Yavneck’s steps across the forest were silent even with all the dry leaves getting crushed underneath his boots. His ability to accomplish such a feat is a mix of his [Sneak] skill, experience, and knowledge of where to take a step around the forest floor. An ability to accomplish such a thing is essential when one is moving across the forest so as to not alert any nearby monster or animal.

Crunch

Each cracking sound was painful for Yavneck to hear, it was as though his ears had bones and they break every time the crunching sound enters. He had spent half an hour with the siblings and he is now thoroughly confused as to how the two could be so confident in going to the forest with him; they did not have any experience (even when they said otherwise,) they make loud noises, and more importantly, they gawk at everything they see like it was their first time seeing it.

Chances are, from how they’re reacting, it most likely is their first time seeing such things.

He was tempted to throw them off his trail and just leave them behind to die, they were deep enough into the forest already and Yavneck deemed that the siblings are inexperienced enough to easily get lost around the woods.

Throwing them away like that does raise problems however, problems like Barow, who knew that Yavneck came from a Bandit camp that lived in a forest as well as also with the knowledge that the siblings are the ones accompanying him in the forest- and when these two go missing, then it would be easy to guess who’s the culprit and what their motives are.

I.E. a bandit who lived in a forest doing forest bandit things.

Actually, he would do the things back when he was a bandit- such as right now where he’s bending down to set a snare trap between two diagonal trees. Yavneck eyed the two siblings as worked, watching them carefully to see what they were doing, and well, even after a while, the two simply just stood there, standing around without a care in the world.

It frustrated him, seeing the two like this and his emotions only got worse when he considers the fact that they’re adamant about staying with him so that they can “protect” him from the Dire Bear, a dangerous beast that requires a full team of adventurers just to take down an adult of the species.

Yavneck doubts that the two in front of him can even put up a fight let alone kill it so once again, he’s gonna try to persuade them to leave- “You’re still not going away?” Yavneck asked as he finished the trap, he turned to the two of them and glared at the pair, “All you do is stand there, doing nothing, I think it would be better if you just leave me to gather the rest of the herbs by myself.”

“Well… you see,” the girl started, “we don’t really know how to go around the forest by ourselves,”

Yavneck’s lip twitched as he swallowed down a sarcastic retort, “And why are you here then?”

The boy started to speak first, "We thought that we can help you-"

Help? What help?! - "And are you?" Yavneck grit out.

His eyesight turned red and he pointed to the two siblings before gesturing to the bag he was carrying and the trap that he had set, he opened his mouth to angrily point out that he’s the one who’s responsible for gathering herbs and setting traps but before he could speak, his mind caught up to his emotions and he took a deep breath to forcibly calm himself.

Great, he had gotten angry- he took another breath closed his eyes, and opened them- when he realized that he was about to get angry again, he repeated the process and when he was calm, he started talking, "As far as I'm aware, you two have just been following me and looking around as if what we're doing is some sort of tour instead of the dangerous situation that it is!"

An angry looked crossed the girl's face before she snapped and pointed at him accusingly, "You were the one who wanted to go to a forest with a Dire Bear inside of it!" She yelled, voice raised to the point that it made Yavneck worry if something out there heard it, "While we wanted to help you because you're unable to do anything!"

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Right next to her, the boy nodded, "Yeah, you should be more thankful that-"

"Thankful?" Yavneck seethed, venom dripping from his voice, "Thankful for what? Your incompetence? And you-" he glared at the girl, "- what help? The one where you stood back and watched? Or maybe the part where you and your brother took a leisurely stroll around the forest instead of being vigilant and taking this entire thing seriously? As far as I'm aware, the only one who's been doing anything all this time has been myself, meanwhile, the only thing that the two of you did is watch impotently, doing nothing."

Yavneck breathed, his anger is getting the best of him again but could he really help it? Here he was, crippled and doing his best to recover while taking stock of his current situation only for these two idiots to suddenly decide that they wanted to go with him into the forest and start making things worse. To say that they are nothing more than heavyweights would be an understatement because as far as he's concerned, his crippled arm has more use than these two morons.

The two stayed silent and Yavneck took it as a sign of them giving up. Well, good luck to them because now they’d have to go out of this forest by themselves- “I’m leaving,” he said with finality, “if you want to follow me, be my guess, but I’m not waiting for you anymore.”

The siblings said nothing even as Yavneck walked away from the two of them, he didn't care what the people back in the Hamlet is gonna think about the death of these two, not when they could possibly kill him with their incompetence instead.

His hand reached inside his robe and up his shoulder where it then pulled the strap of his bag tighter, he grunted when something sharp inside the damn thing pressed itself against his back, forcing him to adjust the weight and check the contents; he's been gathering herbs for the better part of half an hour now and so far, his expedition has yielded good results and he managed to snag off a few of the better herbs that can be found within the forest.

He did collect a few for himself of course, herbs such as Adrenaline Daisies and Great Roots are two of the few things that he prioritizes because one should allow him to brew something akin to a Stamina Potion, and the other can often result in a healing item when mixed with various substances. Yavneck bent down and picked up a black oval stone and shoved it inside his Port. Sponge Rocks can be useful too, he supposed.

He would try his hand at brewery, and Yavneck's ultimate goal isn't to craft a Stamina Potion or even something that can heal him, no, he wanted to try and remake Cego's strength potion, and though he didn't have the "secret” material that the Fratenian Kingdom had been providing Cego back at the camp, Yavneck deemed that with enough attempts at alchemy, he could potentially synthesize something that's similar to Bearman blood, which would allow him to make a fully functioning strength potion that isn't over reliant on a nigh extinct race of demi-humans to make.

At best, it would take him years to do something like that, but Yavneck has time and it's not like the strength potion is the only goal that he would be working towards. Sure, he'd put hours into trying to remake it but otherwise? It would be nothing more than a side project that has the potential to be great.

Yavneck pushed a branch out of the way, stepped forward, and let go, causing it to snap back in place and the sound of a painful, female cry- "AH!" - to erupt from behind him.

The scholar ignored it to the best of his ability and continued moving forward, he didn't see the point in caring about the siblings any further and the more time went on, the more those thoughts cemented themselves on his mind, Yavneck didn’t want to care about the siblings as even now, they seem to be satisfied with following him around like last time. Expecting the two to help him- which is what they told him they’d do in the first place, - would result in nothing but angry thoughts that do nothing but call them incompetent.

Though, Yavneck hoped that should they encounter anything dangerous in this place, the two would actually prove useful rather than act inane and stupid, he hoped that they would be able to use the short swords they were carrying and fight back instead of being unable to do anything more than pretend to fight as danger descended.

So far, nothing really happened and time slowly passed, Yavneck continued gathering herbs while the other two did nothing more than watch him and pretend to be vigilant about potential threats- there obviously weren't any, and that much is proven the more time they spent unharmed inside the forest.

And speaking of time, Yavneck made great use of his early morning expedition/herb run by setting up as many traps as he humanely could, it had gotten to a point that he couldn't even remember how many traps he had placed by the time the herb bag became full.

Given that his target is a Dire Bear, chances are the traps wouldn’t do anything other than irritate it but that’s exactly his intention, because an angry Dire Bear would find targets and Yavneck hoped that it would see the Goblins living inside this forest as the ones responsible for making the traps.

As he got out of the forest, Yavneck wished that he realized the potential of traps much sooner, because if he did, then maybe his [Build Trap] skill wouldn’t just be sitting at a meager Lvl 1.