Whenever Klein felt nervous, he couldn't help but let his mind wander to all sorts of random thoughts.
Right now, he was extremely nervous, his palms sweating as he gripped the bone knife. Several times, he had almost reduced the nearly-finished bow frame into mere firewood.
He scratched his messy, dark red hair and decided to set aside the wood in his hands. After all, he had secretly taken the window frame supports to make this bow - if he ruined it, he wouldn't be able to face Fay for the next few months.
Reading had been Klein's greatest passion throughout his growth. His foster father, who had initially taken him to browse books at the town market stalls just to help him learn to read faster, probably never imagined that this son would become so obsessed with those stories - stories so fantastical that even giants would find them hard to believe.
The most direct side effect was that young Klein began to yearn to become a hero. After lingering at the book stalls and reading seven or eight books, this vision became more specific - he wanted to become an archer. The kind of archer who would wear polished leather armor that gleamed in the light, wielding a bow so exquisite it could be hung on the wall as decoration - definitely not a crossbow, which was equipment mass-produced for villains. He dreamed of drawing the bowstring with grace, releasing it elegantly under the watchful eyes of a noble lady as beautiful as Fay, then watching with sophistication as his arrow streaked across the sky like a shooting star, piercing through some ferocious-named magical beast. Finally, he would sigh gracefully, turn around, and slowly walk away while holding the delicate white hand of the noble lady - truly a magnificent archer.
Unfortunately until now, the only similarity Klein shared with the heroes in books was his name. He was certain that when his foster father found and took him in, he must have been reading the "Chronicles of Trael" series, which featured an archer named Kruen - Kruen fa Alecto - who claimed to be the reincarnation of the Fire Angel Flamir, nicknamed the Meteor that Tears Through the Azure Sky.
But Klein was not Kruen; he was just an abandoned elf. Unable to adapt to the new elven society that had merged with humans, he was a wild elf who had exiled himself to struggle for survival at the edge of the Mist Forest. When encountered by unfriendly outsiders, he would be contemptuously called a wild boar. He didn't even have a surname - neither did his deceased foster father, nor did his nominal sister Fay.
Here, there was only the most rudimentary treehouse, stream water mixed with who-knows-what, and barely edible natural food.
Although they were wild elves, Klein and Fay still had to make regular trips to nearby towns to trade for supplies that were difficult to obtain from nature, while also earning some money to save.
Saving enough gold coins to let Klein and herself settle down in a big stone house in town was Fay's constant dream. Every time she prayed to Raniel, the Angel of Dreams, this was her wish.
Klein was completely different. As he grew older and his coming-of-age ceremony approached, he had changed his prayer wishes many times, becoming increasingly more realistic.
At first, his wish was to become a great archer, then it changed to owning a powerful bow, then simply to having any bow at all. Now, he had lowered his standards to hoping he could quickly meet a powerful adventurer with plenty of gold coins and get a chance to be their guide.
He had long noticed that heroes in books were always extremely generous, throwing around silver coins as if copper pieces didn't exist in their pouches. Mind you, Klein could only save up to ten copper coins a day, and with the terrible exchange rates around here, it would take about thirty days of neither eating nor drinking to exchange for just one silver coin. If they ever encountered a hero who tossed them a gold coin, he and Fay would probably burst into laughter even while giving thanks to Raniel.
Ah... wealthy hero masters, when will you appear? Klein rubbed his aching wrist and cast his gaze toward the depths of the western forest, where thin mist flowed between the tree trunks, growing thicker and thicker as it stretched deeper into the woods.
The Mist Forest lay at the northernmost edge of the Elfas Federation's territory, south of the Hasmil Plains. It was an ancient woodland perpetually shrouded in mist, stretching westward to the massive mountain range known as the Dragon's Spine. While many legends surrounded the forest's depths, only one had been confirmed true: a group known as the Shadowwalkers dwelled near the forest's center, living and training there. Upon completing their training, they would emerge as assassins renowned throughout the continent of Trael.
Living on the eastern edge of such a forest meant inevitably encountering many adventurers. Yet until today, with Klein approaching his coming-of-age ceremony, he hadn't met a single hero as generous as those in books. What was even more infuriating was that during their last encounter, the female thief from that adventuring party had managed to pilfer their pitiful savings before leaving.
It was from that moment on that Fay explicitly forbade him from guiding any more adventurers - unless they paid in advance and had no thieves in their party.
Klein had always listened to Fay, not just because she was nominally his sister, but also because she was the only one who had stayed by his side, persevering in this damp and gloomy woodland.
Fay is two years older than him, and even taking into account the early maturity of female elves, they were both still in their adolescent years. One could only say that the harsh environment had prematurely activated the maternal instincts within Fay, forcing her to become the support that Klein needed to grow up safely.
Without Fay, he would probably have long since become fertilizer beneath some mist-lamp tree, rotting into mud along with the fallen leaves.