Astarto Village.

“With each passing day, the situation out there looks worse than what it did yesterday.” Standing a few kilometers away from the fortified stone walls that now protected the village, Tristan gazed at horizon before him, a slight frown adorning his face as he checked for the small nuances in the aura he could sense from afar.

Though he had done the same thing yesterday while he and Damian were at the outskirts of the village to find out how much time they had left before the monster tide came knocking, the aura he and his good friend felt from the horizon was more or less a homogenous agglomeration of the multiple auras they normally sensed during a monster tide.

Comparing it to that kind of aura, the aura Tristan sensed from afar was a bit more detailed in terms of which parts of the aura came from what monster, allowing him to roughly separate the various auras making up the aura he was sensing, forming a rough distribution of the monster tide’s strength in his mind as he pondered over what kind of enemies they were going to face by the time the tide came at full force.

“Guess I’ll have to come back here a day or two from now to get a better idea of what the village is up against,” Tristan muttered to himself as he scratched his head for a bit, pondering over everything he had sensed so far before inwardly nodding to himself.

“In any case, if there’s anything I’ve confirmed from all of this, it’s the fact that the village is up against its first medium-scale monster tide.” As these words came out of his mouth, a bitter smile gradually crept up his face as he let out a low sigh some time later. “It would be nice if the village had more people with tons of combat power like Damian and Myst.”

“I wonder when Valyr’s going to come back?” Pondering over the thought of having more people in the village with greater combat power to fend off against the upcoming monster tide with greater ease, Tristan recalled the conversation he had with Valyr yesterday, prompting the question to pop up in his mind a few seconds later.

Coincidentally, just as he had turned around to make his way back to the village…

Whoosh!

Accompanied by a brief flash of bright light, a being appeared beside Tristan, causing the latter to squint his eyes before taking a few steps back to distance himself from the being that had just appeared. Then, as the light in the surroundings gradually returned to normal, Tristan slowly allowed the shape of his eyes to return to normal as he took a look at the being that had appeared before him out of nowhere.

“…” Unsurprisingly, it took less than an instant for him to realize who had just appeared before him, his eyes widened in great shock while his mouth was wide agape. On the other hand, the man that had appeared before Tristan looked at the latter with a hint of shock in his eyes before the expression on his face quickly returned to normal.

After that, the man let out a bitter chuckle before slowly shaking his head. “And here I thought I would be able to surprise you guys with my return. Guess the cat’s out of the bag before I could even reveal it.”

“Anyways, it’s nice to see you again.”

…

“I can’t believe you really returned to the village the day after you asked.” After Tristan eventually got over the shock he felt from seeing Valyr appear in front of him out of nowhere, the two of them began to make their way back to the village, with Tristan contacting Damian and Alfaera to head to Damian’s office as he had a surprise to show them.

“At first, I thought about taking a carriage back to the village,” said Valyr in response, a relaxed smile adorning his face as he was glad to see Tristan again. “But because I was already at a place incredibly far away from the village, taking even the fastest carriage would have taken me a week to get there. By that time, the monster tide would have been long gone.”

“And so, I decided to look for other methods to get back to this place as quickly as possible… which is more or less the reason why I appeared in front of you out of nowhere.” As these words left Valyr’s mouth, he let out a brief cackle. “Didn’t expect you to make that face, though.”

“If you were in my place, even you would be making a face like that!” In response, Tristan grumbled, causing Valyr to let out a bit more laughter after that. Though a frown appeared on the man’s face as he watched the young man laugh at him, this frown eventually disappeared as he told Valyr that he was glad he was back at the village, to which the latter told him that he felt the same way.

After that, the two of them talked a bit more, with Tristan informing Valyr regarding what was going on in the village lately after he had departed the village a month ago, while Valyr told Tristan about the things he had been doing as of late. Naturally, he had omitted mentioning a great portion of the things that had been going on in his surroundings, separating those matters from the matter he was going to tackle pretty soon.

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot to mention.” As they made their way back at a leisurely pace, there was still some distance separating the two from the village gates. “I’ve ascended to Rank 2 quite recently.”

“Already?” Tristan’s eyes widened in slight surprise. “Weren’t you still at the middle of Rank 1 before you left the village?”

“That I am.” Valyr nodded. “How about you? Any improvements?”

“Aside from the Basic Reinforcement Elixir you’ve given us, not really.” In response to Valyr’s question, Tristan flashed a bitter smile. “You’re rubbing salt on an open wound here, you know?”

“Definitely not what I intended to do.” Hearing Tristan’s words, Valyr quickly apologized, recalling the lack of opportunities available to Tristan and the other high-leveled players of the village when it came to earning XP. “But since you mention it, I do know a place where you could get a lot of XP in a short amount of time.”

“Oh?”𝑂𝓋𝒍xt.𝑐𝐎𝓜

“Yeah, but I’ll save that for when we meet up with Tristan and Alfaera.”

“Why not tell me now? It’s not like anything would change if I know of the place or not before meeting them.”

“That may be true… but I have something else to propose to you.” At these words, a mischievous grin appeared on Valyr’s face as he looked at one of the good friends he made in the village. “Say…”

“Wanna play a prank on the other two?”

“…”

“…”

“What do you need me to do?”