Wraithwood Botanist

B2 | Chapter 94 - Confession

Doug participated passionately in the "I missed you" parade that followed, then watched in awe as Mira casually said, "Oh, I brought you souvenirs," and then pulled out a mixed bag assortment of plants, elixirs, and special water that could heal any laceration and cleanse almost any poison. Lastly, she said that she gave Aiden two containers of plants that would sell for "Fuck You money" and would buy them a mansion.

Tanya chastised her daughter for developing a sailor’s mouth, and Mira said sorry sheepishly.

Just like things were before they left.

It felt nice.

To be reunited.

If only there weren’t a thousand people crowding around them, trying to get a look at the "Savage of Areswood," it would have been perfect.

It flustered Tanya, but Mira wasn’t phased. She grabbed a handful of multicolored vials and yelled, "Gifts from Areswood!" before throwing them into the crowd, sending the participants into a feeding frenzy.

"They’re like sharks," Mira grinned.

"Are you trying to encourage them?" Doug asked.

She looked him in the eye and said, "I own this forest now. I need to teach people that somehow."

Doug was stunned into silence. Mira was confident—defiant even—speaking like a sailor, wearing beautiful makeup, and now she was speaking like a queen. It was inspiring at first, but the absurdity got too much and he burst into laughter.

"What?" Mira pouted.

"It’s just..." His eyes welled with tears. "Here I was, thinking you’d show up with... grisled features and hair patches ripped out, scarred up and amputated, or... something. Yet here you are, wearing makeup and talking like a queen."

Mira’s face reddened to the tip of her ears, and she looked away shyly.

"I gotta know," he pressed. "How did a few months in that forest—"

"Civilize her?" Tyler interrupted. "Yeah, me too. How did it civilize—"

"If you don’t shut up, I’ll demonstrate how to kill a grown beast with your bare hands," Mira warned.

"Mira!" Tanya said.

"What? He just called me uncivilized."

Tanya tried to retort but then realized how silly the whole thing was. Everyone cracked some awkward smiles, then shared some chuckles, letting it go.

"Let’s eat," Mira said. "It only takes an hour to get back. I got time."

Doug check the sky and found the sky bathed crimson under the sunset. At any moment, the sun would fall and cloak the world in darkness, leaving Mira to return to Areswood under moonlight. But she didn’t seem bothered. She just sat down and pulled out tubs of meat.

It tasted terrible, but its effects were addictive—drug-like euphoria and a feeling of energy and power.

Mira laughed when she saw Gatsby on the ground, thumping his tail listlessly. "Yep, it’s something else," she said. "Now if only it tasted good... Thank God I have real spices now... I don’t know what any of them are, but the traders gave me a cookbook."

"Only you would be worrying about spices," Tanya said.

They laughed about it for another thirty minutes before Mira gave Gatsby a double pat on the stomach and stood. "I gotta go," she said, stretching. Then her face turned grave when she remembered something.

"What’s wrong?" Doug asked.

She bit her lip and winced. "There’s something I need to tell you. And I don’t know how..."

"Just say it," Tanya said.

"That’s worse," Mira said.

"Just do it," Doug said.

His daughter bit her lip, and Tanya scoffed when she conceded, mumbling, "Always does it when you say it."

"Listen," Mira paused. "These Harvests... They’re terrible. This year, people were robbing and killing each other... or worse... and people tried burning down the forest. It’s bad news."

Doug gulped.

"And I decided to stand against it," she said. "To protect the forest and the good harvesters. So that’s what I did. Kline and I... took out the trash."

"What does that mean?" Tanya asked.

"We killed them.

Tanya’s eyes widened in terror and Doug felt a hot blade stab his intestines and twist.

"The unimportant ones," Mira clarified. "I’m not trying to make enemies.

Doug felt like she was living out crucial information, so he looked at Tyler, but his son turned away aggressively.

"I didn’t see it," Tyler said, "but I hope she did it with a hatchet. I fucking hate these people."

"Oh..." I whispered, heart drumming. A memory of a reward screen flashed across my mind:

Soul Guardian (Eighth Evolution Seed). Grade: Legendary.

