First Gathering
After lunch, I took a short nap. I said, “I’m not a baby anymore,” but once Dad carried me to the bedroom and gently patted me through the blanket, I ended up falling asleep.
It seems I slept for about two hours, and when I woke up, I felt completely refreshed. With it being my first time at the learning hall and having walked so far—even if I gave up partway through—it looks like my five-year-old body had gotten pretty tired.
"Mornin', sugar! Did you sleep like a log? Feel up to some gatherin' today?"
On the table were a pair of small gloves, a small knife, and a woven basket made of wicker—all prepared for gathering.
“Dad, is this...?”
"Them herbs 'round here can be picked with your bare hands, but it's best to get used to usin' tools if you're plannin' on gatherin' outside the village too. Vio, that magic bag of yours is somethin' special. There's a mighty wide range in quality when it comes to magic bags."
According to Dad, magic bags come in all kinds of sizes and performance levels. Some look like my shoulder bag, but others are waist pouch types or backpack types.
Apparently, some are even made by magic item craftsmen, but most of those have only about twice the capacity of a regular bag. The ones with greater capacity mostly come from dungeons and rarely circulate among the public. They're usually kept by the adventurers who obtained them. On rare occasions, they’re put up for auction, but the high-performance ones go for absurd prices, and they’re mostly won by nobles or wealthy merchants. “Auction” really does sound like a noble sort of thing.
No one really knows what the maximum capacity can be, but the magic bag Dad once had could hold about the size of this whole house. He gave it to his son as a parting gift when he became an adventurer, so he doesn’t have either of them anymore.
Dungeon-origin magic bags are said to sometimes have a time-stopping effect, and they’re considered extremely rare.
… My magic bag probably holds at least as much as this house. And considering the healing potions inside were still intact, it probably has the time-stopping function too.
"That's why it'd be mighty dangerous if folks found out what your magic bag can do.
And listen here, them cheap magic bags are nothin' more than regular bags—if you don't store things proper-like, they'll get all jumbled up. So if you put them herbs in a basket like this, they'll stay neat as a pin and won't raise no eyebrows when you deliver 'em."
Ah, I see. Mom used to just toss materials into her bag when gathering, but if it were a cheap magic bag, they’d get squished. I thought it was normal that she’d sort them after moving to a safe location and bundle them into groups of 5 to 10 stalks.
"It ain't possible to hide everything, sugar. But if you go flauntin' excessive abilities or tools, you're bound to draw attention. That's why I'm gonna train you up so's you can adjust what you show and learn to protect yourself too."
I didn’t expect him to think that far ahead. Instead of leaving me to figure things out alone, he’s teaching me how to survive. My dad really is my master.
Though when I tried calling him “Master,” he told me to just call him Dad, so I stopped. But in my heart, I’ll keep calling him Dad the Master.
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"If you go on in too far, you'll hit a river. You best not go that far, ya hear?"
Behind the house, the trees are thick and lush, so I’d thought it was a forest. It’s apparently just a small patch of woods, about the size of one section of the plaza’s shopping area, but from a child’s perspective like mine, it feels like a pretty big forest.
There are several poles lined up along the wooden wall that protects the village. I can’t see outside, but it seems similar poles are set up at intervals beyond the village as well. They’re tools to keep monsters away. They’re even placed along the highways, and carriages use those paths to travel between towns.
Of course, they don’t work against large monsters or in a monster stampede, but they do deter normal monsters during the day.
Rivers are a different story. Not only do they have regular fish, but also carnivorous ones called magic fish. Still, the villagers fish them like it’s no big deal, and we’ve already had some served at our dinner table too.
Since it’s not the sea, there aren’t dangerously strong magic fish that’ll drag you under, but I was told that if a small child slips and falls in, it could be quite dangerous. I had no idea—I even bathed in that river, floated along for a while, and somehow ended up here safe and sound. It’s kind of amazing I made it without a scratch.
Whenever I found a herb, I’d check with Dad before picking it. At first, I couldn’t use the knife very well, but once I got the hang of it, I could cut the materials easily and even got praised for it.
I managed to gather 20 stalks of Healing herbs and 10 stalks of Mana herbs with Dad’s approval. I ruined a few at the start because I was too focused on the knife and ended up squeezing the leaf parts—what a waste.
