Klaus slowly used another sword to remove it with a wet shlick and then kicked it off before using a Cleanse spell on his blades, watching as the gore vanished in a flash of golden light.
'Is there anything more for me to handle?' He thought, deciding to look over at Taula to see how she was doing.
He raised an eyebrow in complete disbelief.
'The hell?!'
Taula had abandoned her axe entirely and was now carrying the dead Orc's massive wooden club in both hands while charging at the last Orc with wild abandon.
"GRAAAAAHHH!" the Orc roared, raising its own club.
"HAHHHHH!" Taula screamed back with equal ferocity.
The two slammed their clubs forward in a devastating collision, and a massive gust of powerful wind exploded outward from where the weapons met.
The shockwave was so tremendous that it knocked Klaus completely off his feet and sent him tumbling backward across the grass.
'I really see no difference between her and an orc.' Klaus thought as he scrambled back upright, watching the insane display of brute force.
The two combatants brought back their clubs simultaneously, and Taula slammed a foot into the ground with enough force to create a small crater.
She pivoted with the momentum and swung her club horizontally, hitting the orc that was still recovering from the initial clash.
"GAH!" the orc cried out.
It was thrown completely to the side like a ragdoll, its massive body crushing several bushes of herbs as it rolled to a stop in a tangle of broken vegetation.
However, as the orc looked up dazedly, Taula was already coming down from above like a descending meteor with her club raised high overhead.
She smashed the weapon directly into the orc's head with devastating force, splattering blood everywhere and she didn't stop there.
She hit it again… and again… and again.
"Haaaahhh!" She brought the club down one final time with a primal scream, bursting the head open completely and sending blood and brain matter spraying all over her body in a grotesque shower.
The orc's body twitched once, then went completely still.
Taula stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, covered head to toe in gore then she casually dropped the club and stretched her arms over her head like she'd just finished a light workout.
"That was fun!" she said brightly.
'Fun?' Klaus thought, staring at her in stunned horror. That settled it… The woman was an absolute psychopath, there was no other explanation.
She climbed down from the orc's body with surprising grace considering she was standing on a corpse, picked up her axe, placed it casually over her shoulder, and walked over to him with a cheerful smile.
"Klaus, did you see that?" She asked enthusiastically, as if he was somehow blind and hadn't just witnessed her completely murdering that brute in the most brutal fashion possible. "Oh wow, you killed your own Orc too… you're strong even though you look like noodles."
Did everybody in this damn world have to tell him that he was thin? Did they think he wasn't aware of that fact? Was it tattooed on his forehead?
"That might be because I'm a mage." He said sarcastically with a flat voice.
She blinked in confusion.
"Mage? You're a mage?"
"The hell?" Klaus deactivated Magnetic Field, feeling the spell drop as his swords clattered to the ground.
He bent down and kept them back in the storage ring one by one. "How do you think I'm able to perform that cleansing spell?"
He took it back… she wasn't just forgetful. She was both dumb AND forgetful, if it was even possible to be both at the same time simultaneously. She was a brute through and through with all muscle and no brain.
"Well, I thought you uh… just washed yourself really fast." She said earnestly then she began wriggling her body uncomfortably. "This blood is getting everywhere inside my armor. It's really gross."
Klaus sighed heavily. "Hold still."
He walked over and placed a hand on her chest plate without thinking, and Taula looked directly at his face with wide eyes as he muttered the spell.
"Cleanse."
A warm cleaning light flooded over her completely, removing all of the blood and gore and making her look like she had just stepped out of a bath.
The spell even cleaned the inside of her armor somehow.
"I feel very clean." She said as he took back his hand. "Usually I carry the blood all the way into town until I get to have a bath, so this is very new. It's nice."
"Let's just go collect the cores." Klaus said, already turning toward the orc corpses.
However, Taula grabbed his hand to stop him.
"We can't do that," she explained seriously. "Another rule for coming in here is that you can only take the herbs that you paid entry for, not the cores of the monsters."
She looked genuinely apologetic. "The Drunk Twins will check us once we get outside, and if they find any monster core from inside here then we'll be attacked by them. Trust me, you don't want that."
"I see… so we're essentially helping the Mayor kill the monsters in the dungeon for free." Klaus said, the business model was becoming clear.
He couldn't even be angry about it… It was honestly a clever way to get some extra income while keeping the dungeon clear. "Alright then, let's head for the herbs."
They both walked forward while she led them using her incomprehensible map. Although Klaus didn't particularly like being at the mercy of Taula's questionable map-reading skills, he didn't have much of a choice in the matter.
After a few more minutes of walking and carefully avoiding wandering monsters, Taula suddenly stopped and showed him a small gathering of herbs that looked like roots turned upside down. They were completely blue with an almost ethereal glow.
"These are the Azure Lotus Roots… you can take as many roots as you want. The herbs in here grow back after a set period of time." She said helpfully. "Also, the Mayor doesn't care about these particular patches of herbs since nobody wants them. I'll still pick up some for the shop as well since Grandma might find a use."
