“Finally, you’re back. Took you long enough. Let’s go.”

They hadn’t even had the chance to enter the hut before the door opened and Almina met them outside.

“Uh, Almina, could we get some information on the herbalist profession?”

“Don’t mix up priorities. We can talk about herbalism later. Those dawn herbs are what matters. ”

“Dawn herbs? You mean those orange herbs we brought earlier?”

“Yes. Now stop asking so many questions and follow me already,” the npc said as she looked back at the four players who stood still in a daze.

“Right. Can you explain where we’re going?”

“No. All you guys need to worry about is protecting me while we’re out there.”

Yunya looked back at his companions, not knowing what to do with this rude woman. Unfortunately for him, neither did they. And even though the quest had been updated, it didn’t help either.

Quest Secret of the boars II Description Eldwin has a feeling there is more to the story behind the pregnant alpha boar. You somehow convinced him to let you investigate this further and have discovered that the herbs she was eating seem suspicious. Protect Almina the herbalist while she investigates the origins of the dawn herbs. Reward a personal favor from Eldwin

Sighing, they followed Almina in silence. That silence lasted a full five minutes before Breeze couldn’t take it anymore.

“Zephyr, what is the survivalist profession about?”

“It’s stuff like eating berries to regain health or use fresh water to wash yourself and get a temporary buff. A bit too solo-play oriented if you ask me.”

“So I assume you’re not picking that one?”

“No. I’m leaning towards thief or architect I think. I’ve still got plenty of time left before I have to make a choice anyway. You guys?”

“Alchemist.”

Breeze didn’t even hesitate when she answered.

“That’s… unexpectedly decisive of you.”

Breeze glared at Yunya, “Hmph! The alchemist mentioned that they have a knack for combining opposing things. I want to get good with multiple magic elements, so it’ll come in handy one way or the other.”

“And alchemy potions can sell quite well,” Path added. And before her friend could say anything, she said she’d probably pick painter or herbalist.

“I’ve always liked drawing, so painter would fit me pretty decently. While herbalist could go well with Breeze being an alchemist.”

“Although I like dancer, I need to think about my image as a future guild leader,” she thought to herself.

“How about you, Ashen?”

“Cartographer is dexterity with a little mind, which matches the class I want. Investigator on the other hand could be really helpful in solving quests I think. Finding clues to continue a quest can be a pain, just look at the boar quests. If Breeze hadn’t jokingly said something about the pregnancy, who knows how long it could’ve taken us.”

“That was a genuine guess!”

Yunya continued talking as he ignored Breeze’s remark: “Enchanter and alchemy are doubtful, since I would need a workbench for those, but I want to be able to do my profession wherever I am. And after talking to the npcs, I’m no longer interested in the other few professions. Although there’s still one more profession I know nothing about,” Yunya said as he gestured at the npc running in front of them.

As if on cue, Almina stopped running and turned around.

“We’re here. There should be some clues I can find in the meadow up ahead, so make sure I don’t get disturbed.”

“What are we guarding you from? Monsters? Or humans?”

Almina looked Zephyr straight in the eye after that question for a solid few seconds. Seeing as to how Zephyr wasn’t backing down, she eventually relented.

“I don’t know. I hope human. ‘Cause if it's monsters, it most likely means he sent them here.”

“He?”

“Don’t ask too many questions, boy,” she said before mumbling, “At least not before I confirmed it.”

“Okay,” Yunya said to break the tension, “let’s split up. Breeze and I will go look for high ground, Zephyr and Path stay near Almina.”

“Who do you think ‘he’ is?” Breeze asked once they were far enough from Almina.

“No idea, but I don’t think we met ‘him’ already. If I really had to guess, it's probably someone from Red Reef, but someone from the past.”

“A former inhabitant?”

“Ye. Remember how agitated Almina was when we first showed her those herbs and immediately asked who else we showed them to?”

“She did? I uh, wasn’t paying much attention if I’m being honest,” Breeze whispered.

Yunya sighed, “Yes, she did. But what I’m 100% sure of is that she knows ‘him’ personally.”

Breeze nodded in agreement and when they finally reached the top of the little hill they’d been climbing, breathed a sigh of relief.

“Aahn, what a nice view from up here.”

“You do know we’re here to survey the area and look out for enemies right?”

