After learning that the food he ate might be poisoned, Ali looked inside his body and he did find minute traces of poison. Fortunately, it was manageable, being naturally treated by the body's immune system like an illness. He let out a sigh of relief.
"No, no. The food that I gave you was purified!" Arin hurriedly clarified, afraid of being unjustly accused. "There's an elder in the village who's able to remove the poison from the vicious beasts we hunt. In return, he only takes 10% of the food in exchange for the purification. Everybody gets their hunted vicious beasts treated with him before consuming."
"He also found your body was poisoned and treated you for free," he added.
'Another favor.' Alister sighed in his heart.
"Come, let's go meet him and check your body's condition." Arin grabbed him wanting to go meet this elder but Alister stopped him.
"Wait. Let's go hunting so that you have something to eat first." Ali spoke in a serious tone.
"Ok." Arin relented in a weak voice, feeling his empty stomach.
"Show me the way," Alister said with great confidence.
As they left the house, Ali observed the village. It was simple with stone houses similar to the one he came from stretched across the area with ample spaces between them. But the people were very bulky and muscular, even the women and children. Children were playing with big stones throwing them around like a ball.
'Must be all the vicious beast meat they're eating,' he thought.
The unique thing was the faint signs of tattoos that could be seen in the bodies of all these villagers.
Arin pulled him along a usual path leading outside the village.
Ali continued observing the village and the surroundings when a brawny man slowly came and stopped in front of them.
A strange expression appeared on Arin's face looking at this man.
The brawny man smiled broadly at Arin. "You must be going for hunting, right? I'm so relieved looking at you. I got scared when Uncle Liu said you still haven't returned the meat you loaned from him last week."
Arin hurriedly promised. "Don't worry, brother Lin. I'll definitely return your portion after the hunt."
Brother Lin nodded and patted his shoulder with his heavy hands where his shoulders visibly shrunk. "I believe in you. I still have work to do so I'll go. Don't forget my share."
Brother Lin gave a simple grin to Ali as a greeting before leaving.
Arin heaved a sigh of relief, his shoulders still aching when he saw brother Lin leaving and continued walking to the village gates.
'Thank goodness. He didn't pat me.' Ali looked at the footprints where Arin stood moments ago and his evaluation of the strength of the people of this village increased.
'It's like a village full of jacked-up bozos. Does eating vicious beast's meat really make people so strong?' he thought.
Ali continued following Arin to the exit of the village. A massive stone wall could be seen from afar. A large wooden gate supported by blocks of huge stones formed a wall that soared more than 20 meters in height. The length was so long that he couldn't see the end of the wall with his eyes.
'Each of these huge stone blocks might weigh a ton or more. How did these handful of people make such a humongous gate.' Ali wondered in his heart.
The people of the village and their unusual strength were becoming more and more mysterious in Ali's mind.
He saw two sentries standing at the entrance of the gates staring at Arin with unkind gazes. Both of them were less buffed than the villagers but the tattoos on their bodies were more visible and darker in color. These two had stronger auras than that of the normal villagers.
Alister narrowed his eyes looking at these tattoos which gave him a sense of familiarity though he couldn't point out where he saw them before.
"Damn, why did this jinx have to go out hunting when it's our turn to guard the gates?" one of the sentries murmured in a small voice but both Arin and Ali could clearly hear them.
Arin ignored as if he didn't hear it but Ali's frown deepened at the sentence.
Another guard gave them a fierce stare and said, "It's okay if you can't hunt but don't go and risk your lives attracting strong animals to the village. We don't want to face another wolf pack like we did the last time."
Arin nodded with an ashamed expression.
The guard's expression softened a bit and he sighed, "Alright, I'll share some meat with you today even if you can't hunt today. Just remember not to be reckless and waste your life."
'And risk our life.' He added in his heart.
Both of these guards then grabbed two door handles and pushed with all their might slowly opening the gates.
"Let's go," Arin said moving through the gates.
Ali followed him closely. Outside the gates, there was a large dense forest. From a distance, a faint miasma could be seen spreading around the forest like a dark veil drifting through the air.
He frowned, sensing the ominous aura that covered the entire forest. He couldn't investigate the cause of this with his low cultivation so he turned his focus on the hunt.
The door slowly closed behind them.
Ali got excited to be able to fight after a long time. "Tell me, how do you hunt the animals?"
Arin nonchalantly said, "We first find weaker vicious beasts and punch them to death."
"Just like that. No traps. No preparations." Ali stared at him, incredulous. "No wonder you couldn't hunt these animals."
Arin shook his head with a blank look, unbothered by the comment.
"Don't worry. With me here, I'll think of something." Ali boasted giving Arin a pat on his back.
But Arin's face turned somber. "Brother Ali. Actually, I'm sorry for dragging you with me."
"Why that face all of a sudden?" Ali asked getting a bad feeling in his heart.
Arin explained. "For some unknown reason, the vicious beasts are always attracted to me."
"That should be a good thing," Ali smirked, unfazed. "We can set up traps using you as the bait. It would save our time searching for them."
But Arin shook his head with a heavy expression. "Every time I came to hunt, some mishaps always happen. The past month, I came with several teams of villagers and every hunt involving me had some issues without any exception. I'm the weakest, the most useless, and always bring bad luck to the hunting group."
Ali grabbed his shoulders and consoled him. "Don't worry. It might be just a coincidence."
"My parents loved me so much that they didn't ever let me hunt. A few months back, I sneaked out, hoping to take a small burden off my parents. Instead, I attracted a wolf horde. I was happy to find that my parents were tailing me secretly to protect me," Arin continued with tears in his eyes.
"But they had to sacrifice themselves to allow me to reach the village gates. The horde even followed me to the gates and several villagers got injured to stop the vicious beast's attacks."
Ali's confidence waned a bit listening to Arin's story. But he still had a confident smile on his face as if everything was under control.
"Let's go back. I don't want you to get hurt because of me." Arin spoke with a determined face.
But Ali decided in his heart to somehow help this poor soul hunt something. "No matter what, today we'll definitely hunt some good animals to eat."