Diary Entries 8-10

Diary Entry 8

I feel the need to give advice at the moment as I am collecting medicinal ingredients for a request. A common misconception young adventurers have is that collecting medicinal ingredients is an easy job but they couldn't be more wrong. There are several things that could go wrong when gathering. The first and most common problem is when a young adventurer accepts a quest for collecting an herb without gathering further information from the employer. As such, just to give an example, an idiot could have violently uprooted a rare herb only to find out that they were supposed to carefully transfer it to a pot and bring it back alive and undamaged to the client's greenhouse.

Other problems occur when a young adventurer/cultivator/mercenary/etc., lacks information about the ingredients. A common example is when an ingredient is misidentified and a useless or dangerous lookalike is turned in. Failure to pay attention to other plants and animals that tend to be found near the ingredient, for example, not knowing the fact that Poison Spiked Frogs prefer to nest under Emerald Lily Pads that I am currently collecting, is another, more dangerous, example. But the most infuriating thing that can occur from lack of information on the target is not bringing the necessary materials to keep the ingredient fresh when freshness is important. I'm not going to say how long it took me to figure all of this out, it's too depressing.

Diary Entry 9

Ah Raid Battles, a true test of teamwork. They mostly occur either when some researcher in a Temple of dÚsachtach creates some monstrosity that escapes, although that rarely happens, or, more commonly, a giant sea monster comes ashore on the Rea Build Coast. Our continent's Eastern coast is often invaded by giant sea monsters to the point that only two countries remain in the region, Sakura, and Feng Long, a satellite country of the Tang Ming Song Empire. Today's monster (a Nightmare Conch) is attacking a port in Feng Long known as Wǒmen Shì Shāyú Shíwù (I really should learn the language one of these days as translation spells ignore names). The Nightmare Conch is a sea snail that has a shell made of Coralite and shoots an average of a dozen poisonous harpoons from its mouth.

We started out with about a hundred of us but in about five hours, only a handful of combatants were left. Two were people I came here with, Hogan the Smasher and a new acquaintance, his sister, Explosivo, a wiz at making things explode with or without magic. The other three were a Frying Pan Cultivator, a ninja and a lizardman fighter with a bored look on his face.

The lizardman had bronze scales and was covered in ruby red spikes. He was wearing a fighters uniform that is called a gi, I think. With a maniacal grin on his face, the lizardman waited for the Nightmare Conch to fire its harpoons before dodging and grabbing them mid air. As soon as a harpoon was grabbed, he flung it right into the snail's flesh. When he ran out of harpoons, he started grabbing pieces of scrap metal and plunged them all over the poor snail's body. Explosivo got excited and started threading a wire with packets attached around the pieces of metal. After both of them jumped off, Explosivo yelled at me to use a lightning spell. Soon after I sent a lightning bolt at the Nightmare Conch, I wished I had gone for cover first. Snail guts were everywhere with the shell shooting out to sea. Laughing, the lizardman came up to me.

"My name is Chan Lee. Wanna compare notes?"

"Compare notes?"

"It means we spar with each other."

"Yeaaah....no. Hogan and Explosivo, how we go back to the inn and clean up?" The snail guts reeked something fierce, note to self: burn all armor and clothes that still stink after seven washes.

Thankfully the inn we were staying at was the one furthest from the shore and therefore still standing, I did not want to go looking for a place to take a bath. On the way back, I asked Explosivo how she knew to coordinate with Chan Lee. She smiled and said, "What are you talking about? I was waiting for a chance to try out my new explosive powder the entire battle. Very disappointing by the way, the shell was supposed to shatter." Her words put shiver down my spine.

Inside the men's side of the Yangzhou bathhouse provided by the inn, Hogan and I were ambushed by Chan Lee again.

"Come on bro, let's fight!"

"I'm kinda busy right now, also we're in a bathhouse!"

"So? A real man is ready for battle at anytime and anyplace."

With my eyebrows twitching, I used a freeze spell on him but I barely had gotten clean when he broke free. At that point I had enough and just left. It was the beginning of one of the most torturous weeks in my life. Everyday I was constantly ambushed with challenges, regardless of of where I was or the time of day. After a week of non-stop badgering, I finally gave in.

Chan Lee started by running at me so I used a vine spell to trip him but he rolled to recover. His fist started glowing as he threw a punch but I parried with Tear-jerker and countered with a Fireball. He dodged by ducking followed with a sweeping kick. I braced myself by using an ice pillar to prevent myself from falling and retaliated with a combination of a chain lightning strike and a vine to grab him but he dodged by jumping back, dodging each lightning strike just before it hit. I grinned as I used an Instant-Hedge to block his escape. As he jumped back to avoid the second-to-last strike, he fell over the hedge right into the final lightning bolt! With the lightning striking him, he collapsed on the ground.

Exhausted, I slowly walked over to see if I killed him. Looking over him, I confirmed he was still breathing but thought he should be out of commission for a while when suddenly his eyes opened! With a dangerous gleam in his eyes, Chan Lee got up and said "That was a good warm up, let's get the real match started." After overcoming my disbelief, I whacked him with Tear-jerker and got out of town.

Diary Entry 10

Why me? Why, in every village or town in the Latur area of the Vinland Kingdom, am I swarmed by a bunch of Belästigung kinder wanting to know about magic? Even when I am not the only one who can use magic, they swarm around me. After escaping the tiny horde one day in the village of Barn Undir Fótr, I finally managed to ask a few of their parents why. Apparently the local Magic Academies have been slacking off on educating children before they enter their secondary schooling (more on that later). I will pay them a visit later.... Unfortunately for me, it is so bad that my edito- I mean, my friend back home, assig- I mean begged me, to write a primer on magic.

There are many schools of magic but they all have the same three basic types of spells. The first type requires just the energy of the caster, also known as Mana, Qi, or Chakra, depending on the language, to fuel the spell. Magic that needs materials for the spell is the second type but some energy is still required. For the third basic type of magic, magical inscriptions or chants are required. These three types of spells have been discovered or developed in every school of magic and magic users are encouraged to have several spells of each type in their repertoire.

As for the schools of magic? There are more than I, a "true druid" can keep track of. Of course, it doesn't help that they are discovering or developing more schools every year. The nice thing is that a potential magic user isn't restricted on what magic they can learn, you can have a person who focusses on one school or multiple schools. I myself, chose to focus mainly on spells from the Fire, Lightning, Earth, Plant, Mind, and Shapeshifting schools to give myself as much versatility as I could. I know what you are going say, what about healing spells? Well, you can find attack, support, defense, and healing spells in every school so it doesn't really matter.