire Sword Skill (Flame Splitting Slash).

"whoosh!"

A crescent moon-shaped sword Qi covered in flames flew out of the sword and moved towards the Wind Wolf at a fast speed.

Because the Wind Wolf was entangled with the middle-aged man and couldn't escape, its body was split in half by the sword Qi.

[Ding! You have killed the High-level Silver Rank Beast.]

[Ding! The experience at Peak Rank 2 has increased to 80%.]

The middle-aged man was dumbfounded when he saw James unleash his sword skill. It was a high-level martial skill.

He had never met a high-level martial artist before, let alone seen someone using such a skill.

'I can't afford to offend this young man. I can't even detect his realm. He must be a real expert since he can use high-level martial skills.' The man thought.

"Thank you for helping me. Without your help, I don't know if I could have even escaped, let alone killed the beast." The man spoke and bowed to express his gratitude.

"It's okay, you don't need to be so polite with me. Furthermore, I also need your help with something." James responded and helped the man up because he felt awkward, as he had never been in this kind of situation before.

"Okay then. By the way, my name is Ye Han, and I'm from a nearby town called Hovestad Town. I'm sorry but, how should I address you, and how can I help you?"

"Oh, is there a town nearby? Can you lead the way? By the way, I am James, and I need to know everything about the outside world because I've never been to the outside world before. So, can you tell me everything that I should know?" James asked.

"Yeah, there is a town nearby here, around 4 kilometers northeast. We can go there whenever you're ready, and I can explain everything on the way there." Ye Han answered.

"Okay then, we could go right away so as to not waste anymore time." James gestured for Ye Han to lead the way.

"By the way, young master James. Don't you want to pick up the beast's corpse first before we go to the town?" Ye Han asked, puzzled by James's apparent lack of interest in his spoils of battle.

"Isn't this originally yours? You can take it if you want, I'm not interested in it anyway." James shrugged his shoulders.

"Not interested, my ass! You were collecting rank 2 corpses and cores a while ago and thinking that it's a waste to not collect them because you could maybe sell them for a little bit of money later." Little Fluffy commented at the side about James's behavior.

"Shut your stinky mouth, you little ball. I'm a man with dignity and won't bother snatching a mere rank 3 beast corpse." James said telepathically while glancing at Little Fluffy for only a sec.

"Hmmph, whatever..." Little Fluffy crossed his arms and looked away, ignoring James's gaze.

While the duo was bickering for nothing, Ye Han walked toward the corpse and put it into his space ring.

"Young master James, let's go to the town, I'll explain everything I know to you on the way." Ye Han spoke while walking northeast and unsheathing his sword to stay on guard.

Ye Han explained everything he knew about the world to James, who listened intently, digesting the new information as they walked.