Chapter 39: Outpost
Ivan was currently standing on a square which was surrounded by four big buildings. On of them was an Inn while the other was a transport station.
Another was were the guards were stationed. The guards were part of the military and their job was to check the barrier which kept the monsters out of the save zones as well as execute rescue missions if necessary.
Finally the last one was a commercial building containing a smith as well as a general item store and a clinic. The clinic was only for emergency cases as the patients would be moved into the capital as soon as possible.
Even though there weren't many buildings here it was still bustling with peoples. Most of them were adventures, a job where you made money by going into the wilderness to collect materials. Some of them entered the buildings while others left through the grand arch in the barrier which allowed them to freely enter the wilderness.
After Ivan had finished his talk with his mentor he had taken the train to this outpost, so he could then enter the wilderness and then travel to the forest area where the Steelback bears could be found.
Since he had already prepared everything he would need for this trip at the alliance he walked towards the entrance of the wilderness. The entrance was guarded by to guards in full plate armor which completely hid their features but one could still feel their oppressive aura.
After he left the civilized area there were no more streets and he could only travel through the high grass. He really wondered why nobody bothered to make some streets leading deeper into the wilderness.
He had checked out his route beforehand and there weren't really any dangerous creatures in his way so he started running. The high grass made his progress much harder especially since he still had to be careful of his surroundings.
The grassland was what he had to pass through first and it was seemingly endless. Even after running for more than five hours and completely depleting his stamina there was still no end in sight. After running for so long he had to take a rest even though he couldn't stand this grassland anymore and wanted to leave as fast as he could. Since it wasn't late yet he only took out some jerky and chewed on it while sitting on the ground.
Then after a good rest he once again started running. * Luckily there is a compass and map on the interface or I would have long gotten lost. *
* I really need a mount. Running by myself really sucks.*, he now really came to understand why every adventurer would get a mount as soon as he or she could. Sadly he just didn't have the money to buy one and since his mentor had forbidden him from taming anything he had no way to get one himself. As such he could only run by himself.
After two days of continues running there was finally a change of scenery. At the horizon he could see the outlines of trees and motivated by the sight of his goal he sped up. Sadly the view was misleading and it still took him more than six hours to finally reach the forest.
Even though he was only standing at the border of the forest the trees already reached high up into the sky where their tops were interweaving to make a forest roof which seemed continuous and which didn't let much light through. As such the forest was quite dark and if not for the glowing moss on the trees it would have been even darker. Surprisingly the light from the moss was enough to allow more vegetation on the floor of the forest. You could find grass and different herbs as well as some lonely flowers. In the places where it was darker or on toppled trees you could find different kinds of mushrooms.
Without much effort Ivan could easily see some useful herbs as well as mushrooms. Of course there were more than enough plants which he knew were poisonous and many he had never seen before.
He had read that in this forest there were always appearing new species of plants which one had to be careful of since it was hard to find these that are useful and avoiding these that are poisonous.
On one of the trees he could see some deep claw marks which didn't seem to be older than a day and he guessed that they had to be from a bear since they were higher up on the tree and the spacing of the claws were fitting.
* It seems like I am lucky. There has to be a bear close to the border. And where there is one there have to be more. *, Ivan was happy about seeing the claw mark. After all the territories of the Steelback bears was small and they lived in groups of up to ten bears. Of course he could only attack them if they were alone since he wasn't strong enough to fight against multiple of them.
He set a save point for his resurrection skill, since the grassland seemed safe and he really didn't want to run all the way again if he happened to be killed by one of his prey. After that he took out the simple iron sword his mentor had given him for this mission. As he had been thought by his teacher one should always wear his sword if one is expecting danger since pulling it out of the scabbard one could instantly use it. If one had it in his inventory while it was more comfortable it also made pulling it a bit longer.
He then carefully made his way into the forest. He made an effort to listen to any strange sounds which could warn him about incoming danger.
With careful steps and one hand on his sword he slowly advanced through the dimly light forest.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone