Aiu was woken up by a noise of cracking wood. It was very early in the morning, the sun hasn’t risen yet.
She jumped in alarm as someone grabbed her.
“Shhh.” her guardian whispered.
He groped her from down to top, and this confused her. ‘Why this all of the sudden.’ Then she realised, she was being rubbed in monster repellent.
He lifted her herbalist’s dress, taking it off. His hands rubbed her all over. She felt weird being touched like this, even good. The paste was oily and felt good on her skin, he was applying in generously and rubbing it in gently. She sniffed it, it had a strong distinct smell. After finishing coating her, he handed her two vials of strange liquid.
‘Where did he even get them?’ She wanted to ask it, but her mouth was closed shut by his finger as soon as she opened it. He shook his head and she got the hint. They had to be silent, “Why? What’s going on?”
He grabbed a bunch of rusty stakes which normally would be used for pitching a tent. Then he grabbed a roll of very thick rope which was usually used to host sails of a ship. He went outside motioning her to follow.
Aiu noticed broken and toppled trees at the border of the clearing. It was the spot there the corpses were. She sneaked closer and noticed a huge serpent coiling its long body all around. It was big enough to swallow a bear whole and still have plenty of space in its belly.
She should be afraid, but she wasn’t. She trusted in her guardian.
Guardian ran to it from a side trying to ambush it and she followed. He jumped on the serpent’s long back, clinging to its body. He slammed the stake into the serpent’s body. It barely made a dent in its tough green scales, so he started to hammer it with a rock. It took him all his strength just to pierce the scale and wedge the stake inside. The serpent trashed and raised its head to attack; by that time the stake was in and the rope hooked on it.
“Now! Throw!” He shouted.
The young woman threw one of the vials smashing it to the serpents head. The liquid inside splashed all over releasing unpleasant odour. This stunned the snake missed its attack and shot past Guardian.
He jumped and ran up the serpent’s back, hammering another stake. The corpse eater was in an confused state. It moved and trashed but failed to throw of Guardian from its back.
He wedged another stake further along. Serpent was out of its daze and turned its head for another attack. Its maws were open trying to swallow him whole; its head was approaching.
Girl’s guardian raised his left hand in the air releasing a shockwave. This was magic, it hit the serpent’s head sending it off course and crashing to one of the trees.
He hammered another stake in its body. Now he was quite high up on its back, the serpent was unable to bend and reach him, so it tried to swing its body to throw him off.
He clung to its back using his claws and arm strength alone, climbing up and closer to its head. His goal was reached and he put another stake in. He was too high now and the Corpse Serpent was able to swing him off his head.
He grabbed the rope which was secured in all those stakes. He was swung quite far, but this served to his advantage. Guardian ran around the trees weaving them in thick rope; making knots and loops.
For some reason it ignored her Aiu completely. ‘The repellent must be responsible for this. If only we hand enough for my guardian.’ She realised why this was the case.
The serpent slithered towards the clearing moving away but it was stopped. The rope prevented it from moving.
The trees creaked and splintered, the rope let a loud noise as it vibrated under the tension. The beast pulled stronger and first of the stakes flew dislodged, taking its scale and a bit of a flesh off. But that was it, the serpent was trapped. Rest of the stakes and rope held it firmly.
It turned around changing its direction, loosening the rope. It slithered past the trees and the same rope which was binding it. Her guardian kept weaving it past the sturdy trees, louring the beast towards him again. The rope tightened again restraining serpent’s movement.
He jumped on the serpent’s back again, it tried to shake him. He held firmly on the rope climbing back towards the head.It did not take him long to reach it. The beast tried to roll this time but the rope prevented it. The serpent could not reach or shake him off this time.
He started to hit one of its scales which a pointy but thick dagger he grabbed from his side. It took a while but he managed to pry and remove it, then he removed another one. The beast did not like that and tried to trash about and move, this tightened the ropes even more as it was getting tangled.
Then Guardian chopped at its hide, exposing the flesh and removing chunks of it. The blood was gushing out but this was not enough to even be considered as a dangerous wound to this beast.
