chapter 378
The trip back to the fort was quite uneventful. Goose, however, looked a bit tired. I guess it made sense; the sun was about to set, and he had been doing a lot of flying and fighting. The descent into the fort was the same as last time, but this time we headed straight to the company headquarters. As soon as we made it there, Goose immediately curled himself up and went to sleep.
I did not need to sleep this night; instead, I went towards the quartermaster's building. There, I needed to stay in line because there were a few other groups turning in quests. When it was my turn, I handed in two quest slips I had.
The person behind the counter looked at them, and before I could bring out the body of the bird, he spoke. "Wait, those quests were just accepted. You know what I really hate? When new people come in here and take the quests they’re just not ready for. There will be a heavy fine for you not being able to complete this. Next time be more careful about your choices."
I was honestly so confused that it took me a while to understand what this person was on about, but he just continued to complain. Either this person was having a really bad day, or he shouldn't be working a job where he needed to communicate with other people.
I even tried to cut him off, but he just continued to rant. He started to fill out some sort of paperwork, and apparently, he was writing me a fine. "That's enough," I said, raising my voice a little bit and dropping the body of the bird onto the table.
That finally shocked the person out of whatever madness had come over him. "This is the body of the rank 3 bird who had gathered a large flock around it. I can also report that I was able to kill over 90% of the flock, and the birds who escaped were below rank 2."
From the adventurer's backpack I had, I pulled out a cloth bag that was full of white circular crystals. "This is the proof for the second quest, and these were the crystals that were inside the creatures."
His mouth moved for quite a while, like a fish out of water, but eventually, he started to record everything down. But when he looked at the cloth bag, it was obvious that he wanted the guards to search me. But because of the mistake he made before, he was unwilling to do so.
They wouldn't find anything because I was storing the crystals in my tattoo storage. There were supposed to be some abilities that could search through abilities like this, but they were exceedingly rare, and no one who had an ability like that would be here.
It at least seems that when he wanted to, the madman could work fast. I was handed the bag with 20 small, 10 medium, and three large Mythryl coins. It was a small fortune outside the rings, but here I could spend it all in a shopping trip. I would, however, get a few decent pieces of gear. But this money I will be using to get the company started properly.
After that, I went into the market so I could familiarize myself even better with everything here. It took 3 minutes for the bag where the coins were in to be stolen. I had no idea who took it or how, but fortunately, I was smart enough to store the coins in my tattoo storage. Near morning, I went back to the company headquarters and napped there until Goose woke me up.
We then exited the fort and flew towards Connection. I was going to need to spend the day there as well. Mostly, I spent my time in the library learning about the laws of the place. Before we left, I went and got permission so I could portal here and also submitted paperwork so I could bring other people and animals through the portal. By the time I will be returning here, I should be able to bring others here as well.
I did visit a tavern before I left, as eating rations was getting a lot less appetizing when I knew how tasty the food here was. Halfway through the meal, I was surprised. In the corner, there were three tables pushed together where younger-looking but still rank 2 individuals started playing with cards. I recognized the cards to be similar to the ones the kids who I talked to a while back had.
I didn’t need to go closer to be able to hear what they were talking about. Apparently, a few days ago, a card pack salesman had visited the city, so everyone had fresh cards and people wanted to beat their old rivals with the new additions to their card packs.
I would need to keep my ears open and hopefully catch the salesman one day because I kind of wanted to see my own cards and perhaps purchase some. Whoever managed to turn their ability to see important events happening in the world into this business was a true genius.
When I finished with my meal, I was feeling full, but Goose wasn't. So, while we were flying towards the tree, Goose was keeping an eye out for some breakfast. Eventually, we found a big moose that was close to the second rank. Goose didn’t need any help in taking it down, but I did collect the antlers.
They fit quite easily into my new adventure backpack that cost me one large and four medium mithril coins. It was the biggest investment I've currently made, but it was so worth it. Not only could I bring the tree with me, but I could also have a lot more things I could fit into the bag while keeping the weight down by quite a lot.
When we finally reached the tree, the passive effect tried to take hold once again, but I was now aware of it, so I could brush it off easily enough. I think the reason why it was so effective on me the first time was because I truly was admiring the tree.
I started to carefully remove the dirt from the top layer of the soil. I made the largest circle possible; if I tried to make it any bigger, the bag wouldn’t accept it as an object it could take in. Fortunately, the circle was big enough that the tree would easily be able to survive after a bit of care with its reduced root network.
To cut through the roots, I needed to use my sword and focus on sharpness while channeling my energy into it. It took me about two hours to carefully cut the tree out of the ground. When the tree finally popped into their backpack, only a little bit was sticking out of the top.
That was actually the way I needed it to be because if I were to close the bag completely, it would seal it off from the outside world, and there would be a chance that the tree would die before we got back home.
Even with the weight reduction, the backpack weighed quite a lot because I had the beaver-armadillo creature skins and some other high-rank materials I purchased also inside the backpack. Goose wasn't the happiest with this, as he needed to work hard to keep us in the air, and his speed was reduced.
I explained to him about training, which made him a lot less annoyed about the situation. After a long conversation about training, Goose explained that he thought I was a bit mad by doing weird exercises and that he now understood why I had done those.
He asked for my help to plan his own training regimen. I was happy enough to use my training plan ability to figure out his training plan. Channeling energy into Goose and the ability was a nice exercise for me as well.
We were almost home, but the training plan was still not half done. Fortunately, I didn’t have anything strenuous planned for tonight as I wanted a little bit of a relaxing evening while enjoying the sauna after I planted the tree a bit further away from everyone else.