Lys kept walking. His boots kicked up small puffs of dust on the dry road. The guilt from the gate still sat heavy in his chest and would not leave. He thought about the woman's thin arms and the way her voice had shaken when she spoke about her daughter.
He might have taken her quest without knowing, but now he has to finish it, and he wants to. Especially after he has heard about her.
The road to the Gaiya forest edge felt familiar. Although on the patrol with Vessa yesterday, they had used the gate behind the village that time, the tree pattern of the forest looked almost the same.
The air still carried the same mix of pine and damp earth.
Still, something felt very different today. From the back gate, he had seen many houses in which people lived. But from this main gate, the path stayed open longer. He could see a few worn houses in the distance, far from the wall. They looked as small and broken as he thought they would be.
It seemed the village kept those houses pushed back on purpose so the main gate would look clean and proper for anyone passing by. He had not noticed them the first time he entered the village or even when he had run out at night to save Lady Elowen. But now he was seeing them clearly.
It was like a thing that is noticeable only when you knew where to look.
He kept walking while the village, surrounded by massive wooden logs, thinned out behind him. The houses he saw before were barely noticeable.
As he came closer to the forest, the path narrowed between low bushes and tall grass. The air also changed. It felt thicker, cooler, and carried the heavy smell of leaves and wet soil. Lys noticed the shift more than he had before. He took a deeper breath, feeling the fresh air, and kept moving.
Just when he reaches the tree line, he stops for a second. The forest stood quiet in front of him. Sunlight came through the leaves in small patches.
He activated his Basic Herb Knowledge skill. At the same time, his hunting skill worked passively. He instantly got the feel of the entire forest in his mind as if he had been a hunter in this forest for years.
His viewpoint of the forest as a whole changed right away. The forest edge looked way different now than before the skill kicked in.
Before today, the basic herb knowledge skill used to only show him herbs when he focused hard on one plant, but this time, today, the skill pointed things out on its own. He didn't even have to focus on each of the herbs to know details about them. Every herb in his vision got highlighted on his Basic Herb Knowledge skill's system screen, specifically pointing out their attributes to him. It was almost like he was wearing a spyglass or something.
For some, it might seem like the skill itself got upgraded or something, and maybe that's why the skill has now developed this new feature, but it didn't.
In reality, Lys just got better at using the skill after repeated use of it on every chance he got.
Though he still hasn't understood most of the features of the skills he currently has, at least he understands that he has yet to unlock the full potential of the skills. He understood that there is so much he doesn't know about his skill.
And he intends to learn each and every one of them slowly. One thing at a time.
When he ignored a rotten log and jumped over it, a patch of blue-leaf herbs appeared in his sight before he even looked for it. The leaves had a certain shape and grew inside a rotten, dead tree that looked darker with age. His feet moved toward it before he had even decided.
He crouched down and started working. He cut the herbs carefully with the small knife from his belt and stored them in the cloth bag Elara had given him before he came out of the house.
This herb was one of the rare herbs drawn on the quest paper. And after more than 30 minutes of searching, he finally got one of them.
Most of the plants, herbs, and weeds the skill showed were not on his quest paper. They were mostly very common to be found by others or useless for anything. So, he ignored almost all of them.
But when the skill highlighted a rare one, like this one, which was on the quest paper, he had to be careful when he picked it up. One mishap and the herb could become unusable, because of the contamination from his knife or his faulty techniques of taking it out of the dead tree. Everything had to be perfect, he knew it from the description shown in his herb knowledge skill.
After taking it perfectly, he started moving again. He moved like usual, but once in a while, he found some other rare herbs or such from the quest paper. Every time he found them, he stopped and took them in, even though collecting them was not the main reason he had come in here now.
Rare herbs sold for good money in the market. He knew it already from his borrowed memory from the original Lys. After all, Elara used to be an herb seller before he possessed Lys's body. So, as her son, of course, he knew the basic prices of herbs.
So, he had started taking every rare herb as they got his eyes. And it started after his outing with Vessa.
That is also why he had already made a small collection of rare herbs without letting anyone know. His plan for now is to collect any type of rare herbs he can collect, and when the time comes, he'll just sell them at a high price, cash in, and maybe pay off Sara's 75 gold coins loan that she gave him at the time of buying the house. That fact is still weighing on his mind. So he wanted to resolve that as soon as he could.
She had given him that amount of money without a doubt, whether he ever could repay her back or not, so he had to honor her trust. He wanted to. That is also why he was searching for ways to make money at every chance he got till now, so that he can finally pay her back and be free from this.
Not that he wanted to be free from her or something, but he just wanted to be somewhat equal to her to have a proper relationship with her. He felt it was really necessary for him to do this.
And that is why he was collecting rare herbs nonstop, even though he was on a different job right now.
But even though he was doing this side quest of his, that doesn't mean he isn't focused on the main job he is supposed to do.
However slow that job had been going on till now, he just kept scanning the area with his Basic Herb Knowledge skill and took every herb he found, sometimes herbs from the quest paper also wound up on them too. In other words, his personal job and the main job were currently coexisting right now. He was multitasking.
But there was a little issue with that. It took him a little while to figure out how rare some of those herbs from the quest paper actually were.
And by the time he found out, it was already too late.
Author note: Add this story to your library, so that you don't lose it among the thousands of other books.