#006
Eira glared at me again.
“What nonsense are you talking? Do you know how much hell I went through dragging you here after you collapsed and were dying in the forest?”
‘Ah… so I really didn’t meet Carlisle after all.’
Well, there was no way Carlisle Lightinger would appear at this time, and he wasn’t the type to have piercings all over his face either. That style wasn’t particularly my taste either, so why did I have such hallucinations?
For some reason, I felt strangely depressed. Disappointed, you could say. Though I had no idea why.
But this feeling of mine didn’t last long. Because Eira stamped her feet and let out an angry shout.
“If you’re thinking of belittling my efforts to get a discount on the treatment fee, you can forget about it!”
From the vocabulary choice of “hell” to suddenly bursting into anger, she was so different from the Eira Wintern I knew that I couldn’t adapt at all. It felt like seeing a completely unfamiliar, new person.
“No way. I wouldn’t do that.”
To think that the devastated environment could affect an NPC’s personality (should I call it NPC-ality?) to this extent. In the game, Eira Wintern had a warm and caring personality, making her a character whose favorability was easy to raise. We got along well, so even when it wasn’t for favorability or quests, I’d often visit her to chat when I was bored. We became close enough that I even received hidden quests from her, so this current situation felt somewhat disappointing.
Of course, now that everything had been reset and even worsened, it was a meaningless story.
“I’ll pay the treatment fee now, so calm down. How much is it?”
I tried to appease Eira while rummaging through my pouch.
“50,000 rual.”
My hand searching through the pouch stopped. Originally, emergency treatments were more expensive than usual. On top of that, as the world changed to an extremely polluted environment, medical supplies became hard to obtain, so potion prices and treatment fees had also risen terrifyingly. But no matter how much prices soared and emergency treatment fees increased, in the early game they were always presented within 30% of my current cash. Because quest progression had to be possible.
But 50,000 rual? That’s exactly all the assets I have, as if calculated precisely.
When I froze up for a moment, Eira glared at me with suspicious eyes and then scowled fiercely.
“What’s with that look like you’re looking at a quack doctor trying to rip you off? I’m only charging that much because it’s temporary treatment. Considering the deadly struggle I’ll have to go through to obtain the medicinal materials again, even double that wouldn’t be enough! I’m giving you a discount out of respect for your late uncle, so don’t think about skipping out and at least be grateful!”
Eira began berating me again as if dealing with an ungrateful troublemaker.
No, I am grateful. Thank you. I’m truly grateful that you saved my life… but even so, isn’t 50,000 rual for the first day’s first medical bill too much? Of course, it’s not you but the system that’s being too much…
And the real problem wasn’t that I didn’t want to give it, but that I couldn’t. What am I supposed to do after giving this away?
Thanks to receiving treatment, my stamina had recovered about half, so I’d be fine starving today, but tomorrow I absolutely had to buy something to eat. In the game, even without eating, stamina would recover by sleeping, bathing, or meditating, but after it became reality, that wasn’t the case. Like in reality, I had to sleep and fill my stomach separately.
Besides that, how many things would require money? If I wanted to earn money somehow, I’d need equipment. If I wanted to travel somewhere, transportation costs might be involved. So I couldn’t squander all my assets here and now. Even if she was my lifesaver!
“Um, Eira. I’m not trying to skip out, but my situation right now is really…”
I started to speak to try negotiating somehow, whether through credit or a price reduction, but then I stopped.
No, wait. What did she just say? Temporary treatment?
“What do you mean by temporary treatment?”
“What do you think it means? It means exactly what it says.”
Eira frowned but answered my question properly.
“Besides the wounds from being bitten by small monsters, those swollen arms and legs – you got that from moonhalo seaweed, right? The detoxification treatment I did today will last about three days at most. If you don’t get proper treatment again within that time, the toxicity will build up again. And then it’ll be permanently untreatable.”
“…What?”
I don’t know if that seaweed’s name is moonhalo or whatever, but anyway, I was already about to squander all my assets on treatment fees from the start, and if I don’t get treated again within three days, I’ll die anyway?
