Chapter 397: Taking a little Trip through the Garden

Joshua had learned a lot about the Mercenary world after his conversation with Vincent and the rest of his group. It was an interesting conversation for sure that was often interrupted by the silly antics with Vincent and his illusions. Joshua wasn't surprised to see that he and Adrian got along fairly well after a few minutes of getting to know each other. If anything it looked as if Adrian was trying to learn from the more experienced playboy that clearly had a thing going with the four woman that were working with him.

Even with all of the craziness of the interaction Joshua was able to gleam a few things from their conversation. First off the World Government Guild was currently trying to use their guild as a stepping stone in their conflict between the alliance and other powerful guilds, so they could expect more attempts to go against their group in the future. Luckily for the moment it seemed as if the leaders of the World Government Guild weren't exactly smart and kept being too prideful to realize their mistakes.

The second thing Joshua learned was that he shouldn't expect mercenaries to get involved in the conflict in an underhanded way. At worse they might get paid to interfere in territory wars since they had rules against doing underhanded things in their guild. Sure there could be solo explorers that take deals without the support of the guild, but those came in small numbers and usually weren't people on par with the strength of the higher up members of the Fenrir Guild.

The last thing he learned was the fact that there were actual hit man out there that took jobs to try to either interfere with dungeons runs for different groups or some times to even kill specific people. None of this was possible in the hub city, but it was easily something that could happen out in the world with no rules to keep such things from running rampant. The only reason it wasn't a common occurrence at this point was because of the fact that everyone that went down to earth on the regular were explorers. This meant that they knew how to protect themselves and usually had a way to get out of tough situations.

With all that new knowledge Joshua had a few things on his mind and made sure to stay ready for any random attacks while they were exploring in the future. He was certain that his group would be prime targets in the future if they started getting some grudges built up against them after all of the territory wars he was certain that they would get involved with in the future. After a short conversation Joshua was able to get the contact information for Vincent and the rest of his group of mercenaries in case they needed any of their help in the future. Having an illusionist on their side during certain situations in the future would definitely be worth the money.

It had been a couple days since the territory war and at the moment Joshua was busy leading three people towards the garden they had gained from clearing the last dungeon. The three people were Lilly with all of her soul beast that would fit in with the natural environment of the garden, Grace who was coming along to look at the new garden and see if any of the medicinal plants she had gotten from the system would flourish there, and lastly Joshua's own mother who also had come along for the same reason as Grace. It wasn't often that Joshua's mother took a day off from the hospital and this was the first time that she had come down to the earth like an explorer with him.

Of course for the entire trip Joshua was on guard ready to protect Grace and his mother from any beast that could be in the area of the forest near the dungeon. Before there hadn't been any beast in the immediate area because they were afraid of all the spores that came out at night along with the corrupted plants that had a major control over the forest. Now that they were gone none of the beast had to worry about the danger. This lead to several different beast coming to the area to fight over the territory.

At first Joshua didn't even know why Grace and his mother wanted to com check out the territory in the first place. With the key to the garden Joshua could just as easily get to the garden from James Town as they could going all the way to the original location. It seemed pointless to go through all of the trouble, but after a short explanation Joshua was able to understand why they were willing to go through the trouble in the first place.

There were two reasons why Grace and his mother wanted to check the area out. First was to see what the natural fauna was like nearby the original location. Although the garden could change its environment to help plants inside of it grow, knowing what its natural habitat was like could be useful in getting things started. It would also let them find out if plants from its natural climate would grow much better than plants from other areas. The more they learned about the garden the better. The second reason they wanted to come to the area themselves was to get used to earthen environments while teaching Joshua what to look out for when looking for medical plants.

Both of them knew that in the future they were likely to spend a lot of time exploring the world alongside Joshua's group to find specific supplies for their hospital. This was especially the case when it came to Grace since she planned to become a field doctor and explore the world. At the moment she was getting fairly close to reaching the next level as a doctor and getting to the same stage as Joshua's mother. Of course she wouldn't have as much experience and Joshua's mother was well on her way to reaching the next step in her field already, but there was a perk to reaching such a stage that Joshua found out while watching his mother as they made their way through the forest.

