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

Chapter 13: Chapter 13 — Outer Forest

The north trail began at a weathered wooden marker just past Greyhaven’s outer farmland, and Arlen stood at that marker for a long moment before he actually stepped past it, feeling the strange, significant weight of a threshold he’d spent eight years imagining crossing.

The forest, up close, was nothing like watching it from the wall.

From a distance, the Verdant Crown had always looked like a single solid mass, a dark green smear against the horizon. Up close, it broke apart into a thousand separate details — individual trees, their bark rough and cool under his palm when he paused to touch one; the particular quality of light filtering down through the canopy, dappled and shifting; the layered noise of it, birdsong and rustling leaves and the distant trickle of water, none of which he’d ever been able to hear from behind the safety of the city wall.

He moved carefully, the way Bram had taught him to move through unfamiliar terrain — slow enough to actually notice things, quiet enough not to announce himself to whatever might be listening.

The Silverleaf guide from the guild library had described the plant well enough that Arlen felt reasonably confident he’d recognize it: low-growing, silver-green leaves with a faint sheen, a sharp minty smell when crushed, favoring damp shaded soil near root systems or streambanks. He kept to the north trail’s edge, eyes scanning the undergrowth, and found his first patch of it within the hour — a small cluster growing in the shadow of a fallen log, exactly where the guide had suggested he look.

He knelt, crushed a leaf between his fingers, and breathed in the sharp, unmistakable scent.

Silverleaf. His own small, private triumph, confirmed.

He harvested carefully, cutting rather than pulling, the way the guide had instructed — pulling damaged the root system and reduced future yield, which mattered less to Arlen’s immediate coin purse and more to the quiet satisfaction of doing a thing properly rather than just quickly. He filled his gathering pouch with more than the required three bundles, a habit born of years spent maximizing every trip rather than trusting there’d be a next one.

He was crouched over a second patch, humming under his breath without quite realizing it, when he heard the sound.

It was small — a wet, faint noise, more texture than volume, coming from somewhere in the undergrowth a short distance off the trail. Arlen went very still, the way he’d trained himself to go still over years of careful watching, and turned his head slowly toward the source.

Through a gap in the ferns, he saw it: a slime, translucent and faintly blue, oozing its way across a fallen branch with a slow, gelatinous patience. It was, by every account he’d read in the guild library, among the least dangerous creatures in the entire forest — sluggish, weak, barely capable of more than a mild sting if provoked.

His hand drifted toward the hilt of his sword anyway, an old instinct, the thrill of his first monster rising in his chest despite every warning Mina and Bram had ever given him about overreaching.

He made himself stop and think instead.

What do I actually gain from fighting it? No bounty had been posted for slimes on the outer trail — they weren’t considered pests worth the guild’s attention. Its materials, if it even had any worth harvesting, were common enough that the effort wouldn’t cover the risk of a sting turning septic if he mishandled it with an untested blade. He had nothing to prove by engaging it, and everything to lose if a "harmless" first encounter went wrong through simple inexperience.

The world rewards those who prepare, Bram’s voice reminded him, quiet and steady in the back of his mind. Half the adventurers who died, died because they didn’t ask a question they could’ve asked.

Arlen watched the slime a moment longer, filing away its coloring, its movement, its slow oozing gait — details for his journal later — and then, quietly, he backed away and returned his attention to the Silverleaf patch instead.

It wasn’t the heroic first encounter some younger version of himself might have imagined. But it was, he thought, exactly the kind of decision Bram had spent years trying to teach him to make.

He finished gathering well before midday, his pouch heavy with more Silverleaf than the quest required, and allowed himself, for the first time since entering the forest, to simply sit for a while against the base of a wide old tree and eat the small meal he’d packed — hard bread, a bit of dried meat, purchased for two copper total from a stall near the guild’s inn that morning.

The forest around him settled into its own unhurried rhythm while he ate, birds calling overhead, the faint rustle of small unseen creatures moving through the undergrowth, sunlight shifting slowly across the forest floor as the day wore on. He found himself, unexpectedly, close to tears — not from sadness, but from the sheer, overwhelming fact of finally being here, inside the thing he’d spent eight years watching from a wall.

He opened his journal for the first time as a working adventurer and wrote, in his still-careful, still-improving hand:

First quest. Silverleaf gathering, north trail. Found the plant within the hour — smell matches the guide exactly. Saw a slime near the second patch. Chose not to engage. No bounty on it, no need to risk an untested blade on something that gains me nothing. Bram would approve, I think.

The forest is louder than it looks from the wall. Better, too.

He closed the journal, tucked it carefully back into his pack, and made his way back toward Greyhaven with the afternoon sun still comfortably high overhead, the Silverleaf pouch heavy and fragrant at his hip.

The return quest processing took only a few minutes. Mina inspected the bundles with a practiced eye, nodded approvingly at their condition, and counted out eight silver coins onto the counter.

"Good quality," she said. "No bruising, no wilt. You cut instead of pulled, didn’t you?"

"The guide said it was better for future yield."

"Most rookies don’t bother reading that part." She made a small note in his file. "I’ll flag you for a slightly better gathering rate next time. Guild likes adventurers who don’t strip a patch bare in one visit."

Arlen pocketed the eight silver — minus the one silver registration tax Mina had warned him about, which came out to seven silvers once she’d deducted it — and did the quiet arithmetic in his head. Three nights at the inn had already cost him six copper. Food for the day, another two. The eight — no, seven silvers — from the quest more than covered it, with a comfortable margin left over.

It wasn’t much, measured against the vast unexplored world he still intended to see. But it was, he thought, walking back out into the busy afternoon square with his pouch a little heavier and his sword still unused at his hip, an honest beginning.

He’d gone into the forest a boy who’d only ever watched adventurers from a distance.

He came out, however modestly, as one of them.