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

Chapter 19: Chapter 19 — Ask Questions First

The jackal was faster than Arlen expected, closing the distance in a handful of bounding strides, and only the fact that he’d braced himself against the outcrop rather than standing loose kept him from stumbling backward when he swung.

His sword caught the creature — Jackal 1, he’d start calling it later, once he had the presence of mind to keep count — across the shoulder rather than the clean strike he’d been aiming for. A glancing blow, more luck than skill, but enough to send it snarling sideways instead of following through on its lunge. It didn’t retreat. It circled instead, exactly as the guild notes had warned, testing the edges of his position while a second jackal came in low from his right.

Arlen turned to meet it, keeping the stone solid against his back, and found himself doing something he hadn’t consciously planned — not attacking, but simply making himself as difficult a target as possible, sword held low and ready rather than committed to any single swing that might leave him overextended.

"Keep moving, don’t overcommit," he muttered, half to himself, half to the memory of Torv’s voice in the Smith’s District. Jackal 2 snapped at his leg and he stepped back into the rock rather than away from it, letting the stone take the space it would have needed to fully close the distance.

Somewhere in the tree line, a low growl rose and fell without ever resolving into a visible attacker — whichever jackal it belonged to clearly preferred to hang back and see how the engagement went rather than commit. Arlen didn’t have the luxury of wondering about it for long. A third jackal, larger than the other two, emerged from the tree line at a dead run, and for one lurching moment Arlen understood, with total clarity, exactly how badly this could still go wrong.

He didn’t panic. That surprised him more than anything else in the entire encounter — some old, steady part of himself, built from eight years of careful watching and careful planning, simply took over and did the only sensible thing available: he dropped low, closer to the ground than he’d have thought to go on instinct, making himself a smaller target beneath Jackal 3’s incoming leap.

It sailed past him, claws raking uselessly through empty air where his shoulders had been a half-second before, and landed awkwardly several feet beyond the outcrop. Arlen didn’t waste the opening celebrating it. He turned and drove his sword into Jackal 1 instead — already favoring its injured shoulder, slower now than it had been at the start of the fight — and felt the blade connect properly this time, the creature going down with a sharp, final yelp that cut off almost as soon as it started.

One down. Two jackals still actively engaged, a fourth still lurking unseen somewhere in the trees, and Arlen’s arms already burning with an adrenaline-fueled strain he hadn’t anticipated, his breath coming ragged and fast in a way that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion and everything to do with the sheer, overwhelming reality of the fight.

Jackal 2, seeing its packmate fall, hesitated — just for a moment, just long enough for Arlen to reset his footing against the rock and bring his sword back up. That hesitation, he’d learn later from the guild notes he reread obsessively afterward, was fairly typical of lower-rank pack predators once their numbers thinned; without an alpha pressing the attack, the remaining animals grew cautious rather than desperate.

Jackal 3 recovered from its missed leap and circled back warily, no longer committing to a direct charge, clearly reassessing an opponent that had turned out to be considerably less helpless than it had first appeared. Arlen held his position, sword raised, breathing hard, and made himself wait rather than press an advantage he wasn’t confident he actually had.

"Come on, then," he said, low, mostly to keep his own voice from shaking. "Or don’t. Either’s fine by me."

The standoff held for what felt, to Arlen, like an eternity, though it was likely no more than a minute or two. Jackal 2 broke first, backing away toward the tree line with its ears flat and its tail low, some ancient instinct calculating that this particular meal had gotten too expensive. Jackal 3 followed a moment later, pausing once at the edge of the clearing to look back — not at Arlen exactly, but at the fallen packmate behind him — before vanishing into the undergrowth.

The fourth jackal, the one that had growled from the trees but never shown itself, never appeared at all.

Arlen stood there for a long moment after they’d gone, sword still raised, waiting to see if it had been a genuine retreat or merely a tactical repositioning. When several minutes passed with no further sign of movement from the tree line, he finally allowed himself to lower the blade, and immediately discovered that his hands were shaking badly enough that he nearly dropped it.

He sat down hard against the rock, the adrenaline draining out of him all at once, leaving behind a kind of trembling, hollowed-out exhaustion he hadn’t experienced since the fever that had nearly killed him at thirteen.

I’m alive, he thought, with a clarity that felt almost absurd given how obvious the fact should have been. That actually could have gone badly, and it didn’t, and I’m alive.

He sat there long enough to properly steady himself before making his way back to Miller’s Bend, the fallen jackal’s pelt rolled and carried carefully at his side.

Corwin met him at the fence line with open relief, listening carefully as Arlen explained what had happened — one jackal killed, two driven off, a fourth that never engaged at all and might still be lurking nearby.

"You’ll want the fence reinforced near that northern stand of trees regardless," Arlen said. "Even if the pack doesn’t come back, something else might use the same gap eventually."

Corwin nodded, made a note of it, and pressed his hand gratefully rather than offering coin. "Guild handles the reward, far as I understand. I’ll send word confirming the job’s done, soon as I’m back in town next."

"Appreciated," Arlen said, and meant it — though he suspected, given how relieved the farmer looked, that word would reach the guild well before Arlen made it back himself.

He walked back toward Greyhaven that evening with the pelt slung across his shoulder and his whole body aching in ways he hadn’t anticipated — not from any wound, since the jackals had never quite managed to land a solid hit on him, but from the sheer, sustained tension of the encounter, muscles clenched tight for the better part of an hour that had felt, at the time, considerably longer.

He reported to the guild hall the next morning, where Mina cross-checked his account against the confirmation Corwin had indeed already sent ahead, and counted out the full 9 silver reward without complication.

"One kill, two driven off, one unengaged," she said, making a note in his file. "Solid outcome for a first real combat quest. Most rookies come back having either overcommitted or run entirely." She glanced up at him. "Which were you closer to?"

"Neither, I hope," Arlen said. "Mostly I just tried not to die."

"That’s usually the correct priority." She almost smiled. "Pelt worth anything?"

"Selling it to Brakka after this."

He did, a short while later — 4 silver, a fair price by the dwarf’s own assessment — and logged the entire encounter in his journal that night with more care and honesty than he’d given any entry before it.

First real fight. Wasn’t heroic. Wasn’t clean. I got lucky more than once — the dodge on the third jackal wasn’t skill, it was instinct, and instinct isn’t something I can count on every time.

Bram was right. Asking questions first — the den location, the tracks, the rock at my back — that’s what actually kept me alive today. Not the sword. The preparation.

I understand now, properly, what Iron Vanguard’s calm actually costs to earn. I’m a long way from it. But today I understand it better than I did yesterday.

He closed the journal, blew out his candle, and slept more deeply than he had in weeks — the particular, hard-won rest of someone who has looked directly at how badly a thing could have gone, and come out the other side of it still standing.