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A few hours of foraging later, we had our bags half-full of bundles of different plants, herbs, and mushrooms. Honestly, I learned a lot from Dave and Sam, and now know that gathering was not as easy as swiping some leaves and shoving them in a bag, because even if I collected a shit ton of the requested items, and they were in bad shape, I would either receive partial payment or none at all depending on what it was.
While we were going about our business, the boys passed down the knowledge to me, that was passed down to them from the older kids who introduced them to adventuring as a way to get some spending money.
I was taught that there were certain ways to pluck leaves and stocks, and pack them neatly to avoid damaging them, and I even found out that some of the plants we were collecting had to be collected intact, root and all.
Overall, I had a good time, just me and two guys who knew me well enough to know I did not care much for deference most commoners publicly show nobles, in this moment, we were just a bunch of boys hiking and getting dirty while talking about stupid things, it was a nice change of pace in my busy academic life.
As we were looking for a nice spot to break for lunch, I spotted one of the main objectives of coming out here, collecting Bindo Flowers.
Bindo Flowers, as Dave and Sam understand it, were prized as a stabilizing reagent in alchemy and only grow in the wild around rocky areas, and the one I am currently looking at is currently sitting in the middle of the cliff face of a small hill.
"Hey, guys, break out some lunch while I quickly grab that Bindo Flower over there." I told Dave and Sam as I pointed at the Bindo Flower.
They acknowledged my heads up as they dropped their bags on the chosen resting spot as I ran off.
When I got to the face of the cliff and looked up, I estimated that the flower was up around four times my height, but I saw no issues with that, despite never doing rock climbing before, with the strength of my current body, I was confident of easily scaling this cliff face, and it also helped that there seemed to be a lot of pockets and edges I could hold onto.
I started climbing, and before I knew it, I had reached slightly higher than my own height on the cliff face, and as I reached for the next hold, I lodged my feet into a gap and put my weight on it as I pushed myself up, and as I grabbed with both hands into the only available grip in front of me, the rock hold broke off and I was falling backward.
As the sense of weightlessness took me, I panicked and did the first thing that came to mind. I flared my aura and jabbed my knife hand into the rock face in front of me to grab on. With my right hand embedded in the rock face, I curled my fingers as much as I could so that my hand stayed lodged in before I pulled my body and literally hugged the wall.
As I hugged the wall and calmed my racing heart, I looked down and felt a little silly. From such a height, I could have landed on my feet with no problem, but I panicked. When I finally calmed down, I relaxed my embedded hand and slid it out from the hole I made.
That was when I saw it, and felt it, "Ah, fuck." I cussed to myself as I witnessed the state of my hand. Fortunately, nothing was broken, but I scratched the shit out of my hand, there were scratches, cuts, and abrasions all over it, and I was bleeding. "This flower better be worth it."
I continued my climb, and when I was a few meters away from reaching my target, I reached my hand up to grab a ledge, but my hand went inside the ledge, but that was not the only weird part, as my hand phased through what I thought was solid rock, I felt it on my skin. The tingle of mana.
I pushed mana to my eyes to study what was in front of me and confirmed what I suspected. "An Illusion spell."
I checked around for any physical or array alarms before I pulled myself up and through the illusion and peeked my head through the illusion to see what was inside, but I was met with slight disappointment as the only thing I saw was a tunnel that led further into the dark unknown.
Thinking of what I should do, I shook my head, crawled above the entrance of the cave I just found, and carefully plucked the Bindo Flower, no way am I going scuff my arm climbing up here and not get what I came for.
As for the discovered cave, I better inform Dave and Sam before I do anything.
By the time I got back, Dave and Sam were already munching on their sandwiches, "Luke, you're bac- What happened to your hand?!" Sam exclaimed as he saw me.
"Ah, this… nothing much, just grabbed a sharp rock on my climb, nothing a wash, and some bandages would not fix." I said as I waved off their worries, not like I was going to tell them I panicked and injured myself by punching a hole in the wall.
After washing my scuffed-up hand and Dave helping me bandage it, I sat and joined them for a bite, and casually as I was chewing, I casually told them, "Oh right, while I was climbing up there, I found a cave entrance covered by an illusion."
It took them a second of chewing before my words sank in and they shouted "What?!" in my direction as food chunks flew at me.
After describing and pointing at where I found it, Dave and Sam started whisper shouting at each other for some reason until I cleared my throat to let them know I was there, "Is there something you want to share with the class, boys?" I asked them while tapping my foot.
The two boys had the decency to look a little embarrassed as Dave replied, "Emm… We think that may be a stash… we have only ever heard about it, but from what we heard, sometimes adventures, bandits, or other people would have stashes near a town or city, or in this case, the capital. For bandits, they use it to store money, contraband, and/or their stolen spoils or just lay low when the guard is out looking for them. For adventurers, it is much of the same reason, maybe minus the contraband… I think."
"And who knows, we may strike it rich if it is a bandit's stash, it would go a long way to helping us and our families if this stash has some gold." Sam said, and almost as one, they turned to me and turned their puppy dog eyes up to eleven.
Ha! Like puppy dog eyes are going to work on me, especially when they are coming from 12 year old boys… but who was I to get in the way of them striking it rich, after all, finders keepers!