The outskirts of Willowbrook were always crawling with dangerous beasts.

  Most of them were wolves, though now and then you also got black bears, griffins, killer bees, or, on rare occasions, something like... the Boar King.

  That was Ethan's name for the strange creature lying in front of him.

  It was not listed anywhere in A Beginner's Guide to 100 Dark Creatures. It had a pair of wicked tusks, reddish-brown hide, and most of its body was covered in a black biological shell studded with backward-facing spikes. It was far larger than any wild boar Ethan knew, and when he first saw it, the thing had held itself like a king.

  In reality, though, it was a complete fraud.

  One Ice Arrow had been enough to send it flopping onto the ground. Its stubby legs kicked twice, then it went still.

  Still, the Boar King had one hidden trait.

  It was worth a ridiculous amount of experience.

  [Ice Arrow, Beginner. Proficiency, 1/75.]

  Looking at the skill panel, Ethan fell into deep thought.

  His Ice Arrow had jumped up an entire proficiency tier in one shot. In the two years he had spent training around Willowbrook, this was the first time he had run into a Boar King. Which left him with a deeply uncomfortable question.

  Had his whole training strategy been wrong from the start?

  The Boar King came with four major weaknesses, huge body, easy target, paper-thin defense, and absurdly high experience yield. It was basically a perfect XP pinata.

  If he had started hunting one Boar King a day two years ago, he might have finished every spell in Fireball and Ice Arrow Fundamentals by now.

  That said, Ethan still crouched down and carefully checked the wound.

  Cause of death, a hole punched straight through the body.

  The Ice Arrow had pierced the black shell on its chest, gone straight through the Boar King, then punched matching holes through several trees behind it before finally vanishing into the darkness.

  This was not quite how Ethan had imagined Ice Arrow working.

  At last, he understood why Fireball and Ice Arrow Fundamentals said ice magic was especially useful for resolving disputes between people.

  An elemental caster who knew Ice Arrow was basically carrying around a high-powered sniper rifle. The penetrating power of that single shot was better than any firearm Ethan knew from this era.

  And since Ice Arrow was a basic spell with extremely low mana cost, that meant one more thing.

  It was practically a high-powered sniper rifle with unlimited ammo.

  If you did not like someone, you just sniped them.

  Ethan guessed that was probably how ice casters lived.

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  He, however, was a man who believed in getting along with people.

  He came back with enough wood for a fire and a cooking pot, then returned to the Boar King's corpse.

  Not only was Ethan kind, he was also frugal. He had no intention of wasting nature's generous gifts. Ivy had dragged him through a full day of testing Chloe, and he still had not even had a piece of bread. Perhaps the Boar King had sensed his hunger and lowered itself to appear before him.

  What a generous king.

  Too noble to let the people go hungry.

  When Chloe heard his footsteps, she stiffened at once and stopped tearing at the carcass.

  After locking eyes with Ethan for a few seconds, she gave herself a vigorous shake, flicking blood and bits of meat off her face. Then she walked gracefully over to the pot and settled down beside it like a patient, elegant lady taking her seat.

  Ethan's feelings were complicated.

  Chloe had changed.

  Not only had she developed ladylike manners, she was no longer the little girl who could be satisfied with a handful of crumbs. In the short time it had taken him to gather firewood, one of the Boar King's legs had already vanished, and Chloe still did not look remotely full.

  A flame flared to life in his palm and lit the stacked firewood.

  Then a few chunks of ice dropped into the pot.

  From what Ethan had figured out, the second proficiency tier unlocked elemental conversion. Ice created from magic could serve as drinking water in the wild. As his Ice Arrow proficiency rose, he was slowly turning into a wilderness survival expert who practically ran on free energy.

  "Chloe, help me cut some meat."

  Chloe nodded and even gave him a graceful little bow.

  Then she drove a claw into the Boar King's belly. With one easy pull, she tore off a perfect slab of pork belly. What happened next left Ethan staring in disbelief.

  Chloe had somehow taught herself how to trim the meat.

  Before dropping the pork into the pot, she gave the surface one light swipe with the tip of her claw and neatly stripped away the inedible parts. She did not even wait for Ethan to tell her what to do before tossing the meat into the water.

  Ethan stared at the slab floating in the pot for a long moment.

  Believe it or not, this was a wolf-chicken that knew how to cook.

  The werewolf curse was supposed to make humans lose their minds over time. But Chloe was doing the exact opposite.

  She was getting smarter.

  Under the clear moonlight, man and chicken sat beside the pot, waiting for the water to come to a boil.

  For the first time in a while, Ethan felt genuinely at peace. All the danger in this world, all the trouble weighing on his mind, seemed to drift away for a little while.

  It was strange, really.

  Every time he spent time with animals, good luck seemed to find him.

  Chloe seemed to read his thoughts.

  She lifted her neck and gave him a curious look, then let out a soft clucking sound. Somehow, Ethan managed to detect a distinctly nosy kind of curiosity in a chicken's eyes.

  "Yeah. I used to have a cat."

  Ever since coming to this world, Ethan had buried a lot of secrets inside himself.

  Those secrets could get him killed. But keeping them bottled up forever created its own kind of pressure. Back when he had first arrived here, the only times he could really relax were the moments he spent with the animals in town.

  "She was a white cat with red eyes. Her name was Lucky... Why Lucky? Because she had a gift for digging things up. She was always bringing home little treasures. She was a pretty aloof cat, though. Every time I called her name, she'd look at me like she was judging my entire existence."

  The things Lucky dug up had helped him survive his hardest days.

  Ethan had always felt that Lucky could understand everything he said.

  "Cluck cluck?"

  "Hm? Where did Lucky go? One morning, she dug up a parchment book called Fireball and Ice Arrow Fundamentals, then vanished. After that, I never saw her anywhere in town again. I figured there was probably something she had to do. She was smart. No matter where she ended up, she'd know how to survive."

  "Cluck."

  "I know."

  Ethan gently stroked the head Chloe pushed toward him.

  Steam was beginning to rise from the pot.

  He stood up and started getting dinner ready for both of them. Seasonings were scarce in this world, only the basics like salt and sugar. He added the seasoning along with shallots and carrots, then used a spoon to skim the foam from the surface.

  A sharp cry swept overhead.

  Chloe looked up nervously at the night sky.

  Some instinctive fear of predators still lingered in her memory.

  "Don't worry."

  Ethan saw it too, a falcon racing across the moonlit sky.

  It did not stop even once as it flew toward town, vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.

  "That's a courier from one of the big cities."