Back at the new land, Matais and Jiotian were happily breaking up soil, which Mahayah magicked into dense bricks. Cerise's parents were going about with the [Farmers] and [Surveyors] to establish the lease lines, a task that involved putting down the boundary spikes and setting imprimaturs from the [Surveyor], the land owner, and the leaser.
Sir Brais and the mayor had left, but Israi was slicing at trees that needed to be cleared for field cultivating and Heral was helping her, explaining something about building up endurance and stamina. It kind of sounded like a cadence.
Cerise and Mykhal decided to avoid that. Daisy and the Honorables' dire horses were hobbled over at a quick-made corral, and their cart was set inside with the dires to guard it. A few of the [Farmers] waiting to mark off their lease lines were standing near, but not too near, the corral. A smaller few of them raised their hands in greeting, and Cerise and Mykhal waved hellos, but continued to the corral.
"Them beasts be fierce!" someone with the [Farmers'] group yelled.
Cerise nodded. "Yep. Puck's been trained to bite," she agreed. She nickered to the horses, «How have you been?»
«Good! Guarding!» they whinnied back.
Mykhal went to the cart while Cerise went to greet the horses and check them for irritants. She found a few fly bites, and called over, "Mykhal, remind me to ask Mama about making up a batch of her fly bane. In the meantime, hand me Daisy's cloak, please?"
"Alright," he said, setting the cart cover aside. He pulled out the cloak, and Cerise took it, putting it on Daisy. She also got out the face brush and went over each dire's head, murmuring praises and reminding them what good beauties they were.
"Hey, Cerise, which seeds need to be assessed?" Mykhal asked.
"Give me a moment to finish here and I'll pull them out," she said.
The [Farmers] had drifted closer, curious it seemed, and one asked, "What seeds are these?"
Cerise answered, "Ones we've collected all the way down from the foothills of the Northern Sartalg Mountains to here. We can Identify them just fine, and most are for plants we or the dires here dined on, but if there are uses for them other than eating, there are some we aren't sure of. Mama has Expert Cooking and she's working on her Alchemy, so she'll be the one deciding what we do with them. On the road, she mentioned finding an [Alchemist] to help sort out reagent from spice, and when Mykhal and I were over getting our guild paperwork sorted, I brought up Mama's interest, and it turns out Master Yanasi is an [Alchemist]. She's eager to see what we gathered."
"Well, mind if we look at them?" the man who had taken it upon himself to be the [Farmer] spokesman asked.
Cerise shrugged. "I need to sort out the ones we want an [Alchemist] to assess from the rest. If you can use your skills while I'm doing that, you're welcome to do so in as much as I'm concerned. And if you see any seeds you'd like, talk with Mama. I know she's not so interested in growing plants as in cooking them."
She finished with the horses and went back, returning the brush to the box of horse gear. Then she pulled out her scribe box and several panniers of cloth pockets and pouches. On a whim, she also brought out the panniers of fodder.
"What's your Herbalism up to?" she asked her friend.
"Practiced-3," Mykhal said.
"Bundle these up while I sort the seeds, please?" She pulled out enough of the magic herbs for a single daily treat. "Vary the herbs, but about this bright to your Hunter's Sense. Try to keep the bitters well mixed with sweets and starches."
"Those for some Alchemy thing?" the spokesman asked.
Cerise shook her head. "That's wild gathered forage to keep the dires over there sweet tempered. Dire beasts need mana or they turn monstrous. I think it was Papa who asked about how easy it would be to grow dire grains. They're the only reason we even knew such was possible. I did get the seeds that were ready to come off from those."
"That's good coin going into their bellies," he protested.
"Gather is good coin we didn't spend to feed the beasties, and the one that's ours went dire on us while we were on the road. She's a good horse, and I hope we can keep her. Daisy takes to the harness well. I'll be interested to see how well she does as a plow mare."
The [Farmer] pursed his lips and turned a thoughtful gaze toward the dire horses.
Cerise set up her scribe box as a surface to sort the seeds onto. She pulled out a few sheets of paper and folded two to make pockets. She also drew out her mark stick, but set it and the papers aside for the moment. Then she went through the seeds, pulling out two sets of seed samples.
One set was just the seeds of the magical plants and the other contained a seed from all those they had gathered. She wrote the name that her Appraise skill showed her as a list, putting a sparkle mark (*) next to the magical plants.
Cerise only had to ask the [Farmers] once to not block her light.
They discussed the wild gathered seeds, and Cerise soon added two more marks, a down pointing arrowhead (▼) and an up arrowhead (▲). The down was for the plants the [Farmers] were interested in and the up for the ones she knew her mother had liked, or that Cerise could use for Potion Brewing. Where interests aligned, the arrows turned into a diamond (♦), some filled with sparkles.
