Chapter 122 - Meeting Callisto

Merlin's eyes followed the woman, he watched as her angered expression turned into a wrathful glare, it seemed as though the crowd had caught her ire.

"Move out of the damn way, can't you see we've got people injured!" She shouted out at the crowd, and once she did everyone scrambled to open a path leading towards the rangers guild. 

The group of injured quickly piled into the rangers guild, and the woman stood outside at the door, glaring at the crowd before shouting once more. "The rangers guild will be closed to all requests for the rest of the day."

Once she said this words, she turned around and entered the building, slamming the door behind her.

"What's got the princess so mad?"

"What happened to the kid."

"I was just going to submit a request, damn it."

Merlin heard various loud whispers in the crowd, he felt his curiosity growing, and he decided to walk into the rangers guild.

"What's that guy doing?"

"There goes another one."

He heard a few ominous whispers as he walked up the steps and entered the building. Once he was inside he saw the injured group slowly making their way further into the building, and the woman was speaking to Tuli who was sitting around at the desk.

The woman seemed to have noticed that Merlin entered the building, and she turned to see who it was. Once she realised it wasn't anyone she knew, her nasty glare returned, ruining what was quite an attractive face.

"What the hell did I just say?" She began suddenly screaming at Merlin. "There's always one punk who thinks he's the exception. I don't care if you're a rich, a noble or even my damn father, get the hell out of my guild."

The woman threw a punch at Merlin's face, which he was fortunately able to dodge with ease.

"Guild master, stop!" Tuli shouted just as the woman began throwing another punch. "He's our newest recruit, Merlin. He joined just the other day."

The woman's fist flew past Merlin's face once more, embedding itself in the door behind him. She stared at his face for a few moments before letting out a sharp exhale.

"You should have led with that." She mumbled before taking a few steps back and bowing to Merlin. "I deeply apologise, please don't take this as an indication of our regular behaviour, it has been a rough week."

"No harm done..." Merlin muttered, still surprised as to what just happened. He felt like he understood the crowd's muttering a little bit more now.

"Tuli." The woman nodded before turning back to Tuli, who had a worried expression on her face.

"Yes ma'am?" Tuli responded with a shaky voice.

"Please inform Baron Doolmet that his useless son was mauled by a bear and caused the death of several of my men, and that if I see his face again I'll put an arrow through it." The woman said with a stern voice.

"Do you want me to leave that last part in?" Tuli asked.

"No, you're right. It's better to not give him the warning." The woman muttered before walking off down the hall. "I'll leave the wording in your capable hands."

"Yes ma'am." Tuli muttered, before turning back to Merlin. "Are you okay?"

"Just peachy." Merlin shrugged.

"Peachy?" Tuli looked at him as if he said something strange.

Merlin thought for a moment but quickly gave up. "Nevermind, what about you?"

"Not good." She muttered. "I saw so many injured come through that door, but we don't have enough capable people around to tend to them."

"Could I be of any assistance?" Merlin asked.

Tuli's face suddenly lit up as Merlin said those words. "Would you? Please, we need all the help we can get."

A quest window appeared in Merlin's view.

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[Rare Quest]

Emergency care.

The ranger guild's latest expedition, lead by the leader of the rangers guild Callisto, had ended in a failure. The result of this failure has led to the early demise of several rangers, in the guild, and many more in critical condition.

You have been asked by Tuli to assist in supplying medical assistance to those in need.

Assist Tuli with healing the injured.

• Reward: 200 EXP

└───────────────────

"Yes, of course." Merlin accepted the quest.

The two quickly ran over to a large room, most likely a room dedicated for meetings of some kind, where several wounded individuals had been gathered and seated. The dead had been laid on the ground on the other side of the room respectfully. Merlin and Tuli began inspecting the conditions of everyone in the room.

"These people here have mild injuries, those people there are in critical need. If all you need are bandages, please leave for the moment and bandage each other up." Tuli began running around barking orders at those capable of movement, her main focus was identifying who needed help first.

She and Merlin ran into the medicine room, and she began stressing out while rummaging through shelves of ingredients.

"Wait, is this all the bloodgrass you have?" Merlin asked while staring at the shelves. "This wont be enough for everyone there."

"I know." Tuli said, she looked as though she was about to start crying.

"Do you have any liliox, falsofal or vurdole?" Merlin asked while searching around the shelves.

"We've got falsofal, I'm almost certain." Tuli said before vanishing around shelf and coming back with a large jar of dried pink flowers. "This is all we have."

"I'm borrowing a pestle and mortar." Merlin said as he grabbed one of the jars of bloodgrass and the jar of falsofal and bringing them to a table. He grabbed a pestle and mortar that was laying around and looked clean.

He threw three leaves of bloodgrass into the pestle along with one of the pink flowers and began grinding them into paste. He ended up with a thick red paste with a slight pink hue.

"I need boiling water and potion vials or bottles." He said as he grabbed another mortar and pestle, repeating the process.

He eventually got his request fulfilled, and he began scraping the paste into the boiling water. Quickly making what was once clean water bright red and somewhat viscous.

"What are you doing? That'll dilute the potion too much." Tuli screamed as she watched Merlin waste half of their already limited resources.

"Don't worry about it. Get those potion bottles ready." Merlin said as he dashed back to the shelf, grabbing a jar of what looked like dark grey wrinkly seeds.

"Wait, was this your plan? Impletio won't work, we don't have a stabiliser." Tuli tried explaining to Merlin who was already crushing three seeds up in the mortar and pestle. "I get where you're coming from, if you amplify the healing then we don't need as much potion per person, but they'll overdose if you use it without a stabiliser."

"We just need something to weaken the bloodgrass' effects." Merlin asked her while staring at the jars of ingredients. "We won't need a stabiliser if we just weaken the bloodgrass."

"We need a plant with a poison that dulls the effects of other plants... Something that lowers stats." Merlin began searching through the shelves, reading the labels of various jars of plants.. "We don't have any alanemine, damn."