Chapter 9: The First Hunt

Chapter 9: Chapter 9: The First Hunt

After dinner, Eric returned to his small attic room, latching the wooden door shut behind him. He kicked off his boots and sat cross-legged in a meditative posture on his worn straw mattress.

Closing his eyes, he recalled the rhythmic breathing loop and meridian pathways detailed in the *Low-tier Mortal Grade Cultivation Manual*.

One of the greatest biological advantages of awakening a mana heart was how dramatically cultivation reduced the physical demand for sleep. Before awakening, an ordinary human required eight to nine hours of rest to recover from a grueling day of manual labor. But for an awakened tamer, five hours of concentrated mana circulation followed by just two hours of light slumber provided the same physical and cognitive rejuvenation as nine full hours of deep rest.

Eric slowed his pulse, drawing the faint, ambient mana drifting through the room through his pores.

Because this was his very first time cycling energy, it took nearly two hours of slow, deliberate focus just to clear the dormant meridian channels that had remained sealed since birth. But guided by his [Rank-C: Skill Comprehension], the stubborn blockages gave way smoothly, weaving a continuous, flowing circuit straight into his Mana Heart.

Throughout the night, a warm, rhythmic hum of mana circulated through his veins.

When dawn broke, casting pale gray light across the wooden floorboards, Eric opened his eyes. His mind felt razor-sharp, his senses heightened, and his body completely revitalized.

With a thought, he called up his status panel.

│ STATUS PANEL

│

│ Name: Eric

│ Race: Human

│ Cultivation Stage: Mortal

│ Level: 0 (6%)

│ Talent: Appraisal (Rank E), Skill Comprehension (Rank C)

│ Skills: None

│ Contracted Beast: 1/1

A full night of foundational cultivation had yielded a 6% progression toward Level 1 of the Mortal Rank.

*Six percent in a single night,* Eric calculated, rolling his shoulders until his joints popped. *Not lightning-fast, but far from sluggish.*

While his native Appraisal offered some cultivation speed, his C-Rank Skill Comprehension allowed him to channel energy with near-zero leakage, effectively boosting his absorption efficiency to match someone born with a natural B-Rank Talent.

*At this rate, consistent night cycles will take me to Level 1 in roughly two and a half weeks. But I don’t have that luxury. The syndicate’s thirty-day timer is already ticking. I need raw combat experience, beast cores, and cold, hard cash.*

Eric swung his legs off the bed, washed his face with freezing tap water from the sink, and headed downstairs for a quick breakfast of warm porridge with Emily and the kids.

Today’s objective was clear: he needed to dive into a Rank-1 Dungeon.

For newly awakened tamers, dungeon diving was the fastest, most lucrative method to accumulate wealth. Dungeons were localized dimensional tears that had first begun fracturing across the planet five hundred years ago. Catastrophic tides of demonic beasts had poured out from these rifts, wiping out ancient empires and conquering immense swathes of territory.

Today, only the Seven Great Continents remained under fortified human control. The uncharted wildlands and oceanic abysses claimed by demonic beasts equaled, if not surpassed the landmass of all seven continents combined.

Over five centuries of bloody adaptation, humanity turned the crisis into an industry. Tamers harvested beast hides for protective gear, bones and fangs for weaponry, venom and organs for alchemy, and most importantly, the Mana Stones embedded inside beast cores to fuel modern arcane technology.

"I’m heading out!" Eric called, placing his empty wooden bowl in the sink.

"Be careful, Eric! Don’t push yourself into danger!" Emily shouted back from the kitchen, her voice tight with lingering concern

With Coal resting quietly inside his spiritual space to avoid drawing unwanted attention on the crowded city streets, Eric made a beeline for the commercial sector flanking the western gates.

Before heading into the wild, he needed proper steel in his hands.

He stepped into a bustling smithy near the edge of the market square, where the heavy scent of burning coal and hot iron hung thick in the air.

*CLANG. CLANG.*

A burly blacksmith with soot-stained leather overalls looked up from his glowing anvil, wiping sweat from his brow with a rough forearm. "Welcome. What are you looking for?"

"Good morning, sir," Eric replied, walking up to the display counter. "I’m looking for a beginner-friendly weapon set."

The smith eyed Eric’s patched clothes and the freshly issued bronze tamer crest pinned to his lapel, letting out a low chuckle beneath his thick beard. "Ah, fresh recruit from yesterday’s awakening. Heading out to hunt on day one? You’ve got the nerve, kid."

"Just trying to earn my keep," Eric offered a faint, polite smile.

"If you’re going in green, I recommend a shortsword and a sturdy round buckler," the smith said, tapping a rack of polished steel gear. "Balanced offense and defense. Rookies who buy oversized greatswords and ignore defense are always the first ones dragged back through the gates in body bags."

"I’ll take your advice. Can you show me your most affordable options?"

After ten minutes of hard, persistent bargaining, Eric handed over a stack of worn bills totaling exactly one thousand credits, every single copper and silver coin he had scraped together from odd repair jobs over the past six months.

In return, he received a standard Common-rank Iron Shortsword and a reinforced Common-rank Wooden-Core Round Shield with steel binding.

His pockets were now completely empty. There wasn’t a single credit left to buy even a cheap leather cuirass or a standard healing potion.

*No armor. No backup salves,* Eric thought, adjusting the leather straps of the buckler around his left forearm and securing the sheathed shortsword to his belt. *Positioning, timing, and Coal’s eyes in the sky are all I have.*

He reached out to the spiritual tether in his chest, feeling Coal’s steady Level 3 Mortal Rank heartbeat thrumming in resonance with his own. The bird’s calm, predatory readiness flowed through the link, bolstering his nerves.

*As long as we stick to low-level outskirts and don’t get ambushed by Level 5 beasts, we can take our first bounty.*

Eric turned on his heel, stepping out of the smithy and setting his sights on the massive rift gate looming over the city’s western perimeter.