Chapter 64 Haze Flowers (1/2)

Collecting the needed herbs in the forest was not that difficult. Hunters almost never picked them up and people who knew stuff about medicine would grow simple herbs themselves or would simply walk in the vicinity of the village where it was relatively safe.

Because of that and because the forest was so huge while villages were like grain of sand on a busy road, the herbs could grow in great quantities. I picked up Poison Grass as it was the easiest to find, then I looked around for a dump area that was open to the view of sky. This was the type of environment where the Cloud Mushroom would grow.

After a while of searching, I found the Cloud Mushrooms and I picked couple of them. I would need to make about a dozen of vials with the Cloud Haze Poison and so I would need more Cloud Mushrooms than just one or two. I stuffed the mushrooms inside the bag and waited to hear news from Shelly.

I gave the task of finding the Haze Flower to Shelly because it was the rarest of them three. I showed Shelly how it looked like and also explained the likely location of the flower. I've waited for a while but Shelly didn't find me yet. I thought 'Maybe Shelly can't find me?' I screamed ”Shelly! Where are you?” after a while I could hear rustling sound and saw Shelly running towards me.

I asked ”Did you find it yet?” but Shelly shook it's head to mean that it didn't find the flower yet. I said ”Not to worry, I have all other ingredients right now so we can search together”. Shelly nodded it's head and we went together to look for the specific area where the Haze Flowers would grow.

The area would need to be near the water. The flowers pollinated themselves through the use of water. The mist that those flowers produced allowed for fertilization of new flowers. So a river or a stream or even a waterfall would be an ideal area for these flowers. I took out a map to see if there are any rivers or water reservoirs near this area.

There was a pond displayed not to far away from the mountains location so we headed there. When we arrived at the pond, I could see the haze around some parts. This meant that the Haze Flowers we were looking for, were here. After taking couple of steps, I noticed something else.

It was an insect that looked like a caterpillar but there were two differences. First of all, it was black in colour and secondly it was the size of a dog. I thought to myself 'This creature is not friendly, probably'. I then said to Shelly ”We need to watch out, we don't know the behaviour of those creatures. It's best that we get couple of flowers and then leave”. Shelly nodded it's head and we moved slowly towards one of the patches with the Haze Flowers.

All of a sudden a caterpillar creature came out of the ground and charged at us. To my surprise it didn't spray any venom and simply charged with its body. I flung my hands and threw couple of daggers at the charging creature.

”Cling” ”Cling” ”Cling” ”Cling”

All my daggers got deflected, 'What a strong armour' I thought and backed away. Shelly saw the opponent as well and charged with the greatest speed it could. Shelly and the creature rammed into each other and I could see Shelly being blasted away by couple of metres due to recoil. This time the creature was not so fortunate compared to getting hit with my daggers. It flew up into the air and when it landed it didn't move.

I was not interested whenever that creature lived or not, I was more concerned about Shelly. When I arrived next to Shelly, I could see some cracks on its shell but other than that I saw nothing else. Shelly was a bit stunned and also in pain but it didn't cry out. I said to Shelly ”Wait here, I will take the flowers very quickly and we will leave”.

I didn't wait for the response from Shelly as I ran at my fastest speed to collect some flowers. When I was about 5 metres away from the patch of flowers, I could hear another creature breaking the ground and resurfacing behind me. I didn't turn around and simply went forwards. In the patch of the Haze Flowers, I picked up about a dozen of them and jumped to the left.

”BAAM”