Before they left to deal with the many urging things they had to do, Ender turned to see the old chief, who turned out to be called Collins.
The old man was looking at a small transparent vial which contained a light green liquid, with a complex expression on his face.
"What's the matter old man, you better drink that… I can't possibly make it out without you to nagging me every day", said Ender.
The bottle that the old man had in his hands, was a recovery potion that Daimon gave him, apparently the alchemy in this world was quite out of date, similar to rune mastering, as the lack of mass produced, efficient storage rings, suggested.
Not only that, but the magic beasts of this place were far more dangerous than the ones of the four galaxies, or even Neptune, in a sense at least.
Previously Daimon didn't understand why the old man, hadn't recovered from that wound he suffered, even after ten years.
Back at the four galaxies, even a deep wound could be healed with enough low-grade recovery potions, and some healing spells, as long as there wasn't a need to regrow a completely severed limb, or an organ, the potions will patch things up.
But apparently in this world, to heal a wound cased by a magic beast, a potion made with similar ranked materials or spells was needed, in other words, the old man who was wounded by a middle stage Arch rank magic beast, needed a potion on the same grade, or a healer on the same grade, it was a rather interesting thing for Daimon.
The only thing he could think of, was that there was something different with the magic beasts of this place, probably related to the fact that even Lord ranked ones had cores, because even if humans didn't have as much vitality as most of the other races, they still improved as they advanced, and the old man is a knight, in fact he used to be a peak Lord rank, but after being wounded, his real regressed as he ended in a bad state.
"I will, I can't imagine someone way stronger than me bothering in trying to poison me or something like that, I was just admiring such a refined potion".
"Do you know that all the recovery potions are red colored, because the main ingredient is the blood of magic beasts, sure there are insects whose blood is green, but they aren't suited to create potions with recovery properties, since their blood is like acid… even the potions made with humans that the flesh eating demons drink like wine, are deep red colored", said Collins as he unplugged the bottle and directly drank its content.
Not even a second later a dark gray fog was expulsed out of his body, taking the form of a scorpion which then faded away, the old man whose eyes were glowing took his shirt off, and removed some bandages that were wrapped around is abdomen, just in time to see the wound that has been tormenting him for ten years, disappear without a trace, he then stood up and stretched his body, before releasing his battle aura.
The previously luster lacking hair of the old man recovered some color, and his stance straightened a bit, it was as if he had rejuvenated from being in his seventies, to be in his fifties.
"Damn, it really was an Arch ranked recovery potion, in fact it might have been a peak grade one!", exclaimed Ender, the potions he knew will heal the wound, but helping on the post recovery was another thing.
The old man was amazed at the result too, with some training and time, he should recover his previous realm, not only that, but he felt that there was an advance approaching him.
'I couldn't tell the rank of the potion they gave me… just who are those two?', wondered Collins.
While Ender and Tila were celebrating the recovery of the old man, Daimon and Sarah were about to arrive at the inn, the crazy had a curious expression on her face as she asked.
"Why did you give him a star ranked recovery potion, if you wanted to make him suffer, why not a poison?", she asked.
Daimon was speechless.
"Hey, do you think I torture people for fun…", even before he could finish, the crazy girl softly laughed as she said.
"Yes, I have a large rack of different ones to try in my ring, we can have some fun with them later~".
Daimon sighed in response.
"It was a little experiment, I told Ender to come see me if the potion didn't work, that old man must have drunk it at this point, so that means it worked, in other words, a low-grade star ranked potion, cured a former peak Knight Lord", he said.
In exchange for helping the old man, Daimon made him participate in a little experiment, he wanted to know what would happen to a native of this place, when interacting with things from his world.
To be honest, with all the mana crystals he got from the old man, it was fair that Daimon helped him this way at least, so if that potion wasn't enough, he would have given him one of the many that he has in his inventory for this kind of cases, which are all peak Arch ranked ones.
"Also, aren't we going to interrogate that idiot, why the inn instead of that guy's headquarters?", asked Sarah.
"We are going to interrogate him, but I doubt he knows what we want to know, so we'll use the little fish to bait the big one, also that strange communication scroll doesn't work inside the town, it's probably related to that "purification" mentioned by that guy with the big sword at the roof of the inn", answered Daimon.
"Mm", the crazy girl nodded, a few seconds later they were back at the inn, since Daimon used blink when they left, and blink to return, the girl at the counter didn't even notice that they left earlier.
Daimon then looked at the notification from earlier, the one that gave him the chance to choose his reward, he didn't even have to think on what he was going to choose.
In terms of offensive, he didn't lack at all, both he and Sarah were attack type knights, and with Core Synchrony, he was even less worried in terms of offensive, but defending is harder than attacking, so he naturally chose the shield.
[Congratulations, you have obtained the "Hero Shield"]
The moment Daimon selected the reward he wanted, the notification changed and then disappeared, as a palm sized golden colored shield appeared in front of him, the design was pretty basic, a flat triangle shape with some engravings here and there.
Daimon grabbed it and the think stuck to his belt automatically, the only thing he could see with his infinity eyes was that there was a counter above the shield [Uses 5/5], indicating how many times it could block attacks.
Needless to say, but the crazy girl was marveled at the whole process, she even tried to take the shield but it didn't budge, so she then tried to hug Daimon, just to be easily avoided.
"I'll take a short bath, you can join me if you want to…", Sarah gave Daimon a tempting gaze, as she walked towards the bathroom, just to be directly turned down.
"No", the crazy girl giggled and then happily frolicked into the bathroom, which made Daimon's eyebrow twitch.
…
While Daimon was fighting against the urge to leave the crazy girl behind, and come pick her up after finding Jasmine, at another part of Kerrol, far away from Brown Wind town, which was still occupied by the huge wasteland that seemed to extend infinitely, there was a town of similar size.
But with a completely different current state, more than half of the town had turned into a disaster area, with all the buildings collapsed, corpses here and there and even burning houses.
While the town people were setting the fire out and cleaning the debris, there was a building which remained intact, inside of it, at the main room, which the previous chief used to own, there was a blond-haired young man, with an aggrieved expression, sitting alone on a bed.
"Damn it Ariel, why the hell didn't you tell me that the penalization was that other people, would suddenly turn out to be enemies, I can't believe that just for having taken a few things from the treasuries of those guys, the chief would become "evil" and try to attack me, along with the army that helped me subdue the previous enemies".
"And what's worse… the women in this town are either dead, ugly or fucking whores from the brothels, what the hell, the only decent one was the daughter of the chief and she self-destroyed her magic core in a try to kill me!", shouted Adam at the angel girl floating in front of him with a bored expression.
"I told you that this wasn't like the missions from the system, whatever this place is, the system doesn't react to it nor interferes with it, you could have accepted the reward from the chief, but you wanted the girl and the treasure, not my problem", said the angel girl with an emotionless voice.
"Ah damn it, this is so fucking annoying, even the reward was just a damn dagger which can hurt a native of this world, once, what the hell kind of reward is this", he said as he looked at the bronze-colored dagger in his hand.
The more he looked at it, the angrier he got, after going through so much trouble and having to fight basically since he entered the town, because the bandits that infiltered the town, saw him with the daughter of the chief.
He had to see his target, in other words, the daughter of the chief, try to kill him all of a sudden, when they were having a dinner, he was about to take her to his bed, and then she went crazy, to make things worse, the chief casually entered just to see his daughter die, and then declare him an enemy of the town.
The as if the mansion of the chief had gained a life of its own, everything tried to capture him or attack him, it didn't stop until he used one of his strongest martial arts to blast away the chief, as well as the other people that were attacking him.
Only then the madness stopped, and the remaining people of the town, thanked him for having killed the "tyrant" that was oppressing them, which didn't match with what he knew from a few hours ago, which was that the chief was a respected and wise leader, that was being threatened with the life of his daughter, by a group of bandits, in other words, the mission took a 180° turn, for the worse as a penalization for him trying to trick the daughter of the chief, who though thankful, wasn't throwing herself at him, until he used his "blessing", not only to get what he wanted, but to make her give him some nice things from the chief's treasury "willingly".
