'What?'
It was his first lucid dream. Rowan knew he was sleeping, and he knew this was a dream. He looked around. Nothing but darkness everywhere.
That darkness should have been frightening, yet it wasn't.
Rather, it felt strongly familiar. Having that feeling, Rowan's expression twisted in confusion. The frustration from his instincts and reason being so different choked him.
His body said it was safe, but his head didn't. Rowan recognized that this was definitely wrong.
'Be alert!'
He tried to control his relaxed body without tension. But having to think like this even in a dream was contradictory in itself.
'Isn't it okay to just stay still?'
His hesitation was brief.
'It could be magic, right?'
But for that, Rowan's existence was too insignificant. He was just a guy dreaming of success in a mountain village. He was no different from the mercenaries right now.
Swoosh!
Rowan's ears perked up. He reacted to the sound of smoke moving. His body didn't hold strength well, and when he tried to apply strength, it felt odd and tingly. Still, he sloppily prepared for combat. Whether a lucid dream or magic, he thought he should rationally defend first.
'A door?'
A door created through two moving columns of smoke appeared. It wasn't a clear form and literally only looked like a door visually through the smoke's currents and movements.
Whoosh!
With a wind sound, the door opened with a creak, and a black smoke mass popped out. The smoke quickly created one shape.
A bow and arrow!
The bowstring drew itself and shot an arrow. The arrow was instantly shot, passing through the air and turning into a streak of smoke.
From another door, a small goblin appeared with a small build, a hunched back, and utterly shabby rags. It showed the appearance of jumping and running in the mine.
Though it was a goblin made of black smoke, he could tell at a glance it was a goblin.
Rowan checked the two doors. When he approached, the smoke of the bow and arrow or the smoke of the goblin disappeared, and beyond the door, where only darkness was visible, opened wide, and massive darkness spread as if to swallow Rowan.
"Huk!"
Surprised by that movement, he tried to step back, but the darkness swallowed him right up. Simultaneously, Rowan's whole body trembled.
"Kuhak."
He felt intense pain in his head. At the strange sensation as if blood was dripping down, he touched his head with his hand, but it was dry. Phantom pain.
Rowan also checked the goblin's door. Darkness covered him. Similarly, he felt pain, but it wasn't the sensation of blood dripping. Rather, it was accompanied by visions.
Culture's Right Foot, Barbarism's Left Foot.
'Ah!'
Starting with birds like crows and hawks, sharp carnivores like wolves, and powerful wild beasts like wild boars and bears, even dolphins—the goblin showed dominating them skillfully in different landscapes.
'Goblin Beast Taming?'
It wasn't a hard decision. Wasn't Rowan's biggest weakness archery? Moreover, goblins were monsters. He didn't feel inclined toward them.
'Let me think a bit more.'
Rowan stopped walking, sat cross-legged, and closed his eyes. If it was a dream anyway, he wanted to hold onto this interesting imagination a bit more, and thinking it through thoroughly was enjoyable, because if he woke from this dream, a barren world with no culture to enjoy would be waiting for him.
'Bows and arrows are expensive.'
Arrows weren't consumables at all. When the arrow shaft broke, you recovered the remaining parts and recycled them by carving wood again—that was arrows. If the tip broke, there was no help for it, but recycling any part was essential, and if you could recover after shooting, you had to recover.
It was more valuable than real soldiers picking up shell casings. Literally, because the materials to make one arrow easily exceeded five types.
'It's not something I can operate.'
You had to be a mercenary captain, connect directly with merchants and trade goblin subjugation loot like Jose to freely use arrows. Ordinary mercenaries couldn't even dream of it. Since bows were made of wood, maintenance was also important.
He couldn't afford to buy a bow and arrows. The money received from his father Haldanak would run out after buying armor and one sword.
Using quality arrows was something only the well-off did. In this world where combat was so prevalent, swords and armor were expensive, but bows and arrows were also expensive, because demand overflowed since nobles wanted them, and starting from mercenaries, villages also had to stock them.
'Goblin Beast Taming.'
The skill to instantly tame wild animals—grain powder or meat was enough.
Rowan entered the goblin's door right away. A feeling of his whole body tingling, his head becoming dizzy, then expanding with a pop, and he opened his eyes wide.
"Huk! Huk! Huk!"
Breathing roughly, he looked around. It was his room. He got up from bed with a body covered in sweat. Strangely, his body temperature was high, he was in good condition, like he'd slept soundly, and he was completely awake, so he had no desire to lie down again.
'It's real.'
Goblin Beast Taming was entirely in Rowan's head. Rowan spun his head around like a thief checking his surroundings. It was his own room with no one. Even though he'd just looked around, he was disoriented, so he repeated the same action.
If someone had been spying, it would definitely have been suspicious behavior.
Rowan's appearance, looking around his room twice like a robber, was strange to anyone. But there was no one here. Rowan was just a clueless kid dreaming of being a mercenary.
'Should I check once?'
Holding a handful of grain powder, he walked around the village. A bird he didn't even know the name of before was grooming its feathers on someone else's roof.
White-breasted Coward.
Of course, humans hadn't named it. Rowan had no interest in birds, so he didn't know. Goblins had named it.
'When there's a big guy nearby, it always makes noise and runs away.'
Because it was in a human village, it just stared at him blankly from the roof because it knew humans wouldn't climb up to catch it. White-breasted Cowards living in the village flew away at the sight of small children.
White-breasted Cowards in the forest would make noise and fly away if fairly big predators appeared.
"Choruruk. Chururu."
Rowan made sounds while holding out grain powder. Though others could do it too, the White-breasted Coward, showing great interest in Rowan making precise bird sounds, immediately landed on Rowan's hand and pecked at the grain powder.