He stuck his arm deep into monsters flesh and released another magic shockwave. It blew the beast from inside making it spit blood. However, it was still alive. He was out of mana, but not out of options.
“Aiu bring me more rope and the knives we got yesterday.” He hoped she was still alive and well.
She ran out of her hiding shouting to wait up. It did not take her long to bring the stuff. She reluctantly approached the serpent.
“Is it safe?”
“it is tired and bound. It can move but cannot escape.”
The girl handed the knives and the rope. He used the rope to further secure the beast. It was better to be safe than sorry.
“Its underbelly is a lot easier to pierce.” He said raising its head using one of the many ropes.
Then he proceeded to slash horizontally using the knives. The scales were in the way to make the job easy. The blades got blunt quickly one by one.
“Can I help, somehow?” the girl asked.
“No the blood is toxic do not get it on your skin.”
“How about you?”
“My skin is much thicker than yours giving me resistance.”
“What if it gets in one of your wounds?”
“They are closed already. My regeneration ability is high.”
The girl did not want to believe it. He got injured just yesterday.
When the last knife expired, the slit was big enough and the beast was bleeding profusely.
“It will die soon.”
“And then?”
“I will harvest it for profit.”
“How much of it can we sell?”
“Most of it is useful. However we do not have the skill or equipment to do that.”
This was magical beast and its flesh and blood could be rendered into alchemical ingredients.
“What we can do is take the scales and leather off, tongue and eyes, special glands. If you gather the pot you could harvest some of the saliva. The rest of the body and organs will start to decompose very quickly, it is because of its caustic blood.”
It was easier to dismantle the scales from inside, but still it took the most of their day. She helped as much as she could to harvest the serpent.
The rest of its body will be burned to prevent rancid smell and attracting something even bigger.
“How much will we make selling this?”
“A small fortune, but this thing could sell for four times more.” He showed a squishy blue ball, it was the size of human fist.
“What is it?”
“Mana core. All magical creatures have it, even humans.”
“Do I have it?”
“You are not a mage, so no. If you became one you would grow it as your mana pool grew.”
He brought it to his mouth and then ate it. The girl was shocked in disbelief in what just happened.
“Why did you do that?”
“This will recharge and increase my mana pool. This is the reason I killed this Carcass Serpent.” The money will be just a nice bonus.
“Shall we go home?” the job was done and she was hungry, tired and stressed out.
“No we need to sell ingredients while they are still fresh.”
“The apothecary will be closed by the time we got there.” It would take ages to harvest it.
“It is not the apothecary we are going to. This is some serious stuff we got our hands on. We are going to the alchemist’s guild. They won’t mind it, even if it is afterhours. It is not every day they can get their hands on quality stuff.”
They spent the rest of the day taking the beast apart. Then they headed to the city. By the time they got there it was already night.
At first they were turned away, but they kept knocking on the alchemist’s guild door. The guardian shouted out that he had the good stuff and they better let them in. They were met by annoyed guild trader and quickly made their trade.
They received a good amount of gold for the eyes, tongue and glands. Her guardian asked the alchemists to process the pot of saliva to poison as part of the pay. The person they were talking agreed.
Also the trader asked about the bones. He wanted them too as they could be grinded to special powder. The teeth were valuable too, they could be easily enhanced and turned into daggers or talismans. Guardian agreed to bring it on the later date.
“So how much did you get?” Aiu asked.
“2 gold for two eyes, 1 gold and 6 silver for tongue, 1 gold for glands. Minus ten silver for making the poison. That sets us at 3 gold and 6 silver.” Twelve silver where equal to 1 gold coin. 3 gold was the amount of money a farmer would get after his summer harvest.
“Can I see the gold again?”
He passed a goil coin. She did not have many times to see actual gold. It was so shinny and pretty. She did not want to give it back, but knew that she has to.
“Why did making the poison cost so much?”
“It actually was a bargain. It is because a full pot of saliva will make quite a lot of poison and even small amounts were quite affective.”
“I see.”
They went straight back home; it was past midnight by then.
