Wishlist Wizard: The Rise of the Zero Hero [Isekai LitRPG / Now releasing 3x weekly!]

Today's Earth date: October 19, 1991

We stepped away to privately discuss their offer.

The cultists are looking more and more agitated. The longer we wait, the more it feels like this has already gone off the rails.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

Fergus argued that they should have brought the rest of the Zeroes along, but Wayne insisted they deserved their full vacation.

So the pair set out for the weeping man-eater Grinroot told them about, enjoying the sun as Outlawson crawled across the countryside. They went in the same direction as Wayne had in one of his solo grind sessions. He found a small pack of ratmen in this wooded area. After talking to Grinroot, he was thankful he stopped exploring at their burrow.

The weeping man-eater was ten minutes farther in. If he didn't see the red dot on his HUD, he would have mistaken it for a standard weeping willow. And he would have ended up like one of the three ratmen he and Fergus saw wrapped in willow branches. The bones of one were partially visible–a femur, maybe–but otherwise, the wrapped ratmen looked like green cocoons.

But their tails dangled loose, making them easy to identify.

Wayne drew his sword.

Fergus told him to wait.

"Why? Bushwack in, grab the seeds, bingo bango ready to go-go."

"You didn't read up on weeping man-eaters?"

"Don't shame me," Wayne said. "I thought we covered all of it with Grinroot."

The old scholar sighed. "It's a monster. If we cut it, it will defend itself. All of the branches on the side of the danger will attack while the opposite side wraps the trunk to protect it."

"So how do we do this?"

"I do not know."

Wayne sat against a tree–of the non-man-eating variety–and looked through his system menus for inspiration. Finding none, he studied the weeping man-eater. Then he looked all around the tree as well as the forest around them. Looking up, he had an idea.

Crown shyness. That was when the canopies of trees didn't touch. Minding each other's space allowed more sunlight to come through, which was good for all of the trees.

"Does it attack other plants?" Wayne asked.

He and Fergus looked around the weeping man-eater and found it touching ferns, a clump of raspberry bushes, and a mess of poison ivy. "Appears it does not," Fergus said. "Unless these specific plants negotiated their own treaties."

Nee.

A shrubbery sprouted beneath the weeping man-eater. As it grew upward, it touched and lifted man-eater branches with no reaction from the monster.

Nee.

A second shrubbery appeared next to the first. The way the bushes lifted man-eater branches was like a stagehand holding a curtain back for actors to come and go from a performance.

"Please come get me if this doesn't work," Wayne said, handing Fergus his sword.

"We pledged to preserve the specimen."

"If I die, you might lose system access."

"I was only joking."

Wayne crawled on his stomach between the two shrubbery, and then he cast Nee again. And again. And again, building a shrubbery tunnel all the way to the trunk of the weeping man-eater, careful not to disturb a single willow leaf. He felt a system notification when he cast his second to last Nee.

The seeds of the man-eater grew from the trunk like hunter green party balloons. The most mature seeds were fully inflated and easily plucked, but they were heavy and bulky. Wayne tried carrying two out with him, but he gave up, finding it easier to crawl with only one.

Resource Values.

Weeping Man-Eater Seed, Average Value of 173 gold.

He asked Fergus if he wanted a turn in the shrubbery tunnel. Fergus said his back was feeling a little tight. Wayne rolled his eyes and returned to his stomach to inch-worm to the trunk again.

He collected five seeds in total. He considered gathering more, but he picked all he could from this side of the tree. More seeds would require another tunnel and much more crawling.

"Grinroot said 'a' seed, right?" Wayne asked, trying to dust mud off his clothes. He was dismayed to find that mud could not be dusted away. It simply smeared.

Fergus said Wayne was correct.

"I think I unlocked something new in there too," Wayne said.

In his system, he found a new spell from Spellcasting 101:

Hrlgut – Induce vomiting

What.

"It may be that the system adapts that spell the way it has adapted your other abilities," Fergus proposed. "A more creative interpretation could make it more useful than it sounds."

"Like…?"

Fergus shrugged. "Okay, you got me. That's the most straightforward description the system has given any of us yet."

"Want to test it?"

"Don't you dare."

***

Seven goblins bared their teeth, gleefully laughing at their luck, two humans this far from help and one was too old to fight. This would be an easy meal, the goblins believed, fully unaware that they were little more than test subjects.

Wayne determined that Wing Type 1 from Super Monaco GP extended the distance of his Blitz. A longer dash ability was definitely an upgrade, but Wayne had just barely become comfortable with the original length, reaching the point where he could execute several maneuvers and end up where he intended to without being crippled by motion sickness.

