[Battered Standard-Issue Longsword]
Type: One-Handed Sword
Grade: Common (White)
Description:
Twenty-five grayhide rats, twelve Goblins, and even one Bugbear… Buddy, how could you possibly ask any more of it?
Note:
“Remember! Why! You! Began!”
• Legendary Sword Saint of the Thousand-Iron Style, Vice Captain of the Ever-Radiant Throne Adventuring Party, Titus
…
“This must be my cheat ability, right?”
Beside the campfire, Xia Nan stared at the longsword resting across his knees and murmured to himself.
It was his second day since transmigrating to this world.
In his previous life, Xia Nan had never gone through any great hardship. He had grown up in a comfortably well-off family, studied hard, taken his exams, and made it into a fairly respectable university.
After graduation, he had followed the crowd into an internet company and enjoyed the “blessings” of a 9-9-6 work schedule. Then, on his thirty-second birthday, he had finally climbed his way up to department manager.
After the celebration that night, thoroughly drunk, Xia Nan refused a coworker’s offer to take him home. He figured he could walk back and let the cool night air sober him up.
He had barely made it away from the restaurant when a frantic horn blared behind him, followed by the shriek of brakes.
Then everything went black.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in another world, reborn in the body of an eighteen-year-old young man.
“Sigh…”
Xia Nan let out a silent sigh, momentarily distracted by the memory.
At the same time, the Attribute Panel floating above the one-handed sword, visible only to him, quietly faded away.
After inheriting all of the young man’s memories, Xia Nan had gained a rough understanding of the world he had landed in.
The good news was that this really was a fantasy world where transcendent power existed.
When Xia Nan’s predecessor was a child, a Bard had once stayed overnight in his village and performed several cantrips in place of paying for his meals. More recently, Xia Nan had passed a tavern and seen a muscular Barbarian carrying a faintly glowing two-handed axe on his back.
Either one was enough to prove that supernatural power was real.
The bad news was that, in this life, Xia Nan was nothing more than an ordinary farmer who had to worry about where his next three meals were coming from.
Aside from the scraps of knowledge he had brought over from modern society, most of what filled his head consisted of things like how to plow a field with less effort and which crops should be planted in which season.
None of it had the slightest connection to this world’s transcendent power.
It was not that Xia Nan looked down on farming. Far from it. In his previous life, he had often dreamed that once he made enough money, he would leave the big city behind, rent a small patch of land somewhere pleasant, and live a quiet life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.
Unfortunately, a few meager fields in this world were nowhere near enough to support a large family.
That was exactly why his predecessor had left the village where he had grown up and ventured into the dangerous wilderness.
Xia Nan finally pulled his gaze away from the sword.
He raised his head and looked ahead.
The campsite could hardly have been more primitive. There was not even a tent, only several sleeping bags scattered haphazardly around the campfire.
A few figures of different shapes and sizes sat around the flames.
Wood crackled in the fire. Faint murmurs drifted through the night, though Xia Nan could not make out what anyone was saying.
A Human, a Gnome, and a Half-Orc.
At first glance, it almost looked like the classic four-person adventuring party.
In reality, Xia Nan could say without the slightest hesitation that the four of them were nothing more than a party of small fry.
Take Elki, the Gnome.
His race could supposedly live for as long as five hundred years, but that impressive lifespan did absolutely nothing for a Gnome barely in his twenties.
His knowledge and experience were not even as extensive as those of Xia Nan’s predecessor, an eighteen-year-old farmer who had spent his whole life bent over the fields.
The two daggers hanging at Elki’s waist looked convincing enough. At a glance, one might even mistake him for an Assassin or some other class holder.
The truth was rather less impressive.
Elki was a genuine right-hander.
Forget fighting with his left hand. He could barely hold a fork properly with it.
Xia Nan had once watched, with his own eyes, as Elki spent three full minutes using his left hand to undo the bracer on his right arm.
The only thing about him that rose even slightly above the ordinary was probably the cheerful disposition he claimed ran in his family, along with a talent for making jokes at the worst possible times.
Then there was Gagu, the Half-Orc.
Although everyone called him a “Half-Orc,” Xia Nan suspected the Orc blood in his veins could not possibly amount to more than one-thirty-second, perhaps even less.
Aside from slightly sharper canine teeth and a sturdier build, he looked almost indistinguishable from an ordinary Human.
Still, he could just barely qualify as a frontliner.
As Elki had once put it, “At least the beasts in the forest can chew on him a few more times.”
The final member was also the captain of the Small Fry party.
Maji.
A Human hunter.
He was probably the most reliable person in the group.
According to what Xia Nan had heard, Maji had once been a fairly famous hunter among several villages on the kingdom’s western frontier. Unfortunately, after offending someone he could not afford to offend, he had been forced to hide his identity and flee his homeland.
Elki seemed to know a little about the story behind it.
“Ah, women,” was all he had said when Xia Nan brought it up.
In short, the entire party consisted of a right-hander, a bastard, a hunter, and a farmer.
As far as Xia Nan understood it, a proper adventuring party should normally have a Warrior, a Priest, a Mage, and either an Assassin or a Ranger.
The classic warrior-mage-priest setup.
For this ragtag party, though, such a lineup was pure fantasy.
Forget a rare spellcaster. Their party did not even have a single low-level class holder.
Even Maji, the most experienced hunter among them, was still nowhere close to taking up the Ranger class and gaining his first class level.
Calling the four of them an adventuring party was, in a sense, flattering them.
Of course, that did not mean class holders were nonexistent in this world.
The conditions for obtaining a class were simply extremely demanding. Unless someone was exceptionally lucky or came from a wealthy family, an ordinary person might go their entire life without ever touching that level of power.
After all, the bounty for a single Goblin was three silver and seven copper coins.
That was almost two full days of wages for a porter at the docks.
High risk, high reward.
That was the common understanding every sapient race in this world had of adventurers.
And that was precisely why this ragtag party was here.
“We’re still half a day’s walk from the sighting point listed in the mission report.”
Sitting beside the fire, Maji methodically checked the arrows in his quiver.
“We should get there sometime tomorrow morning.”
“Tsk, tsk. That’s an entire band of Goblins. I’ve never taken a job this big before!”
Elki waved his dagger around with his right hand. Excitement danced across his firelit face, though his tiny frame made the display look more comical than imposing.
“What, scared?”
Gagu grinned from the other side of the fire.
“Don’t worry. They’re just little green-skinned rats about your size. I could pinch two of them to death between my toes.”
“Of course!”
Elki nodded solemnly, as if he could not agree more.
“A tough guy like you definitely doesn’t cry for his mother while talking in his sleep.”
“%@#*&! (Orcish slang)”