Chapter 90: A First Time for Everything
Dappled sunlight filtered through the canopy, shifting across Seraphina's light brown hair as she walked.
She walked at the front. After a while, she stopped, pulled the map from her hip pouch, and unfolded it. Her fingertip traced a line of handwritten notes. The map had already started to curl at the edges from the humidity.
She glanced down at the map, looked back up to compare it against a massive tree covered in purple fungi ahead, then walked right without any hesitation.
Uriel followed two steps behind, the spare collection bag hanging from his left hand. His right hand pushed aside a broad, low-hanging leaf — the surface cool and slick, leaving a thin film of water on his fingertips.
His posture was loose, his gaze wandering. The rainforest had no shortage of things to look at. At one point, a weird flying insect pulsing with neon blue light drifted past the tip of his nose, and he batted it away without breaking stride.
He looked exactly like a boyfriend who'd been dragged along on a shopping trip against his will and assigned bag duty for the afternoon.
He tilted his head to examine a vine coiled around a nearby trunk. It was as thick as a forearm. The bark shimmered with an unnatural dark purple, pulsing faintly like a vein.
"Does that thing... bite?"
Seraphina glanced back at it, folded the map, and tucked it away. "That one doesn't. The shrubs three steps to your right will paralyze you for a few hours if you touch them."
Uriel's right foot, which had been mid-step, quietly retreated.
Two steps later, he poked the edge of a massive jellyfish-shaped mushroom with his boot. It recoiled violently and discharged a burst of yellow-green powder. He stepped back half a pace and let it pass.
"Are we going to have venomous snakes dropping out of the canopy? Fist-sized poisonous insects? Mushrooms that spray acid?" His eyes jumped from trunk to trunk. "A man-eating flower that swallows you whole? Or one of those monsters where you have to do something specific to cure the venom?"
"All of the above," Seraphina said, pushing through a curtain of hanging vines. Her tone did not change. "Nothing here is dangerous enough to be lethal to a Silver-rank adventurer, though. As long as you don't stick your head into the man-eater's mouth on purpose. Stay on my footprints if you're nervous."
Uriel stepped into her tracks and let out a dry laugh.
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About ten minutes later, Seraphina stopped at the base of a gnarled old tree, its roots knotted into a dense mass above the soil.
Beneath the roots was a damp, dark crevice. A few clusters of pale, almost white plants grew along its edges. Fine silver veins floated across the leaf surfaces, emitting a faint luminescence in the shadow.
"Here we go."
She took the collection bag back from Uriel, dropped to one knee, and drew a thin-bladed knife from her hip.
Uriel swept a look around. Heavy shadows, birdsong drifting down from above, nothing moving on the ground except the occasional falling leaf.
"Want a hand? Dirty work like this, rooting around in the mud — you can leave it to a man." He leaned forward to watch her carefully peel back a layer of moss with the knife tip.
Seraphina's blade lifted a root fiber no thicker than a strand of hair. She didn't look up.
"Do you know the technique? Cut the wrong spot and the fluid loss exceeds thirty percent. The whole plant is ruined."
Uriel shook his head honestly and closed his mouth.
Seraphina produced a small silver pair of tweezers from her leg pouch, along with several thin crystal plates.
"Turn around. Watch the perimeter. Keep guard."
"Aye aye, captain." Uriel shuffled a few steps left, kicked a pinecone, stared up at the canopy for a while, then wandered back a couple of minutes later.
"So what does this thing actually do?" he asked the general air. "In the adventure novels I've read, any herb that glows in a dark corner like this either breaks through a level ceiling or dumps fifty years of mana into you all at once. Please tell me it's not that."
Seraphina tightened the cap on one vial and moved to the next plant.
"It's not. It's a compound ingredient. Helps the body reach peak condition in a short window. Used before The Hero's Ascent."
Uriel's eyebrows slowly drew together.
"Peak condition in a short window..." He lowered his voice as if discussing a controlled substance. "That's a performance enhancer. You're allowed to use that in an Academy tournament? The organizers don't regulate it?"
"No."
Seraphina sealed the last prepared root fiber into its vial, capped it, and wiped a faint sheen of sweat from her temple with her sleeve.
"Also — don't let conversation make you forget you're supposed to be keeping watch."
Uriel shrugged. A very faint gleam passed through his eyes.
Observer — activate.
The rainforest drained of color. The aether drifting through the air resolved into thousands of glowing violet-blue threads. He swept the surrounding area. He scanned the forest. The trees and undergrowth might as well have been transparent. Within several hundred meters in every direction, only the dim green signatures of ordinary birds, insects, and minor magical beasts moved — slow, aimless, harmless.
About as dangerous as a public park.
"Keeping a close eye," he said, pulling the interface back and taking the collection bag she held out. "That said — why not just post this on the Adventurer's Guild board? You've come a long way for something that isn't even a high-difficulty gather."
"You only know what a job is actually worth after you've done it yourself from start to finish." She brushed fragments of moss off her knee and straightened. "Measured the distance yourself. Assessed the difficulty yourself."
She looked at him.
"More importantly, you need to keep the core techniques and processes under your own control. Otherwise, the moment they stop taking the job, you're the one who gets stuck."
She said it plainly. No lecture in her voice, no performance of wisdom. Just a fact.
Uriel watched her load the collection bag into her pack.
The clasp caught on the first try, then didn't. She tugged it twice before it clicked. The shoulder strap slid off immediately after. She pushed it back up without comment, fumbling slightly.
"A little rough on the handling there. First time doing this?"
At his assessment, Seraphina paused mid-swing of the pack onto her shoulder.
She turned to look at him. The polished customer-service smile that lived on her face vanished completely, replaced by two eyes with the emotional depth of a drained fish tank.
"Yes. And the first time doing it with a boy, specifically."
Flat delivery. Sharp as a blade.
Uriel didn't miss a beat.
"Mine too, actually."
Wind moved through the canopy above them.
The birdsong suddenly felt very far away.
Seraphina held the dead-fish stare on him for three seconds. Uriel held his pack-carrier stance for three seconds back.
A bird dropping fell from somewhere above and landed in the mud exactly between them with a decisive splat.
"Let's go."
Seraphina stepped around him, pushed through a hanging vine, and started back the way they'd come.
"Wait — " Uriel blinked and immediately fell into step behind her. "That's it? We're done? My first time, and it barely lasted ten minutes?"