Her mother returned during her sorting, and Cerise gave her the long version of why she was sorting the seeds now instead of after their house was built. Mother Bergin pursed her lips at her daughter, but conceded that good relations with the Free Lancers Compound Master was an acceptable reason.
She claimed one of the waiting [Farmers] and they left to go settle his lease boundaries.
Cerise's father showed up, frowned at Cerise, but accepted her quick statement. "Already talked with Mama. It's Free Lancers related." He, too, left with a waiting [Farmer].
Mykhal finished with the bundling and took over Scribing, but by that point Cerise was nearly done with the sorting. They restored order to the cart and Cerise gave the horses each a quarter of an apple as a treat before they took off with the lists and more than a few of the paper pockets filled with seeds. Cerise had marked the magic-only set with sparkles and left the other set unmarked.
----------------------------------------
When they returned to the guild, Hildai was awake again and her party was drinking with Jaxin. She slumped when she spotted Cerise and Mykhal walk in. The clerk was with someone, but paused and called out, "Delving Lights! Master Yanasi's waiting for you. Sarah, would you take them up?"
Cerise and Mykhal politely called back their thanks for the message and followed the older woman who got up at the clerk's request. They were led to office on a second floor of the building, to a largish corner office. Sarah knocked on the door frame and then opened the door. "Master, the Delving Lights."
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"Thank you, Sarah!" Yanasi said, sounding gleeful. She smiled enthusiastically as she stood up and showed the duo to a round table to the side of her office. "You did bring them with you, right?" she asked.
Cerise pulled the paper pockets from her belt pouch, along with one of her blank journals, the list tucked in the front, and a mark stick. While she sorted the pockets into their sets, she said, "I wasn't sure what to bring and leave, so I just made two sets. These marked are the seeds harvested from only the magic plants while the unmarked came from just about all the plants with seeds we gathered." She pulled out her list and explained about having the [Farmers] looking over her shoulder and the mark meanings.
"You have as neat a hand as some of the clerks," Yanasi commented as she glanced over the list. Her eyes stopped on several entries, then she picked up one of the unmarked seed pockets and looked at Cerise. Cerise nodded, and Yanasi spilled the seeds out onto the table. Cerise sensed the precise passage of a skill, and Yanasi sorted the seeds into two piles.
"The smaller one is just food seeds. These have some alchemical use."
Cerise pulled the food seeds to her and added a new note to her list to denote simple food seeds, this a box (☐). She put them back in the paper pocket.
Yanasi had kept her skill up as she examined the seeds in the pile in front of her. About half were set to the side. "I'll need to experiment to find out what those can be used for. These here are well documented in the herbal guides at the Consortium."
Cerise looked at the experiment pile and pulled one seed out. "That's Crabble Briar. It's a common plant up North. The juice is used to soothe bug bites, but it's mostly cultivated for natural fencing. The thorns deter anything larger than a fox from crawling through, and crabble berries are a sweet-sour taste."
Yanasi nodded. "I still want to experiment."
They were done going through the seeds in a few rush marks with Cerise and Mykhal sharing what they knew of the Northern seeds. At the end, Cerise indicated the set of unmarked seeds and asked, "I mentioned Mama planned to post a request. Would these be a good request reward?"
Yanasi laughed. "You two really are new! If you had posted this as a quest, you would have been guided to set the reward around two to five large. The value of all those seeds is easily a silver leaf, and possibly up to a branch."
Cerise nodded. "What about a request for skill mentoring?"
"For yourself?" Yanasi asked.
"For Mama. She has Alchemy and is a [Generalist]. I only have Brew Potions, so making glues or varnishes does me no help on advancing my class."
"That would be coin and contract."
Cerise asked, "Do you want to experiment with these?"
"Ah," Yanasi said. "Yes, I do. And you are used to bartering, not trading. Currency, trade, is far more beneficial to Free Lancers in general and so as the Compound Master, it is my job to promote that. If you want me to experiment with the unknown seeds and provide you with my results, here's how you go about it as a Free Lancer."
Not a rush mark later, they were downstairs in the guild hall, at the counter, filling out a request form. Sarah was now manning the counter, and when she realized what their request was for, she burst out with a loud, "Oh, blessing upon you! This will have Master Yanasi dancing for joy!"
While they were filling out their forms, people began to trickle in, grabbing tokens for the counter queue. By the time they were done, half the tables were occupied by sweaty, dirty people, many bruised and banged up. Cerise swept them with her Triage Aura and found one in need of attention. She marched up to their table and asked, "Who's your [Healer]?"
Inspects fired off on her, and she returned them on the people at the table. None had a [Healer] class. One of the two [Scouts] said, "I am."
"Miss Warrah here has a concussion. Do you know how to treat that?" Cerise asked.
"She's wobbly, but ... no," he admitted.
Cerise nodded and said, "Miss Warrah, my apologies. I am going to be talking around you to your party's [Healer]. Mister Lowel, her pupils are dilating out of pace, and there is swelling across the temple here." Cerise then asked for the [Scout's] healing skills and showed him how to use those skills to treat the concussion, including how to monitor for things going worse.
