Narrator: Rosa
I remember that day so warmly. Well, it used to be kinda hard to remember, because I didn't really remember anything from that time, but I'm currently using a spell that lets me relive my old experiences, even if I don't remember them. Ah, doesn't that sound just absolutely wonderful? I can assure you, it really is. I bet you'd love to do that yourself and tell me all about the most wonderful times in your life. Anyways, um, I may as well narrate this for you.
@ Boron: Hey, what's going on here?
Oh, I'm ... recording all of the lovely details of my life, and our adventure.
@ Boron: Well, that sounds great.
Ooh! You should narrate the next chapter!
@ Boron: Chapter??
Yeah. I'm formatting it in a book for someone.
@ Boron: You sure do have some weird projects.
Hey! Don't act like you're the normal one here!
@ Boron: Okay, okay. I'll help narrate some of it for you.
Good boy. I new you'd understand. :D
Now, um... oh, right. I should be narrating.
Alright, let's narrate this
The first time I met Boron, it wasn't magical, but it was very important. My mother had just died the day before. She was out shopping, and one of the racist people in town saw her and was really disgusted, because she was a troll. Us high trolls have always been seen as inferior beings with less intelligence than others, even though we're not really unintelligent at all. People just hate us because they are racist. Luckily, the man who killed my mother didn't know much about her and was not an immediate threat to me, as long as I didn't happen to randomly runinto him. The day my mother died, I cried myself to sleep, and felt horrible. Luckily, after waking up, I got super motivated to move on and get stronger, so I wouldn't like my mama did. So, I went to the neighboring town, and went to the adventurer's guild. That's where I met my very first friend.
I walked in, and it wasn't super busy. The 2 adventuers that were sitting at a table talking about their next quest went silent and glared at me, noticing that I am a troll.
"Oh, hi there." The receptionist said pretty plainly.
I was going to respond, but then the entrance door suddenly opened. The adventurers jerked their heads in that direction, and glared at the boy that just walked in, which was Boron. After a mere second, the adventurers realized that me and Boron weren't really that important, and decided to continue talking about their quests. The receptionist dropped her shoulders a little and let out a sigh.
She looked directly at me. "Now, girl, what are you here for?"
"Me become adventurer, request."
"Huh?"
"Me become adventurer. Apply."
The receptionist did not like how simple my speech was. You see, I really wasn't very educated or good at speaking back in the day, so I was very hard to understand.
The receptionist frowned. "Okay. That will cost 10 silver."
I put 10 silver on the table. I was kind of stressed, but that's because I was not used to interacting with people.
The receptionist calmly placed an adventurer card on the table. I grabbed one of the scalpels, and pricked my finger to drop a drop of blood on it.
The boy behind me interrupted us while I was doing that. "I'd like to apply too."
The receptionist quickly pulled out another card, and held it in the air. "Silver, please."
He quickly payed, as if this was a race between him and the receptionist. They were both smiling now. How cute. I just watched them mindlessly (I still thought they were cute though). My adventurer card was now complete, and had my name and stats on it.
The boy quickly dropped a drop his blood on his card, using the scalpel I just used, instead of one of the other 20 scalpels, not that it matters. He then put it in the empty jar, labeled "dirty".
The receptionist put the silver coins away, and looked at both cards, flipping them around.
"Wow, you two are bound for success. You should make a party."
The other 2 adventurers in the room stopped talking for a moment and looked our way. Then they went back to talking. They were now talking about another adventurer they'd partied with before.
I looked at the boy blankly, and then back at the receptionist. The boy looked at his card, and grimaced. He must have noticed how bad his stats were. All of his stats were 0, and he was level 1. He looked at mine, and saw the same values. Then I remembered why I was here, and put my card in my pocket.
The boy thought for a moment. He was pondering whether forming a party would be a good idea.
"Good idea." He looked at my face, which was pointed at a painting on the wall.
"Um." He tapped my shoulder, and I was a bit startled. I took a step back and faced him.
"Do you want to join my party?"
"Ohhh wuhhh... Confirm." I had a hard time figuring out which word to say, but agreed.
He was a bit confusd though. "Huh?" He tilted his head. I nodded slightly.
"Is she your sister or something?" The receptionist interrupted us. The boy looked at her a bit sheepishly and a bit surprised.
I had not given her the best impression, and it would make perfect sense for him to bring his sister with him, or accompany his sister, especially if she was as awkward as I was.
"N-n-n-no." The boy sheepishly stuttered.
The receptionist sighed. She pulled out some papers and markers, and started making flyers for a public event.