She walked toward the field where the roots were growing while Klaus stayed back a bit, observing cautiously.
'Why do I have a feeling that something is going to attack me the moment I step in there?' He thought with well-earned paranoia.
He had no spells that could detect danger, but his gamer instincts were screaming at him.
He brought out two swords from his storage ring and used Magnetic Field to levitate them in a protective orbit around him.
'Now I think I'm prepared.'
He walked to the roots slowly and carefully across the field with his his swords rotating steadily around him. Klaus looked down at the blue roots growing from the ground.
"They're exactly how they look in the game." Klaus muttered under his breath, examining them closely.
They increased Mana points permanently when boiled to a certain temperature alongside small parts of the other two herbs. If it was that easy to get the herb to the point where it increased your mana, then everybody would be using it by now. "Though I don't know exactly how they're harvested safely."
He looked over at Taula, who had grabbed onto one root and ripped it straight out of the ground immediately with brute force.
Instead of just the root coming up, a large worm-like monster erupted from underneath as well with its body segmented and twitching. She cut through it casually with her axe before it could even attack, and purple blood sprayed across the ground below her.
Upon seeing that Klaus was looking at her, she waved cheerfully.
"Hey Klaus, I forgot to mention it but these roots are actually part of a monster's body and you need to kill it quickly after pulling it out from the ground or the root will die and become useless." She said casually, dropping the blood-covered root that she had gotten on the ground before approaching another one. "It's easy once you get used to it!"
Klaus looked at his own hands and then down at the root directly in front of him. He took a deep breath.
'I can do this…' He thought, steeling himself. He hated worms with a passion, but he would do it for the sake of getting stronger in this forsaken below-average commoner's body.
He grabbed onto the root firmly and pulled with all his strength with his muscles straining.
The root came undone from the soil with resistance, and as expected, the worm came with it except this wasn't a small worm. However, this particular worm was really, REALLY long, easily ten feet or more and just the process of it emerging from underground pulled several more roots out of the ground as well, creating a chain reaction.
Its segmented body was apparently holding onto all of these roots like some kind of underground network, anchoring them in place.
"Fuck fuck fuck!" Klaus cursed, throwing the worm above him with all the power he could muster in his hands.
The long segmented body followed in an arc, writhing through the air as he rolled out of the way desperately.
It hit the ground not too far away with a wet, meaty thud and immediately began curling and writhing like an angry snake with its mouth opening to reveal rows of tiny teeth.
Klaus didn't hesitate or give it time to orient itself. He flicked one of his floating swords at the worm's center mass with a mental command and pierced it straight through.
The sword punched through the creature's thick skin with a satisfying squelch, and the worm immediately exploded like an overfilled balloon. Purple blood and internal fluids sprayed everywhere in a disgusting fountain, dousing all of the roots it had been connected to in the revolting gore.
"Nice!" Taula said from directly behind him, making him flinch violently and nearly jump out of his skin.
When had she gotten there?! He hadn't heard her approach at all!
"The blood of the worms gives the herb a lot more flavor, apparently. My grandmother swears by it." She examined the gore-covered roots with approval. "I also forgot to tell you about the longer worms that have multiple roots attached to them, so I apologize for that. They're called Root Anchors."
"What about those little worms in the blood…?" Klaus pointed out with growing horror, his stomach turning.
Small white worms were now wriggling all over the blood-soaked roots, hundreds of them emerging from the purple fluid. They were baby worms, he realized with disgust.
"Oh, so it was pregnant too?" Taula placed a hand on her waist, examining the scene with genuine interest. "That's actually really lucky! It makes the herbs even tastier and more potent when they absorb the baby worms, apparently. The nutrients get concentrated. Let's wait for them to burrow completely into the herbs before picking the roots. They add medicinal properties."
Klaus almost threw up on the spot with his hand going to his mouth.
What the hell were the people in this world eating?! This was disgusting on a level he couldn't even begin to describe! He'd eaten things in college that he wasn't proud of, but this was on another level entirely!
…
Twenty minutes later, after the most traumatic herb-gathering experience of both his lives, Klaus had collected 15 roots that he had personally harvested without any worm blood on them and absolutely no miniature worms either.
He took them carefully into his storage ring, keeping them separate from his other items.
'I don't think I'm ever going to deal with herbs again.' Klaus thought with absolute conviction. Why was it even called the Azure Lotus Root if it was this disgusting and came from a worm? How many times had he fed his in-game characters worms without knowing it?
The thought made his stomach turn.
"You did very well for your first time here." Taula said cheerfully. She had a bit of worm blood still smeared across her face and small twitching worms crawling on it.
Did she not feel them?!
Klaus stood up and sighed heavily.
"Take better care of yourself. Cleanse." He said while reaching out and touching her face gently, casting the spell.
The instant his hand made contact with her cheek, Taula's entire body twitched violently and just as the cleaning light finished washing over her face, she punched him… hard right in the face.
