The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Day 13 (in-game)

Just outside Karukorm Town, The Southwestern Lowlands

Status: finally heading out to Cerkanst

*

Saying goodbye to Talan, Liwi and the rest took a brief time of the morning.

Krow fiddled with the straps of his Travelpack, getting them to rest more comfortably on his shoulders. It might be more empty than not, but it was also an added defense for his back.

He was walking to his next destination because he heard gossip that there were Glareweed Grass patches all along the road.

Krow wanted the seeds.

Glareweed Grass was a Common plant, he didn't think he knew any recipes where it was used. But it was one of just three plants that transmigrators had found was suitable for making durable high-quality paper.

Paper in Zushkenar wasn't that important, it was either the ordinary kind for students or the coarse kind used for wrapping. Official contracts and the majority of writings were done on parchment.

Parchment was superior, the material able to handle the security enchants that were so important to Zushkenari communications privacy and the complicated enchantments needed to bind signatories to a Contract.

The paper made from Glareweed was deemed suitable for minor Contracts, and that was a moneymaker when the wars had decimated supplies and the parchmentiers could not keep up with demand.

The Guinsant Alliance territory wasn't known for parchment production. Or anything much, really. Its main traded products were from agriculture, husbandry, and forestry.

A quiet place to grow.

It helped that the races who called it home were all vicious in retribution.

Sirens would poison any outsiders trying to enter their wetlands.

The vargvir were known warriors and few people would want to provoke that hot-headed race.

The draculkar had a habit of tossing people who offended them off cliffs.

And the humans were human. In Zushkenar, where they were not the primary predators of the planet but were just one of nine reigning races, they could be terribly territorial.

Alliance territory was quiet, but it wasn't all nice.

Krow brightened when he saw the rumours were true. The slender and stiff leafblades, long as an arm and wide as a palm, with a pattern reminiscent of glaring eyes, dotted the sides of the road.

There were clusters of berries already grown from the inflorescence, but those were not the seeds Krow was after. Wild-growing Glareweed had two kinds of seeds, the berries that grew from the flower-clusters, and the seedcones that grew from the stem-flowers.

He was after the second.

Paper made of the leaves grown from Glareweed berries was weak, ordinary paper. It was the Glareweed grown from seedcones that made high quality paper.

Krow took out a knife and started to remove the seedcones. Each plant had only one, located in the center of the mass of sharp and glaring leaves.

He felt he was being admonished by a whole clearing of angry grandmothers while he took their seeds.

He gathered enough to send to his trade-vault by way of auction.

[Due to natural usage of inherent skills, you've gained the Subclass: Forester as a Talent at First Apprentice!]

Krow straightened. Finally!

This was the reason he didn't choose the subclass before. Forester was a subclass he could gain just from practicing the skills he already had.

Forester had the basic skills of Stalk, Trap, Harvest, and Hunt available to learn from a master forester, and those he could do just by taking quests.

First Apprentice rank in Forester just gave him additional apprentice skills 'Fleet of Foot' and 'Shaded by Boughs'.

The effect of the first was obvious, increasing his top running and walking speed. The second gave him great stealth skills, but only when in a forest or woodland.

For a monster hunter, Forester was a great subclass.

Unlike his chosen subclasses, he'd need to apprentice to a master to advance a Talent, or it would stay at First Apprentice forever.

But that was for later.

He finished harvesting his 100th seedcone, sending everything to auction, and started his journey anew, heading northwest and lower still on the mountain.

He alternated jogging and walking, training both his VIT and the 'Fleet of Foot' skill.

At noon, he saw the towers of another town.

He laughed wryly at the sight. "The lowlands sure are different."

After nearly two weeks of seeing no civilization, he came across a village and two towns in under two days.

His luck had turned!

Or, a part of him muttered acerbically, it was because he was using the road now instead of haphazardly hurtling toward a likely direction and subsequently getting lost in the wild.

His eye twitched.

Whatever. He got a Forester Talent out of it, a ton of materials, and the advancement of several subclasses.

His stats, apart from MND, were in their forties now.

It was getting harder to gain stat points. The whole morning of traveling, he only got three points of VIT.

Fleet of Foot was 25% mastered in the same timeframe, so he wasn't so unhappy.

Shouts reached Krow's ears, putting him on alert.

A mass of people at the entrance to the town hollered in argument with each other.

He walked closer, sidled up to one of the people on the sidelines. "Is this Baaturik Town? What happened?"

The draculkar woman grimaced. "Bluebottle Greatgnats. A swarm. This is indeed Baaturik, traveler."

"Krow. Noisier than I expected."

She huffed a brief laugh, eyed him curiously, but then only sighed. "I am Adleri bal Adlejan. It's an unfortunate time for you to see our beloved town, Krow. The merast and the council are debating whether to send for assistance from other places."

"Why is it an argument?"

She nodded to a neighboring peak, where Krow could see several towers closer together than the usual town architecture. "The lands of the town are owned by Tegrikan Fort, and we're supposed to send there for assistance. They're equally as besieged, however."

Krow made a sound of understanding. The soldiers of the Fort couldn't help, and to ask for assistance from the outside would be a blow to the perceived strength of the Fort lord.

He frowned. Bluebottle Greatgnats were only Common monsters.

"A large swarm then?"

A draculkar nearby snorted. "More like they used all the Monstrepel on training soldiers in the woods, and have none spare."