"Screw it, let's go to the next town mentioned by the chief, there should be some decent girls there, I need a rest from this stupid place", said Adam, the angel girl disappeared as he stood up from the bed.
He looked at what used to be a treasury full of valuables, which turned into a black waste, as part of his penalization for being greedy, and gritted his teeth.
"What the hell, I can't get women, I can't get treasures, then what the hell is the purpose of this mission, wasn't it a place that will benefit me", said Adam as he kicked the wall destroying it and then jumped out of the building.
He took a carriage from one of the many dead merchants and then set out to the next town, which was supposedly way more civilized than this one.
Without him noticing, a black robed figure was observing everything from the roof of one of the many burning buildings, but even when the town people were using water to put out the fire, they not only couldn't see it, but the water went through it.
The figure then turned into wisps of black smoke, as if it was never there to begin with, coincidentally, the fire which was still burning some buildings, was put out, but at the same time some screams could be heard through the town, as some people suffered lethal accidents, losing their lives.
…
Back at Brown Wind town, once Sarah finished her bath, Daimon also took one, he had to ask Rita to chain the crazy girl up with her shadow threads, because she kept trying to barge in, saying that she will "wash his back", while she had a predacious gaze on her eyes.
Only after Daimon had cleaned himself, he changed into the Hollow Suit, put on his mask and then left the bathroom, just to be met with the weird scene of Sarah being restrained in a strange position.
Her legs and arms were on her back and tied together, while she was hanging from the roof, there were also some threads covering her eyes.
"Sorry, but she kept staring at the bath… so I thought that maybe she could see through the walls, at least she didn't try to melt the threads though", said Rita from within Daimon's shadow.
"Why would I, it was my fated one the one that ordered you to tie me, it's as if he did it himself, ah, this is how our honeymoon should be~", mumbled the crazy girl, making Daimon sigh.
Rita undid the shadow threads and Sarah fell to the ground, but stood up quite fast, the hour they took to rest and refresh was now gone, Daimon did so, because the travel will take at least a day, in the wilderness with no commodities.
"Let's go", said Daimon, allowing the crazy girl to hold onto his shoulder, against all his desires, to use blink.
'I really need to come up with a way that doesn't require direct or indirect contact', he thought as they both disappeared from the room.
The short merchant was already waiting for them, in front of Ender's headquarters, the caravan consisted in five rough and durable looking carriages containing goods, among which the two prisoners, in other words, Jeremy and the woman called Beni were hidden.
And three more decent looking carriages for personnel, one for Gary and his assistant, an average looking woman in her early thirties, one for the guards and one for Daimon, who already knew he will have to travel in the same enclosed space with the crazy girl.
He even saw the merchant giving him thumbs up with a knowing gaze, as he entered his carriage, which made Daimon bitterly smile.
Sarah who was already inside of the carriage, patted the place next to her as she invited Daimon to enter.
Luckily the carriage was quite spacious, and there were three rows of merged seats, with a soft cushion-like cover, so Daimon simply laid down on one of them, separated from Sarah and closed his eyes.
"Young Gabriel, we'll pass the mine area as you wished, since it is in your route, the old chief has already told the guards, we'll contact you once we reach it, enjoy the travel", the voice of the merchant came from a communication array engraved on a table that was placed at one of the corners of the carriage.
It was a one-sided channel, unless both parties agreed to communicate, for privacy reasons of course, Daimon didn't bother to answer, but he did speak to the crazy girl who was eyeing him from the row behind his.
"If you try anything, Rita will throw you out of the carriage, sleep, we'll need to be in our best conditions for what will happen next, it's for Jasmine's sake, okay?".
"Mm, okay", for a change the crazy girl behaved, she accommodated on the sofa-like seat and then closed her eyes to sleep.
'And here I was thinking that not getting another mission was enough to be excluded from this farse, but it seems like this place is set to cause annoying situations, no matter what you do', he thought as his mana sense scanned all the carriages, stopping for a momment in the guard's one.
'Whatever, I'll just have to deal with it, later', he thought as he entered the land of dreams.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is free(w)ebnov(𝒆)l