Blood erupted from Klaus's nose as the force of the blow sent him rolling backward across the ground. He crashed against a tree trunk with tremendous force with the impact knocking all the breath out of his lungs.
'The hell…' Klaus blinked as his vision became blurry and spotty and stars danced across his sight. She had just tried to kill him with a casual punch.
He slowly sat up with every movement sending pain shooting through his aching back. He looked at Taula, who had a bright red tint on her cheeks and was looking away.
"Y-you shouldn't t-touch someone like that." She stuttered, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.
It would have been cute if she hadn't just nearly broken his nose and possibly cracked several ribs.
'What a troublesome woman…' Klaus gritted his teeth, feeling blood running down his face.
He summoned one of the Mid-Grade Healing Potions he'd bought from his storage ring and drank it quickly. The pain died down gradually and his vision returned to normal, though his back still ached.
'This will be the last day I'm dealing with her.' Klaus thought firmly.
What kind of person punched the face of the person that was just trying to help them?!
"Have you gotten the roots you need?" He asked as he stood back up, his legs still shaking a bit from the impact.
"Yes… We're ready to go to the next location." Taula said while keeping her own bag of harvested roots in her storage ring, which made Klaus wonder why she didn't just keep everything in there so they wouldn't get lost constantly.
"What herb is closest to us?" Klaus approached her, but stayed carefully out of arm's reach to avoid being hit again.
"It's the Crimson Starflower next." She pointed ahead and pulled out her map again, squinting at it. "It's not too far from here so come along."
She began walking and Klaus followed behind her at a safe distance.
They cleared another section through the thick shrubbery and trees, pushing aside branches and ducking under low-hanging vines.
Strangely, they had no encounters with monsters this time even though Klaus was looking around constantly, which made him very wary since there was definitely a reason for this unnatural silence.
In dungeons, silence usually meant something big and dangerous nearby.
"We're here…" Taula said quietly, positioning herself behind a large tree.
Klaus moved up beside her and looked at what she was indicating.
There was a large open field filled with starflowers of different colors arranged in beautiful patterns and each flower was shaped like a perfect star but Klaus focused primarily on the red flowers with golden indents on their petals, those were the Crimson Starflowers he needed.
"This is Starflower Field where different starflowers exist. I think according to Grandma's book, all of the Starflowers except for the red ones are used as accessories for confessing love, but there aren't any worms under them." Taula explained.
'Why does she sound so disappointed about the lack of worms?' Klaus thought with disgust.
"If it's like that then we should hurry up and take them." Klaus said. He didn't want to waste more time than absolutely necessary.
"Well…" Taula picked up a rock from the ground and threw it in the direction of the flower field.
The instant the rock entered the airspace above the field, it was struck out of the air by something moving at incredible speed. An oversized Hornet the size of a small dog appeared with its stinger dripping with venom.
"There are Razorwing Hornets here and they are immensely territorial of this place since they feed on the nectar of the flowers so it'll be a bit hard to reach the Crimson Starflowers." Taula said seriously.
Then her expression brightened. "But I have a plan!"
Klaus raised an eyebrow skeptically. Taula had a plan? This should be interesting.
"I'll use myself as bait and lead the monsters away from here while you head into the fields and take the things you need. Make sure to pluck some other colored ones for me too!" She said.
Without giving Klaus any time to even accept or object to this insane plan, she slid down the slope and ran directly toward the front of the field.
"HEYYYYYYY!" she shouted, waving her arms.
An angry buzzing sound filled the air immediately.
Several of the oversized Razorwing Hornet monsters spotted her and turned in her direction with clear hostile intent and one even shot directly at her at tremendous speed with its stinger aimed at her throat.
She unhooked her axe smoothly and cleaved it in half with one swing with its stinger and all. The bisected hornet fell to the ground in two pieces.
This aggressive display agitated all the rest of the monsters in the area, and they began chasing after her in a furious swarm.
Taula turned and ran off at her amazing superhuman speed, giving them a gap but the hornets still followed, their angry buzzing soon disappearing into the canopy of trees.
Klaus took a deep breath, he was alone now.
"The things I do for strength." He muttered while sliding down the slope carefully, gritting his teeth. He ran into the field at a crouch, trying to stay low.
There were a lot of flowers here… hundreds of them in various colors creating a beautiful rainbow pattern.
Some flowers had holes in them where the hornets had already drained the nectar, so Klaus decided to only pick the ones that looked healthy and full.
However, as he was gathering his third Crimson Starflower, he felt something watching him intently.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he turned his head slowly to the right.
Perched on a large tree branch directly overlooking the field was one of the Razorwing Hornet monsters. It was significantly larger than the others… which meant it was probably a guard or something.
It was staring directly at Klaus with its compound eyes and its wings were raised as well while its antennae were hitting together rapidly, creating a clicking sound.
Klaus's face grew pale as he took a deep breath.
"Hey?" he said weakly, raising one hand in a pathetic wave.
"CREEEEEEEE!!!" the hornet screeched.