Chapter 133 - Bear Attack

"Well, honestly. Our stocks are getting pretty full." Tuli said while making her way into the medicine room and instructing the new recruit with her to take a seat. "But I might have something for you to do, nobody else wanted to take this request."

Tuli vanished behind a shelf and came back a few seconds later with a jar that had four red berries rolling around in it. She placed it on the bench and looked up at Merlin, but before she could say anything, Merlin spoke first.

"You want me to find you yew berries?" Merlin asked.

"Yes, and the needles too." Tuli nodded.

"Why does nobody else want to do this?" Merlin asked with a confused expression. "Is it just because it's a deadly poison?"

"No." Tuli shook her head. "It's because the closest yew trees are deep within the territory of the giant bear."

"Oh, that place that I've been specifically told to run away from at all costs?" Merlin quipped with a lighthearted tone.

"That's the one." Tuli nodded, "Well, the bear isn't always there, it seems to move around a fair bit within the forest. So as long as you get in quick and get out just as fast, you shouldn't really have any issues if you're cautious."

"Good to know." Merlin said.

"Although if you do see the it, I'd advise that you run." She added, "Personally, I'd rather you weren't mauled by a bear."

"I share the sentiment." Merlin laughed, "Alright, I'm up for it. In which direction should I be heading?"

Tuli briefly gave him instructions, and then a quest notification appeared.

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[Uncommon Quest]

Taking stock III.

It seems the rangers guild medical supplies are being filled up quickly now that expeditions have been temporarily halted, giving the rangers enough time to set out on smaller gathering quests for the guild.

Tuli has given you a task that had been turned down by many of the other members of the guild, due to the great risk that comes with it.

You've been tasked with retrieving yew berries and yew needles from the few yew trees located within the territory of the giant bear.

Almost every part of a yew tree contains lethal amounts of a deadly poison, with the only exception being the flesh of the red berries, which is sweet, although the seeds inside the berries also contain the deadly poison, so eating them is not advised. 

Yew needles are the thin leaves on the tree. The needles also contain a lethal amount of poison, of which, the consumption of even a small amount may lead to debilitating sickness, if not outright death.

Be advised that the poison can be absorbed through your skin, so try avoid getting any of the tree's sap on your hands.

Provide Tuli with the materials she requested.

Yew Berries: 0/300 grams

Yew Needles: 0/1000 grams

• Reward: 200 EXP, 200 Ranger Soul EXP.

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"Alright, I'll get to it." Merlin said as he made his way out of the medicine room, leaving Tuli to go back to teaching the new recruit.

He quickly made his way outside the rangers guild and went directly towards the gate leading into the frontier, making sure to greet the guards as he did so.

"Alright, so the bear's territory is approximately that way." He said, pointing somewhat south west. "Well, If I get attacked by a bear, I'll know I'm in the right place."

Merlin walked off the overgrown road and quickly vanished into the treeline. Once again, there didn't seem to be any threats around, just wildlife.

Merlin travelled for approximately seven minutes before he saw a collapsed tree that seemed to have been partially hit with a cannonball, as a large chunk of the trunk had been removed. But upon further inspection he noticed a few distinct indents that were reminiscent of claw marks.

"Are you telling me a bear one-shot a tree with the swipe of its paw?" Merlin mumbled to himself. "Callisto wasn't kidding."

Merlin continued through the forest, eventually making his way into a shaded clearing, with three large trees providing most of the coverage in the area. Merlin looked up to see bright red berries hanging from the branches. All of these trees were yew trees, and Merlin noticed that none of the trees seemed to have any marks from the bear, although other trees in the area did. It seemed the bear was smart enough to avoid this area.

"Alright, time to get to work." Merlin said while pulling his clippers and tough leather gloves, both of which were items that came with the herbalist's kit, out of his inventory.

He put the leather gloves on and began climbing one of the trees. He couldn't use his daggers to climb the tree like he usually did because he feared sap splashing back at him. Even if his hands were protected, the rest of his body, especially his face, generally wasn't.

Although the tree's strange trunk structure gave him plenty of footholds, so overall he didn't need to use anything to assist his climb.

Merlin made his way up the tree and onto one of the branches, he continued along the branch until he reached a spot where there were plenty of needles and berries within reach.

"How much of this stuff is a gram?" Merlin wondered out loud, he couldn't remember using yew in the past twenty or more years, as once you hit a certain point in the game, the poison from a yew tree was essentially ineffective against everything with such high constitution scores.

"It would be less tedious to just cut the whole branch down."

Unfortunately, Merlin didn't have an axe, nor did he have any form of logging skill or a lumberjack soul, so it would be pretty difficult and inconvenient to take the thick branch down at once.

Instead Merlin crawled along the branch, picking off smaller branches that either his clippers could cut, or he could cleave through with a swing of his dagger. He dropped all the branches to the floor to deal with later.

After about twenty minutes of work, several of the branches were stripped bare, and Merlin made his way down to the ground, landing in a sea of leaves. He then spent the next half an hour stripping the branches of as many needles and berries as he could, throwing them in his inventory without much care.

He seemed to have cut down way too many branches, thinking the leaves wouldn't account for much.

「Yew Berries: 743/300 grams」

「Yew Needles: 2704/1000 grams」

"Well, that was an oversight on my part." He exclaimed, throwing what little remained into his inventory. "Oh well, I've got plenty of personal stock to use in the future."

As Merlin was talking to himself, he heard a loud thud in the distance. His immediate attention snapped to the animals that seemed to be taking off in quite a hurry, even the nocturnal predators seemed to be making a run for it, leading Merlin to assume that what was around was both big and tremendously powerful.

Merlin heard loud footsteps, with the occasional thud, which Merlin could only imagine was either trees getting shattered or monsters having their bodies forcibly injected into trees. Either way, Merlin didn't want to stand around and find out.

As Merlin began running for the treeline, an orc's dead corpse was thrown several meters past him, making a deep groove in the forest floor as it was slowly buried under the mountain of dirt its body dragged with it.

Merlin's attention snapped to the left, where the dead orc had come from, and there he saw a massive brown bear that towered over the two orcs that were still attacking it.

The bear seemed to have noticed Merlin, as its eyes locked on him, causing a shiver to run down his spine. Although this brief distraction by Merlin was all one of the orcs needed to bury its axe into one of the bear's hind legs.

As punishment for its insolence, the bear squashed the orc into the dirt as if it were slapping a mosquito. It raised its paw, only to see what amounted to an orc pancake that was partially buried in the soil.

"Oh dear god, that's overpowered." Merlin muttered out loud.

Merlin began moving again, hoping the last orc would distract the bear for long enough so that he could get away from the it safely.

But then he watched from the corner of his vision that the last orc stupidly decided that, even after seeing all of its friends killed by the bear with ease, that it would decide to test its luck and attack the bear too.

Merlin watched as the bear swiped it paw, and everything above the hips for the orc had vanished into nothing, leaving only the legs that quickly slumped to the ground.

"That's genuinely terrifying." Merlin muttered as his legs continued moving as fast as they could.

He could still see the fight play out through the various layers of trees, however it was quickly being obscured by the forest as he continued running.

However before his vision of the bear was entirely gone, he watched the bear's head snap towards Merlin's position. And then he heard heavy footsteps, it seemed as though the bear chose him as its next target.

"God damn it." Merlin swore, realising that he was pretty much doomed if he didn't do anything. Merlin started weaving between trees and trying to throw the bear off its path. "Is this where I die?"

The stomping was getting louder, although Merlin was yet unable to see the bear.. Even though the bear shouldn't have been able to see him either, the bear seemed to be tracking him surprisingly well.