Healing herbs is used for making healing potions, and Mana herbs is for mana recovery potions. I thought those names were kind of silly to the point, but they’re easy to remember. Considering it’s often small children who go gathering, names that are easy to remember are probably best.
These two types are the basic ingredients for each recovery potion, so you can earn a reward of 50 lari per set of 10 bottles. Each set you deliver earns you one request completion point, so if you deliver five sets, you get five points.
From Tin rank to Bronze, it seems you can rank up with 50 points, so if you accept requests seriously, you can apparently rank up in about a month.
From Bronze to Copper, you need to accumulate another 100 points, but since the type of request doesn't matter, there are many kids who work hard by just gathering materials or helping out.
However, from Copper rank onward, subjugation requests begin to appear, so if you don’t have knowledge of weapon handling, magic, or recovery potions before reaching Copper, the result could be worse than just a serious injury.
In the past, many young adventurers reached Copper rank with little knowledge and never returned from subjugation missions. Taking this situation seriously, the Guild appealed to the local lords and the kingdom. As a result, in the Lizmoni Kingdom, the nation took the lead and established training schools at the Guilds several decades ago.
Thanks to that, the risk of death among adventurers who completed training dropped, and now the Guild headquarters recommends the system and seeks support from other nations.
It seems that the neighboring Republic, which also has many adventurers, has established training schools as well. However, the Empire looks down on adventurers as barbarians, so they apparently have neither Adventurers’ Guilds nor training schools.
Another neighboring country, the Menekes Kingdom, is vast and said to house the continent’s Adventurers’ Guild Headquarters, but it’s unclear whether all the guilds in that kingdom have training schools.
Here in the territory of the Margrave Plessama, which guards the borders of the three countries, the margrave who values martial prowess also puts effort into training adventurers and has created a completely free training school system. I probably won’t ever get to meet him, but I’m totally, overwhelmingly thankful to Margrave Plessama.
I tied up the herbs into bundles of 10 with thin hemp string, arranged them in the basket Dad had prepared, and placed them in the bag for bringing to the training school.
I spent quite a bit of time gathering, so it was already close to evening. Since walking from here would take time and I didn’t have the stamina, I ended up going to the Guild in Dad’s arms.
They’d still be fresh tomorrow when I go to the training school if I stored them in the magic bag, but since I decided to keep the time-freeze function a secret, I chose to turn them in at the Guild a bit late instead.
"Startin' tomorrow, you won't be droppin' by the reference room no more, so you can start a mite earlier."
I suggested skipping my nap, but that was firmly rejected. Today I’d also done some transcribing at the archive, so we finished later than usual, and I also insisted on walking part of the way myself, which made it even later.
At the Guild, a sheep beastkin man named Mr. Naara handled the reception.
“One, two, three, four... That’s 20 sheets of Healing herbs for two sets, and 10 sheets of Mana herbs for one set—total reward is 150 lari, and three points.
I’d heard you were Alke’s daughter, and just like him, your gathering technique is impressive for a first request.”
He carefully examined the materials while wearing a monocle—was it called a monocle? I was nervous while he counted, but Dad just watched cheerfully, and I stayed quiet and watched too...
“Mr. Naara, can you really tell that I gathered those herbs? What if Dad cheated and picked them for me?”
“... Hah! What a funny kid. Admitting you might have cheated yourself—you’re either ridiculously honest or just plain unique.”
"She's a right sweet girl, ain't she?"
“Heh, that she is. Now I understand why my grandkids were making a fuss.
Young lady, people's own mana is around them at all times. Even with simple material gathering, unless you’re wearing special gloves that block mana transfer, some mana inevitably clings to the materials. So if all the gathered materials have the same attached mana, it proves they were collected by the same person. We compare that to the mana registered to your Guild Card. There’s no room for cheating.”
Whoa. Apparently, Mr. Naara’s monocle is a magic tool—part of the Guild’s equipment for mana appraisal. They really do pull out high-tech stuff now and then.
Once the appraisal was complete, I received my Guild Card and reward. One round bronze coin and five small round tin coins—I've practiced shopping before, but this is my very first money that I earned myself.
There wasn’t anything visibly different about the Guild Card, but somehow it must be keeping track of the points. After all, it’s a high-tech card.
On the way home, I wanted to buy a present for Dad with my first earnings, but he told me to save it for the future.
I’ll save up a bit more and, once I can shop on my own, I’ll buy him a present! I’ve got another new goal now.
What do you think about this chapter?