The work did not stop as they needed to gather wood to burn the serpent’s corpse. This was an easy way to get rid of the flesh from the bones. It was inedible.
The girl was asked to help but she could not; she was very tired. He clearly was not happy about it but, still let her go to the hut and sleep her exhaustion off.
She woke up late in the morning and went to look for her guardian.
The air was filled with foul smell of charred meat, the remains of serpent were still smouldering at the edge of the clearing. Guardian popped out of the woods. Conveniently he was holding a boar in his hand. The board’s head was smashed and the beast’s body looked broken in a few places. She would eat some high quality meat at last, something only rich would be able to afford.
She ran happy towards him saying good morning and asking how he slept. It turned out that he did not sleep, he was busy working. She asked how it went, listening carefully of him, paying attention to his intonation. She wondered if he was angry about her not staying to help. His voice sounded happy so he either forgave her or did not mind from the beginning.
He cut and skinned the beast while she prepared the fire with a big metal pot on it. The fat was separated from the meat. The boar meat was cut into smaller chunks and set to slowly cook while the fat was put to render indo lard using smaller pot. Hence from this day onwards the small put was retired to be used to make crafting stuff, and the big pot designated for the food.
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While the food cooked, her backpack was stuffed with scales. It was not big enough to fit all of them as there were too many scales. The serpent they have killed was 20 metres long. They had about 500 hundred scales (30x20 cm by size), plus its serpentine leather. She could not carry the rest but the Guardian could, and did so.
The leather was rolled and secured with rope on Guardian’s back, he stuffed the rest of the scales in sacks and carried them in his hands. He looked like a pack mule.
They went through the city, people looked oddly at them and kept respectable distance. Theyr eyes would get fixated on the large serpent skin and then to the one who was hauling it.
The pair reached the tanner and came inside the shop.
“Big man, this is what I am talking about! Did you kill it alone?” The tanner joked.
“No.” He shook his head.
“How many men did take? Ten, fifteen?”
“Only one more, she is standing beside me.”
Young woman waved her hand shyly. She was happy to receive some credit but she knew she did not deserve it.
“Hahaha. I would not believe if someone said that such beast was slain only by you… by the two of you. But seeing you and the very hide of it proves it.” tanner re-evaluated monstrous traveller standing in front of him. He was the size of three or even four batsmen after all.
“Mhm.”
“I can take the skin but this…” he handed back the scale he have taken to inspect “You will have to trade it to someone else. I am a tanner and you need an armour maker for this stuff. I can suggest a good customer of mine if you want.”
“How much for the skin then?”
“Roll it out I need to measure it.”
Tanner took his time to measure the skin. He did some calculations as well.
“Hmm… let’s make it 8 gold.”
“I can always trade it to someone else.”
“Ok, ok it was just a jest. I will round it up and make 10. How about that?”
“Better.”
‘Wow this is a small fortune’ the girl thought.
“Deal?” tanner stretched his hand.
“Deal.” He shook it.
“Ehhhm…” tanner cleared his thought. “I do not have such money on me. Can you wait until I process it and sell it to my other clients?” ten gold was not an amount of money which just laid around idly.
“I need the money. How about I keep some of the hardened leather once you process it, and take the money you have now?” This way he would need to pay tanner for processing the leather and would get some money out of him.
“All I can give is 3 gold and this leaves me in empty pockets.”
“That’s only a third of what we agreed but that is a yes, with one condition. Process this first.” He gave the boar pelt he hunted this morning.
He took it. And gave another one which was done already.
“There is no need to wait for me to do that, have this instead. I will be busy with the serpent skin.” he would have no tame to render other pelts, the serpent skin will take most of his time now. They made a trade.
He handed a bunch of silver and copper which were equal to 3 gold in value. And told them to come after a week or two to collect the rest.
The two took the money and went to look for the armour maker, the one tanner knew. It took a while but they found his shop.
The two were greeted with a very suspicious glare. The armour maker looked extremely wary of oversized brute who just stepped into his shop. Armour maker wondered what could a brute like Guardian possibly want, he was way too big for any of his armours and did not look rich enough to ask for a custom one.