“Mhm,” Breeze said as she spun around. “Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the view.”

Yunya didn’t answer, instead climbing the lone tree on the hill. From up there, he could see the entire meadow, with the exception of a few clusters of trees near the edges.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

And he could see a patch of what seemed to be orange herbs.

“Zephyr, I think there’s a patch of dawn herbs about 100 meters west of where you guys are,” Yunya sent the rogue a message. Soon, he saw how Almina and Path looked at Zephyr, then at him, then went towards the patch.

“Ashen, do clouds always move in such strange ways?”

“Hmm?” Yunya turned around, looking to where Breeze was pointing. On the ground, the shadow from one of the clouds was moving faster and in an odd pattern. Yunya then looked up, trying to find the actual cloud. Unfortunately, the sun was in the way, preventing him from doing so. Squinting, he kept looking until he finally found what he was looking for.

“Fuck, that’s not a cloud. It’s birds. A lot of birds.”

“Are they the monsters Almina warned us about?”

“Maybe. It’s too soon to tell. But they’re definitely not normal birds.”

“Hm? Ashen, Path says we need to come over.”

Both of them joined up with the others, where Almina was lost in a daze. Up close, Yunya could tell it was indeed a patch of dawn herbs they were situated in, but some had been picked, leaving empty stalks everywhere. And Almina was staring at those stalks.

“Has she said anything?” Yunya whispered, afraid to wake the npc up.

“No, she just looked at the herbs, found the empty stalks, then became… this,” Path explained. “You think we should wake her up?”

“Let’s give her some time. If she’s still like that in half an hour, I say we wake her up.”

“Sounds good.”

“By the way, look out for birds. There’s a big flock of them somewhere with unnatural behavior. I hope I’m wrong, but they might be the monsters Almina warned us about.”

Path and Zephyr nodded, both subconsciously looking into the sky.

“They like to hide in front of the sun,” Yunya chuckled. “Look at the ground, find the one shadow of a cloud that behaves differently. It’s how Breeze found them initially.”

With Yunya’s tip, it didn’t take long for them to find the flock. Zephyr said he found the behavior suspicious indeed, but it’s not like they could do anything about it except wait. And that’s what they did. They waited. And then waited some more. Yunya and Zephyr had been thinking about Almina’s ‘him’, but didn’t really get anywhere, not with the daze the herbalist was in. Instead, Yunya had been trying to entertain himself by following the movements of the flock.

When 30 minutes had passed and they were just about to try to wake Almina up, the flock attacked. Yunya had been distracted by Breeze announcing that time was up, so he didn’t pay any attention to the flock’s movement for a brief moment. And in that moment, the flock’s shadow had disappeared.

Yunya was quick to react however.

“AMBUSH!” he bellowed, “The flock is incoming!”

No sooner had he said so or Zephyr threw down a smoke bomb, concealing their precise location. Shrieks from above proved that he had acted just in time, preventing the birds from dive-bombing them.

“We need to get out of the open, there is no cover at all around here.”

“No. We need to find Soren.” Almina had woken up.

“Who?”

“My father. When I was young, I found out that these unique herbs had a special effect on animals. but he and I are the only people that know about it.”

Yunya didn’t want to just ignore this sudden turn of events, but those birds didn’t leave him much time to dwell on the topic.

“Seems there’s a lot to talk about later. For now, how do we find that Soren?”

The npc looked at Yunya in relief, glad she could avoid that topic for just a little longer. They indeed had more pressing matters right now.

“He has a certain control over animals, but he can only tell them what to do, not experience what they experience.”

“So in other words, he needs to actually see what’s happening before he can give them an order,” Zephyr said.

“Yes. So he’s closeby, with a direct line of sight. Although closeby might be a bit of a stretch, he does have hawkeyes after all.”

“Please tell me you don’t mean that literally,” Path shivered.

“Almost. Soren is a druid. He can transform part of his body to certain animals and he has had the eyes of a hawk ever since I was a child.”

No one noticed how Breeze's eyes widened at those words, not even Yunya.

“And these dawn herbs? What do they have to do with anything?”

“They’re used to stimulate female hormones. He probably wanted to create a super alpha boar from the pregnancy, to then steal its prowess.”

