Bluish-White flower

Making his decision he slowly resumed his climb. Each nerve was tensed and each sense strained to the limit, ready to identify the incoming thread and to react to it. And he wouldn't be disappointed.

He had barely made 1m headway when once again the snake shot towards him from its hiding place.

This time he didn't waste time whipping out his dagger instead he let go with his right hand and used the motion to escape the incoming attack. At the same time, he used his empty hand to try to catch the snake behind its head.

The strengths of the snake where its capability of hiding and its fast linear speed while attacking. Now that its attack had missed it was hard for it to change its movement. It tried to once again retreat into the lush tree leaves to hid but Ivan's hand was faster.

With his fingers closing around the snake just behind its head he managed to catch it safely. He was now able to reaffirm his guess as to what kind of snake it was. It was a Blue Vine Snake, a snake that could commonly be found close to the blue vine which had been his target. It wasn't seen as a difficult-to-defeat monster since it could easily be caught if you knew about it.

It would try to bite its victim and inject a fast-acting paralyzing poison. It wouldn't normally attack humans as long as they didn't invade their living habitat, which he had done by climbing the tree. After all, they weren't capable of eating something as large as a human. This poison could also be extracted and then used to refine pills that acted as fast-acting painkillers.

The best method would be to keep the snake alive and milk it but with Ivan's current position of clinging to the trunk of a tree, he wasn't able to safely keep it, leaving him only with the choice of killing it now and then extract the available resources later, which would be less but there would still be some useful material.

He used his mana to summon a small flaming blade and then cut into the snake just behind its head. By separating the head from the body with the hot blade he would be able to keep as much as possible from the snake, damaging only a small part of it.

After separating the head from the body he put away both parts and continued upwards into the tree.

There weren't any more incidents and he easily reached the top of the tree. Besides the lush green leaves of the tree, there was also a bluish-white flower that had a radius of around ten centimeters. This was the flower of the blue vine and the reason he had climbed up here.

There were five petals and each of them had the same color signaling that the flower had been completely developed and had thus the maximum use for pill refining. He carefully plucked two petals, leaving behind the other three. This would ensure that the vine would survive and bear a new flower next year. If he removed more petals it may be possible that the vine wouldn't be able to survive, since the flowers were essential to recreate as well as collect energy.

Descending from the tree was easy and fast, and soon he found himself once again searching the forest for other materials.

Meanwhile, Vlada hadn't been lazy either. She had found four different groups of bears. Although bears would normally live alone the here ones living here Steelback Bears loved to meet up regularly, thus they would create something similar to small communities.

Those communities consisted of only a few caves located next to each other, making them very hard to find. Without Vlada's scouting abilities it would have taken Ivan a lot more time to find even one, as long as he didn't stumble into one.

Now he could slowly make his way towards one of the four she had found, while constantly keeping out an eye towards possible resources.

And he wasn't unfortunate. Along the way, he not only picked up a few more mosses but also flower petals, snakes and other small herbs. After getting back he would be able to refine a lot of pills. Although he would give some of the materials to the store so the others could practice as well.

Finally, he arrived at a clearing in the forest which was dominated by the huge stone in the center which was surrounded by cliffs on three sides. According to Vlada, Steelback Bears could be found in the caves which had naturally been formed inside the cliffs.

But currently, there were no bears in sight.

"Could they all be inside the caves?", Ivan wondered.

Although it was already late, the sun hadn't disappeared below the horizon yet and it was still bright outside. So it was unlikely that the day-active animals had already gone into their caves to sleep. There should be a different explanation for them to have disappeared.

He was still thinking about what this reason could be when his thoughts were interrupted by an angry roar.

"Sounds like a Steelback Bear. I wonder what angered it like this.", Ivan murmured to himself and then followed the sound.

The roar had come from a location sideways from this clearing. Just by following one of the cliffs, he should be able to arrive at the right location.

He carefully made his way over. He didn't want to suddenly stand face to face with a group of bears. Not without any preparation.

The sight that entered his view when he arrived at the source of the roar was so comical that if it wasn't dangerous he would have laughed out loud.

On top of a small ledge sat a small girl who was cuddling a small cub. And below the ledge stood a row of bears, each of them angrily staring at the girl above them.

But while they stared at her angrily and sometimes also roared at her, she completely ignored them and continued petting the cub as well as talking to it. From the distance he wasn't able to understand her words but considering that the cub didn't make any moves, trying to escape from her grip it didn't seem anything problematic.

'Wait, a little girl, here? Don't tell me its that guy's little aunt. But where is he? Didn't he say that the compass showed that she was further into the mountains?'

Anyway, that was for later. Now he did have to make a decision. Should he help that girl or not? And did that girl even need his help?

Out here in the wilderness one shouldn't judge things just by their appearance. Just look at how relaxed the girl looked. She even had the leisure of petting the little cub, while below its parents were angrily looking at her, ready to rip her into pieces.

'Whatever. I'll just come back later and check-up at her.', Ivan decided after some thought. In his opinion, the girl wasn't in any danger at the moment. And leaving her there would be a good learning experience if she truly was unable to escape.

Having made his decision he turned around and left just as stealthy as he had come.

Now that the group of bears he had initially targeted wasn't a valid target currently he had to look for another one. But the other groups were too far away and he wouldn't be able to reach them before nightfall and moving through the forest during the night wasn't something he planned to do.

Thus he informed Vlada to meet up with him and while on it to check for a comfortable cave he could rest in.

About half an hour later he stood in front of a smooth stone wall. There didn't seem to exist anyway to climb the wall and looking at the structure of the surrounding mountain, it didn't even seem possible to arrive at the small ledge at the top of the wall.

"Hm. Vlada informed me that there is a cave up there. But there is no way for me to get up there. I guess I have to wait for her here."

According to the slightly unprecise information he had gotten from Vlada, the ledge was in front of a cave. She had found it before while looking for bears and had remembered it when he told her to look for a place to spend the night.

As a bat, Vlada's flight was extremely silent and if not for him being in constant contact with her, then he would definitely have missed her arrival. After arriving at his side, she first perched herself on top of his shoulder. Something that seemed to have become something she loved to do.

Ivan also directly started to pet her. She had done a good job searching around. And a bit of praise wouldn't hurt anyone.