"It is already quite late, but I have slept so much that there is no way I will sleep again this night."
After muttering, he really pondered about what to do.
"If I go quickly, I can still leave before the gates close, but I can't sense how much my power changed, maybe it is better if I spend the night familiarizing myself with the changes."
Shiba feared failing to assess his real strength and end up dead due to overestimating himself.
He felt mighty compared to before, but that was relative to his previous strength, he wasn't invincible.
"I shall train to get used to my current strength first. Without knowing everything about myself, I shouldn't face others in battle."
Shiba didn't know if that was true or not, but he felt that those words made a lot of sense.
The next morning, he finally had gotten used to his power.
When circulating the energy through his body, he could assess accurately its state far better than just throwing punches in the air.
Despite not sleeping, he wasn't tired at all, so he decided to leave the house early in the morning.
After leaving the house, he looked for a place where he could eat breakfast.
The house didn't have any food, and it wasn't an inn, so the food wouldn't be served if he were to just wait there.
Of course, Shiba had some food in his spatial ring.
He thought that everything would have been wasted for leaving it there a whole month, but when he checked it after waking up, it was still alright.
After asking the Lord of the town, he heard that the food there would last for far more time when placed in a spatial ring since the time would flow slower there. However, for that same reason, the spatial ring couldn't allow living beings inside.
Thus, Shiba decided to leave the food inside the ring as emergency provisions and went to eat breakfast somewhere in the town.
Moreover, there wasn't that much food left in the spatial ring, so he wanted to buy some more to store.
He didn't know how to cook, so he didn't dare to eat something he hunted. After all, eating a beast without cooking it properly could be lethal. They weren't ordinary animals, and even some ordinary animals could be dangerous if not cooked properly.
That was one of the reasons the Beast Hunter Guild was the only one allowed to buy the deceased beasts. They would make sure to sell the edible parts only to certified cooks that could ensure cooking them without problems. Of course, parts that weren't edible had other uses like creating weapons and clothes. The guild would ensure to obtain the max profit of each deceased beast.
As for picking plants or fruits outside, Shiba didn't have too much knowledge about them, so he feared eating something poisonous by mistake.
Thus, it was far better to buy food in the town and store it in the spatial ring than obtain it by his own means.
Shiba walked for the streets, looking for a cheap place to eat. Although he obtained some money, he didn't want to waste it on luxuries like eating fancy food. As long as it could fill his stomach, it was enough.
Better food could also help to raise the physical stats faster, but Shiba had all of them maxed, so it was useless for him.
While looking at those places, he saw a pretty girl eating in the most expensive site he had seen until the moment.
It wasn't that Shiba had any interest in that pretty girl, but that her looks were so different from the plain looks of the rest, that it wasn't difficult to not look at her.
However, he just looked at her for a couple of seconds before continuing to look for a proper place to eat. The girl didn't even notice Shiba. She was already used to attract attention since she became famous, so she wouldn't turn around just because she felt that someone was looking at her.
She was Eini. Although she always got bad prices for her hunted beasts, she surpassed quality with quantity, so she became quite wealthy without relying on the money she had obtained previously.
Having a spatial ring, she didn't mind about carrying several beasts at the same time. Of course, the fact that she had a spatial ring also spread quite quickly.
There were some greedy fellows that followed her while hunting to try to steal the spatial ring from her, but they were all reduced to ashes.
She feared the guards that she had met in the arid zone, but she didn't have the slightest fear of the people of Border Town, excluding the Lord of the town. However, she was still confident about fleeing successfully from him.
Just the fact that she could fly was enough to make the others powerless against her. Even if she couldn't win, she could always flee.
Having already forgotten about the girl he saw, Shiba found a place where he could eat for only five bronze coins. After that, he went to buy some food for another forty-five bronze coins and stored everything on the spatial ring.
Once he secured a good amount of food, he also bought water and also stored it, but it was quite expensive since it came ready to transport and not just in a glass like when it was served in an inn or a restaurant. Thus, he ended up paying a hundred and fifty bronze coins. However, with so much water, he wouldn't need to worry about it in the near future.
Once his provisions were ready, Shiba left the town to hunt some beasts.
That day, Shiba had better luck looking for beasts and managed to hunt three of level 4 without too much effort given his strength.
Previously he needed to go with care due to being too weak, but with his increment in strength, he could look for them without that much worry. He would be in trouble if more than one Level 7 Beast appeared, but there weren't beasts of that level in the area he was. As for a single Level 7 beast, Shiba believed that with some effort, he would be able to kill it.
Those beasts were quite big, but with the spatial ring, he didn't need to worry about that. Usually, Level 4 Beasts weren't small, with some exceptions like the fast one he had caught the previous time. However, they were still overall small than the sturdy one he defeated before. Anyway, without a spatial ring, it would be troublesome to carry those three beasts, so among beast hunters that went solo, only Shiba and Eini returned with so many in one travel to hunt.
When Shiba returned to deliver the deceased beasts, he saw that he was attracting a lot of attention.
The people didn't know his name, but they knew how he looked based on descriptions, so everyone felt that they were probably in front of the legendary boy who battled against the Lord of the town. Shiba knew that he had quite a fame among the guards, but he didn't have any idea that he was so famous among the rest of the people.
Once Shiba showed the beast that he had hunted, which also showed that he had a spatial ring, everyone was already sure that he was the same as in the rumors.
"Thirty silver coins. You really became quite famous these days. Be careful when being alone."
The woman attending him was the one he knew, so she gave Shiba some advice. She knew very well how famous Shiba was, and it was a fact that he had been recognized.
However, that was unavoidable, Shiba would need to deliver the beast there, so unless he only went to deliver them at night, it was obvious that a lot of people would recognize him. Moreover, at night he could still be recognized by someone, and it would be more dangerous.
Some people would worship a legend like him, but others would try to beat him and become legends themselves, or just kill him to steal his wealth. A spatial ring was extremely alluring after all.
Although most of them didn't dare to battle Shiba fairly, they dared to use a sneak attack to kill him. After all, Shiba was only a Level 6 Mortal, so even if others believed that he was an expert in battling, his defenses couldn't be so high if he were caught unguarded.
Inside the town, they might restrain themselves unless they were sure that they wouldn't be caught, but if someone followed Shiba when he was hunting, it would be far more difficult to investigate, so they wouldn't waste the chance.
"Thank you for your advice. I didn't think that I would attract so much attention."
Although he didn't know about his fame before, seeing how everyone looked at him and hearing the words of the woman, Shiba would be stupid if he didn't notice that the battle that he had against the Lord of the town had leaked.