"Can we pay you to heal her up, Miss ban Siverwood, and what would that cost us?" their [Warrior], who appeared to be evenly between Mykhal and her father in age, asked.
"Mykhal and I joined the guild recently enough that we're still Copper Rank, and the Code of Conduct, if you pay me, that's taking a request, which we aren't to do until we're Bronze. So, no, you can't pay me." As she spoke, she brought out her needles and a jar of healing potion she had intended to take over to the Consortium for assessment. "However, you can think kindly of us and be willing to offer a helping hand should we get in over our heads in the dungeon. Mykhal, would you please see if there's any salt at the bar? I only need two pinches in a cup."
"Okay," he said, taking off.
Cerise went into her spiel about her Surgery skill, and Mykhal returned at the tail end of it with a cup. Cerise added water from her water bag and used Brew Potion to transform the mixture into sterile saline, which she then used with a piece of gauze to mask her use of Greater Cleanse to clean the concussed woman's skull and her needles.
Inspect skills were firing off all over the room, and more people were entering and being informed of the spectacle. Someone whistled and said fairly loudly, "Damn! That needle is an Artifact!"
Cerise, already more focused on healing than speaking, said, "I thought something of the like. The Whisperer in the Leaves gave it to me for healing her Guardian. It's not much use to anyone without the Surgery skill, which so far as I've met or heard of, is just me.
"Now, Miss Warrah, I'm going to tap you with a Paralyze skill. Surgery is all about doing the least damage on the way to the problem site. I don't want you moving and causing more harm. I will be keeping up skills that prevent infection in the wound I will have to make. I will also be using a pain blocking skill, but you will still feel pressure. Are you ready for this?"
"Yeah! Do it!" she cheered.
Cerise did. It took a rush mark, and Cerise put the patient to sleep afterward, catching her and gently repositioning her to sleep at the table. "I'll Dispel the Slumber in a rush mark or two."
Lowol the [Scout][Healer] said "I just got a skill called Triage from watching you work. What in the Abyss?"
Cerise laughed and said, "Good on you! If you fire that off just under your regeneration rate, within a moon or two, you should get the Aura mutation. Be careful where you have that Aura up because it can get overwhelming. On the bright side, it's a [Healer's] advancement of Sense Life in the Aura form."
Hildai stomped over, reluctance in every line of her body. "Hey, [Healer] girl, I'm sorry," she barked out.
Cerise felt her entire body go flat. She turned, contemplating dropping the woman with another Slumber, but held off. "What do you think you're sorry for?" she asked instead.
"I offended you I didn't mean to, but I did, I'm sorry you were offended."
"No, you're not," Cerise said, coldly angry. She kept going, not pausing for Hildai's sputtered protests. "If you were genuinely sorry, you would have asked yourself why walking up to complete stranger like a noble expecting bowing and scraping, obviously having used an Inspect skill to know my class, but choosing to call me '[Healer] girl' like I'm a slave and not deserving of a name or the respectful 'Miss' of a Freeman, you would have thought about maybe why that would be offensive.
"If you were genuinely sorry, you would have asked yourself how you would feel if someone came up to you and said, 'Wanna join a real party?' like the party you're in isn't real, like your teammates never bled for you, never watched out for you, never shared the last scrapes of their food with you. Or worse, like you were some parasite willing to gorge on the yields of their sweat and bruises and blood, then abandon those teammates for some idiot who won't concede to you the the dignity of calling you 'Miss'.
"No-no-no-no! I know you didn't know any of that!" she said, still rolling over Hildai's objections. "Because you did not ask yourself those questions! You still are not looking beyond your own nose to see that you are face to face with real people!
"Now, your party is off my nuisance list. They got you to apologize, and they have to deal with you. I'd say that's punishment enough. You, do not come to me for healing unless that's the only way you're going to get the [Survivor] achievement. And if that does came to pass, thank Noq-el for his generosity!
"Now, go away." Cerise waved a dismissal at the narcissistic [Warrior] woman.
Hildai fumed for a moment, flexing her hands, and Cerise was angry enough that she wanted the [Warrior] to swing on her. Hildai, though, controlled herself, turned, and stomped back to her table.
There was a moment of silence from the crowd, broken shortly by a man clapping giddily. The crowd turned to stare at him. He looked back, his excitement making him bounce in his seat. "Guys, there's a [Healer], a true [Healer], blessed by the God of Death! In our guild! If anyone can learn True Resurrection," he held out his hand toward Cerise. "that's her!"
Cerise shook her head as the crowd's gaze swung back to her. She turned to Lowol. "I have some business at the Consortium. I'll be back to Dispel Miss Warrah's nap. In the meantime, it's probably at least of benefit to you to keep watching her with Triage up." She and Mykhal left.