The forest road was dark at night. There were no magical lamps that allowed one to see as they walked like you would see in old-school games. This game was made to be as realistic as possible, so the darkness of night, without a moon to light your way, blanketed the path in front of us. 

While I was fine with this, it seemed the pink-haired thing liked to jump at every sound. And sadly, while I know I shouldn’t, I couldn’t help but find it cute. It was so cute that it made me want to tease her. I sent her a message and paused my steps. “Did you hear that?”

“Hea-Hear what!?” The pink-haired thing’s voice shook. She hugged my arm and began looking around nervously. It was quite amusing.

“Oh right, I forgot to tell you that that comes out at night in this forest. It can’t be hit with physical or magic attacks and will just suck away our HP like it was nothing. From what I remember, it kind of looks like that over…. THERE!”  This time I was speaking out loud, which caught the pink-haired thing off guard and, at the same time, scared the crap out of her. I couldn’t help but laugh. I had never seen someone jump so high from being scared. She almost knocked me over in the process.

“You! You are teasing me!” The pink-haired thing’s cheeks puffed out as she glared at me with tears in her eyes. Did I feel bad at all? Nope, not in the slightest. It was great entertainment.

“You shouldn’t be so nervous until I am. If you see me calm, then you should be as calm as I am.” I sent my words in a message this time since it was too tiring to talk. 

“That’s…. I guess that makes sense, but don’t pick on me next time! I hate ghosts and stuff like that. I  have never been good with scary movies and the like.” The pink-haired thing was giving me some valuable information.

“Remind me to go to the horror shop tomorrow to get some new decorations for my place.” I felt like this was a good idea, but for some reason, the pink-haired thing next to me was glaring at me. 

We made it out of the forest by the time the sun was starting to rise. This was actually quite a beautiful view since before us was a field of white lilies. Or what looked like them. These were actually a flower called White Dragon. It was a common herb used in creating potions. “Let’s stop here and harvest a few thousand stalks of this flower.”

    “A few thousand!?” The pink-haired thing yelled in surprise. I guess I could see why. That was quite a lot. But from what I could tell, we were the first to arrive here. This field would disappear quickly once others realize what this flower was used for so having a good stock on hand was a good idea. It only took one petal per potion, so having a few thousand stocked up in our inventories was not so bad. Luckily, stacking items did not stop until 9,999. 

A few hours passed, and because we were grabbing hand full after handful of these flowers, our stock had already reached over three thousand. “That should be enough.”

“Thank god! I never want to pick another flower in my life.” The pink-haired thing fell to the ground. The once fully white field now had a huge chunk taken out of it. 

“Get used to it since we will be doing this quite a bit. Once we get your unique quests going, we will be coming back here to farm more. The more we have, the better. I highly doubt people have started crafting all that much, so we can really use this time to stock up on certain herbs that will be hard to find later on.”  I did not like flower picking all that much as well, but it was still something that had to be done. 

“Actually, now that I think about it….” I really needed to make use of my skills. I did not work so hard to get them and not use them after all. “Nature Embrace…..” 

A magic circle formed underfoot, and four white flowers with roots as legs and leaves as arms appeared in front of me. “You guys go harvest these flowers. When you are done, you can go back. If you see anyone coming, just act like any other flower. If someone tries to pick you up just desummon yourself.”

The four flowers gave me a strange salute and went to work. Each time they picked a flower, it appeared in my inventory. Now I understand why this skill was bragged about by the person on the forums who had gotten it. This kind of ability was kind of a cheat for crafters.

“What is this!? That’s not fair! How do you have such a skill? Wait, why did we pluck all these flowers by ourselves!?” The pink-haired thing seemed to be stuck between awe and wanting to yell at me for making her pick so many flowers. 

“It’s a skill that allows me to summon plants to do my bidding. They are quite handy. I kind of forgot I had the skill since this was my first time using it.” I scratched my chin. If I remembered earlier, I would have summoned them long ago!

At any rate, with the pouty pink-haired thing in tow, we made our way to the village. It was just when we arrived, it was not really a scene I wanted to see just yet….