“What? Nah, sorry. I don’t want to be rude, but a ranger is completely nerfed. Waste of a class, in my opinion,” Van replied. He figured that, maybe, if he were to piss off the other ranger about something like this, it would spark a longwinded gaming debate that would make them forget about the whole suspicious-figure-wandering-alone-after-the-murder-of-their-buddies thing.
“Well, everyone has their own opinions,” Savorn said, her bow never changing its focus from aiming right at Van’s face.
“Right, right,” Van wheezed. He glanced past them and saw that Sang had climbed up one of the trees and had her bow ready. This was going to be a horrible fight unless he were to solve this problem somehow. “You know, I’m so sorry that I’m trespassing here, but I’ve been poisoned and need a root in this area; that’s why I’m here.”
“Poisoned? By the chest?” Pullmin asked.
“Yeah! The chest in the middle of the road...”
“Why… why would you open a chest in the middle of a road?” asked Savorn.
“Um, because treasure, duh!” Van said.
This elicited laughter from the entire group. “You can’t be serious,” Pullmin said as he slowly backed away from Van. He looked more at ease than before. “You’re meaning to tell me that you saw a treasure chest in the middle of the road, and decided to open it up in the hopes of getting treasure? An unguarded chest?”
“Well, I thought it was gonna have a lot of free stuff in it. Like treasure. And maybe some cool magic items,” Van said. Perhaps if he acted like a moron, they’d be less apt to brutally stab him a bunch of times.
“Wow, you are a real card, you know that?” Savorn asked. “We rarely ever get people who were poisoned by the chest. Normally, they’ve been poisoned by the Manticore King from the east.”
“Our guild collects this special root. It only grows here, making it the perfect item for us to sell. That Manticore King quest is repeatable, and it pretty much poisons everyone who fights it,” said Pullmin. “So, one day our founder, Kraggoth, said it would be a great idea to just stick around this area and consistently harvest the root, selling it for a high price. Anyone who tries to steal the root gets killed.”
“Oh, I wasn’t trying to steal anything... I’ve just got a quest to find it, that’s all!” Van protested.
“Yeah, that quest is a rare one, but it requires that you have to pluck the actual root itself from the tree where it grows. So, we can’t sell you one anyway. But we’re going to have to charge you for entering our area,” Pullmin replied.
“How much?” Van asked.
“2,000 gold pieces,” came the reply. Van’s eyes bugged out of his head. They barely had any gold due to the fact that they were bouncing around all over the place, and any money that they did have was needed for buying better weapons and healing potions.
“Oh, man, I don’t have that kind of money,” Van replied.
“Sorry, but those are the breaks. Either pay up or get out,” Savorn said.
“Well, how about some kind of exchange? I’m a professional bard! I can boost your stats for an entire 24 hours with a song!”
“We have a bard back at our base camp, so there’ll be no trades, no discounts—either pay up or get out,” Savorn said, growling a little this time.
Van shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the money, and I really don’t want to die due to this poison; can’t you guys be cool and just help me out this once?” Van asked. “I’m just a down on his luck bard who doesn’t have the skills to pay the bills!”
That description elicited a chuckled from Pullmin. Enough that he glanced at the other two, who shrugged. “Well... alright, fine. We’re going to be cool just this once, and whenever you meet people who are looking for good herbs for good prices, you point them to the Junglefoot Guild, okay?”
Van grinned with excitement; he couldn’t believe he was pulling it off! Maybe he was a lot cleverer than he thought.
“We’ll escort you to the root,” Savorn said as she put her bow away. “It’s the only way to guarantee that you won’t steal more roots than you need.”
“Oh,” Van said, “uh, of course!”
“It’s this way,” Pullmin said as he sheathed his sword and began to walk toward the main road.
“Help, help!” screamed the bush.
“He, that bush lures people every time,” Savorn chuckled.
“Yeah, it sure is realistic,” Van said, glancing over to the hidden Sang. As long as they didn’t notice her following, it should be fine. At least he hoped.
Chapter Sixteen
They travelled for quite some time, moving at a decent pace until they reached a massive, solitary tree in the middle of the mangroves. The water had been deep, up to Van’s waist so that it slowed him down as they trudged through the increasingly swampier land, and he was tired when they reached their apparent destination. The tree was impressively, and Van could see dozens of vines dangling from it. Each vine looked like a noose of some kind. A few dead bodies were hanging from the tree’s vines. They were far too high up to have hug themselves, however.
“Be careful! The tree isn’t particularly friendly to interlopers. If you get too close to it, the vines will try to strangle you.”
“Oh, that sounds… lovely,” Van said as he looked up at the tree. He could see razor-thin blades on the insides of the vine nooses. It looked as if the tree strangled and slashed the throats of those who got too close. It made for a nasty sight, and he didn’t want to experience the highly accurate haptic biofeedback simulators which were sure to assist him in feeling every iota of pain as if it were really happening to him. Perhaps, of all the ways to die in this game, this looked to be the worst. He certainly didn’t want to deal with the ramifications of getting wrapped up in one of these vines.
“Alright, the root’s located under the water, so just dive under and find it at the base of the tree. Don’t come up or you’ll die. And only grab one,” Pullmin said.
“Right, of course!” Van agreed as he trudged through the water and took a deep breath. Then he dove. The water was cold, but he didn’t mind it too much as he swam down to find the root. The mangrove marsh wasn’t too deep, either, but it was deep enough for him to get his entire body under the water. He could barely see, but luckily there were the words STRANGE ROOT hovering not too far from him. He swam up to the root and began the harvesting process. The loading bar moved a little slowly; he didn’t have any ranks in herbology, but luckily anyone could harvest the item since it was quest-specific.
Once the root appeared in his Inventory, he surfaced, taking a deep breath and feeling the rush of oxygen to his body. It was crazy how realistic the haptic pods were; it had felt as if he’d really been without air for a few minutes. Then Van glanced up and saw Kraggoth standing with his back to Van, and talking to the party that had been escorting him to the tree.
“And so, this archer just picks me off! It was crazy!” Kraggoth said.
“Yeah, we found your bodies looted, and there were arrow wounds in both of you,” Savorn replied.
“Yeah, I swear as soon as we find those two, we’re gonna kill them,” Kraggoth said, brandishing a massive axe.
“Good. Hey, did you find the root okay?” Savorn asked Van when she noticed he’d surfaced. Kraggoth turned around and his eyes went wide as soon as he saw Van.
“There he is! The bastard who was working with that ranger! They lured me into some kind of trap! I thought say saved me, but they killed us both!” Kraggoth shouted, hatred in his eyes. He raised his axe high and charged at Van.
“Oh, come on!” Van shouted as he desperately splashed around, trying to avoid the violent attack. The water was impeding Kraggoth’s charge, slowing him down enough for Van to scramble back away from the psychotic barbarian.