“Yo! Dumbass”
Lugan’s cheerful voice greeted me as I opened my door at noon next day. Even if we were both born the same month, he was already half a head taller than me, and his lanky stature only accentuated his height. As if he was actively trying to be completely opposite than me, his sleek black hair was neatly combed as opposed to my, identical to my father’s, unruly brown hair that seemed to have a will of their own and waved all over the place.
“So, Andarius, you really have to teach me that trick of yours to escape from physical training.”
“Heh, at least the weaklings know to address me with my full name properly. As a reward I’ll teach you how to skip class and training. Wait here a second for me to bring my wooden sword out and I’ll show you in a heartbeat.”
“Haha, nah I’ll pass. So… are you ok now?”
“Yeah, no worries. So, what did I miss?”
“Nothing special, the usual. Elsa beat the crap out of me in a spar, teacher talked about how to calculate change, but that would have already gone over your head either way even if you were in class. And etc. I’m going down to the meadow now to find Daren and Elly. You’re coming?”
“No work today?”
“Ha! I’m already done. Father wanted me to calculate how much we’ll have to pay the lord based on our crops. I’ve done it in like an hour, so my whole day is free now.”
“You’re weird man, I can barely do subtraction… you should really go tell your father to go baptize you as a merchant already.”
“You already know my dream, fuck merchant. I’ll become a mage. You hear me? Mage! And then I’ll throw fireballs from my hands, become a mercenary, and then I’ll get knighted at a war, and then the king will make me a noble, and I’ll come here to become a lord and have all of you work for me as I sit in my castle!”
“…”
“Yeah, yeah, keep looking like a fish. I have it all planned out.”
“Didn’t you go to granny to ask to learn magic and she shot you down?”
“Pfff, minor setback. After I get some money from whatever random job I get from my baptism, I’ll go study under a proper mage, and then I’ll force my second job to be a mage. I told you man, everything is planned out. Now, are you coming to the meadow? I heard Elly’s parents got her a proper ball from the city!”
“Nah, gotta run to the forest. Granny asked me to bring her some herbs for my medicine. By the way, have you seen any purple dragon bushes? I need some stems from them.”
“No. Every random adult harvests those when they see them since they sell for a good price. But I think I’ve heard my father say that he saw some further in the forest, near the old thunder tree, that he wanted to go harvest. Not sure if he did so already or not though.”
“Nice! Thanks for telling me!”
“Always, it’s brothers above fathers, right? We promised!”
“Yeah, yeah, now go get your ass kicked in the meadow. If I end up quickly, I’ll come join you.”
And with that, I turned and rushed towards the forest so as not to waste sunlight. I knew granny’s ‘a few’ when it came down to herbs meant ‘as much as you can carry’, and gathering and grinding them all would take most of the day already.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Leaving the fields behind, I could already see the edge of the forest, and I could already spot patches of red grass nesting safely in the shadows of those first trees, bloodweed was as plentiful as it was useless, so I could already harvest it last, but crimson lilies and purple dragon was a whole other story.
Crimson lilies were one of the most popular gift to give to girls according to my father and some older kids, although I couldn’t understand why we should gift it to them, after all, if they wanted to extract red paint for a cloth or something, they could harvest some themselves. Nevertheless, when I mention that question to my father, it ended up with him smacking me on my head before bursting into laughter, so I simply added that to adult weirdness.
Purple dragon now… that was a real herb. Highly poisonous and toxic to the touch, it even released a toxic cloud if you didn’t know how to harvest it properly. Most people use it either to make poison for arrows for when they went hunting, or some healers like granny used it to produce anesthetics. But not only was it rare, but it was damn expensive. A single stem of it could net you enough coppers to spend the night at the tavern.
That said, for a herbalist like granny all those had additional value. From what she had taught me, bloodweed had the property of absorbing liquids, so you could extract that and use it to staunch wounds. Crimson lilies got their deep red color by taking in the iron in the soil, and you could extract the pollen from their leaves to make a poultice that could enhance cloth and leather durability. And lastly, purple dragon, actually had mana inside its poison, mana that it actually gotten from draining it from its prey.
Thankfully, I’ve already mapped a good portion of the early forest in my countless escapades to gather ingredients for granny. So I already knew where to find some blood lilies far away from the main path so that they should still be intact. And since bloodweed was everywhere, I only had to hope that Lugan was correct.
The old thunder tree was well inside the forest, and somewhat further than my usual journeys, but one had to be blind to not find it. Towering above the other nearby trees at more than double their height, and with a trunk that would take four or five of me to circle around it, the old tree had withstood lightning strike after lightning strike for hundreds of years now. Streaks of silver run from the trunk upwards towards the branches, and bloomed in thousands of silvery green leaves. Even after seeing it countless times, it still was awe inspiring, as it should be after all for a tree that’s nicknamed the guardian of the forest.
That said, now was not the time to look around like a clueless city person. It was the time to comb the entirety of this area for the elusive herbs. So, after a short pause, it was time again to head in the nearby trees.
As per normal for the forest, every step was filled with colour, fragrancies, and sounds. The chirping of small birds, the rustling of the leaves against the wind, even the small sounds of little twigs breaking as small animals rushed away from me as I searched around for the vibrant purple. Apparently I got so immersed in my search that my vigilance lapsed as I was suddenly interrupted by the crunching sound of stepped upon leafs on my right. But when I casually turned around, expecting to see a foolhardily brave doe, I froze.
In front of me stood three small, greenish, humanoids. Goblins weren’t strong, having the physique of a young human child, even a kid with just a first job could probably fight one of them fairly square, and an adult could hold his ground vs the three of them. But for me it was different, my stare got drawn directly into their vicious, bloodshot, eyes. Their whole existence screamed of maliciousness as their rugged breaths came out from their wide mouths that were filled with jagged, yellowed, teeth that dripped with saliva. There was only one thought reverberating, screaming, inside my head.
“Death. Death. Death. Death.”
I screamed and turned tail and started running like my life dependent on it. No, my life was really dependent on it. My vision started going blurry as I jumped over the ferns, and the world around me started getting tinged in red colours. I tried to listen behind me to hear how close my pursers were, but the only sound I could hear as I frantically dodged the trees and vines the was my own heartbeat. I kept running, feeling my sticky sweat slowly dripping to my neck. I didn’t know for how long I kept the pace, driven purely by instinct and the forest map that was imprinted in my mind from the countless journeys here, but it still felt like a miracle when I was suddenly bathed in sunlight as I exited the forest and entered the fields. The questioning gazes from the nearby villagers as they turned to look at me seemed like angels smiling at me as I shouted out of breath.
“GO-GOBLINS!!!”
And then I fell on my knees, coughing a metallic tasting, red liquid, before the familiar feeling of losing my senses overwhelmed me once more.