Jake was already up the next morning when Drak came down. His friend looked a little worse for wear, a combination of the local moonshine and the realisation of the mistake he’d made. Or at least Jake thought that was what was wrong. Sometimes with the confident Dragonkin, it was hard to tell.

“Okay, I think we need to start with my usual ingredients guy, Sern. He gets the best stuff from the monster hunters that work around the area. I bet he’ll have this Orm skin we need,” Drak announced.

“This isn’t a common item you find in most stores,” Jake warned.

Drak waved off his fears. “Trust me, this guy is good. If he doesn’t have it, I bet he can tell us who will have it.”

The walk to Sern’s store was a short one. Vine Road was already heating up, the thick jungle smells filling the air. Occasionally, strange animal sounds could be heard but Drak made nothing of them, even though Jake couldn’t help but wonder how dangerous the creature making the sounds really was.

Sern’s store was larger than theirs and in better condition. The pair entered and saw a wood elf standing behind the counter, talking to a tall human who was holding a large sack. They waited a polite distance until the pair shook hands and the human left the store.

“Sern!” Drak boomed, approaching the counter with his usual beaming smile on his face.

The wood elf nodded to the Dragonkin. “Good to see you Drak, how’s business?”

“Fantastic as ever,” Drak said confidently. “This is my partner, Jake. He just arrived in the city and we already have a special commission. So I’m here looking for a particular ingredient.”

“Sure, what do you need?” Sern asked.

Drak glanced to Jake. “Orm skin,” Jake told him, anticipating the response.

The wood elf looked like he’d swallowed something that tasted bad. His easy early morning sale had just vanished, his expression saying that he obviously didn’t have the ingredient they were seeking.

“Not a chance, sadly Drak,” he replied. “That stuff is ridiculously hard to get and I haven’t seen any in months.”

“But you can get anything!” Drak said, clearly repeating something the elf had said to him in the past.

Sern squirmed just a little bit at having his own confidence thrown back at him. “I can, pretty much. But seriously, there are some things that are beyond me. Orm skin is one of them apart from the rarest occasions.”

“How often do you normally stock it?” Jake asked.

“Once,” Sern replied awkwardly.

“Once in how long?” Drak queried.

“Since I opened the store. fifty-two years,” he admitted. “Look, I can get you some similar ingredients you could substitute for it, no problem.”

Sensing Drak was being drawn in, Jake shook his head firmly. “Thanks but no, the potion is very specific and there’s no way we can settle on anything less,” he added, giving his partner a quick glare.

Drak sighed. “Jake’s right, sadly. It has to be Orm skin. Is there anywhere we could try that might have it?”

Sern literally scratched his head for a moment, thinking about the question. “I can’t think of many of the other stores that might stock it. How about you try Jodie’s Fine Goods, they aren’t better than I am but they do sometimes have more unusual things that my customers don’t need.”

Thanking Sern for the idea, the pair left the store. Back in the sun, the temperature seemed to have increased even in the short time they’d been inside. Jake realised that the hot and humid conditions that seemed to make up the weather of Vine Road was something he needed to adapt to because it never seemed to change much.

For a second, he felt a flash of homesickness. The area outside the city where he’d grown up had a much more temperate climate, with a good amount of rain and sunshine. He wondered if he’d done the right thing, moving to the city.

But he gave himself a mental shake. He’d made a sensible decision because the only way he would progress through Tier 3 and actually reach Tier 4 was to work on different projects. At home, there was only a limited number of commissions available and they tended to be the same things over and over. Here in the city, he could find the challenges he needed.

Of course, making a potion with a really hard-to-find ingredient to satisfy a homicidal gnome on his second day in the city was a little more challenging than he’d been expecting.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Jodie’s Fine Goods definitely looked like the next step up in terms of the size and appearance of the shop. The pair stepped inside to see an impressive array of potions, ingredients and supplies spread around the store.

Guessing that if the store had the Orm skin, it wouldn’t be on the shelf, Jake approached the counter. There was a human woman there, scribbling notes in a ledger. She looked up as he approached and smiled.

“Hi there, how can I help?” she asked. “welcome”

“Hi, we were told you might be able to help us find a special ingredient,” Jake replied. ‘Orm skin?”

Jodie winced. “Wow, Orm skin. I haven’t had anyone asking for that in a long time.”

“Does that mean you stock it?” Drak queried.

She gave a little half-laugh. “Of course not! That stuff is stupidly expensive, rarely needed and has a limited shelf life. I’ve seen it a few times but I’ve never bothered to try and stock it. Just not enough demand.”