Krow winced in sympathy. Greatgnats attacked in masses, like locusts. Without Monstrepel to thin the swarm, even the strongest soldier would be overwhelmed by the countless poisonous stings.

He glanced to the side of the arguing leaders, to see a group of Guards grimly splattered with ichor, several being tended on the ground. The leader of the contingent looked furious, pacing like a possessive tiger around his people.

"Do you think the Guard would hear me if I said I had some Monstrepel to spare?"

Krow only had three full crates of Monstrepel left, and most of a fourth. The fifth, he'd given away on the road to Karukorm.

The draculkar in hearing whipped their heads toward him.

Adleri grabbed his arm tightly and all but dragged him to the Guard. Oh, not the Guard. She took him directly to the merast, insinuated herself between the councilors and declared, "This is Krow. He says he has Monstrepel."

The councilors paused in their arguments to look at him.

Up close, the ragged nature of the Guard and a number of citizens was even more pronounced.

One of the councilors sighed. "Of course, we are thankful for any you are able to spare, but the swarm is more than a few Sachets could take."

Krow decided. "Three and a half crates."

The silence that fell was shocked, hopeful, suspicious.

A couple of councilors studied him. One of them asked, her voice barely hiding the sharpness. "And have you been in the area long, Krow?"

"I am a traveler." Hah, this backstory was really getting some work. "With a group of refugees, I was in Karukorm yesterday. The weeks before that I was in the wilds of the highlands."

"The wilds?"

"I was separated from the EYTC caravan I was traveling with due to a bandit attack. If the caravan passed by here, one of the wagon drivers, Charakh, who is distant nephew to Docent Ordoi of the Nyurajke Temple of Telanweth, would remember me."

"The docent in Nyurajke is correctly called Ordoi," stated one of the councilors.

"A caravan did pass here a seven-day ago, sponsored by that company," sighed another.

"Not enough," said one firmly.

The merast, silver-haired, and quietly studying Krow with gentle eyes, spoke. "And what is your price?"

A person who would go straight to the point, excellent.

"The chance to purchase a Galedrifter." Krow actually planned to buy passage only, but since providence tossed this chance at him, what kind of gamer would he be if he didn't take advantage.

"Impossible!" came from multiple throats.

"And a Contract that I or any who work for me won't seek to breed it," he continued.

That addition silenced most of the objectors.

"Just the chance to purchase?" the merast asked.

"One would be worth more than thrice the Monstrepel I have now," Krow laughed. "I do want to help, after all."

And this town was the only town where he could make this kind of deal.

A Galedrifter was a domesticated monster, native to the draculkar lowlands. In the wild, they were called Windblade Runners. With wings spread, they looked like manta rays, if rays had narrower and longer wings, and scaly legs.

They were used as flying transport all over the draculkar nation.

Only in Baaturik though, in the upper lowlands, were they bred and raised.

After the Quake, the secret breeding methods were disseminated to various guilds and towns. Gojo had once bitterly said, upon seeing them used as beasts of burden, that the monster used to be an exclusive draculkar-bred mount.

"I won't be requiring it now, of course. But within the next year or two, definitely. Would this request be possible? I will pay in advance."

The councilors looked at each other. Then they all turned to someone in the crowd, who had come forward when hearing their discussion.

An elderly draculkar eyed Krow, who tried to project his best reliable aura.

The elder sighed, nodded.

It was a good deal.

Krow gave the crates to the Guards nearby as soon as they agreed. From the surprise on their faces, the councilors expected him to haggle the Contract first.

The merast, with a smile at the promptness of Krow's actions, brought out parchment and ink. He wrote the Contract himself.

The terms were simple.

The Galedrifters Association of Baaturik would sell Ilas Krow one juvenile Galedrifter of the best quality for 540 drax.

He was not allowed to breed it. He was not allowed to let others breed it unless it was required in the town of Baaturik, for which he would be paid 15 drax for every breeding attempt successful or unsuccessful.

He was not allowed to dissect it. If deceased, the body would be returned to Baaturik for burial.

The Galedrifters Association of Baaturik had first refusal should he want to sell it.

If the Galedrifters Association of Baaturik broke the agreement, they would be fined 1000 drax and be forced to surrender a Galedrifter of similar attributes to Ilas Krow.

If Ilas Krow broke the agreement, he would be fined 1000 drax and be forced to surrender the Galedrifter he bought to the Galedrifters Association of Baaturik.

The Contract was valid from now, the twenty-fourth day of the seventh circling of the 9116th year after the Shattering, to the last day of the 9118st year AS.

If the Contract was unfulfilled after the last day of the year 9118 AS, all terms of agreement would be rendered null and void.

The end of the contract was well past the timeline of the Quake.

It didn't matter, as Krow would take the 'Lost Tigercat' quest in Galbrane City as soon as he could. It had been one of the recommended list of quests for a beginner player, the last time. It gave the player the ability to tame monsters that weren't classified as battle-mounts.

He secured his copy of the Contract with a smile. It had been signed by the elderly draculkar who was the leader of the Galedrifter's Association and witnessed by the merast and the council.

A flying mount!

Of the known mounts in the game, just 10% were capable of flight.

A Galedrifter wasn't very fast, compared to most flying mounts, but who cared?

It was still a mount that could fly, and he'd gotten it with a significant discount!

Hiding a grin, he waded into the fray with the Guards, falling into formation to protect their flank as the Greatgnats swarmed upon seeing them enter the town.

Things were going great!