"Ah!"
When he flinched at the sharpness of the beak, it immediately made a sound and flew away.
'Jackpot.'
Thinking it would work on bigger guys than these, Rowan was greatly pleased. He knew well this would be a big weapon.
The mercenaries said they'd stay one more day. Rowan headed to where the empty houses the mercenaries were staying at were gathered to receive payment for this job.
"What? It's the kid."
The mercenaries kept clicking their tongues the whole time they saw Rowan, like they were handling their junior. Seemed they planned to break him in early.
'Idiots.'
Rowan openly huffed at them. The mercenaries giggled at that appearance, yelling it was cute and telling him to shake his butt too. If he overreacted, they'd definitely pounce more frantically, so ignoring them, he looked for mercenary captain Jose.
He was already writing loot on parchment and organizing. Among the mercenaries, those who weren't experienced enough, had defects, or owed Jose debts were helping. Wagons with completed confirmation were securely sealed.
'Did they borrow two from the village?'
Because Black Mountain Village was involved, and beyond that, the merchant guild dealing directly with Rakson, they seemed able to freely borrow the village's resources.
"Huh? I was about to call you anyway, but you came on your own."
"A guy eating sword money has awareness. Was gonna just pocket it if you didn't come."
The mercenaries snickered. Some crazy bastard went beyond the second and third rounds to the sixth round. He wanted to throw a punch, but mercenaries stick together. If he confronted mercenaries, a beatdown was guaranteed.
Beyond the ongoing hypocrisy, he could even see blood. Rowan knew well that mercenaries had no discipline. If a colleague became a corpse, just bury them on the spot, and that was it, and Jose didn't give orders well.
Because even if they made noise and got preemptively attacked by enemies, it wasn't his problem. He might even think of it as an opportunity to kill the attacking enemy. Of course, there was no such stupid mercenary.
'Even with skill, they died emptily.'
It was also why Rowan decided to build his skills in this village for a few more years.
"Is this mine?"
"Yeah."
There was a big difference between what his memory told him and what the mercenaries had set aside separately.
'Half is missing.'
Rowan was in a position where he had to let such unfairness pass.
"How much will you give me?"
"Where do we mercenaries have money! You gotta barter with something useful from the wagon."
Rowan frowned, because he knew it was obviously bullshit, but no matter what he said, the mercenaries wouldn't change their proposed exchange method. Because Rowan was the weaker party.
"Our mercenary group doesn't carry money in the first place. When going to fight, if individuals hold money, they can get stabbed in the back. The corpse becomes money."
At those words, Rowan nodded without realizing it.
"Puhaha!"
When Rowan's awareness was considerable, the mercenaries burst into laughter. Pretty good. The young guy wasn't like a kid. Actually, to call him a kid, he'd killed several goblins.
'He's not showing anything, even though it has less than half of what he caught.'
Jose stopped writing on parchment and spoke.
"You wanna join our mercenary group?"
"Wow, the young guy's getting an offer from the mercenary captain. I never got one."
"We'll adore you. Really!"
Rowan finished with a laugh and started rummaging through the wagon with the mercenaries' loot. Naturally, Rowan's target was heavy weapons.
'They have lots of iron, and among them there's definitely a lottery ticket!'
Wasn't it heavy weapons piled like a mountain?
When Rowan completely removed the tent, the mercenaries waved their hands.
"That blood smells no joke. Why are you taking off the tent?"
"I gotta take one with less blood. How can I barter with rusty stuff?"
Jose diverted the mercenaries' attention. This wasn't the time to get sidetracked. There was too much loot to give attention to the kid. Like guys who occupied positions in the mine, they'd properly collected scraps from mines humans abandoned because of wages.
Without writing a list, theft occurred easily and was hard to notice. That's why Jose always did this work, because the difference between doing it and not doing it was very big.
Rowan moved diligently even in the indifference. He openly scraped greatswords, halberds, and barbed spears with a dagger. Even if rusted, he checked thoroughly.
'Plenty worse than daggers. This is crazy.'
Not only were they not heat-treated, but because they were big polearms, the folding process was missing too. If you checked up close, it was visible to the eye.
Thanks to that, Rowan could easily pick out one greatsword. Since the mercenaries wouldn't trust a kid's eye, they wouldn't care, and there was no mercenary who wielded swords while being thoroughly knowledgeable about blacksmith techniques, so there was no way to get caught or nitpicked.
"Should I try armor too~"
"Just upper body!"
Jose yelled like a ghost.
"Just give me a set! Who knows? Maybe I'll join this mercenary group looking like a beggar later?"
"We don't raise beggars! You little shit!"
Rowan skillfully threw jokes while getting both top and bottom. He even picked up chain mail that was rough and completely iron-colored because it wasn't heat-treated. Naturally, the chain mail was taken away, because it was out of the question.
He could get various forms of leather armor protecting the whole body. The measurements might not fit right away, but he brought fairly generous ones.
"Not gonna wear it right away, gonna do sword work when you're a bit bigger?"
It was a blunt question.
"Yes."
"If you have nowhere to go later, come find us."
That was the end of the meeting with the mercenary group. They didn't greatly want each other in the first place. The mercenaries weren't good-natured enough to raise others just because they showed promise, and Jose didn't have big ambitions.
The mercenary group left precisely after one day.
Rowan headed to the forest alone after that. The purpose was to master wild animal taming. It was only dead knowledge in his head. Of course, the success rate was mysteriously high, but Rowan didn't become arrogant about such things.
'I have to be able to firmly control wild animals anywhere, anytime.'
For that, proficiency was needed. He had to repeat until his head was sick of it, and repeat until his body felt not just familiar but intimate.