Sensing a theme, Jake asked the question. “Any idea where we might be able to find it?”

“Honestly, the only people that might have a clue where to find it is the monster hunter guild. After all, those are the guys that go out there and capture the creature to skin it,” she replied.

Another walk in the sunshine led them to the monster hunter guild. Or rather a series of buildings that made the guild’s local headquarters. Because many of the monsters that gave the guild their business were found in Vine Road, there was a large complex that included workshops, accommodation for hunters and a meeting place. This was where people could commission hunters to find specific monsters or store owners could buy what the hunters had caught.

Jake and Drak entered the meeting hall, which was filled with a mixture of hunters and customers. Most were sitting at individual tables, deep in conversation, sometimes with different items on the table. They approached the person who seemed to be organising everything, a green Dragonkin.

The three exchanged pleasantries and Jake told him what they were looking for, already half expecting the reaction. He wasn’t disappointed.

The organiser, Borass, gave a chuckle and shook his head. “Do you have any idea what a pain in the arse Orm are to hunt?” he asked.

“Not really,” Jake admitted. He had a passing idea of what an Orm was but that was it.

“Have you ever seen an Orm before?” Borass queried.

Both Jake and Drak shook their heads.

“There’s good reason for that,” the older Dragonkin replied. “The things are masters at making themselves hard to see. That’s what makes their skin useful in potions and such. But it also makes it hard work to hunt them.

“Really hard work,” added another hunter who was passing where they stood. “Had my hands on one once, glanced away and the damn thing’s magic meant I forgot it was there. Opening my hand and it was gone like a shot. Never did find the critter again.”

“Are they very dangerous?” Drak asked a strange look on his face that gave Jake a vague sense of unease.

“They have good claws, especially on those front legs. The back legs tend to fold up and give them more of a burst of speed but they still have claws on them. They have a nasty bite but there’s no poison. Their diet is mostly small mammals so they bite to incapacitate then just swallow them whole,” Borass explained.

“That skin is pretty tough, you need a sharp blade to cut through it,” the other hunter added leaning against the desk where Borass was sitting.

“The problem is just that ability to make your eye turn away from them, that’s what makes them so hard to catch,” Borass added. “They are that green-brown shade that almost everything out there in the jungle seems to be, which only makes them even harder to find.”

“But if you can find one, then capturing it isn’t too bad if you have the right gear?” Drak continued.

“Assuming you get one, you just need to avoid being eaten by all the other massive critters that live in the area,” Borass replied. “Sure, the Orm aren’t the most dangerous thing out there but they are neighbours with everything that is. And if any of those big predators hear anything that attracts their attention, be ready to run for your life. Fast.”

“I’ve seen them a few times about an hour southeast from here,” another voice added. All of them turned to see a grizzle half-Orc sitting in a window seat, smoking a pipe.

“Bullshit,” the first unnamed hunter replied. “You’ve never hunted an Orm before.”

“Never said I was hunting it,” the half-Orc answered. “But I’ve seen them a couple of times while I was hunting other monsters there. Or see enough to know that was what I was seeing.”

Drak had turned his attention to the older hunter. “South-east, you say? About an hour’s walk?”

Jake’s sense of unease continued to grow. He had a terrible feeling about what was going to come next.

“How much would it cost to hire someone to help us find one?” Drak asked casually.

Both Borass and the first hunter stated a figure, both near each other and way more money than either Jake or Drak had ever seen.

“But you said they weren’t that dangerous?” Drak queried when he recovered from the shock of the number.

“Not about the danger level,” Borass replied. ‘I’ve told you, they are a pain in the arse. You need specinlised spells to help you see them in the first place and make sure you don’t forget you have them to get them back here. It takes three to four times longer to hunt them than any other creature the size of a medium dog. And you always end up running like your arse is on fire to escape the other critters living nearby.”

“Yep, not a commission most of us would want,” the unnamed hunter added, shaking his head.

Drak glanced towards the half-Orc. He gave a sound that might have been a laugh and simply shook his head.

Jake decided it was time to call it quits and go back to the drawing board. Drak also seemed to have decided that there was nothing else they would gain in the guild but didn’t seem as despondent as Jake felt.

The pair stepped outside and Drak gestured to his friend. They stopped under the shade of an unoccupied store across from the guild building and Drak let loose his great plan, just as Jake had been feeling was going to happen.

“I know what to do - we hunt the Orm ourselves!” Drak announced.