The boy looked at me. "Will you join my party?" He asked again. He was more harsh this time, since he didn't really understand my confirmation from a moment ago.
I sighed, relieving some stress, and gave him a confused look. I had assumed that he must have wanted something else (or course, I would have had no idea what, but I still felt like there was something else). After my sigh, I concluded that he was just asking me to join his party.
"Confirm. Positive."
The boy tilted his head in confusion. Unfortunately for him, I did not know the words "yes" or "no". The only words I knew were ones related to magic and spells. I was like that nerdy kid who is so awkward because he's not even used to using your vocabulary. Actually, nevermind that. I don't think the average nerd is as lacking in their vocab as I was in mine.
"Um, okay?" The boy sighed. Then he looked at the quest board and walked over to it. I stood still for a second, and then followed him over to the board.
He faced me, and I met his gaze. He thought for a second, and realized that I did want to be in his party. He then found an E rank quest to pick 300 magic herbs. He brought it over to the receptionist. "I'd like to accept this quest."
"Alright." The receptionist put it under her desk and continued working on her flyers.
The boy came over to me. "Come on." He gestured for me to follow him, so I did.
We walked out of town, and towards the nearby woods.
"So, who are you?" He asked.
I looked at him blankly, not understanding his question.
"Ugh. What is your name?" He asked after another moment.
"Name..." I thought for a moment. I recognized that word.
"Rosa." I recalled. My mother has used my name many times, but I've almost forgotten what the word "name" means.
"Hi Rosa. I'm Boron."
Unfortunately, I did not understand that, and just glanced at him.
"You're not very talkative, are you?" He asked with a frown.
I gave him a confused look. He sighed and shook his head.
We continued our walk into the forest.
The forest was dense, and the boy almost immediately tripped. I ran over to him, and grabbed his hand. He was a bit surprised by that, and tried to force my hand off him.
"Stabilize." I said. He gave me a bewildered look, and sighed. He stopped struggling, and I led him through the woods, making sure he didn't trip.
I let go of his hands when we got to large ditch with a bunch of roots that we could use to cross it. I turned around and watched him climb on the roots behind me. I helped stabilize him twice when he almost fell over.
"Thanks." He smiled after we finished crossing.
We walked a little further, and found one of the meadows where the medicinal herbs grow.
"Good, we're here. Now you pick 150 of them, and I'll pick the other 150, okay?"
I gave him a blank look. He sighed and put his hand on his forhead while wincing.
He walked over to one of the plants, and plucked the auxiliary leaves off of it.
"These." He put the leaves in my hand.
"Low quality." I stated plainly.
"It's low quality. Wait, how do you know that?"
I looked at them again, and brough them to by nose, sniffing them.
"Low quality. Confirm."
"Okay then... I guess you can just tell. Pick more, okay?"
He started picking the herbs, and I moved closer and watched him for a moment. I saw what he was doing, and noticed that he was not holding the stem correctly when the plucked the leaves off. I also noticed that this plant didn't even require him to pluck at it.
"Inefficient. Watch." I stopped him, and showed him how to slide his fingers along the plant and essentially slice the leaves off it. It's much faster and easier.
I grabbed his hand and took him to the next one.
"Sublow quality. Bend." I used a knuckle to bend part of the plant, and slide the leaves off the bend. The sublow quality plants are stiff like that, so you need to bend them to overcome it.
"Wow. You know what you're doing, don't you?" He looked at me in awe.
I handed him the leaves, and searched through the field, crawling on my knees. I figured with there being so many herbs here, there were probably some medium or subhigh quality ones around.
I searched and searched, and found a large bundle of multiple dozen medium quality ones. I smiled.
"Medium quality. Pinch. Turn." I tighlty pinched a part of the plant where a bunch of leaves branched off, and twisted the leaves while also twisting the rest of the plant. The leaves easily popped off. I handed them to Boron, and quickly repeated the process 3 more times for other 3 bundles of large leaves on the plant. I ignored the smaller fresher leaves, because on these herbs, the small leaves are not useful when picked, and are better left to mature, like unripe fruits.
Boron continued storing everything in his bags for me. "Wow. You're so fast. You must be quite experienced."
"Fast." I repeated what he said, recognizing the word.
"How come you don't talk much though?"
I didn't respond, because I had no idea what his question meant. I continued picking herbs. After some time, I found some subhigh quality herbs.
"Turn, turn, turn." I twisted the herbs 3 times back and forth to harvest their leaves.
"No one around here really likes beast people, so I was hoping I could become an adventurer." He said with worry in his tone.