The moment his mother had reached the worker level which allowed her to own and control her own hospital in the hub city there was also something else that she had gained. She gained the ability to get a first tier combat job once again. Anyone who started out in the support job category obviously decided to go that route from the get go and avoid the combat role that explorers chose. This locked them off from being able to level up any combat jobs for the time being, but from what Joshua could see of his mother she was able to access a combat job the moment that she had gained worker level in her support job. It didn't mean that she had to go out and become an explorer or anything, but if she wanted to level up past level ten in her combat job then she'd have to get out there like all of the other explorers.

Joshua had been curious why his mother was decked out in light gear that was similar to Amy's, but now he knew the reason why. It came as no surprise to Joshua that his mother had decided to go with martial artist for her combat job which explained her gear of choice. Although she wasn't all that interested in combat like he and Amy had been growing up around their father, she still learned more than enough to defend herself. Now Joshua also knew why Grace seemed to be in such a rush to get to worker level. It would makes things that much easier for her to become a field doctor, but she'd have to do a lot of training to catch up to the rest of the group and be able to go on their large scale explorations.

Eventually the group did make it to the center of the forest where the dungeon had originally been. Grace and Joshua's mother both examined the surroundings to see what kind of plant life seemed to thrive in the area. There were several different types of plants in the forest, but only a few of them naturally thrived with the current climate to the area instead of being forcibly grown thanks to the rich natural aura in the forest. While they were examining things Joshua cut down any beast that was foolish enough to come into the area. All of the beast that were flooding into the forest at this point were only around level sixty which were easy for Joshua to take care of on his own. Lilly just seemed to enjoy the trip while she let some of her smaller beast companions out to get some experience from Joshua's rampaging.

"I think we've figured out enough about the natural plant life in the area. Let's go ahead and go into the garden." Joshua's mother said with a sigh as she wiped some sweat from off of her face. In the meantime Joshua just shook his head at the way the two doctors seemed to turn a dangerous trip through a beast infected forest into a little walk through a park.

"Alright, there's no more beast around this immediate area so we should have no trouble going straight to the garden." Joshua said as he took out the key and twisted it in the air like the system showed him how to do after observing it. Soon a portal appeared in front of them. "You guys go on ahead, I'll bring up the rear."

Joshua kept his aura senses up to make sure that they wouldn't be taken by surprise as they made their way through the portal. When it was finally his turn he made his way inside and couldn't help but smile at the gorgeous scene in front of him. Although he wasn't an elementalist he could still sense the overwhelming aura of the garden. He couldn't imagine how amazing a place like this would feel to someone like Ysildea or even some of the other elves.

While Grace and Lilly rushed off to start looking around the safe area to see what the system of the garden needed to properly grow the things they wanted too Joshua stopped his mother and brought her aside so they could have a small conversation. "Alright what is it Joshua? I've got lots of stuff to do here and not a lot of time." His mother said with a questioning look.

"How come you and dad didn't ever tell me you guys had combat jobs?" Joshua asked. He noticed that his mother was already level thirty-two as a martial artist which meant that she had been able to gain the job a while ago. It also meant that she must have been fighting against beast at some point as well for her to gain so many levels.

"We didn't tell you because we know you would have babied us." She responded while getting less tense after finding out what Joshua was worried about.

"Isn't that the other way around?" Joshua said with a confused frown. "I mean usually the parents do the babying."

"It's not always like that sweetheart. There always comes a shift in the dynamic between parents and children. I had to go through the same thing with your grandparents, but now that we're younger and able to keep taking care of ourselves for the foreseeable future we didn't want to worry you with having to take care of us the entire time."

"I wouldn't have…" Joshua started to say but his mother just shushed him.

"Please. If you had known you'd have us trained up by some high level explorers like some little rich kid that doesn't know how to take care of themselves." His mother said with a glare before once again smiling. "We wanted to explore things at our own pace and we make sure to be careful and not go beyond our limits. Besides it gives us a chance to spend some time together."

Joshua caught the underlying meaning in those words, but decided to just let it go and avoid that subject. "Anyways I'm going to explore this garden and you better be prepared to go out and find a few things for us." She said before turning around and leaving Joshua alone to go check things out. Joshua just looked up to the large sphere in the center of the garden and thought what could he possibly have to do with the two genius doctors here to figure it all out.