At night Claude, Max, Susan and grandma Mary had dinner together.
"This chicken soup is tasty." Max said without much expression on his face.
"Yeah, can't deny that after all Susan and Claude also helped me out while making dinner." Grandma Mary said with smile on her face while appreciating Susan and Claude help.
Claude become bit shy after hearing getting appreciated even though he didn't do much like Susan, he look at Susan and she was just eating chicken soup without showing any emotions on her face like everything taste bland.
Since awakening ceremony he feels odd whenever he's around her before that he never felt like this when he's around Susan.
"Today village chief Luther son Jake was talking about class rank."
"He told us about mage, warrior and knight class rank."
"That's good kid, you need know that too." Max said.
"If you knew this from beginning then why didn't told me about this before." Claude asked with bit grumpy voice.
"Ohh, about that I just forgot to tell you." Max said while chuckling.
Grandma Mary shook her head, "Max you should have told him about his mage class rank."
"You knew about class rank too grandma Mary." Claude asked with disbelief.
"Offcourse I knew about it but I don't know everything about correctly, Max knows better than me about this."
"So, I thought he might have already told you but he didn't." Grandma Mary let sigh and rub her eyes.
"Max you should stop drinking too much alcohol, you forget important things when you are drunk."
Max didn't said anything cause he's drunk at this moment too.
"But the one thing I didn't understand is why they refuse to talk about witch class rank."
Claude asked this cause he's really confuse with Dave and Jake action as they appear to not even want to hear anything about witches.
"Cause if you said out loud witches name they might appear."
"When someone talk about witch class above Neophyte and Witch, those above this rank have mystic power to know if someone mentioned their name or class near them."
"That's why no-one talks about them even if they knows." Max said this with serious face as he's not joking around with this and he truly believes that's true.
At this moment for the first time Claude saw expression on Susan face her eyes were terrified, she was really scared just at mention of witches.
Grandma Mary and Max didn't notice this but Claude did and eyes never lies, her legs were shacking beneath the table.
Susan stood up from her chair and left the table and didn't said anything Max and grandma Mary didn't mind that as she always does this they thought she's acting like always nothings new but he sure saw her scared eyes in mantioned of witch.
Whatever the reason Susan has became like this it was because of witch but he didn't say anything about it now cause it wasn't the wise thing to do.
Next day early in the morning Max, Brian and Claude were stood not far away from the snow deer.
"Listen up kid you have to kill that deer with ice spike, you only got one chance if you miss it deer's going to run away." Max said while looking at the deer in distance.
"Don't mess it up kid, I haven't eaten deer meat for quite some time." Brian said at first he wasn't agreed with Max to let Claude hunt this deer as Brian himself have more chances of killing this deer than Claude who just started hunting rabbits.
Claude looked at the deer not far away from him eating tree leaf.
Claude stretched out his hand, concentrating the mana present in his body.
As he gathered sufficient mana he focused, he visioned ice spike that he wanted to materialize beneath the deer.
"Heed my words come out ice spike"
Then out of thin air ice spike materialize beneath the deer and pierced the deer hind leg.
Just as ice spike pierced hind legs, it broke apart like glass.
Deer start to run with bleeding his hind leg bleeding, it couldn't run as fast as before because of injury taking this as advantage Brian raise his axe and made throwing motion stance and throw the axe in air.
Axe hit the deer neck, deer falls on to the snow with blood flowing out of neck like small stream and it died in few seconds later.
Brian and Max didn't even look at the dead deer they just look at Claude with huge disappointment on their face.
"I'm sorry, I made mistake I got bit nervous and messed up my spell."
"You've anything else to say now Claude."
Claude just lowered his head and looked at the snow around his feet.
"I'm sorry, It didn't..... I'm sorry."
Max took deep breath and said,"Claude if you don't put your efforts in magic, you won't be able learn no matter how much time passes."
"I know it isn't easy for those who awaken with lower tier power but it doesn't mean you don't even practice your magic."
"I know, you didn't practice your magic for few weeks like you did before and some day you didn't even practice at all."
Claude was ashamed of his poor performance as his ice spike got destroyed before it could fatally injured deer.
Brian didn't said anything to Claude as it isn't his place to say anything to him.
Since, Max is the one who teaching already said what needed to be said.
Brian pull out his axe from deer neck and put his hand inside his rob and bring out his sharp knife and start dismembering deer body with his knife, Brian hold deer head with one hand and with his right hand he cut deer head completely and effortlessly slice of deer limbs one by one.
Brian rob and is stained with deer blood and he put deer in bag, Just as Brian put deer in his bag they all heard rustling sound further inside the forest, after few seconds sound completely disappeared.
"From the sound of the rustling leaf it seems to around 4 or 5 deer's that means their herds isn't far from here."
"They must have smelled this deer death musk scent, now they're going to change the place." Brian look at the direction rustling sound came out of it.
"What do you mean by that." Claude was bit confuse as deer companion can smell him why hunt single deer in first place.
"Snow deer companion can tell whether or not one of them dead or not by their smell for example just as we arrived here you smelled something different and pleasant right."
"Yes"
"That smells came out of deer musk gland and when deer died and I dismembered deer body musky smell became more strong in air, you can smell this pleasant smellin air right now. It came from dead deer body."
"That's why those who stumbled across them are considered lucky as no-one can easily get venison meat to eat." Brian said while thinking about eating snow deer for dinner.
"Stop daydreaming Brian stay alert other wild animals will come here for snow deer corpse soon." Max said with bit irritation as snow deer meat does taste to good but after hunting down one the hunter and prey position change.
"Common Max just one more snow deer after that we will returned to settlement as quick as possible."
Max turns his head to look at Claude but he met with same gaze as kid who lost all his senses when they see their favourite ice-cream.
Saliva is dropping from Claude mouth and he doesn't even realise that his drooling, he just kept staring at Brian bag.
"Okay, just one snow deer after that, we will return to settlement."
"Let's go kid, just don't make any noise."
Three of them quickly followed the snow deer trail on snow, after walking for while they finally saw snow deer in distance.
It was all alone not with the herds, it was running in east direction from where they were standing.
It look beautiful and majestic snow deer compared to one they hunted before the way it run is so elegant and beautiful that it was hard to believe that any wild animal would exists like this.
"Snowy wind guide thy credentis ice spear to the one they credentis hunt."
Ice spear came to existence out of thin air but if one pays attention they can subtle change in mana around Max.
Ice spear has sharp edged and its short and sturdy ice spear, Ice spear was rotating along with wind in air.
Even though Max is ice mage, he can ice spear rotate in air with spell here recite to invoke mana in the air to change its characteristics slightly.
Claude didn't know this, that Max could make ice spear rotate in air, he never said that or show that to him.
He's definitely hiding a lots of powerful spells from me.