Keno awoke, he still felt slightly exhausted and his muscles seemed way too relaxed for him just waking up. He could still remember small segments of the night before, the horned rabbit talking, him following it to a hollowed out tree and falling asleep in that tree. But he had more pressing matters to attend to, because when he looked up he saw something he never thought he would ever see... A spirit of nature. She was very pretty but the fire in her eyes and the warmth of the air around her showed him that she was dangerous. He sat there dumbfounded and waited for her to speak.
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Qu looked down at the boy as he sat there looking up at her, so she finally went to break the silence seeing that the boy didn't seem to want to break it himself. "Hello child, i but only have a few questions for you and if you play your cards right then you may just survive another day"
All the boy did was nod and wait with utter fear etched into his eyes.
"My first question, why are you in my forest?", the boy responded to Qu, "i was just looking for my brother, i was tracking his earth magic from a couple nights before". As soon as he said this Qu knew exactly who the kid was looking for.
"Now for another question, how far away is the nearest settlement and what species make it up?", the boy then told her "Just a day or two walk from this area, and mainly humans make it up but a few elves and dwarfs live there and maybe some types of half breeds".
"And finally, what is the highest rank person in that village,and i want to know everything about that person", the boy sat and thought for a little while before finally responding, "the highest ranked person is at the middle of 'rare' rank, his name is 'para cantorp' and he is a human, he specialises in a strange type of magic that he gives very little information on, but from the bits and pieces that the village has seen him do it has something to do with blood or life force or something"
After getting given all this useful information, she chose to be nice to him and allow him to leave with is life, but just before the boy started to walk of he stomached up the courage to ask her name. "Qu" was all she replied with, and soon afterwards the boy left her sight.
She went back into her tree and went back to her elemental human form, it was surprising just how much her head weighed when she had horns on her head. But she got little time to react as her system had finally chose to show itself.
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"Congratulations, you managed to go through a full conversation without killing someone.
But you better not go into that town and go on a rampage, i could see the bloodlust in your eyes when that poor boy told you about other species"
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And like per usual, it was annoying her.
But while Qu still had all the information fresh in her head she chose to stop the conversation before it turned into a pointless argument and asked the system just what the difference between an uncommon and a rare rank was.
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"Well different rankings usually depend on just how much energy a being can control and contain, or how pure that energy is. A creature usually uses mana, but some use special energy that they get from there race or other means that i don't quite know yet. But anyway the difference between a uncommon rank fire wizard and a rare rank fire wizard, is either the time they can cook for or how high they can crank up the heat or a mix of both. (So don't fight a higher rank, pretty obvious if you ask me)
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After learning all of this, it was definitely safe to say that taking the place by storm was off the table. So she could either stay in the forest until she is ready to go head first, or go in the village and pretend to be one of them to try and climb the social ladder.
So just as Qu was preparing to settle down for good in the forest she got the biggest box to ever appear from her system yet. And to sum it up;
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"Your an idiot, you need to go in the village, if she doesnt do as she is told then she isn't allowed any fire elemental forms of anything until the day she dies"
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So after a long hard think Qu chose to go the village and blend in with the crowd.
So Qu went through the forest and after about 6 hours travel, it had started to hit night. So Qu chose to start hunting as she would soon need to get clothing, and so she chose that she might as well as get some deer skin. So after a little while of walking around and following tracks, she finally found a deer and so she got on all fours and crawled up behind it very slowly and quietly until she was just behind it, then she transformed into her dire rat form and jumped up onto the deer and before it could react she penetrated its skull with a claw. And then staying in the same form she skinned it, although not very well but it would do. She then tied some around her waist and some around her breasts, giving her a rudimentary skirt and shirt of sorts.
She then chose to sleep for the night so that she would be ready for the day ahead of her, so she transformed into her giant worm and dug a hole into the ground for her to rest in and keep somewhat safe for the night.
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Keno finally arrived back in town and went straight to the bar, as soon as he got there he went over and cancelled the request to let someone else deal with the craziness of that forest. Once he did so he went straight home and sat on his bed, he chose to tell his family that he believed his brother had gone to a bigger and better place than this to become famous, but he didn't tell them about the deer tracks, the horned rabbit and especially not that woman, afterall if he did he would look insane. He needed time, he needed to have a proper rest and time to think, he just couldn't bear to go anywhere near that forest for the time being, so he would give it a month or two before he would even risk confronting that spirit again.