The armour maker loosened his guard once hearing that the tanner send them here. He was more than happy to take the scales too. Her guardian did not sell all of them and kept most of the tiny ones and about two dozens of large scales.
They got a whopping 30 gold for that. The armourer practically emptied his entire coffer, but he deemed it a good trade. He would turn those into exquisite armour and
30 gold was a big sum for one man, but if one considered that it took at least ten skilled men to take the beast each of them would get only 3gold for their trouble. Still a large sum but one would think twice before risking his life for that. There also would be costs for equipment one would need to consider.
‘We are rich!’ The girl wanted to jump in glee.
After getting the money they went to one of the hunters who lived at the border of the city.
Unlike others he was neutral towards her guardian, even though he met him for the first time now.
“What business do you have with me?” he asked.
“I have knowledge that you are the master hunter here. One of the best I might add.” He was flattering him. Old man was not the best in this town.
“Yes, yes that is true. Are you in need of my services? But I doubt that since you killed that serpent. Didn’t you?” hunter said somewhat scornfully. He got the news from the tanner when he went to trade in his own pelts. He felt jealous.
“The world travels quickly. Could you teach magic skills? Harvest and Skin to be precise.”
“And why would I do that?”
The hunter did not want to increase his competition further. Especially training someone who could defeat the Corpse Serpent.
“I will pay you good.”
“No, I will teach you nothing. Magic skills are extremely precious as you know.”
“It is not me but this girl you will be teaching.” He pointed at the petite woman who stood behind him. She looked shy.
“Hmmm.” Hunter thought for a moment.
Her guardian opened his pouch showing the glistering gold.
“I have the money here and ready. Who can turn away easy gold just like that.”
The gold swayed the man’s mind. Only the idiot would say no to gold. He would not lose anything, teaching magic skills cost him nothing. Sure there was a limit on how often he could train someone, but still he lost nothing of material value in doing that. The girl was small and frail she would not outcompete him. As long as it was not that monstrously big stranger he was fine with it.
“Fine. 5 gold in total.”
The man was taken by greed. This was a rip off. It would normally cost 3. Guardian knew that hunters were very protective of their skills.
“Agreed.”
“Ah! On top of that I want the head of the serpent. You still have it no?” he wanted a trophy for himself.
“You are asking too much. Also its skeleton would be blackened from flame. I have burned the corpse.”
“I can clean and polish the bone there is no problem.”
“Okay. Teach this girl how to use a bow properly and we will have a deal.” he stressed the word properly.
“Fine she can come in evenings for next two weeks. I will show her how.” Hunter reluctantly agreed. He wanted that 5 gold and serpents head so he could boast that he had killed it himself.
The coins passed the hands and the deal was struck.
The hunter laid a leathery rug on a ground. It was marked with symbols and strange shapes. He splashed some of his blood on one of the shapes and told the girl to do the same. She cut her palm whith a knife. Droplets of blood sunk into the markings and they glowed slightly. Hunter said some sort of a prayer. She felt dizzy for a moment. The ritual gave her the Skin skill.
Now she would be able to get the pelt without needing to put a lot of effort. She no longer would need to manually separate it from the animal.
Then he took a large bone shaped into the dagger. It looked old and was purely decorative.
He told her to hold it while hunter again said something she could not comprehend. She learned a variation of a Harvest skill; it was Harvest animal. This enabled her to harvest the organs of the animal quickly. For the first time she would need to harvest particular organ from particular animal by hand. But second time she could use the skill to do that. If she got skilled at it, this step could be skipped if she roughly knew what she wanted to get from an animal.
She also got Identify animal. She would be able to tell what sort of animal she looked upon. No longer would she confuse direwolf with wolf.
Moreover, harvest animal had synergy with her observe and identify skills. It was possible to identify useful organs and their properties on an animal and apply them in alchemy later.
There also was a track skill which would help to find animal one searched. Essential skill for hunters. But she did not learn that one as she was not meant to be hunter and amount of utility skills one could have was limited.