“What a swine,” Breeze said before firing a few magic missiles up into the air. She was partially venting her anger, but with the flock right above them, she didn’t really have to aim to hit a bird. And sure enough, a couple of sparrows fell out of the sky.

“Sparrows? Please tell me he doesn’t want to kill us with sparrows?” Path frowned.

“There’s probably a couple birds of prey near the flock, just not in it. Or he’s using the sparrows as scouts, with the more dangerous monsters on the ground.”

“This entire meadow has zero traces of anything trampling the ground, so he’s using birds of prey, not ground-based monsters,” Yunya said.

“That’s a very nice analysis you made there, but my smoke bomb is about to dissipate. What’s the plan?”

They all looked at Almina, since she had more experience with this Soren than they did.

“He’s not letting any of you leave. Soren should’ve died a long time ago, but clearly, he did not. And if he’s being this secretive, he’s not letting any witnesses escape.”

“So what, you want us to split up? Force him to choose, so that he might reveal a flaw?”

“Yes. I don’t see any other option.”

Yunya sighed, “neither do I. Path, Zephyr, the three of us are the fastest. You two run towards the middle of the meadow, I’ll go second, hopefully tricking Soren into thinking I’m Almina. That should give Almina and Breeze the chance to run for the trees. Zephyr, how many smoke bombs do you have left?”

“Two.’

“Those will be our trump cards.”

“I know. Let’s go, the smoke is almost gone.”

Two silhouettes dashed out the smoke, attracting a big part of the sparrows. When Yunya ran out from a different part of the smoke and made his way over to the hill, the rest of the sparrows followed him. Waiting until the view was completely clear, Almina and Breeze slowly came out, carefully going towards the treeline. Unfortunately, they were still spotted, with the part of the flock that was pursuing Path and Zephyr splitting up, so that half of them could go after them. This caused a split of the situation, with Yunya on the hill versus sparrows, Almina and Breeze between the trees versus sparrows and finally, Path against sparrows. At some point, Zephyr had activated his Stealth, hiding from prying eyes. And somewhere, Soren was still hiding.

Path had no clear end goal she was running towards, just hoping to stay ahead of her pursuers. Yunya however, had been going towards the hill he’d been at earlier. Not only could the singular tree there give some form of cover, its elevated position could maybe help him spot the druid. With his back against the tree, Yunya shot down a few sparrows, whilst looking out for the real enemy. Similarly, Almina and Breeze had entered the treeline, dodging and weaving to escape the sparrows. It wasn’t until Zephyr, who had been observing the battle in silence, found the birds of prey, that the situation changed for the better.

“Look at their shadow again! There are some smaller shadows following the big one. Those small shadows should be the birds Soren wants to use to take care of us.”

“THWANG”

Yunya had only seen the first sentence of the message, but he immediately understood what he had to do. And with that first arrow and Precision Shot, a hawk fell from the sky. And it shrieked. Loudly. Very Loudly. The sparrows immediately left the scene, with a few more hawks coming over from where Path had been. As a warrior, Path could not deal damage to the hawks if they stayed in the air, so Soren decided to send over half of those. Yunya shot a few of them out of the sky, but the situation was quickly becoming unbearable.

“Fuck. Nobody has eyes on Soren yet?”

“No, but I think he can’t see me and Almina. The sparrows just keep circling above the trees, not coming after us.”

“So opposite from you. On it,” Zephyr said as he went looking for Soren again. In a meadow, there were very few places to hide. He was either in a tree far away or lying down in the grass. Or high up in the sky like a bird, but that was unlikely.

“Ashen, lie down for a moment.”

Yunya didn’t know what Zephyr was thinking about, but he instantly let his body drop to the floor. And sure enough, the attacks stopped.

“Everyone, get on the ground as fast as you can.”

With everyone now down on the floor, the meadow became eerily silent, like the calm before the storm. Soren had been lying down himself in a corner of the meadow, cursing at his opponents.

“How!? How did they figure it out!?” he muttered crazily. He stood up, gazing all around. At the hill, where Yunya was lying down. At a random spot in the middle of the meadow, where Path should be. At the treeline, where his meddlesome daughter and Breeze were, even if he hadn’t been able to see them for a while now. And near the location of the original smoke bomb, where his hawk eyes spotted a shimmering figure, hidden from most eyes.

He squinted his eyes, a murderous intent coming off his body.

“Got you, you bastard.”