“What are you talking about? Then just give me proper treatment now!”
I couldn’t afford even the temporary treatment fee right now, but that was a problem for later. I had to be alive first to repay treatment fees or anything else.
But at my words, Eira irritably rubbed her face. Through her messy hair, tired bloodshot eyes were revealed.
“I would if I could. But right now I don’t have the necessary medicinal materials to make a complete detoxification potion.”
What kind of absurd situation is this – I was hurt by the ‘first monster’ on the ‘first day’ of the game, but can’t be treated because there are no medicinal materials?
‘Is this trying to trigger a sub-quest?’
Commission quests had both mandatory and optional ones, but seeing how this was driving me to this extent, this one seemed like it would be mandatory.
What kind of quest are they making so brutal from the early stages? I’d do it if they just asked, without having to shake my lifeline like this.
Just how dangerous a place and how rare medicinal materials was I going to have to obtain? Since moonhalo seaweed was also a name I’d never heard before, I thought there was a high possibility that the required medicinal materials would also be something I’d never heard of or a rare substance, so I asked nervously.
“No medicinal materials… what kind of medicinal materials do you need?”
“Red cap mushrooms from the Wanderer’s Plains.”
“Ah…”
Whether I should call it fortunate or not, I immediately deflated at Eira’s answer.
Of course. There was no way a quest would be that intense from the early stages.
The Wanderer’s Plains was, so to speak, one of the areas to be conquered in this game and the place with the lowest difficulty. In the game, only low-level monsters appeared in the mine dungeon inside this area. Now, naturally, due to contamination, monsters appeared not only in the mine dungeon but also above the fields, but most of the ones that appeared above the fields during the day were small monsters.
I could confidently say it was less dangerous than this forest, and even less dangerous than my house. Honestly, even this forest would have been manageable on my own if I hadn’t been poisoned by the seaweed. (Come to think of it, was my house the most dangerous place?)
The Wanderer’s Plains was also the only area I had experience conquering in the tutorial. (Though I did get eaten by monsters on the way back when my stamina ran out.) Thanks to that, I even knew places where I could obtain less contaminated mushrooms without having to enter the dangerous dungeon.
“If it’s that much, I think I can obtain it myself. If I bring it back, can you treat me properly?”
But Eira’s reaction was only dismay.
“You’ll obtain it yourself? You’re talking like it’s incredibly easy. You mean you’ll commission the Hunter Guild, right?”
I was bewildered.
Why would I need to commission the Hunter Guild for something like that?
Actually, the Hunter Guild existed in the game, with the setting that they hunted monsters while protecting the town. So when something needed to be done in dangerous areas, rather than ordinary residents going directly, problems were solved through the Hunter Guild.
But that was just a setting – I never commissioned anything to the Hunter Guild. Naturally, since I was the player, the Hunter Guild actually commissioned me instead. They’d make excuses like examining guild membership qualifications and demand that I hunt monsters or obtain something from dangerous areas infested with monsters. (In other words, most were quests to raise my combat level, but since I played this game purely for healing purposes, I didn’t find that side particularly interesting, so unless it was a mandatory quest, I’d just gloss over guild commissions with a disinterested eye.)
So I confidently replied.
“No. I’m planning to obtain it myself.”
“You yourself? Going into the fields alone?”
Eira looked at me with a shocked expression as I nodded calmly, then soon snorted.
“I used precious medicinal materials to extend your life by three days, and now you want to throw it away immediately. Going to the Wanderer’s Plains alone?”
Eira began pouring out harsh words at me with the expression of looking at an unprecedented idiot.
“Look, you ended up in this mess just from crossing the forest to get here today, right? And you still don’t get it? Is your head just decoration? If someone like you could go and come back alive, I would have already gone and obtained the medicinal materials myself!”
Eira stood with her arms crossed, continuing her lecture as if teaching a stupid person.
“The Wanderer’s Plains is no longer the peaceful place it once was. People who went there to gather materials becoming ghost wanderers who never return isn’t something that started yesterday. Why is everyone acting like they don’t know facts that everyone obviously knows? Have you been holed up somewhere sleeping for years?”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