Her guardian watched with interest while she received the skills. Once it was done they went back home and ate the lunch. It was boiled boar with some vegetables. The meat tasted nice and soft, it was spiced with some leaves found in forest.
“What will you do with all this money?” she asked him.
They had money equal to 31 gold and 6silver. Large portion of it was actually in gold and copper. Her guardian kept the gold coins they had in a separate leather poach.
“Do you think we have a lot and are rich now?” he asked in turn.
“Well yeah.”
In a week they got more than a skilled warrior in two years.
“Money melts away very quickly, you will see.”
He avoided telling what he will spend it on.
After finishing their lunch they went to the blackened remains of the serpent. They had to pick and clean the charred flesh from the many bones. This was gruelling, boring and very tiresome. It took them the rest of the day to do that. The bones were clean and sorted into the piles.
The two went to the stream to wash off the dirt and soot from their bodies. Her guardian’s skin was already dark in colour so it was not that visible on him; Aiu was a completely different story. She undressed and started to rub her skin trying to return it to the normal colour. It took a lot of effort and a lot of scrubbing.
“If only there was an easier way to get this out.”
“There is, it is called soap.”
She forgot they had money and could afford such luxury now.
“We need to buy a lot of it. I imagine we would need it every day. And you are so big!” her guardian would probably need half a bar to lather all of his body. The work they did everyday was very dirty too.
“No need. You are herbalist now I will show you how to make it from tallow and ash.”
They went back to their hut and she set her dress to dry outside. She was nude and uncovered but she was given the boar pelt to use as a cower so she does not get cold during the night. They went to bed early as they had much to do tomorrow.
They started to harvest the forest goods as soon as the sun have risen. Besides the herbs, she picket the nuts every time she found ripe ones on the nut bush. She was making stash of them.
Just before the midday they went back storing the stuff they have gathered. She checked the lye water she have left before in the morning, it was not quite ready jet. She was told to mix some ash from fire place with water and let it sit to make that lye water which was used for soap.
Then they gathered bones and hauled them to the alchemist’s guild. They could not carry all of them in one go as there were just too many. They had to make a few trips.
Selling the bones got them 20 silvers which was almost equal to 2 gold.
They went back to the hut, Guardian strapped the serpents head to his back using some rope. The head was huge and they had to leave the teeth in, they were quite valuable too. They could not sell them because the hunter wanted the head with all its four teeth. The trophy head would wold look stupid without its teeth.
The hunter was very pleased to receive the head, he instructed his wife to start cleaning it while he took the girl to the range to show her how to use a practise bow. Guardian did not stay and left to attend his business back in the city, before the shops closed for the day.
While training she felt useless, her arms lacked strength to draw the bow string far enough. Her fingers lacked dexterity to make it accurate, her eye-hand coordination was very poor. However the old hunter was very patient, he did not belittle or shouted at her. He encouraged Aiu and assured that she will get better if she kept coming to train.
None of her arrows flew straight or far enough, the target seemed unreachable for her. It took at least 30 minutes of practise before she was able to shoot the arrow without messing it up.
“So how come a human girl is tagging along with such an odd person?” huntsman asked out of interest.
The two looked completely mismatched. It was a type o huge beastman, who looked more monster than a man, and a tiny useless looking girl. She was clearly not suited for manual labour men wood do. So why he was having her. If he wanted a servant to do his bidding a man would be better as he could carry more and would be useful in labour.
On top of that he was paying for her skills and training. He pondered that the girl might be a noble of some sort, but she was too skinny to be one so he ruled it out.
“He adopted me from an orphanage. I am his apprentice.” The girl said proudly.
Such a weird thing to do. There would be plenty of healthy and willing people to work for him for few coppers, or experience alone. The big man was clearly skilled, he was able to take down the serpent.
“So is he a hunter?” the old man still worried about having competitors he knew little about.
“No, a herbalist. I think.”. Officially, she was named herbalist apprentice so he must be one/
The huntsman relaxed a bit. It was still odd that he was a herbalist and not some warrior retiring to be a hunter.
“I see, I see.”
