All of the plants Arthur was looking for were quite small and colorful compared to the rest of the plant life in the forest. It was a bit of a wonder as to how he didn’t notice them the first time he foraged, or at least it was until after half an hour had passed and Arthur had only found four of each plant.

‘I underestimate the difficulty of this again haven't I. The only upside to this is that I have actually found a sizable portion of the plants I came to search for.’ Arthur looked over the twenty plants he had in his bag, or the valuable parts of each plant.

It was not always the entirety of the plants that were useful, only certain parts in cases like the Goblin Berry in which only the actual berry was useful for anything other than fertilizer. Each Plant would have on average five berries that were yellow and the size of a grown man's thumb. But to prove to his new teacher Arthur was required to bring the whole plant.

/- - - - - -\

+ Foraging Level 2

\- - - - - -/

Soon Arthur’s determination led him to learn a bit more about foraging on his own. When he picked plants he was just so ever better at pulling just the right spot and when he needed to cut it from its roots he was just so ever faster.

Over the course of three hours Arthur picked up speed in his foraging and was able to acquire all the plants he was tasked to and his skill in foraging further increased.

/- - - - - -\

+ Foraging Level 3

\- - - - - -/

‘25 Healing Roots, 25 Abyss Sage, 25 Goblin Berries, 25 Witch’s Ivy, and 25 Knotweeds. Yup, that's everything.’ Arthur took one last look over the plants he collected just to be certain he did not over count and he set off back to Antium.

‘It's still only about five o’clock in the afternoon so I have plenty of time to get back.’ Arthur had barely finished that thought when an arrow whizzed past his face and hit a small tree he just passed. He immediately ducked for cover behind another much larger tree and listened for any sign of his attackers.

Off in the distance roughly thirty or forty meters away he could hear two voices talking, and based on what they were saying they were likely the culprits. “You stupid drunk. You had a clear shot and you still missed e’m.” The first voice, one belonging to a middle aged man, sounded quite annoyed by his partner's failure.

“I am very sober for your information, and I told you hitting a target through trees is a very difficult thing to do. It would have been better if we weren't alone, we could have ambushed him that way.” The second voice, much younger sounding equally annoyed by his partner's insults.

“If we do that then we will never get promoted, we need to prove ourselves if we want better gear and a team to assist us.” The middle aged man said.

“Well it doesn’t matter now, we need to either kill this poor fool or we need to run away.”

“Out of the question. We find him and we kill him.”

Arthur did not remain idle while the two argued amongst themselves. Since he could not hear them clearly from so far away he decided to try getting a bit closer while hiding behind anything he could.

It took a bit but he did eventually get close enough to hear the men who attacked him just as they were getting ready to come out and find him. ‘Well I have a little surprise for you two when you come out.’ Arthur smiled and he slowly molded four spikes of earth from the ground, two for each of the attackers.

The reason Arthur chose to create them slowly was because magic can create quite a bit of noise when being used and he wanted to try attacking while hidden and take them off guard.

The two attackers slowly exited from behind their cover and began walking towards the tree watching their surroundings for anything that might pop up. Suddenly they stopped and whispered. “I think he's still behind that tree. I will go around the left side, you go around the right side.” They then split off in their respective directions forcing Arthur to rethink his plan.

Stolen novel; please report.

‘This might actually be better for me, now I can fight them both one on one. They probably aren’t at the same level as the vampires, but it wouldn’t hurt to be extra careful.’

Arthur waited for them to be a sufficient distance apart from each other before he moved from his spot toward the one going around the right. When Arthur spotted him crouched down slowly walking towards the tree he noticed the man's small size and the bow in his hands. The skin coloration and his size clearly gave him away as an elf, the bow looked quite special though. Despite being quite literally taller than him he wielded it with little difficulty.

