Still carefully observing the ageing murlock, she starts planning her first ever murder. “I should run around the bushes as not to make any unnecessary sounds. After I reach it, I should have a weapon…., o right, a weapon would be nice,”

“Let’s see what she kept in the pouch, might be something useful.” And she starts digging. the pouch the old Ayana kept on her robe is a magically enhanced simple design leather pouch meant for apprentices as an better alternative to hauling with spoils through the hall ways, but the space in it is still limited, although very much more than in a normal one which has minimal storage space.

out of the pouch first are some torches, simple wooden sticks with oil soaked rags twisted around the edges.

Second out is some healing paste, packed in a tube for easy appliance. “o well, this might help” and she pulls out what looks like one of the knifes that are sometimes given out in the tower to cut something that is on your dinner plate, but this one has been modified already. Just o so slightly sharpened at both sides of the upper part of the knife.

“did she buy this or did she make this herself and if she made it herself before she died, what the hell was she planning to do with it?” and an array of other questions arose within her.

“I will never know I presume, and her memories aren’t of much help either, most of the more personal memories are covered in thick fog, too thick to go through for now.”

Back to planning the murder it is and she looks over to the murlock, “it hasn’t moved yet, I am in luck.” She checks the surroundings for one last time.

“nothing in seeing or hearing distance, good, next, is the path clear? Yes it is”. She checks her weapon one last time and bolts of the pathway, she is supposed to stay on, around the bushes and reaches the murlock in no time at all.

Still being as quiet as possible, she approaches the last steps that separates her from the murlock, she stops to listen if there are any sounds that may have alerted enemy’s, not a sound to hear, but something else catches her interest.

“that is strange, I don’t hear any breathing”. She leans forward to check and indeed the murlock is not breathing. “did it die after it sat down?”

let’s try poking it and she puts the knife forward, a tiny fraction into the neck of the murlock.

No reaction at all. “well that makes it easy” she puts away the knife and grabs the spear from the ground, which also gets deposited in her pouch.

Next she reaches out for the murlock and even it disappears. Then the sound of leaves rustling and she freezes. She looks around but nothing else to hear. After confirming that it is silent again she starts going back to the path only to step on a twig not long after.

Immediately the leaves start rustling again and a loud grumbling sound can be heard not far from her previous location. She picks up the pace and the rustling, presumably a murlock that has come to check on the other one, gets closer.

Nearly at the pathway there is an open space that she has to cross. “no time to think, staying here means being found of the trail so I have to move”.

She starts crossing the open space while running and not soon after comes out of the bushes, an agitated murlock. As soon as it sees her it starts making all kind of loud noise, most likely calling for help from the other murlocks.

nearly closed in on her and with the trail in sprinting distance, the murlock takes out some rocks and starts throwing them. She picks up the pace, knowing that if it catches her as a result of being hit with the rocks it will all be over.

The stakes are high and nearly back on the trail she feels a stinging pain in her ankle. “I have been hit” goes through her mind and she falls face forward onto the trail, not hesitating for a moment, she pulls her feet onto the trail as well and the murlock stops his pursuit.

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It starts waving with its arms and jumping up and down while growling, knowing it can’t go onto the trail or there will be punishment from the deviant that runs the tower, master Wilson.

Slowly more and more murlocks start emerging from the bushes and all of them are growling. “let’s move on to the next area, those murlocks aren’t going to leave me out of their sight again so finding spoils will be difficult”.

Her face showed no emotion at all when she continued on the trail, but internally she was celebrating. “wheuw that was a close one, I should apply some healing paste on my ankle though, otherwise it will swell and I can’t walk”.

Before she entered the next zone, or better said, habitat in the garden she sat down on the trail, opened her pouch and took out the tube, she had pulled out earlier as well, with healing paste. It even came with a small instruction note: pull of the cap, squeeze tube, apply evenly by hand, put on the cap, do not squeeze the tube when putting the cap back on or some paste will be lost.

She follows instructions and near instant after applying she feels relieved of a small part of the pain. “I guess it will be a multiple time appliance then”.

She gets up and continues on her way over the trail, passing a set of bushes, that seem to function as some sort of boundary, the murlocks lose interest in following her every move and disperse back to where they came from or what task they had left behind to hunt the intruder.

After a short rest on the path, she picks up the pace again and reaches the territory of the mini water snakes.

Best way to describe them is half a meter long, half a wrist thick, side pieces on the body starting below their necks, scaly slippery body and decorated with al kind of blue patterns in different places. One has them only near one of the eyes going downward to the side piece only to stop there, while the next one has them only around their tale. You can tell by how much of the body is covered and the darker they are, the stronger the specimen in question is.

Their favourite habit includes a lot of marshlands and a lake or 2 some distance from each other. Here they only have a few ponds, but the marsh environment is still present so it doesn’t differ much from what they like.

As for drops, every part of the water snakes is useable, so anything you find outside of the 10 mandatory scales will be your own. They like to gnaw on bones as well. So you may find those but usefulness is not one of their quality’s, except for an apprentice deviant who dabbles in necromancy.

“Maybe Vayentha would like some bones, will have to ask her that later. “

The water snakes territory was a smooth sailing compared to the murlocks from before, while staying on the path she collected the scales she needed and in the distance she saw some of the water snakes, but those were too far too have reached her while she grabbed the scales she needed.

After collecting enough scales and she made her way to the water sprite territory.

While checking for parts of their wings, Ayana progressed smoothly on the path she was following, with not much to see except for high waterlike plants.

The minimum amount of items she had to collect from the water sprites was a more tricky then the previous two.

The sprites have small farm lands where they grow water grass, this grass is a delicacy for them, they make square farm lands with two rows of grass, after which there is a water stream followed by two more rows of the same grass. Fenced around by wood they make quiet the nice gardens.

The water grass, that is to be gathered can be used for refinement into beats and used to enhance magical gear, but that is only applicable as an apprentice. as a deviant it is merely a tonic to be used for enhancing the constitution.

These gardens are guarded by sprites and are only reachable if you leave the path, so to get the twenty stalks of grass needed to complete the tasks you need quite some time.

Luckily for her the sprites don’t use a one on one ratio for guarding the gardens, but just one guard for multiple fields, so the guard has to walk around and that is the window in which you should be able to pull out the grass.

To be honest, among all the different fields that surround the tower, this one is in the top 3 for having the highest fatality rate among the apprentices with the inspection rounds,

“the high fatality rate is probably why the inspection rounds are being avoided like the plague by every other apprentice deviant except me and Garrick.”

There are only 2 reasons why anyone would take on the task of inspecting the gardens, the first one is that they need the rewards promised by the completion of the task, the second is that they heard of or saw an item that is in the gardens and they want it.

Her upper arm started searing and after thinking of opening the screen, it appeared with a paragraph of text and a single question:

“It appears host is in need of assistance with databases, this is something I might be able to assist with that.”

“Would you like to start the assistance functions?”

That’s when her whole mind started spinning with all kinds of questions

again and she sat down to process what the screen showed her.