Chương 18: Level 2

Standing outside the house, Alexandra watched the sun rise with Lara and Therion, ready to finally put her workforce to the service of the ones who'd helped her so much. As it turned out, unprocessed Aetherveil was terribly harmful for the liver, which was why Therion and Lara took time to separate and store all its components separately.. Who could have known? In any case, having a priest of Fanon in the village was handy.

After chastising her, and warning her that there were ailments even he could do nothing against, Bamir cast a skill washing her damaged organ.

"Let's go," Lara said, nudging Alexandra along. Therion waved them goodbye and went to take care of his work. Today, he would be planting new Aetherveil seeds in the now empty field. Lara and Alexandra had another goal in mind. Gather flowers of ten different species (0/10) Alexandra smiled and shook her head. Here, in the flower plains of Baleria, she just had to bend down and her hand would stumble upon a new species. That was, if Lara accepted to let her leave Lanterne again.

"I'm going with you," she'd insisted, upon hearing her quest. Alexandra shrugged. They wouldn't have to wander far to complete the quest, anyway. Lara set a brisk pace through the village. A few early risers were out. Most looked at Alexandra, then looked away. She kept up the hood that Lara had gifted her to hide her hair, while her hands were gloved. At the edge of Lanterne, the plains opened up ahead of them, the morning light sitting low and pastel across the flowers.

Alexandra stepped off the path and reached for the nearest bloom, a small red one growing in a cluster at her feet. Lara caught her wrist.

"Wait." Alexandra threw her a questioning glance.

"Do you know what flower this is?"

"Does it matter?"

"Since I'm with you, it does," Lara answered. She crouched beside the cluster.

"Look at it. What do you see?" Alexandra crouched beside her. The flowers were small, five petals each, a red so dark it was almost brown at the center, lightening toward the edges. The stems were thin, slightly fuzzy. The leaves grew in pairs, one on each side, each one shaped like a shallow spoon.

"Red flowers," Alexandra said.

"More specific."

"Small red flowers. Dark in the middle, lighter at the edges. Fuzzy stems."

"Good." Lara reached out and pinched a leaf between her fingers, then held them under Alexandra's nose. She pulled back.

"Bitter."

"Very." Lara rubbed her fingers together, the leaf staining them faintly yellow.

"The smell gets stronger when you crush it. Now look at where it's growing." Alexandra looked. The cluster sat in a shallow dip in the ground, sheltered on three sides by taller grass.

"Low ground. Shade."

"It avoids direct sun. You'll almost never find it on an open slope." Lara stood.

"What do you think it does?" Alexandra considered the smell, the coloring, the yellow stain.

"Something medicinal? I don't know."

"A good guess for most plants. It's called Numbcrown. The petals, dried and ground, can be mixed into a poultice for joint pain. Muscle pain too, though less effective." Lara brushed her fingers on her trousers.

"Farmers use it a lot. Especially older ones. Though with Bamir, we don't need it as much as other villages in the plains."

"Why doesn't Bamir use it?"

"He has skills that work better and cost him nothing." Lara glanced at her.

"But if you're ever somewhere without a healer, and someone is hurting, you harvest the petals only. Not the stem, not the leaves. Dry them before you grind them, or the poultice won't bind properly." Alexandra looked back at the cluster. The same flower she'd been about to pull up by the roots without a second thought.

"How do you harvest it without damaging it?" Lara crouched again. She pinched a stem just below the flower head between her thumb and forefinger, and twisted once, clean, leaving the stem intact. The flower came away without resistance.

"Always leave the stem. It'll grow back. Pull the whole thing and it won't." She handed the flower to Alexandra. Alexandra turned it over. Up close the petals were slightly waxy, the dark center dense with tiny stamens. It smelled like nothing from this angle. Only the crushed leaf had given it away.

"Why are you teaching me?" Lara stared.

"You'll poison yourself to death if I don't." She smiled.

"Furthermore, I have always wanted a student, but those things are common knowledge here." She leaned and whispered to her ear.

"I have a skill quest." Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Then," Alexandra said, smiling.

"Let's continue." Lara moved deeper into the field, eyes low, scanning the ground. She stopped beside a cluster of pale yellow blooms growing in a tight spiral around a single thick stem.

"This one." Alexandra crouched. The petals were almost translucent, tissue thin, the center a deep orange that bled outward. No smell. The leaves were long and narrow, serrated at the edges.

"Serrated leaves," she said.

"Translucent petals. No smell."

"Good. It's called Sunthread. The stem, boiled, produces a dye. Orange, if you add an acidic base. Yellow otherwise." Lara moved on before Alexandra had fully stood.

"Don't eat any part of it." Twenty meters further, half hidden beneath a sprawl of bell flowers, a low mat of tiny white blooms, each one barely the size of a thumbnail, clustered so densely they looked like foam.

"Foamwort," Lara said, not stopping.

"Completely harmless. Bees love it. Farmers plant it at field edges to encourage pollination." Alexandra looked at it as she passed.

