56

My familiars and I just traveled around toward random compass points while appraising everything along the way. Now that my tags had actual information it was easier to tell what parts of what were actually worth collecting. As well, my Appraisal skill was now high enough to appraise the compass points.

Cheating my way through the forest in this fashion, I found small groves of wild fruits or magical plants usually guarded by different creatures such as ferecats or even tree dragons. It was after disturbing such a nest of dragons while collecting the large white and silver orchids of some plant called the Lunar Lily, that had strong healing and curative properties, that I saw my first wild armored tree lizard.

Unlike the ones at the Golden Ferry, this one large tree lizard had ridged scales instead of spikes that showed it was female while the others were male. Female tree dragons were more prone to evolve into a water or air related version of themselves than the heavy and bulky armored versions, making this a rare find.

However, all of my familiar slots were currently full.

Hermes had the job of keeping the biggest lizard busy while Cweeper and I dealt with the others using earth and ice magic. Duck swooped down to dismember their tails at random. After the lesser lizards were dealt with, I literally tackled the leading female lizard myself.

Luckily, my armor was thick and hardened for the most part so the dentillated ridges did not simply tear into my gear. However, wrestling and rolling with the lizard still chipped away bits of my durability and HP as I fought to get a choke hold on the giant crocodile sized iguana-thing. After almost a minute and forty percent of my health, though, the choking tree dragon finally began running out of energy.

"Hermes!" I called out, rolling over with the minor dragon so that I was on top. Hermes was there in an instantly, dropping down on the beast's back right behind me. "Capture!" I command next before rolling off of the tree dragon and away.

Taking over my position while wielding a long length of braided leather between his hands, Hermes begins strangling the dragon anew for a few moments before it gave up entirely. Then the redcap sat up, placed its hand on the tree dragon's head, and roared something into the air that I could not truly understand. However, I instinctively knew that he was saying, "Mine!"

[Redcap Hermes has Captured and Tamed: (female) Armored Tree Dragon]

[Redcap Hermes has acquired Skills: Capture&Tame]

[Redcap Hermes is Fusing Skills: Capture+Tame]

[Redcap Hermes Fused Skill: Beast Taming]

[Redcap Hermes has acquired Unique Title: Redcap Tamer]

[Acquired Unique Title: Beast Tamer's Beast Master]

[+200XP]

[Beast Tamer's Beast Master: Legendary. Passive. As a Beast Master who trained and owns a Beast Tamer, you have earned yourself a small but special place in history as the first beast taming beast's tamer. To help handle all of the new extra beasts you may deal with in the future, permanent +3 to all stats, +5 to familiars stats after taming, and +1 familiar slot. +25 Imperial Reputation]

"Melpomene, please send Go a message containing these notifications and my condolences," I say while fishing out some tree vermin meat for Hermes to feed his new familiar and build their bonds with. "Thank you, by the way, for doing this go-between stuff for me so I can show others my stats."

[You are welcome, message delivered]

I did my best to ignore the competitive behavior between Cweeper and Hermes after that, wondering whether or not it had been truly wise to give the newest recruit their own mount. However, it was too late to do anything about it at this point. The best I could do was just try and keep the two of them from getting physical in the future.

We traveled straight our to the east from camp and traveled out for about two hours, collecting loot and materials at every available opportunity and confrontation. After that, we spent two more hours winding back around to camp from a southward side seeking more and more things to kill. I was actually grateful to be leaving the region because I wanted to see some new enemies.

Fighting the same old monsters without even seeing a bear like the one Skooma and his old team killed was downright upsetting. I had literally killed hundreds of goblins and I just earlier started my third reality day of gaming. In fact, the third day would not even officially start until noon when I made my character!

When my group got back to camp for the night I sent the others out as their own group to go hunting on the other side of the river with their familiars while I watched the camp. To keep myself busy I decided to try out some of the things I had read before bed the previous night. For this place, I took a bunch of low grade plants from my inventory and started separating the parts of value.

Placing the roots of one small bush and the petals of another flower together in a small metal bowl, I spend half of my mana transmuting a pound of iron into a large pestle with which to crush the roots and petals together. While I worked these two ingredients, I had the stalks of two milky weeds drying out close to the campfire.

Once the roots and petals were all mushed and ground into a dark and wet pulpy mix, I check the thistle-like stalks by the fire for their dryness before breaking one up into the bowl. By the time this one was crushed and mixed, the second stalk was dried. Next I drained the little amount of remaining fluids onto a simple porcelain plate.

Once the contents of the bowl were lightly squished of fluids, I scooped them out into a swath of linen cloth that I wrap around the wet plant materials and tightly knot into a crude teabag. Like any other teabag, I simply dropped this herb bundle into a pot of wire that I set on one of the large rocks bordering the fire to simmer. Then I started a new teabag.

After making six teabags that I divided between two pots of water, I take the plate of crude herbal juices I collected and start covering the thin layer of juices with cut meat from my inventory. The meat was already rubbed with basic edible herbs that promoted general health but now it was going to marinade in a plate of raw healing potion. This was not a part of the original recipes I had read, but my Cook title was just for the purpose of healing food.

Lightly flipping the meat around the plate to thoroughly soak in the herbal juices, I put the plate of meat aside to soak before going into the lea wagon. Opening a crate of alchemy supplies Lady Mara had bought, I take out a small box of jars like baby food containers and return to the fire. Then, I took out some sweet fruits and berries from my inventory.