A longer dash screwed up all of his timing.

Fanbi, the life drain spell he learned from Phantasy Star II, had no effect. Wayne and Fergus agreed that was likely due to the drain portion of the mechanic. If Wayne's hitpoints were full, he couldn't take hitpoints from an enemy because he had no place to put them.

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Despite two of the seven goblins dying during Wayne's tests, they interpreted his clumsiness and slow attacks as weakness. Wayne had one more spell to test:

Hrlgut.

The front most goblin wretched and fell to its knees, clutching its stomach. Its body spasmed again, and the goblin spewed into the dirt.

Two of the goblins pointed and laughed at the sick goblin.

Hrlgut.

Hrlgut.

The laughing goblins stopped their revelry to puke.

Fergus looked pale. "Okay. We can stop now." He put a hand against a tree and breathed slow, deep breaths.

Wayne wanted to laugh at him, but he wasn't feeling so good himself.

***

The Underway Mountains were west and southwest of Cuan, and the Wheel Mountain was the closest peak of the range. Grinroot's druid contact lived on the Cuan side of that mountain, and while it was nice that the party didn't have to go around, there was no formally maintained road for accessing their destination.

Grinroot told them where to find a wagon path–the one the druid used to come to town when he had business–but calling it a path was generous. The wear from wagon wheels was scarcely visible, and the party lost the trail entirely several times, having to fan out to find the next rut before continuing on.

Were this a normal road, Outlawson would not have fit, but the plant life seemed to lean away as the bug approached, as if making room for the wagon to pass. When Wayne looked behind him, the trail appeared to close back up again. The change was visible, but it was slow enough that he thought his eyes played tricks on him at first.

None of the Zeroes balked at interrupting their vacation. The three of them admitted they were getting bored and were thankful to have something to do. Armond, especially, seemed moorless without a mission or objective to pursue.

"Druids are like plant wizards, right?" Hector asked, watching the plants around the path expand and contract with their passing.

"That's somewhat accurate," Fergus said. "Druidry is both a craft and a way of life. I've only met a few in my lifetime, but of those I have encountered, they have a special kind of reverence about them."

"Zealots?"

Fergus said that zealots existed within every belief system. People were likely more judgmental of druids due to their lack of experience with them. Also, Fergus reminded the party that a druid may very well commune with plants and animals. Their conversation was not as private as it seemed.

To emphasize the point, Wayne told the party that four blue dots–two on either side of the road–had shadowed them since they entered the forest. He caught a glimpse of a tail here and a flash of orange eyes there, making him believe they were wolves, but they were completely silent and nearly invisible the entire journey.

The party emerged from the forest at the base of the Wheel Mountain into what felt more like an exceptionally large yard than a field. The space was densely planted with herb and vegetable bearing plants. At Fergus' suggestion not to touch a druid's belongings without permission, Wayne resisted the urge to use Resource Values on every plant he didn't recognize, of which there were several.

And though this was clearly a tended garden, it lacked the formal rows of a farm or a backyard vegetable patch. The narrow paths winding through the field seemed to work around where the plants grew, nature determining the ultimate layout and organization of this garden. The human component simply followed its lead, it seemed.

The party left Sammy and Outlawson with the wagon and proceeded through the garden on foot.

The druid's home was built into a hillside so that grass rolled up one side, went over the roof, and gently rolled down the other. To Wayne, it looked like an ecohouse from Earth or a human take on a hobbit hole. The door was narrow but of normal human proportions otherwise, and a small cart sat nearby.

Birds, bees, and butterflies were everywhere. They moved out of the party's path but didn't show any signs of feeling threatened. They had complete confidence they were safe here.

"Leave," a disembodied voice bellowed. The party stopped immediately.

Probe.

Wayne saw only the green dots of his party. No blue or red dots appeared on his HUD, including inside the hillside home.

Fergus replied, "Lady Grinroot swore us to secrecy and told us how to find you."

A long stretch of only bird chirps and leaves rustling passed. The party didn't move.

"Why?" the voice boomed back.

"Our party is led by two scholars with an interest in druid history, druid history in this region specifically."

"Go on."

Fergus cleared his throat, seeming undecided on whether he needed to speak loudly when he answered. He settled on a volume somewhere between talking over cafe background noise and yelling over the din of a nightclub. "We're looking for a building in the Underway Forest. We've read that druids have walked these woods for many years, and we are also aware of a conflict involving twenty soldiers and druids. Our knowledge of that is limited, but I'd wager the druids were not treated fairly in that incident."