"That's it?"

"That's it." She picked one and caught up to Lara, who had already found the next one. A single tall stalk, knee high, topped with a drooping purple bloom, its petals curling inward.

"Don't touch this one." Alexandra stopped.

"Why?"

"It's called Shepherd's Hook. The pollen causes skin irritation, and if you get it in your eyes you'll be blind for two days." Lara crouched and studied it without touching it.

"The root, however, processed correctly, is worth more than everything Therion and I made last season."

"Have you processed it?"

"No. Neither of us has the skill for it yet." She smiled.

"Maybe sometime in the next few years." Alexandra filed that away and kept walking.

"Does everyone in Lanterne know that?" she asked.

"They know more than me," Lara glanced at her.

"I'm still learning. I grew up in Esmera."

"The city?"

"It's more of a large town. But yes." She kept walking.

"How did you end up here?"

"We always wanted land of our own. The quiet of the plains." She scanned the land ahead, countless flowers painting the ground.

"Look at this. Why would we not?" She paused beside a cluster of deep blue flowers, low to the ground, their petals thick and waxy.

"This one." Alexandra crouched.

"Stormleaf," Lara said.

"Crush a petal. Carefully." She did. The smell hit her immediately, sharp and electric, like the air before rain. She sneezed.

"What's it used for?"

"Pranking children."

"Hey!" Alexandra protested, wiping her nose. They kept going. The morning warmed around them, the dew burning off the grass as the sun climbed. Lara moved through the field unhurried, reading the ground, stopping and moving on. Alexandra followed, collecting what she was told to collect. After three other flowers, Alexandra remembered to ask.

"Do you think this will help me get Basic Herbology?"

"You have the skill quest?" She nodded.

"Well, this is a start. But you'll need a lot more than a few flowers to get a skill like that," Lara explained.

"Were it a more specific version, like my Floral Lore skill, it would have been possible in the plains. But yours requires knowledge about a wide variety of plants, including herbs, and roots, which we don't have many of."

"How many?" she asked. Lara shrugged.

"What does your quest say?"

"Apprentice level in Herbology." Lara sighed.

"Then it will be difficult. But me teaching you counts for something." It didn't take long for Alexandra's daily to be complete, and with it came her first level up. Gather flowers of ten different species (10/10) -> Quest Completed: +10 exp, +1 PER Daily Quest Streak: 4 -> 5 Level up! 1 -> 2 Class perk selection available. No skill quest, this time. This was new, yet something Alexandra had been expecting to happen at some point. Her list of skill quests was growing too fast.

If she truly got one per day, she'd end up with almost a hundred skills in three months. And that was without considering the attribute points she was also getting.

"Done?" Lara asked. Alexandra nodded.

"You?" Lara cleared a patch of dirt, and symbols magically appeared under her hand, carved into the earth like glyphs. This was her class art, as Alexandra had learned, the equivalent of her journal for the Farmer class. She couldn't read the glyphs, and Lara assured her that it was normal. The content of her journal would also be indecipherable to anyone else.

"Three flowers to go." She looked up at her.

"You'll help me?"

"Of course." They found the remaining three flowers in the same stretch of field, Lara leading, Alexandra following. It took another hour. With every flower, Lara checked her progress by summoning her glyphs. Alexandra waited. Lara's eyes moved through whatever she was reading. Her expression shifted once, then settled.

"Floral Lore Teaching," she said.

"Finally." She looked at the field around them, then at Alexandra.

"I thought I'd need to have children to get it."

"What does it do?"

"It makes me better at conveying information about flowers."

"Shall we try it out?" Alexandra asked. Lara smiled.

"Find a Numbcrown." Alexandra scanned the ground and spotted one a few meters off, tucked into a shallow dip. She pointed. Lara crouched beside it.

"What do you see?"

"Red flower. Dark center, lighter edges. Fuzzy stem—""Stop." Lara reached out and turned a leaf over with one finger.

"Before you describe. Look. Really look. What does the underside of the leaf tell you?" Alexandra looked. The underside was paler, slightly silvery, with fine hair running along the veins. She hadn't noticed that before.

"It catches dew," Lara said.

"Which tells you it grows in shade, yes, but also that it needs moisture. You'll find it near streams too, not just in dips." She moved her finger to the stem.

"Feel this." Alexandra touched it. Firmer than she remembered.

"Older plant. The stem toughens with age. Younger plants are more potent for the poultice." Lara stood.

"Now. The stain." Alexandra pinched a leaf and crushed it.

"Yellow."

"Old honey yellow. Not bright yellow. That distinction matters. Duskbell stains bright yellow and looks almost identical. Use that one and you'll make your patient worse." Alexandra stared at the flower.

"That's different from this morning," she said. Lara looked at her hands.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"It is. Interesting. Nothing inherently new, but these sorts of details come back to me naturally now." With both goals accomplished, the two of them returned to the village. Alexandra was already flipping through her journal, looking for the page that pertained to her class perk selection.