There were plenty of monsters around these parts.
Not that mutated.
They steered clear of my path, as I stayed out of theirs.
Monsters- was a general term used for anything that was harmless to us.
Predators, harmful bugs, mutated monstrosities, natural disasters- all of them were called monsters by humans. Most of the other races- especially the Alves often mocked humans for it.
To them, monsters only meant- highly mutated animals creating a slaughter fest to breed more.
But the irony was- Alves were mostly extinct while humans were flourishing.
Anyway-
Run!
The sun had risen and running constantly was draining my stamina- but actually not as much as I thought.
And even surprisingly the cat didn't struggle.
It just stayed put, often- "Mew!" –pointing!
This made my running job a lot easier but-
Was this cat sentient or something?
Last I checked, sentient monsters were really- monsters.
Even the Alves were afraid of these types.
'Well, at least he's not talking…'
That would have been more creepy than scary though.
Anyway-
Trees.
Trees with leaves.
'What the hell…' I gradually slowed down.
The injured mother was supposedly maybe 50M away.
'But don't I just have like one potion?' Yeah, too late to think about it now.
But I did keep a sharp eye around me.
There were trees with live branches and leaves.
Which meant, there were monsters here.
Almost all the birds of this land had nests here, and I was an outsider.
So- one hand on sword, the other on the cat- I trudged forward.
"MEW!" The cat jumped out. "Mew!" He looked back and was basically telling me to follow him?
'Damn thing really does understand stuff, huh?'
I did follow him. But- but I kept a rather sharp eye.
So far- nothing. Not even a single nest.
Was I worried for no reason at all?
A few minutes later- we'd found her.
The mother.
Lying against a tree.
A nut tree.
The Alma nut tree.
'Yeah, this isn't a coincidence at all…'
No monsters, I clearly got what I wanted and so did the system.
This system had planned out things well beyond what I'd even thought of thinking.
But more importantly, the lioness was injured.
A rather large lioness, bleeding from the head. Unlike her cub she had something that looked like a literal tiara on her head-
"Mew!" The cub ran up to her, rubbing face against face.
Though bleeding, the lioness tried getting up but- couldn't. Instead, she just licked the poor cub whilst letting out painful groans.
The cub in turn stared back at me- "MEW!"
Even the mother stared at me- though she couldn't mew- she did stare at me like she wanted me to take care of her cub or something. And she was thanking me to get him here one last time?
And I understood that?
Sigh.
I didn't know what to think anymore.
I thought I was here for myself.
I thought I was doing this all-
But- 'Fate is weird huh?'
And some things were pretty much unavoidable and unexplainable.
This wasn't one of those because the system for sure did everything on its own.
Anyway- there were nuts on the ground. So, I picked some up.
Three-round- pointy Alma Nutshells.
If my guess was right then-
[Confirmed- quest complete]
[Exp gained- 2000]
[Apothecary unlocked!]
[User may now craft crude items!]
I was right indeed.
I opened the menu-
R. Human (F-)
• Status (Locked)
• Equipment (Locked)
• Refinement (Locked)
• Skills
• Magic (Locked)
• Store (Locked)
• Apothecary
• Familiars
• Party (Locked)
• &^@&#*& (Unavailable)
The apothecary option was unlocked and I pressed on it.
•Crude potion (Alma Nuts X3)
•Crude wine chant (Décor Grape X9)
Just pressing on the crude potion gave me a potion while making the nuts disappear.
I didn't even need a bottle-
Or rather- the empty potion bottle I was carrying from last night disappeared and instead- it got filled with this stuff.
I didn't know why but I got the feeling this was as the name implied- crude.
The color was plain brown and it didn't glow like the one I drank before. Potions were generally blue. At least the potions that the system gave me were blue. The ones sold at the stores were- actually, had I even touched normal potions before? I never really needed to. The royal healers almost always healed me when something happened so-
Anyway- I poured half the contents on the lioness' head while helping her drink a bit.
Lions couldn't drink apparently. At least not like humans.
So that was a chore.
But in the end somehow it worked out and for the time being- the lioness did in fact look far better than before.
It did not try to eat or attack me, no. Instead- She just rubbed her face against my face and while laying against my back, started feeding her kid.
Well- that was something.
With a bit of relief, I sat down for the time being.
The border was still ways off but if nothing went wrong, I'd be there before the afternoon.
'Its still strange how there aren't any monsters here…' And no nests either.
Something didn't really feel right.
I really hope it was just my imagination.
[New quest issued!]
[Recruit and mate with a Harpy.]
'Excuse me, what? Recruit and mate? With a demon!?'
First of all, was it me, or was this quest vaguer than mist? Where the actual hell was, I supposed to find a demon? In hell!?
Second, Harpies were demons! DE-MO-NS.
And last but not least- my first lover was going to be a demon!?
Like what in the actua-
'Wait a second, miss Daphne did always say Harpies were only second in beauty compared to Succubi and Succubi were basically the best-looking women on-'
He he….
Yeah, I couldn't stop grinning.
HAh- aha h aah ahaha haahhh!
I somehow ended up laughing out loud, only to realize I was getting awkward glances from the two lions next to me.
The mother was actually kind of disappointed in me.
Oh well-