Johan was doing his favorite thing, wandering alone through the wilderness. Even before Silver Spoon had given everyone classes, he had relished the feeling of being on his own. It came with significant danger, but the feeling of overcoming those dangers was heady, while the solitude was soothing.

Now that he had hunter and fighter classes, the danger was lessened, but he could range farther than before. Currently he was exploring the boundary to the east of Elstree. The southern portion was mostly forest, but a lake was part of the northern section. Water didn't interest him, other than for drinking, so he was instead exploring what the woods had to offer.

He had already found a few animals whose carcasses were currently in his storage ring. It wasn't a great example of one, only allowing him to store a couple of cubic meters, but it was preferable to having to lug the bloody remains around with him the normal way. The ring had been a reward for his most recent dungeon run.

As a loner, Johan had broken with his party fairly early on. He wasn't the only one to do so, but most of the others had done it because they weren't interested in the adventurer life. There were also some who broke up their parties due to personality conflicts, but those usually joined with others who had done something similar, making a new party.

The schedule for the dungeon was full, but they left a couple of slots at the end of each run through for the odd people to sign up, the ones who weren't in a party. That was only enough for ten people, and there were around fifty who weren't in a group, but it was rare that people wanted to go and couldn't find a slot. Johan made sure to sign up every time. His problem wasn't that he didn't enjoy being an adventurer, it was the fact that he didn't want to be tied to a party.

Splitting the loot with a group of people you were temporarily attached to was a challenge, but since Johan was always the strongest person in his makeshift party, and he contributed the most to their progress, he was almost guaranteed something. Occasionally he had to offset his loot by paying gold to others to make up for it, but that wasn't a problem for him either.

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Hunters made good money, with protein being in short supply, and there were none better than Johan. On his own, he was about as productive as a whole team of any other hunters, and he didn't have to split his money with partners. When the storage ring had shown up in his last run, he had immediately called dibs. No one fought him on it, but he had also paid everyone a couple of gold pieces each. It was far less than such an item was worth, but their community wasn't at the point where their economy was normal. No one had minded the transaction.

His ring was full, but he still had his bloody leather satchel that he had used previously to store his kills. It wasn't good for holding more than a few small animals, or the juiciest parts of something larger, but he wasn't really looking to fill it anyway. Right now he was just enjoying the peace and quiet.

This tutorial world wasn't fully developed yet. The planet he had lived on before had a complete ecosystem. There were birds, bugs, prey, and predators, and magical creatures as well. Over time, beasts would be spawned by the excess mana in the atmosphere, and if they survived they could lead to a whole population of the animal. He had seen the beginnings of such things here, but this disk had only been around for a few months. His former planet had been around for thousands of years.

A chittering noise alerted Johan to the presence of one of those squirrels that had recently shown up. Instead of being the result of a random mana creation, these started appearing after Silver Spoon left a caged version by the training dungeon. He had run off suddenly when he discovered the village had been attacked, causing everyone else there to follow. Left behind was a wooden cage holding a squirrel that he had brought from somewhere. When the village people returned to resume exploring the dungeon, they had found both the cage and the squirrel were gone. Shortly after that, the forest had started to fill up with the furry devils.

These wild ones weren't as annoying as those that had also shown up in the dungeon. They were much less likely to throw acorns at you, especially if you left them alone. Johan was keeping an eye on them, though. The rate at which they were reproducing was rather astounding, and it was important to keep that in check. Anytime he found a group of the creatures together, he would kill one or two of them. Solo critters, like the one he saw now, he left alone. These were his woods, and he needed to keep them in balance.

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