"Thank you," I said.

"Be careful with it. Personal deliveries like this attract unwanted attention."

I turned to the crowd and saw some of the middle family members staring at me like a hawk.

"Now go," he said. "I wouldn’t want my son’s latest interest to die over short term gain."

I nodded and waved to my family and walked toward the gate.

"Mira!" Brexton yelled.

My face twitched, but I remembered that he saved my brother from permanent blindness, so I reluctantly whirled around.

"Wh~at?" I smacked.

"Forgive my intrusion, but I do believe that you wanted to make some sort of message, did you not?" Brexton looked at Kline. "I’ve asked everyone to wait."

My lips curved into an awkward smile. "There’s no need. Come on, Kline, let’s go."

I waved to Aiden, who stood with the Claustra, then turned around. Kline jumped off my shoulder and turned into his panther form—sparking an explosive reaction.

"I-It’s true!" a harvester yelled. "That’s the cat that killed the torok!"

"No way!"

"Yeah. I watched it happen!"

"Shut up. You were back at camp. There’s no way—what?"

Kline’s body dissolved with Active Camouflage, and the rest of the crowd devolved into a feeding frenzy of crazed speculation. Some people were yelling, "It’s the Rawkan!" and another said, "That’s the cat! You killed Casla!"

I considered turning around and saying something like, "Should’ve followed the rules," but the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that giving a grand reveal without saying anything was some chilling mobster shit, so I just walked down the path, listening to them freak out, revel and squeal about it until their voices became distant and I was alone once more.

The lurvine were waiting for me when I returned. They had killed another few dozen beasts looking to feast on the torok, and they were acting like normal canines, waving their tails—

—waiting for their rewards.

I smiled and petted Sina’s snout, and said, "Come on. Let’s feast."

As of that moment, I was living in that area until the torok meat stopped working. And there was probably twenty-five to fifty tons worth to work through. It was time to eat.

3.

I had forgotten about the torok’s cores, and to my surprise, two of them still had them—the one I shot and the one that Kline killed. It seemed that Hadrian and the legacies left the ones that were ours and took the rest. As for the scavengers, they were too weak to even penetrate the hide of the torok, let alone rip a baseball-sized mana core out of its spine.

I held it in awe. It was a sunrise core, blue and orange, like a marble formed from two colors of molten glass. It radiated with power as I rolled it in my palm. I had a feeling it would feed me all winter.

Or at least a couple days.

Only time would tell.

In the meantime, I had time to eat as much of the meat as I could and load the rest in backpacks I’d tie to the lurvines. With any luck, it would be all I ate all winter, so by spring, I would be twice as strong.

Game plan.

Nice.

I spent two weeks camping, lounging, and eating the torok before the wind got chilly, and I remembered that I still had to move multiple crates worth of goods to a home I had yet to build—and snow would probably start falling in eight weeks or less. So I reluctantly loaded up supplies onto the lurvine with the help of the tarp, some rope, and all the gravity backpacks worth of supplies.

Then we packed off to the Diktyo, lurvines guiding me to the equipment I left with them and Aiden.

I’m not sure when I started to feel something was off, but I found myself checking my Wood Wide Web obsessively near the mountain—but no one showed up.

Then I approached my stuff, expecting it to be plundered and burned, but found something else had happened.

Basic survival gear’s missing, I thought, rummaging through the pallet of tools and equipment. But she didn’t burn it. Is that a message? Or...

I didn’t know what it meant—if anything. Was it a truce? Or to let my guard down? Maybe she planned to track me down and kill me later, and it was better to inherit all the equipment elsewhere.

I wasn’t sure what would happen, but it was clear that she wasn’t a problem for now. She would probably lick her wounds and get stronger before facing me or just stay down south, where she knew the plants and landscape.

Whatever the reason or rationale, she wasn’t stopping me from getting my stuff, so I packed up as much of the equipment as I could on the three massive foxes and then rode north.

I worked so damn hard to set up my home and live my life, and I had a whole year with Thorvel, the Drokai, or harvesters to mess with me.

Those were my thoughts as I filled up containers with Diktyo Water and turned north. It was time to make a home.