With a small flick two of the four earth spikes flew towards the elf, one aiming for his leg and the other just a few seconds behind aiming towards his head. The first spike hit the elf in the calve causing him to drop his bow and clutch his leg as he shouted out in pain, the second missed entirely and instead struck a nearby tree.

The shout of pain altered the elf's partner and he came running. “What is it!? What happened!?” Arthur looked frantically towards the source of the voice and realized that he was going to pass right through him to get to his partner.

‘Shit. Should I move or should I use this to attack him from behind cover.’ Arthur pondered over the situation he found himself in. The elf was more or less disabled for the time being, should he take the opportunity to take out the other or get out of the way and wait for him to turn his back.

Given how Arthur was under cover and he could easily take out his opponent with the two remaining spikes he elected to try that. If it didn’t work then he would just need to face him in melee combat, and he was almost certain that without outside help his opponent would lose.

********

Tullus raced towards his friend after hearing him cry out in pain. Their target must have somehow slipped past them and attacked Almon with a sneak attack. Despite the fact that Almon wasn’t the best at melee combat he still was no pushover, but he still should have been able to see his opponent and fire off an arrow or two. Regardless the situation was clearly dire and required his immediate attention to deal with the threat.

Suddenly with a small russell of a bush both of his knees lost their strength and he fell to the ground. It took a moment but soon he felt great pain from his knees and he looked down to see two pieces of dirt formed into spikes sticking out of. He tried to pull them out but that caused intense pain that caused him to lose his grip.

The one responsible for the attack quickly exited his hiding place from the bushes. It was a human man about six feet tall whose brown hair and fair skin gave him away as a Northman, or at least the descendant of a couple.

He also wore some expensive looking armor that was clearly some sort of dwarven antique since no one made armor like that anymore. Tullus recalled his father telling him how all the masters used newer techniques to forge their masterpieces. It was still well made but there were better techniques that could be used for both flexibility and protection.

The man walked towrads him with a longsword in his hands made from the same yellow metal as his armor. Tatrium it is called, or magic steel as the common people called it. The blade was pointed straight at his face and before he could call out and ask for mercy it was thrusted forward and stabbed him in the throat.

*********

Almon sat with his back to a large tree. The stone spike still sticking out from his calve, he hobbled behind cover before he attempted to remove it and with great pain he slowly pulled it out leaving a small wound that he quickly did his best to stitch and bandage.

With his leg now in a somewhat decent condition he picked up his bow from his side and peaked around the tree to see if he could spot the mage who attacked him. Since he heard Tullus cry out in pain about twenty or so meters away from his hiding spot the forest went quiet and he did not see any movement.

Almon knew that if he wanted to survive he would need to get away and do so quickly, but with his wounded lag it was easier said than done. He knocked an arrow and readied himself to fire at the first thing that moved.

For quite some time he waited for anything to move, and with the trees casting such shadows and the closer it was getting to winter it was a bit darker than he expected it would be. With no sign of anyone or anything he knew he had to take the opportunity and try and run.

Well, run wasn’t the right word. More like hobble or crawl away. Either way Almon began to make his escape in the opposite direction toward one of the few camps that were dotted throughout the forest. But after only a handful of seconds he heard movement coming from behind him, and it was moving fast.

Almon turned around with his bow drawn with an arrow ready for anyone to show themselves, and soon they did. Someone wearing yellow armor that didn’t exactly blend in with the environment was racing towards him, likely the same person he tried to hit through a few trees.

He did not hesitate and fired an arrow towards the armored individual's face, aiming for the one unprotected spot. But his arrow did not hurt his target, in the low light he could not easily tell what happened but it looked like whoever it was running deflected the arrow with his open hand.

‘What!? That's not possible!’ Almon did not like what he just saw and fired off several more arrows in quick succession that were all deflected the same. With nothing working he turned and tried to hobble away faster hoping that he could by some miracle outpace someone running at full speed.

That only lasted for about another ten seconds before he felt the armored individual tackled him to the ground.