The baron quickly scrambled out of the building, threatening that this wouldn't be the last time she heard from him.
"Was it wise to shoot an arrow at him?" Merlin asked as he approached. "Even if you missed on purpose, he's going to run around and be a nuisance now, isn't he?"
"It wasn't on purpose..." Callisto mumbled while putting the arrow she nocked back into her quiver.
"What?" Merlin retorted, unsure if he had heard that correctly.
"I was aiming for his head." She said. "But my hands went numb."
Merlin stood there for a few moments, unsure what to say, or if he should even say anything.
"That isn't good." Merlin remarked, completely ignoring the part about her intent to seriously maim or kill a man. "Maybe you should go pay a visit to Tuli and get those hands taken care of. They took quite a beating and it wouldn't be good if you developed permanent nerve damage."
"I'm just waiting until everyone else gets healed before I go in." She mumbled. "I was told that we didn't have enough medical supplies left, especially after the last expedition, so I didn't want to waste what little we had."
"There are a few medical herb shops in the city, why don't you get stock from them?" Merlin asked out of curiosity.
"Well generally we prefer gathering our own supplies. We'd rather keep the supply in those stores exclusively for the use of civilians, but we do occasionally buy what we need if it's an emergency." Callisto explained.
"Oh, well that's fair enough." Merlin nodded his head. "And there isn't a shortage of medical supplies anymore, so go get healed right away."
Merlin began walking towards the door, but as he approached, Callisto spoke once more.
"Where are you going off to?" Callisto asked with a hint of curiosity. "I thought you were going to tell me about the vine thing?"
"I'm just doing a task for Tuli, helping to restock the medical room." He said, "I'll be happy to explain when I'm back, but Tuli doesn't have any alanemine so she sent me out to get some."
"Very well." Callisto said with a nod before seemingly remembering something. "Oh, a word of advice."
"You'll find a larger amount of alanemine if you walk down the road for about twenty minutes before you enter the forest. But please be careful, as the further from the gate you go, the stronger the creatures you'll find."
"One of these creatures that have been spotted in the area is a brown bear, although it is roughly three times the size of a regular brown bear and very powerful."
"Whatever you do, please do not attack it or anger it in any way." She warned.
"If you find large bear tracks, trees that look to have been shattered by a claw, or see the mauled corpses of monsters, it's likely that you entered its territory. If you enter its territory, get out of it as fast as you can."
"The bear is generally harmless if you leave it alone and keep your distance, but it's a terrible threat if you decide to attack it." She concluded. "It hunts down monsters in the area around its territory, making the general area closer to the wall much safer, so we'd rather keep it alive."
"Understood. Thanks for the warning." Merlin remarked as he made his way out the door.
The crowd outside seemed to have dissipated, but he could see a new group forming in the distance, and he caught glimpses of Baron Doolmet leading the crowd.
'Maybe I should kill him before this gets troublesome.' Merlin thought to himself as he watched the group vanish into a large estate. 'It's just going to generate annoying quests otherwise.'
Not really wanting to deal with the karma punishment, Merlin decided against it for now. He instead made his way towards the gate and stepped out into the frontier once more.
'But if I could somehow bait him into ruining his karma...' Another obtrusive thought arose in his mind, but it was quickly snuffed out as Merlin made his way down the road.
He looked up at the sun, noticing it was getting rather close to night time. Instead of following the road for twenty minutes, Merlin decided to do both and hopefully save time. He ran into the forest and began making his way through the forest in the direction the road, while searching the forest for plants as he travelled.
Besides a few critters and medium sized herbivores, Merlin didn't really encounter anything for the twenty minutes he travelled, and definitely not anything that could reasonably be seen as a threat. Instead he was peacefully picking plants while enjoying the peaceful scenery, and after about an hour and a half he had harvested enough to finish his quest, and even managed to pick up a few other plants for his own use.
As he thought about sticking around and harvesting more, he received the same dreaded red alert box that make him decide against it.
