After a dozen attempts Mark was finally able to hunt his first Shatank. He figured out, that if he activated [Stealth] and came from the forests side he was capable of coming within the distance of 5m from the bird. At this distance after he drew the bow to its maximum draw of 80 pounds, the birds didn't have enough time to start flight. With this he was also able to preserve more arrows and get more of the Shatank's carcasses.
Their bodies turned out to be meatier than he has expected. Their bones were also very interesting. They were the thickness of one millimeter. The spine had at most two millimeters in diameter. The only protection was one millimeter thickness bone plating at the ribs. And surprisingly it was very resistant. It wasn't capable of stopping his arrows, but after flying halfway through this breastplate the arrow stopped. So, Mark could see that it was exceptionally durable for its thickness. Unfortunately, after every kill, the rest of the birds always flew off and didn't come back for more than an hour. Now he knew why there weren't any more adventurers here who took the quest. But that didn't discourage Mark from further hunting, it was more reward for him, and no one disturbed him during the hunt.
Stalking them more he learned a trick to use his abilities [Double Tap] and [Precise Shot] to widen the gap between the arrows and hit two birds at once. It took some training but after about seven, eight attempts he was capable of hitting both birds 70% of the time while 100% of the time he hit at least one. He ate his dinner in the fields and when he was going back to the city, he had 11 Shatank's corpses in his bag that besides holding his already eaten rations for today was empty. It was nearing evening when he was coming to the guild with the bloodied bag, some curious people threw him a look, but no one seemed overly concerned. In the end it was a common sight around here.
In the association building there were quite a lot of people but most of them sat at the tables eating a meal and chatting about today's adventure. Coming to the empty queue he once again saw the middle-aged aunty from his first day.
"Well, hello there boy how can I be of service today."
"I took a quest this morning I wanted to collect the reward."
"Oho, very well. Give me your AT for a moment."
She took his token and slid it on the counter token. Afterward he was given his 2 silver 20 copper. After that he asked the lady if she knew where Sheila the Landowner lived. Without asking too many questions she decided to just draw him a map on a small slip of paper. The Landowners house wasn't that far, he only had to walk up to the little river crossing through Pharia, walk along it for a street or two, and there it was. It was a little bit bigger than other houses, but nothing really screamed Head Landowner about it.
He walked up to the doors and rang a little bell hanging in a little alcove by the doors. Not that much later, the doors opened to reveal Barry the Blacksmith towering over him. He looked pretty surprised to see Mark here.
"What are you doing here boy, the smithy is closed for today, if you need something come tomorrow."
"Hello, no, actually I cam to lady Sheila, she set a task for killing Shatanks, and said that if I get any corpses she would gladly buy them off of me."
Hearing that Barry looked at the bloody bag laying on the ground near the boy and seemed to understand.
"Ok, go this way and through the little wicked into the garden, I won't have you stain the floors, Sheila will come out to you in a moment" With that he closed the door and Mark could hear him walking away talking to someone inside. Listening to the blacksmith the young man waled over to the little gateway, and walked into a beautiful garden. It was filled with all kinds of different spices, vegetables, fruit trees and colorful flowers. It looked to be very well taken care for, the owner must be very invested in maintaining it. He looked around, sat down on one of a couple bigger boulders strewn around and waited. A couple minutes later the lady Landowner came out of the back door with a basket and a little coin purse.
"Young man you are back, how did it go? I am surprised that you actually managed to hunt some of those little devils."
"Yes it went pretty well, all in all I managed to get 11 of them today" He said smiling with just a corner of his mouth. There was something so vibrant, and warm about the woman before him that it just naturally brought him smile.
"Eleven?! By the gods, aren't you a capable one. Very well, I can pay you 10 copper coins for one. One silver and ten copper for the whole batch, how about it?"
Earlier he has already asked in the guild about how much he could sell a carcass for. It turns out that not that many people actually want to buy them, as there is apparently no use for them besides the above average tasting meat and the little breastplates. Normally the market price is between 5 to 7 copper a body. So Sheila was giving him a very good deal. He decided to ask.
As it turns out Sheila has once found a recipe for Shatank Soup. If properly cooked the Shatank meat has some libido enhancing properties, that after ingesting could even achieve the efficacy of the little blue pill back on Earth. He decided that there is no reason to hold onto the bodies and no longer asked why would she need that many of the deciding to just take the money and bail out. When he was walking away Sheila shouted after him, that if manages to catch anymore, he could always bring them to her. He was surprised, usually he is good at judging peoples characters, but he would have never thought that the hardworking woman from the fields outside had such side to her.
Returning to the inn as there was still some time before the food was ready to be served, he could squeeze in a training session. He went to the back of the inn, took off his shirt and started exercising. After some time he felt a gaze on himself, wary he looked in that direction, only to see a young girl around his age sitting on one of the benches in the backyard watching him intently.
She was wearing adventuring gear, A short arming sword on her left hip, a parrying dagger on the small of her back with the handle sticking out just behind the sword handle. On her trained thighs and torso she wore a heavy leather jerkin over a gambeson all her gear looked pretty expensive and well taken care of, though still within what an adventurer of her level could possibly afford. She had red hair, pretty blue eyes, small button nose and full red lips.
Seeing her he instantly knew she was more than just an adventurer, though other could possibly be fooled, he just had too much experience working with fake personas. After seeing him notice her, she quickly looked into the sky as if nothing happened, her cheeks gaining a slight red tint.
Seeing this, Mark didn't pursue the matter, he was aware what the girl was thinking, he wasn't dense. He knew how he looked, and has even used his looks on more than one occasion during his missions. He was tall, well build, his short cut light brown hair, naturally set themselves in an alluring wave without any care. His chilly blue eyes entrapped many women before. And even after coming back to an untrained and malnourished body, he has already had enough time to build a nice definition of abs on his stomach.
Seeing that he didn't react the girl calmed down and came back inside. Seeing as the time for a meal was almost up Mark also decided to quickly clean himself and go back in wanting to eat a warm meal, he has grown to like this world cooking, and surprisingly for the era they seemed to be living in, there were a lot of different spices and flavors in the local cuisine.