“Ok, what do you need,” I asked the first person in line. Leaning on the counter to support myself.

“Do you have any herb mixtures that help with sore muscles?” I couldn't help but smirk. “Spider webs?” I asked.

The large man nodded, clearly embarrassed. “It's hard for someone my size to avoid them.”

I looked in one of the closets until I found some. “Yeah, it's easy to avoid them higher up in the trees, but if you can't…” I grabbed the bottle of dried herbs. “You want these. Sunleaf and Rivermist. Just boil them in water, or eat them raw if you're lazy.”

He squinted, “The trees?”

I paused. “Well, yeah… There aren't nearly as many up there, most of the trees are fairly well connected too since the branches are so thick and easy to walk on.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

“I thought everyone knew that?” I said, checking the price of the herbs. “1 copper please.”

He groaned before coughing up the money. I pulled a small pouch out of storage and placed the coin inside of it.

“Thank you kindly.”

Most of the customers after that went the same all the way through the evening. When the sun had begun to set everyone looked on the verge of collapse.

The girl with the clipboard came over to check on me and ask how Posy was doing as well. After I informed her of everything that happened I grabbed a jar of herbs from the shelf. “It’s not just her, everyone here is starting to show symptoms, we might be out of mana potions but if we use these herbs at least it will help our mana recover a bit faster, stave off the symptoms…”

“Those are… Mistroots right?”

I nodded. “They're much more potent when fermented, but that doesn’t mean they are useless otherwise.”

She nodded. “I admit I’m not too familiar with it, but anything will help.”

With her stamp of approval, I used a bit of magic to brew some tea, boiling my water with fire magic around the herbs and then diving it into large glasses. After that, I went back to manning the counter. ‘At this point, I’m starting to feel like I’m in charge… If not only because I’m the only one awake enough to keep my head on straight…

Now and then we'd had more victims come in with poison. We did our best, but the recovery process was long and painful without the proper medicine. We had herbs and magic that would keep them alive, but nothing comparable to a real antidote.

After the sun set we began working only in torchlight. Surprisingly, I was still getting customers. Adventurers that were either coming back late or search parties that were setting out for missing persons. None of them even knew what they were asking for just saying things like Herbs that do X. I spent over a year studying alchemy and even my brain was starting to melt sorting through them all.

“It's an emergency, does anyone have enough mana to cast?” I heard someone yell from the back.

‘Sparks, what now?’ I rushed to the back of the tent. I never got to sleep, but I was certainly better off than the priests who all looked like they were starting to become empty husks. “What's happening?” I asked.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“There's something wrong with him.”

I rolled my eyes. “How insightful,” I said sarcastically, looking at the man they were referring to. ‘Taggart?’ “When did he get here?”

“Just recently, he lost consciousness not long after.”

I felt his forehead. He was ice cold. His breathing was so slow. It was almost nonexistent and he was even more pale than the poison victims. When I figured out what was wrong I almost laughed, letting out a snort with a grin. “This one will be easy.”

“What?” The girl who had called for help seemed like she was still in a panic, but it was fine. I knew exactly what was wrong with him.

I placed my hand over his liver and used “disinfect”, it was just enough to make sure he'd end up alright. “Alcohol poisoning,” I said bluntly.

As far as mana cost was concerned it wasn't nearly as draining as curing the spider's poison, simply because you only had to remove a small amount of the toxins to stop him from dying. He would still have a massive hangover, but that's what he deserved.

I walked back to the counter and filled out several more orders before Ted finally showed up. “You guys always lag behind?” I asked jokingly.

“Chika? No, I mean… We just got back, is Taggart here? He ran ahead.”

“He'll be fine. In the back.” I pointed.

They all rushed past me through the tent, and moments later I saw them carry him out. ‘A full party… Must be nice…’

After that things finally settled down. The search parties returned largely successfully, and it seemed everyone had the supplies they needed. I was exhausted though.

When there weren't any customers, I helped tend to the patients, ground herbs, and other simple things I could do to help. It wasn't long before I was going to crash. ‘They were working like this for days? How…’

Fortunately, the young apprentice girl woke up. Despite her weakness, she was healthy enough to continue working.

‘I guess it’s four days on my healing magic now…’ In the end, I wound up collapsing on the bed in the back Posy was using before she got up. The moment my eyes closed they shut so tight nothing could have woken me up.

When I came too I found out someone had removed my helmet and covered me with a soft blanket. I wasn’t exactly surprised to find out it was the same girl who smiled through all that pain.

She was sitting beside me with a soft smile. “Feeling better?” She asked.

“No…” I groaned bluntly.

She chuckled. “Well I’d offer a hand, but I was told not to use magic for a while.”

My blood pressure spiked as I sat up and my head pounded, but after a moment it all settled. “That's good advice, you should probably wait till tomorrow, and then only use a little at first.”

She nodded with a determined smile. “Right.”

‘It’s like she got all fired up for no reason…’ “Well, it isn’t any of my business anyway I guess. Sorry for taking up a bed here, where did you–”

She handed me my helmet. “Oh here. You looked uncomfortable so I took it off… I admit…” She turned to the side, blushing slightly out of embarrassment. “I didn’t realize you were a girl at first… But you're so beautiful. It took me off guard seeing your face.”

I froze, unable to properly register what she was saying. When I finally did I quickly put on my helmet to hide my own embarrassment. “D-don’t say things like that…”

She tilted her head, and after thinking a moment started beaming with joy again. “Sorry, I meant you’re ugly as a horse.”

Her chipper response took me off guard yet again, at least the embarrassment went away but… With how sincerely she tried to say it as a compliment I became a bit worried about her. “U-uhm… Please don’t say that either…” ‘If anything it’s mean to the cute horses…’

She started pouting as I stood up. “Well, what am I supposed to say then? My teacher told me that was how I was supposed to compliment adventures.”

I only started to feel more awkward. “Your… Teacher huh…” ‘The same idiot that almost let you kill yourself?’

“Yes. He said that if I was going to give compliments to the ones being rude, then I should at least do it right, and then he told me they preferred it when I called them that. Only the rude ones prefer it though… Honestly, I don't really get it.”

I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh but ultimately failing.

“UH?” She took a step back, turning bright red again. “Wh-what did I say, why are you laughing at me…”

I couldn’t help it. She was just too adorable. “Sorry, sorry. You should keep calling the rude ones ugly. Oh but quit comparing them to horses, horses are cute.”

She tilted her head again, this time to the other side. “They’re… Cute?”

Shaking my head I decided maybe it was best to just leave. “Yup. The cutest.”

“Cute…” She mumbled to herself. “I guess I never really thought about it. I know that male horses have 40 teeth and mares only have 36. Oh, or that they produce up to 38 liters of saliva a day. I counted. They have 10 different ear muscles, and in the Whitlight stables we have over 30 different breeds of them, isn’t that crazy?”

‘She counted? How do you count how much saliva a horse produces, and their ear muscles?’ “Are you into horses or numbers, I can’t tell.”

Her eyebrows pushed together, leaving me with the feeling she really didn’t want to answer, so I took that as my cue to leave. “Well, I’ll see you around. And make sure not to overdo it so much next time.”

“Bye… Goodbye, uh… See you around, yea. I like the sound of that.”

‘Not just as stupid as me but just as awkward too… Geez.’ After I walked away a bit I turned back to see her taking inventory of everything left in stock, once again counting. Then she suddenly scowled and took a single bundle of herbs from one of the shelves, throwing it into a storage item before she could smile again. ‘A bit… Off I guess. Still, having your healer be good with numbers is always a good thing. I wouldn’t mind being in a party with her.’