"Beast people." I looked at him, and saw that he is a lizard beast person.
"Yeah. What are you?"
I looked at him again, and showed him another plant. "Fire herb." I harvested it the same way the other herbs were harvested.
I grabbed some bark, took a leaf, grinded down part of it with my knuckle, then broke off a piece of one of the low quality herbs, and put it in my mouth with some seeds from the grass. I chewed it up into a mulch, and whistled through it while looking up. A small streak of fire came out of my mouth as I whistled.
"Wowww!!! That's so cool!" Boron was amazed by my alchemical trick.
The fire kept blowing for about 30 seconds. Then I pulled the ingredients out of my mouth, and ripped them apart throwing a bit of them around here and there.
"I tried asking what species you are."
"Species. Turnina, cordid, barobble, tiffoa, maple, trynaut, ebcoli..." I named a bunch of species of herbs and plants with useful magical properties.
"What? No. I mean you." He poked me.
"This. What race are you?"
I gave him a blank look, and grabbed the finger he poked me with. He tried pulling his finger out, but I just held it tighter.
He sighed, and I let go of his finger.
"You're really weird, you know that?"
I frowned, becuase he seemed to be unhappy with me.
He frowned back, but he also looked sad, because he cared about how I feel.
He took a second to calm down, told me to "Pick more herbs.", and waved one of the leaves in my face, in order to make his command more clear.
"Low quality." I said while looking at the herb.
We stared at each other for a brief second, and I decided to continue picking herbs. Immediately, I turned around, stood up, and walked to the other side of the meadow. I found a cluster of boulders there, and avoided it.
After checking around the meadow, I returned to the boulders, and scanned them thoroughly. I checked to see if any dangerous insects or snakes might be living around them. After checking, I found no dangers, and proceeded to check for any good herbs. I managed to find a nice bunch of herbs growing near a short boulder, surrounded by thick grass and wild flowers.
I crouched down, and moved some grass out of the way to make the herbs more visible. I glanced at Boron.
"High quality."
"You found high quality ones? I heard those are so rare!"
"Large rock." I pointed at the cluster of boulders.
"That's how you knew. Smart." Boron replied.
I got up and walked over to the forest.
"What are you doing?"
"Small rock." I told him that I was looking for a small rock.
"What are you going to do with it?"
"High quality banuin." I stated the name of the herbs I had found a short moment ago.
"Oh really?" Boron seemed to understand me.
I searched through the woods, and found a small stone that fit in one hand and had an edge with an angle of 160 degrees. I walked back over to the herbs, and sat down.
I pressed the stone against part of the stem where the leaves branch off, and pulled the plant back on the stone, holding it down with my right thumb. Then I used my left hand to twist the leaves, slowly, and moved the leaves from my left hand to my right, pressing them between the stone and the stem. I held the stem with my left hand, and sliced the leaves off with my right hand. Finally, I hand the leaves to Boron, who is sitting next to me, watching. He started sitting next to me after I harvested herbs for about an hour. Now he's sitting even closer than last time. I scooch over for more room, because he is kind of in the way.
That took a minute. I repeated the process twice more for this plant, and then moved on to the next plant.
The last set of leaves was pretty high up, so I decided to do them later. I crawled over to the 5 other plants, and glared at Boron every time he sat too close to me. He seemed to figure out by the last plant that I needed a foot of working room between us. However, him sitting so close also meant I didn't have to reach as far to hand him the leaves. However, he just started taking the leaves from me after the 1st plant, since he could tell when I was done working on a plant.
I stood up, and started working on the top leaves of all of the plants. The plants had grown very tall, probably because no one had harvested from them in a long time. I heavested 2 to 3 sets of leaves from the tops of every plant, and felt proud of myself.
"I think we have enough herbs now." Boron's 3 bags were really packed.
I grabbed one of the bags, and put it on my back.
"Huh. Thanks a lot, Rosa." He smiled.
I smiled back at him.
He started walking in a random direction, and I followed him. I followed closely, and made sure he didn't trip on the dozens of roots, rocks, and holes in the ground that would probably make him stumble.
After some time, he stopped. "Um, this doesn't seem to be the way back to town. Do you know the way?"
"Path to town?" I asked.
"Yes. The path to town." Boron replied.
I looked at him for a minute, and saw the pleading look in his eyes.
I grabbed his hand, and pulled him in the correct direction. I knew the way back to town. Kind of.
I was never too good at finding my way around, but sometimes I would get a tingly feeling that led me in the right direction. I ended up changing direction a few times as I took Boron with me, but I was pretty sure that it was the way back.