Reborn as an Adventurer: I Gain a Skill From Every Monster I Eat

Chapter 30: Chapter 30 — Something More Than Training

The quest was Arlen’s first proper Rank E posting, and it showed him, immediately, exactly how much the higher rank actually asked of him — a subjugation contract against a small colony of Rank 2 burrow-wasps that had taken up residence near a grain silo on the frontier’s eastern edge, aggressive enough in numbers to have already stung two farmhands badly enough to need the healing hall’s attention.

He took it alongside Cobb, who’d been pushing for more combat-focused work himself lately, the two of them pairing up for the first time on anything beyond casual quest-board conversation.

”Rank 2’s a step up from anything either of us has soloed,” Cobb admitted, checking his bowstring as they approached the silo’s perimeter. ”Wasps swarm. That’s the real danger — not any single sting, but getting surrounded and stung a dozen times before you can retreat.”

”Torv told me something similar, about jackals,” Arlen said. ”Don’t let yourself get flanked. Same principle, probably, just faster.”

They worked the engagement carefully, Cobb picking off wasps at range while Arlen held the ground nearer the nest entrance, and it was there, in the thick of it, that Enduring Vitality made itself plainly, undeniably visible for the first time in front of someone who actually understood what he was watching.

Arlen took two stings across his forearm partway through the fight — sharp, burning, exactly as unpleasant as Cobb had warned — and kept fighting through them without any noticeable drop in his pace or precision, when by every account he’d ever heard, a Rank 2 wasp’s venom was supposed to leave even a seasoned adventurer’s arm swollen and half-useless within minutes.

They cleared the nest within the hour, burned the remaining structure per the contract’s terms, and made their way back toward Greyhaven with the job done and Arlen’s forearm already looking considerably less swollen than it had any right to be.

”That’s not normal,” Cobb said, eyeing the fading welts as they walked. ”I got stung once, years back, different wasp entirely, and I could barely lift my arm for two days after. You took two stings and you’re already walking it off like it’s nothing.”

Arlen felt the familiar, careful tension settle into his chest — the moment he’d been quietly preparing for since the library, arriving sooner than he’d expected, from someone he genuinely liked rather than a stranger he could deflect without consequence.

”Recovers fast,” Arlen said, keeping his tone light, unremarkable. ”Always has, for whatever reason.”

”That’s more than fast recovery, Arlen. That’s Awakened, or close to it.” Cobb studied him with open, unguarded curiosity rather than suspicion. ”You never said anything about having an affinity.”

Arlen considered his answer carefully, the cover story surfacing exactly the way he’d rehearsed it in his journal weeks earlier, though speaking it aloud for the first time felt considerably stranger than writing it down had. ”I wasn’t sure, for a while. Started noticing changes a few months back — stamina, recovery, small things I couldn’t quite explain. Didn’t want to make a claim about it before I understood what it actually was.”

”And now?”

”Now I think it’s real. Aura-leaning, probably, given what it looks like in practice.” Arlen kept his voice steady, matter-of-fact, the same careful economy of words he’d use describing any ordinary fact about himself. ”Might be something else underneath it too. Still figuring out the full shape of it.”

Cobb’s eyebrows rose slightly. ”Dual-Affinity?”

”Maybe. Too early to say for certain.” Arlen offered a small, genuine-looking shrug. ”Didn’t want to go around calling myself something I wasn’t sure I’d earned yet.”

Something in Cobb’s expression shifted toward real respect, rather than the mild surprise he’d started with. ”That’s rare, if it’s true. My cousin’s Awakened — plain Aura, nothing fancy, took her almost three years of dedicated sword drills before it finally settled in. Dual-Affinity types usually get noticed a lot faster than that, once people realize what they’re looking at.” He shook his head, half-admiring. ”You really didn’t know?”

”Not for certain. Not until recently.” It wasn’t, strictly, a lie — Arlen genuinely hadn’t known, in any way he could have explained to Cobb, until considerably more recently than his childhood.

They walked the rest of the way back to Greyhaven in easy conversation, Cobb peppering him with the kind of good-natured, admiring questions Arlen had half-expected and prepared careful, vague answers for — whether he felt any pull toward becoming a proper battle-mage eventually, whether he’d need specialized training to develop the Mana side of things, whether the guild’s review board already knew.

”Haven’t told them formally,” Arlen admitted. ”Wanted to understand it myself first.”

”Probably wise. Guild likes to fast-track promising Dual-Affinity types, once they’re confirmed — better postings, sometimes sponsored training. But they’ll also want proof before they commit resources to it. You’ll need to actually demonstrate something more concrete than fast healing, eventually.”

Eventually, Arlen thought, turning the word over with the same careful, methodical attention he gave most useful information now. That buys me time. Time to figure out what ”something more concrete” might actually look like, before I need to produce it.

He reported the quest’s completion to Mina that evening, the burrow-wasp contract closed out cleanly, 14 silver earned for the two of them to split, and found himself, walking back toward the tavern afterward, turning over the strange, dual sensation of the day — genuine relief that the cover story had held under its first real test, mixed with a quieter unease at how easily Cobb had simply accepted it, no real scrutiny at all, just warm, uncomplicated respect for a friend who’d turned out to be a little more talented than expected.

That’s the danger of it, I think, he wrote in his journal that night. Not that people will suspect the truth. It’s that they won’t. They’ll simply believe the easier story, because the easier story is the one that already makes sense to them. Cobb didn’t ask a single hard question. He just accepted it and moved on to being pleased for me.

I should be relieved by that. Mostly, I am. But I think I understand, a little better tonight, how large a secret I’m actually carrying — and how much easier it is to keep hidden than I ever expected, precisely because nobody’s looking for what’s actually true.

Rank E. Two abilities. A cover story tested and holding. Cobb thinks I’m Dual-Affinity, and by tomorrow, I suspect Sil will think so too, and probably half the guild not long after that.

I wonder, sometimes, what it will take before that story stops being enough.

He closed the journal, blew out his candle, and lay in the dark a long while before sleep finally found him, the fading welts on his forearm the only visible proof, to anyone who might have looked closely enough, that something in him had already grown well past what any ordinary Awakened Novice should have managed this early in their climb.