┌───────────────────
[Message from the devs!]
Group one, there is only one hour left for today's session, you will receive another notification when it's time to log out.
If you do not leave by that time you will be forcibly disconnected, please make sure you're in a safe location when you log out.
└───────────────────
Merlin sighed as he swiped the quest window away, and he began making his way through the forest, towards the road.
As he breached the treeline, he noticed a large group further down the road, they seemed to be making their way towards the gate, but still had a fair walk to go. Merlin saw several bows, so he assumed they were one of the ranger expedition teams that were mentioned previously.
Fortunately none of these rangers seemed heavily wounded, at least from what he could tell from this distance.
Merlin made his way towards the city, not bothering to wait for the expedition team behind him. As he continued walking, he noticed that he seemed to be increasing the distance with the group. It was likely that the group hoped to rest at Acacesium before continuing, only to find that the town had been looted and abandoned due to not yet receiving a messenger warning them.
Merlin entered the city once more. He noticed that the groups seemed to have dissipated by now, with only a couple curious observers nearby paying any attention to him, albeit only briefly.
He made his way inside the rangers guild building and took a direct path towards the medicine room where the red-headed Tuli was slaving away at the mortar and pestle.
"Hey Tuli, I've got everything you need." Merlin said as he walked into the room.
He unloaded a kilogram of alanemine and three hundred grams of foxglove onto the table, and as he did so, he received a notification telling him his quest was complete.
「You have completed the quest, "Taking stock II.", rewards have been delivered.」
"Thank you!" Tuli said as she quickly ran to grab a couple jars to store everything. "You've been a great help."
"You're very welcome." Merlin smiled. "Oh, I saw another expedition team on their way back, they should be arriving any minute now."
"Oh, they're early." Tuli mumbled, "Well, at least I've got more supplies to treat them with."
"Fortunately they didn't look that wounded, mostly tired." Merlin reassured her, "But that was only from a small distance away."
"Anyway, I've got to take off." Merlin said, "I'd love to stick around and help, but I've got some things to take care of."
"Not a problem." Tuli said, "Take care, and thank you for all the help!"
Merlin walked out of the room and briefly wandered around the base looking for Callisto to fulfil his promise, but he couldn't seem to find her. He made his way over to the front desk and asked if the person sitting at it knew where she went, and apparently she went into the forest alone to blow off steam, something that was apparently common as of late with her.
Merlin instead made his way out of the building, where he saw a smaller crowd start to form around. Merlin walked through the crowd after seeing the group they were there to see, it was the rangers he saw earlier on the road.
The crowd was rather negative, but not as negative as both times Callisto's groups came back. It felt as though maybe someone was stirring the pot against Callisto, or there was just a widespread hatred for her. But besides Baron Doolmet, Merlin couldn't quite understand why anyone would have anything against her.
Merlin wandered through the city, stopping at an interesting looking ruin. For all intents and purposes, it was nothing but a freestanding arched stone-brick door frame. But what caught Merlin's attention, besides the fact that there was clearly no signs of a building previously being attached to it, was the strange almost Greek-like runes inscribed within the stone above the door frame.
"What mysteries lie within these old stones." An old mans voice could suddenly be heard.
Merlin turned around to see a short grey-haired old man with round glasses and a back hunched over due to old age. The old man slowly wandered closer until he was stood beside Merlin.
"Do you find interest in these old stones?" The man wondered out loud.
"I do." Merlin nodded. He was trying his hardest to hide the overwhelming excitement that he felt due to being approached by an NPC in regards to the ruins.
"An immediate answer, oho. Not many youngsters respect their ancestors nowadays." The man seemed pleased, but then his face quickly shifted to sadness. "All they do is complain that they get in the way of construction."
"What a stupid way of thinking." Merlin replied. "This city is a treasure trove of history, they'd be fools to tear this all down."
The man's smile returned to his face when he saw Merlin's enthusiasm.
