Aquos starts his journey in a communal house by grabbing a few strawberries from the bags nearby. Nobody in the house is any sort of warrior, so he moves on to search for willing allies. He searches, but Cunningflames is quite lacking in both cunning and flames. Not one inhabitant knows how to handle a weapon. Luckily, the local fortress of The East Rooms is heavily guarded.
The soldiers only laugh, not even bothering to stop talking with each other as Aquos introduces himself.
He could not get any martial assistance, but it even he knows it's dangerous to travel alone. He asks an elven poet to follow him and chronicle his adventures, but she would only travel with a fellow entertainer. Aquos tries to regale the story of his home village's founding, but the poet is not impressed.
She tries to spare Aquos' feelings afterwards, but he catches her lying. She was quite literally bored to tears.
Disappointed, Aquos feels a craving for an argument and starts one with one of the soldiers who rejected him. It soon becomes very...repetitive.
Aquos decides to give up with Cunningflames and moves to the next hamlet over to continue his search for allies: Soakedslip. He crosses a wide canyon river on his way there, but the cold weather was to his advantage and he could just walk over it.
It has started to rain by the time he arrives to Soakedslip. Guess the village really is quite soaked. The reception is about the same as in Cunningflames. There is but one swordsman in the village, and just like the others, he laughs at Aquos.
He couldn't possibly make it to another village or town before nightfall, so he goes out into the wild to hunt. Maybe if he practices his combat skills against animals, the others will take him more seriously?
The Infinite Swamp is much more finite than its name would imply. He manages to blindside a duck and wound it seriously. It bleeds out soon. Aquos doesn't feel much more skilled from this one-sided fight, but makes sure to take as many of the details as he can so he can regale the tale of the man-sized demon-duck straight from the Circus later. That should get him some attention.
Looking for a greater challenge, he spots a group of boars not far from him. He tries the stealthy approach as he did with the duck, but they start running away before he can get close enough. He breaks into a sprint to follow and soon catches one with the shaft of his spear, but doesn't wound it too badly. His next strike strikes way truer into the boar's pancreas as it collapses, panting from exhaustion. It gives into pain, denying Aquos the combat experience, so he opts to put it out of its misery quickly.
He spots another boar of the group and chases it, knocking it unconscious in one blow. He cuts its throat and begins to work on his trophies. They shall all hear how he defeated two massive beasts of the vast swamp with barely any effort. He carves figurines. They are somewhat abstract as he had never carved bones before, but they depict: himself striking the boars down, his goddess, the dragon whom he chose as his quarry, and an obscure poet who went missing some time ago.
I'm not done for the day just yet, don't worry!