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

Chapter 33: Chapter 33 — Rumors from the Ravine

The tavern was busier than usual that evening, a handful of parties back from longer expeditions all converging on Greyhaven within the same few days, and Arlen found himself, once again, in his favorite position at the guild hall — quiet corner table, hot meal in front of him, listening more than talking.

"Migration’s off," said a weathered adventurer at the next table over, a Rank D huntress Arlen recognized vaguely from around the guild but had never properly spoken to. "Deer herds we usually track near Hollow Creek this time of year, they’ve moved a full day’s walk further south. Something’s pushing them."

"Wolves, probably," her companion suggested.

"Wolves don’t push herds that far, that fast. Not without leaving carcasses behind, and we didn’t find any." She shook her head, frowning into her drink. "Something’s got them spooked bad enough to abandon good grazing land. Haven’t seen that happen in the two years I’ve worked this territory."

Arlen listened without turning his head, the old habit still comfortable after all these months, filing the detail away alongside the rest of the evening’s scattered conversation.

He’d noticed, over the past week or so since returning from Eldrin’s ruin site, a low current of similar talk running through the guild hall — nothing alarming on its own, nothing that had risen yet to the level of an official posting or guild concern, just the accumulating weight of small, unconnected oddities that veteran adventurers seemed to be picking up on faster than anyone else.

"Outpost near Ironpeak reported a Rank 3 bear wandering territory it’s never claimed before," Cobb mentioned at their own table, passing along secondhand gossip he’d picked up from a delivery quest earlier that week. "Attacked a woodcutting crew, apparently, which bears that size don’t usually bother doing unless they’re starving or provoked."

"Was it starving?" Sil asked.

"Nobody’s said. Just that it wasn’t behaving normally."

Arlen turned the pattern over quietly as he ate, the same careful, methodical attention he gave most information now. Displaced herds. An aggressive bear outside its usual range. He thought, too, of Eldrin’s carving — the professor’s genuine unease, the admission that he didn’t recognize the symbol, that instinct alone told him something about the site sat wrong in a way he couldn’t yet explain.

He didn’t think the two things were necessarily connected. He had no evidence for that beyond a vague, uneasy feeling, the kind of pattern-seeking that could just as easily be coincidence as genuine signal. But he’d learned, these past months, to at least notice when his instincts flagged something worth watching, even without understanding why yet.

"You’ve got that look again," Reya said, dropping into the seat across from him with the easy familiarity of someone who no longer needed an invitation. "The thinking one."

"Just listening to the tavern talk tonight. Seems like there’s a lot of it lately."

"There is." Something in Reya’s usually confident expression sobered slightly. "Guild’s noticed too, for what it’s worth. Nothing official yet — no posting, no formal warning — but Lyra’s had extra scouts out checking the middle forest boundary the past week. Word is she’s not satisfied with what they’re finding."

"What are they finding?"

"Not much, which is apparently the problem. Whatever’s pushing wildlife around, it’s not leaving obvious signs. No unusual tracks, no clear predator responsible, nothing the scouts can point to and say ’there, that’s the cause.’" Reya shrugged, though the gesture didn’t quite mask her own unease. "Could be nothing. Forests shift, sometimes, for reasons that don’t need a dramatic explanation. Weather patterns, disease among prey animals, any number of ordinary things."

"Could be," Arlen agreed, though he found himself thinking, again, of Eldrin’s carving, and the professor’s admission that genuine surprise happened to him perhaps twice in twenty years of this work.

He mentioned it to her, carefully, framing it as idle curiosity rather than genuine concern. "I was out at a ruin site a couple weeks back, with Professor Eldrin. Found something he didn’t recognize — some kind of carving, not decorative, more like a marker of some sort. He seemed more rattled by it than he wanted to let on."

Reya’s expression sharpened with real interest. "Eldrin doesn’t rattle easy. I’ve heard stories."

"That’s what worried me, honestly. He kept saying it was probably nothing. Didn’t seem like he fully believed that himself."

"Might be worth mentioning to Lyra, if you haven’t already. She’s the type who’d rather have too much information than too little, especially with the wildlife acting strange lately." Reya studied him a moment, something thoughtful behind her usual sharp humor. "You’ve got decent instincts for this. Noticing things, connecting pieces other people might miss."

"Comes from years of watching, before I ever had anything else to offer." Arlen said it simply, without any particular weight behind it, though the observation settled into him with quiet satisfaction regardless.

He took Reya’s suggestion the following morning, stopping by Lyra’s office before his next quest, and found the Vice Guild Master already aware of Eldrin’s report — apparently the professor had submitted his findings promptly upon their return, exactly as he’d said he would.

"Eldrin’s notes match some other reports I’ve been compiling," Lyra told him, her composed expression giving away little. "Nothing conclusive yet. But I appreciate you bringing it to my attention directly rather than assuming someone else already had."

"Is it connected? The carving, and the wildlife?"

"I don’t know yet," Lyra said, with the same honest uncertainty Eldrin had shown at the campfire weeks earlier. "Might be nothing more than coincidence — a strange ruin and a strange season, unrelated events happening to overlap. Might be something else. I’d rather gather more information than guess prematurely." She studied him a moment, something faintly appraising in her gaze. "Keep your ears open, if you’re willing. You’ve a good instinct for noticing what other people talk past without really hearing."

"I will," Arlen said, and meant it.

He left her office that morning with the same low, uneasy hum settling into his chest that had been building all week, though nothing about his ordinary routine changed in any visible way over the following days. He took his usual quests, cooked his usual careful meals, wrote his usual careful journal entries, and continued, in his quiet, private hours, testing the growing edges of his own strange, secret ability whenever a safe opportunity presented itself.

But he found himself listening a little more closely now, at the tavern each evening, to every scrap of tavern gossip about displaced herds and strange predator behavior, turning each new detail over alongside the memory of Eldrin’s unrecognized carving, waiting — the same patient, watchful waiting he’d practiced his entire life — for whatever pattern was quietly assembling itself somewhere beyond the edge of everything the guild currently understood.

Something’s shifting, he wrote in his journal one evening, the guild hall’s noise drifting up faintly through the floor below. Nobody knows what yet. Not Eldrin, not Lyra, not the scouts combing the boundary for answers that aren’t showing themselves.

I don’t know either. But I intend to be paying attention, whenever it finally does.