The door to the house opened, a blue dot appearing on Wayne's HUD at the same time. A short, thin man stepped out. He had the build and stature of a racing jockey, and he had the hair and beard of a hermit hiding in the forest to write a manifesto. He wore a loose pair of linen shorts but had a bare chest and bare feet.

Without a shirt, the druid's right arm was plainly visible. His flesh ended halfway between his elbow and his shoulder, and an arm seemingly sculpted from woven roots replaced it. Those tendrils entered the muscle of his upper arm, akin to cyborg wires, Wayne thought. The hand at the opposite end had human proportions and seemed just as functional. The druid held a broom with it.

"You're picking at deep wounds, old man," the druid said, not moving any closer to the party.

Fergus laughed. "Of the two of us, I believe you are the old man."

The druid almost smiled. "What business do you have with Lady Grinroot?"

"Very little, actually," Fergus answered. "We sought her out as an expert source and retrieved a weeping man-eater seed to earn her trust."

"Will your insect mount eat my garden?"

"Definitely not," Wayne said. "He doesn't really eat, and I can dismiss him if that would make you more comfortable."

"Suppose it's fine. Come. Sit."

As the druid turned to go back into his home, roots emerged from the ground and bent to form benches for the party to sit. They did so, and the druid returned with six cups of tea, all in handthrown clay cups. The fingers of his root hand extended and wrapped around each cup, holding all six with the one arm.

His root hand reformed, finger by finger, as he gave each person a cup of steaming orange water. Hector immediately raised the tea to his lips, but Fergus stopped him, putting a hand on his bicep to guide the cup gently back down. He had the foresight to recommend the party not ask after the druid's name, but he had neglected to warn them about other pitfalls.

"Distrusting?" the druid asked, taking a seat on a root for himself.

"Cautious," Fergus answered. "I can think of seven folktales that begin with a strange food or strange drink."

Resource Values.

Cup of Elder Red Robe Tea. Average Value of 17 gold pieces.

Holy shit. Seventeen gold pieces for a cup of tea?

Wayne sniffed it. The tea did smell quite good, like a summer flower in bloom. "This is Elder Red Robe Tea," Wayne said to Fergus.

The old scholar looked at his cup, astonished, and looked back to Wayne. "You're certain?"

"You know I'm resourceful."

Fergus understood his meaning. "My apologies to the host. We are humbled by your generosity."

The scholar briefly explained to the rest of the party that the Red Robe varieties of tea were highly sought after, Elder Reb Robe doubly so. Fergus compared it to an expensive bottle of wine, naming a few bottles that did well at auction, but no one but Fergus understood wine well enough to completely follow the comparison. The party got the idea, though. Red Robe tea was expensive.

Wayne and Fergus sipped from their cups. The tea had the sweetness of a muted lemon drop and that flavor continued to deepen long after Wayne swallowed. He felt the heat of the tea drink wash over his body, giving him goosebumps along the way.

"Lady Grinroot has never sent me visitors before," the druid said. "You must have been quite convincing. I'll do her the courtesy of answering your questions as best I can."

As he opened a document on his HUD to take notes, Wayne summarized what they knew from their research:

-A mining survey mentioned a "druid retreat" 120 years ago

-Military expense reports mentioned a "druid dispute" 73 years ago

-A lost child described seeing a fancy stone house 30 years ago

"You believe this 'fancy stone house' is related to druids?"

"If it isn't, a druid would be most likely to know where it's located."

The druid saw the logic in that. "The place you seek is not meant to be found, and we druids do not want to be found either."

Fergus gently asked if the druid could explain why.

"What your records call a 'dispute' my people call a 'massacre.' Those soldiers took my arm."

"You were there?" Wayne asked.

The druid nodded. "The 'house' was likely the gathering point for Underway druids an age ago. Each mountain had its own clan, and we met in that place for each solstice. We convened in that very place to discuss growing threats." Cuan was smaller then, he said, but the city and its shipyards devoured forest for its rapid expansion.

The druids were opposed to this, and they attempted to halt logging before it reached Wheel Mountain and beyond.

"The Asplugha meeting was to be a peace summit, or so we were told. Our neighbors in Cuan were interested in imposing terms, not discussing them."

Two whole clans died out that day. The clans who survived lost many of their members as well.

"The conflict didn't end there. We lived in secrecy in these forests, avoiding contact with your civilization at every turn. That served us well for some time, but then the Chosen Heroes attacked."