Dropping a few safe and healthy berries into each jar, I put the lids on and harshly shake the jars to bruise and mash the berries within. Opening the jars back up, I core out a section of C grade citrus fruit that ferecats usually lived around and squeeze the rest of the fruit over the jars. Filling each of two dozen small jars by one third was messy and took half a dozen fruits, but eventually I managed to put potion flavoring in the jars.

By then the pots of 'tea' were heavily simmering by the fire with large quantities of steam. However, the herbal tea made the water thick and oily so that it never truly boiled. Instead, it just continued cooking out the water and leaving behind a light herbal syrup.

After almost an hours of this simmering the first small pot of healing syrup was done and I could finish filling most of the jars. When the first pot was empty of all but a runny drizzle of syrup I simply put the pot upside down on a plate to drain. I spent my next wait period just shaking up the prepared jars of fruity health potion.

[Successfully Brewed: Basic Sweet Health Tonic x12]

[+50XP*12]

[Acquired Skill: Brewing]

[+50XP]

[Brewing: Whether to make a gin for a gin and tonic or a plain old fashioned healing tonic, you can now brew just about anything you can make or find a recipe for]

[Acquired Title: Brewer]

[Brewer: As a maker of all forms of fluids, you naturally become 10% more efficient in your work so that your works come out 10% stronger. Whether this means 10% more proof or 10% stronger healing is up to the Brewer]

[+50*12 Brewing XP]

[Brewing Leveled x5]

[+75XP]

By the time the first batch of potions were done and my new notifications were out of the way, the second batch was ready to pour.

[Successfully Brewed: Basic Sweet Health Tonic x12]

[+50XP*12]

[Leveled Up]

[All stats raised by 1]

[+50*12 Brewing XP]

[Brewing Leveled x5]

[+75XP]

Now that all of the potions were done, I checked the stats on the first and last to see that they both had the same stats and descriptions. Not only did the tonics heal two hundred and fifty Health Points overall and about twenty-five or thirty a sip, drinking the entire jar could dilute poisons and venoms by thirty percent to lessen their effects and duration.

The descriptions were also nice to read, talking about how the usual tonics were all harshly bitter and stuck around long after drinking while this naturally sweetened and flavored tonic was lightened with fruit juices and much easier to stomach.

Stashing four of these in the utility pockets of my armor's belt, I put the remaining twenty away back in their box before storing the box in the wagon. Oleander had made plenty of potions over the last few days using materials the team and Lady Mara provided that were all stronger, but the descriptions about how disgusting they were had been accurate. As hell.

Even if my team could stomach the use of the nasty potions, tasty potions would have a decent sale value to other players and NPC alike. If there was an alternative with sufficient taste and healing, anyone would want to take it. As well, instilling a crutch in other players that makes them rely on tasty but inferior healing items had its own merits for my team.

After that I simply tended the fire while reading, killing time until Go and his team returned first. Once they returned I simply handed over watch duties before going to sleep on the driver's bench of the wagon. Then, before I knew it, I was waking up with the sun to start feeding the land dragons.

Today was spent more carefully in Fast Travel, stopping naturally after about four hours of traveling. Then, like the coach Lana and I had rode to Sierra in, we stopped for two hours to rest the land dragons like horses. The others all went off to do some light hunting and I sent my familiars with them, but Hermes instead chose to patrol on his armored tree dragon.

We were actually attacked by almost a dozen tree vermin being harassed and harried by a trio of hobgoblins but I did not even have to do anything. The land dragons all snatched up a single tree vermin snack apiece and then just watched as Hermes and his armored tree dragon dealt with the others. The hobs, though, tried to run away.

Hermes caught them all one right after the other, flipping from one body to the next to split them open up or down the middle with his Flying Guillotine routine. It was honestly a move I was interested in training in but after my experiences with 360 Edge and Spin Specialist I was content to wait before trying for that Flip Specialist perk. I did not absolutely need to use the attack, yet, so I did not yet need to put my in-game body through even more hell.

And risk getting pissed on in the middle of a battle.

When the others all returned from their hunting we set off once again to finish yet another day with Fast Traveling. Just like the night before, we split up into three initial hunting parties while the others stayed at camp. However, things were just a little bit different tonight.

We had finally left the forest today and now found ourselves in sprawling meadows of gentle hills and shallow gullies with few scattered trees growing in the lowland areas around the stretched hills. The wild grasses and weeds all grew as tall as everyone but Skooma and Stonewall, drastically limiting our visibility. Luckily, we all had familiars with extra sensitive senses for keeping track of our surroundings.

My Hermes and his lizard were especially useful in this regard. The assassin's astute bestial senses could probably pick up the buzzing of a fly from fifty yards away and the giant reptile's vibration sensitivity was probably every bit as strong. Even if I did not have Duck flying overhead watching the area around us I would feel comforted with just Cweeper and Hermes riding the sixteen-foot long minor dragon

After twenty minutes of wandering through the grass, though, I finally received a large but transparent combat alert. Seconds later I could hear the soft rustles and skittering of bodies moving through the grasses nearby. Even Duck was hooting an alarm from above, telling us that we were being surrounded.

When I finally laid eyes on the first enemy it was while leaping through the grass at me. A large furry body with a canine-shaped head and snout was leaping through the air at me. Instead of a wolf, though, it had a bipedal body not much different in size from Hermes with large clawed hands outstretched toward me.

Stepping forward to meet the monster, I simply punch forward with my clawed left gauntlet and drop into a kneel while slamming the smaller body into the ground at my feet. Even as more than ten percent of its health faded away it kicked and clawed at me while howling. However, now that it was held still I could finally use Appraisal to get its name and some of its information.

It turned out to be a subhuman lesser wolf demon called a 'juvenile kobold' and was level twenty-four.

*