Sorry about the delay. Had some issues irl. I'm back~ As always, point out any mistakes you find in the comments!

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Without the horses our speed tripled, at least. The trees passed by like snowflakes in a blizzard. I activated my skill [Ingredient Scan] and located a few herbs and flowers that I could use in potioneering. Unfortunately, I didn’t find much else.

Benson and I traveled without rest for two hours straight. My armor buffs and Benson’s natural stats made such a feat rather easy, though the soles of my feet were starting to ache. The woodlands transformed from deciduous to evergreen as we traveled further north. What was once a nearly tropical jungle was now scattered thickets of pine, spruce, and even cypress.

The air smelled sweet and tree roots provided stable footing. Benson’s movements seemed surreal. His motions looked scripted, like something out of a movie. He seemed to float from branch to branch and hill to hill. I stared in awe.

The evergreens grew taller as we approached The Mire. I smelled the swamp before I saw it. The fumes of rot and death permeated the air, and the bottoms of trees grew skeletal, with their lower branches becoming like boney fingers reaching out to grab us.

The ground sank into mud pits and small rivulets flowed brown with plant detritus. My feet would sink down in the muck if I wasn’t careful with my steps. I tried to mimic Benson’s movements, but I had little luck in emulating them. Thankfully most of my equipment was enchanted to keep clean, letting the mud wash off.

After another hour of trekking, Benson came to a halt and signaled me to stop with his hand. “People ahead,” he said in a whisper. “At least ten. They’re in combat with monsters.”

I crawled forward and peeked over a small embankment. Off in the distance, on the edges of a small pond and knee deep in mud, was a group of lightly armored men and women fighting what looked to be three wyverns.

“Why are wyverns this far north?!” Cried one of the men as the beast snapped his spear in two with its jaws.

“Something must have happened in the Thrush to drive them from their normal habitat!” Replied a woman’s voice.

A sinking feeling hit my gut. I looked at Benson and his expression was clear. We had caused the wyverns to migrate north by destroying their nest. These adventurers were currently suffering because of our actions.

“Let’s go help them. We need to make a name for ourselves in New Hidet anyways,” I said with a sigh. Benson’s face lit up like the stars on a clear night and he flashed his teeth with a ferocious grin.

Benson moved first and I followed close behind. He hit the closest wyvern, smashing it to the ground with ease. I used my staff and fired a bolt of lightning at the next one. This time I prepared for the discharge and avoided being blinded. With a thundering crackle, a blast of blue light jumped from the end of my staff directly into the beast, killing it on the spot.

With two of the wyverns taken out in moments, the other adventurers rallied and cried out ‘Reinforcements!’ They overwhelmed the last of the beasts and slayed it collectively. None of them were particularly skilled, and each seemed rather low leveled even compared to the adventurers I had seen back in Golden Thrush.

After the smoke cleared and all the wyverns were finished off, Benson and I found ourselves standing off to the side while the adventurers tended to their wounded. Three were in critical condition.

“Hold on Sabe, we’ll fix you right up,” said one of the women as she tried to staunch an injured man’s bleeding. She was dressed in light chainmail and leather armors that accentuated her tall and lithe figure. A thin sword was hung on her hip. She turned towards her comrades and cried out, “I need a salve!”

Salve was a word I recognized. Back in Xternity a low ranked healing potion was called a salve. They were generally ineffective for most diseases, curses, and such. They tended to only heal a little bit of Health Points. Looking at the bleeding man, I could tell immediately that a salve wouldn’t save him. Of course, I also saw this as an opportunity to test something else I had been meaning to try. I had yet to see how effective potions were outside of the game world. I pulled a rank 5 health potion, something capable of even fixing mild curses and diseases in game.

“Give him this,” I said as I offered the potion bottle to the woman. She didn’t hesitate. Grabbing the glass, she upturned the whole thing and poured its contents on the man’s wounds.

As if it were boiling, the man’s flesh began to bubble and stretch. A soft fizzling sound came from his injury and, before everyone’s eyes, his body stitched back together. He jerked and then, with force, his eyes opened.

“I’m… I’m alive?” Asked the man as he looked down at his hands and body, incredulity painted on his face. The tall woman wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into a long hug.