This still explained little why he would take a girl from orphanage. Was she serving him in different ways, but he daubed that beastman would go after human women, and after such underdeveloped ones.
It was widely known that batsmen preferred their own. Same could be told about humans. But there were deviations, especially then it came to seeking pleasure and not seeking to make family. Was that tall stranger like that… He could not ask that, and he did not care if he was.
“No offence, but it is odd he is paying for you to get educated. You are not even one of his kind and this would usually be reserved for one’s own children.”
The girl actually thought about it quite a lot. What master hunter said was true. She came to the conclusion that since he could not have children, that being because there was no one else of his kind around, he took her as his step daughter. However she did not want to disclose this information. It was private family mater.
“It is because he is very kind.”
Hunter doubted that. The man looked like a brute one would expect to eat his enemies after the battle, just like more barbaric batsmen did.
She kept practising under hunter’s instruction and the hour went by very quick. Aiu was told to get a bow and some arrows so she could continue practising more at home. The hunter even offered to sell some used ones for the cheap as he had some old stuff around. It would be useless if it came to real hunting, but still good for practise.
Meanwhile her guardian went on a spending spree. He bought barrels, many clay pots and other containers. Some generic tools and other mundane materials were purchased. This had costed him roughly 18 silver (1 gold 4 silver).
He purchased a herbalist book which had pictures and descriptions of various plants which costed him 3gold. Books were very expensive since they were all handwritten.
He spent a whopping 10 gold on alchemical guide and recipe books. This was the stuff nobles and rich would buy for their children as an education tool, if they were to become alchemists.
Also he bought alchemical tools and distillation equipment, which was mostly glassware so it was expensive, totalling another 3 gold coins.
He spent 16 silver purchasing a book for young children, they would children from a noble house. It was meant to be used in teaching someone how to read and write. It was cheap because it was not new. Incidentally there were not many who could read or write even in noble families, they had scribes for that.
Guardian was the lucky one who could. This was due to his hard work and effort integrating himself in civilized sociality. Civilized only in a subjective terms as the civil part of it was actually in a decline.
He also bought some more work gear for the Aiu. The most expensive piece were leather boots. This added another 16 silver on his expenses. On top of that he bought some alchemical ingredients from the apothecary; the stuff he could not obtain or make himself like herbalist’s oil and solvent. Spending another 3 gold.
His expenses were over 23 gold coins now.
He needed more stuff but his money were running out so he decided to wait and save up putting the stuff he has bought to good use first. He picked up most of the goods and arranged the rest to be collected tomorrow, he will send Aiu for that. He hauled what he had straight to home.
By that time the girl was walking back home, she was using a narrow overgrown path bordering the forest.
Out of nowhere a feral domesticated wolf jumped and attacked her. The forest was dangerous and she forgot that. its teeth sunk into her leg. She was fortunate to get attacked by domesticated one and not an actual forest wolf. It was a stray. It has probably escaped or has been abandoned at some point. Domesticated wolves who turned feral again lacked basic skills to survive in the forest so they prayed on an easy prey like other small domestic animals or children.
Aiu’s panic did not last long, she gripped a vial her guardian gave her a day ago. She shattered it into the wolf’s head hopping it will work just the same as it did with on serpent.
It did, it stunned the wolf, its eyes got teary and the nose was itchy and full of burning sensation. It’s head felt like spinning. The wolf let her go and started to sneeze violently while stumbling around.
She used the chance to take a small skinning knife she carried. She crawled towards the wolf while it was still stunned, clutching the knife in one of her arms. She plunged the knife into the wold again and again. The blood splashed all over and the wolf struggled to get away. It succeeded eventually and scampered away whilst whining loudly.
The girl stood up and tried to catch the wolf to finish him. It did not run too far as it was injured. It fell down due to shock and loss of blood.
The girl fell down too as the rush of adrenaline was over and she clutched her leg in pain. It was bleeding but it was not too bad. She looked down on her arms and dress they were dyed in wolf’s blood.
She limped continuing her journey, glad that she was a winner. Aiu was distracting herself from pain by fantasising how she would be able to boast about her kill.