I left the healing center and started walking towards my "home". My home was just a small shack where I kept some of my clothes and other small things. There were many such shacks in the area I lived in and since everyone was poor like me, there wasn't really much theft. As I walked home, I thought about all that had happened. I started thinking about what went wrong in the first place. Why couldn't I find the herb I was looking for, why was a wolf in the area when there had never been any sightings of them in that area, who was the person that had saved me etc. To start with, I decided to get changed, eat something and go to the adventurer's guild to look at the map. I thought it likely that I was the wrong location. I bought my map from a shady place since I couldn't afford the official guild maps. I never bothered to check if the map was accurate. It seems like that was a mistake.
I arrived at my home and found things were as I had left them. I quickly changed into my clothes and started thinking about what to do about food. I had only a little bit of money saved up which I had kept hidden under my bed. I took it out and went to a nearby stall to buy some food. I didn't want to skimp on the food since I had been heavily injured today and was feeling really hungry.
It took me almost half an hour to get to the guild. It was around 5pm and the sun had started to set. I entered the guild and found it quite busy. A lot of adventurers had returned after finishing their quests and were collecting their rewards. Most of the people at the reward counters had ranking badges. These people had finished many quests and were experienced adventurers. The lowest rank for F and the highest was S. There was also the unranked category. These were the people that had not completed enough quest to get even the F rank. Unranked adventurers did not get any badges and most ranked adventurers ignored them. As such, people thought I was one such person and ignored me.
Since I had not found any Kura herbs, I had no reward to collect. I sighed and walked towards the large map on the wall that showed the areas around the city. I looked for the area the Kura herb is supposed to be on the map but I couldn't find it there. Based on my memory of the map and the location I had marked it should have been in the southeast direction of the city. Then I realised my mistake. This map was showing north at the top and south at the bottom but the one I bought was inverted! I had gone in the completely opposite direction. I checked the correct location on the map and found the Kura herb region right away. I hissed in frustration and at my own stupidity. The first time I tried to do a quest, I messed up! I checked for where I actually went and found that it was the most dangerous area around the city. Only D rank and above are supposed to go there. No wonder I found a wolf there. That was actually a direwolf! A direwolf is supposed to be a D rank monster and one of the easiest to deal with in that area. The monster levels keep rising as you go deeper and eventually you get the area where even A rank adventurers don't go.
I held my face in my hands and sighed. I am so stupid. I was lucky that only a direwolf found me. If it was a pack of direwolves or higher ranked monsters, I would have been dead for sure. I decided to not make this mistake again. I also never wanted to buy another map for that shady place. I realized I was not prepared for this at all!
I started to back away from the map but I bumped into something soft. I turned around and saw a pair of large breasts above me. I backed away and looked up to see a woman glaring at me. She was more than a full head taller than me and looked quite a bit bigger as well. Was she 6'5 or 6'7 maybe? I top of my head barely reached the level of her breasts! She had a beautiful face and dark hair that were tied up in a ponytail. She had toned muscles and looked quite strong while still looking feminine. I didn't know what she wanted to do but I was sure I would die if she hit me. Considering how my day had been I was expecting the worst.