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“That… Wasn’t a Salve,” she replied while turning back to look at me. She stood up and bowed towards me and Benson. “My name is Guine and these,” she motioned towards the other men and women around her, “are the members of my adventurer team. We owe you a great debt.”

“Raise your head,” I said in a gentle tone as I shook my hands, trying to get her to stop with the embarrassing display. “Benson and I were a bit lost, so maybe you can repay that debt by helping us get to New Hidet. My name is November, and I’m an Artisan.”

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Benson and I started traveling together with Guine’s group of adventurers. Their pace wasn’t very fast since they dragged several monster corpses with them, but we took this time to get acquainted with them. Most were simply ‘D’ ranked, and a few were even lower on the totem pole. They were all astounded when Benson and I introduced ourselves as ‘C’ ranked adventurers, and we received several questions about our skills and equipment. I, of course, hammed up my performance. I told them that I crafted all of our equipment myself, among other things. I played myself up as the apprentice to a master Artisan traveling the world for the first time. They seemed to buy it.

“So you’re looking to set up shop in New Hidet?” Guine asked me as we walked.

“Yes. Benson will be challenging the Labyrinth and I’ll be opening a shop,” I replied, a smile on my face.

A strange look crossed her face; Guine scooted up real close to me and asked, in a whisper, “by the way, that Benson… He’s rather cute for a beastman. Are you two… Seeing each other?”

My eyes went wide. “No, Benson and I are friends only,” I replied, keeping my voice calm. I wanted to laugh. I could hear Benson snickering off to the side. He had good ears.

“Really? So he’s available, huh…” Whispered Guine as her voice receded into mumbles. Benson’s snickering stopped, and I laughed openly. The fur on his cheeks looked to be a bit red.

We traveled through what the adventurers called The Mire, a great swamp bordering New Hidet and The Great Thrush. Occasionally, through the breaks in the treeline, I could make out tremendous mountains in the distance. Guine pointed them out and named them: Starcaller, the tallest mountain; Firepeak, the mountain to the east of New Hidet; and Laurenhall, the shortest mountain directly south of the city. She mentioned a fourth mountain on the northwestern side, but we couldn’t see it from our approach due to Starcaller being in the way.

We journeyed for several hours with the adventurers. The swamp became deeper, the trails muddier, and the rivers wider as we moved north. The trees started to grow sparser and sparser, and those that did grow were lifeless and gray.

All at once, as we passed a final thicket, the world opened up. Water, as far as the eye could see, spread out before us.

“Mire’s Lake,” said Guine as she waved her hand out at the massive body of water. I had never seen the ocean in my previous life, but I imagine it must have looked something like Mire’s Lake. The water stretched onwards in every direction, seemingly endless.

“Over there is New Hidet,” said one of the other adventurers as he pointed west. On the far shore I could make out what looked to be civilization, but it was hard due to the distance. Directly to my left stood the mountain Starcaller, which combined with the lake seemed to block off all distant sights. I could just make out the very top of Firepeak from across the Mire.

On the shores in front of us numerous boats were moored and tied down. No doubt they belonged to the adventurers.

“We’ll travel by water from here,” said Guine with a smile. “It’s much safer than traveling over Starcaller, and it’s faster than traveling around it too.”

“Aren’t there monsters in the lake?” I asked.

“Yes, but nothing we can’t handle,” replied Guine, “we’re not going very far out. The real monsters don’t appear until you hit a depth of 50 Sich.”

I noted the word Sich, the same word used for unit of weight. Since 100 Sich was considered the weight of an average man, I wondered if one Sich was considered the height of the average man. It would be worthwhile to investigate it later. I doubt their units of measure are much more refined than my old world’s, anyways. How did we measure length before the advent of science? By feet.

I nodded along to Guine’s words, and walked down towards the beachhead. Surprisingly, there was sand running up and down the waterline. I kicked what little mud remained on my boots and boarded the largest of the boats. It was bigger than most trucks I had seen, and with all my nautical knowledge (which amounted to nothing) I decided the largest boat was probably the safest. I knew how to swim, but I wasn’t about to risk getting soaked to the bone in monster infested swamp water. That just sounded like a bad time.