CH 188

The Vast Forest

Around 4 days had passed since I entered the Roza forest.

In these 4 days, during the day and afternoons, I’ll go around the places I have marked to gather the poisonous plants, and from evening till late night, I’ll focus on building my base.

Thanks to all my work, I had finished a decent enough house, good enough to at least protect me from rain, wind and the cold. And I also built a similar house for Snow as well.

The protective fencing around this base was still inadequate but, at least I was able to put one full circle of a small wooden fence around the area. Overall, a lot of progress had been made.

As for the poisonous plants, I had gathered quite a big quantity of Reizen grass, lizaf fruit and Jinpi leaves; enough to last me at least a month.

As for the Jinpi leaves, I plant to head to [Gaddfoura] and have it turned into potions of course.

The base was coming along well and I had gathered quite a bit of poisonous plants as well.

For the first trip to the forest, this was pretty successful already——-now one last thing, I want to find an Ongneer plant here.

According to Botanist Otto’s Records, he had written that Ongneer definitely grew here in this forest.

If anything, he had never found one in Carlisle forest actually…….

Since I found one where it was supposedly never meant to be, surely it has to exist here in the great forest of Roza.

Since I had only been exploring the south region of the South Area until now, from here on, I plan to increase the range to entirety of the South area for my exploring and continue investigating every nook and cranny of this place.

If possible perhaps I’ll find some clues towards the Fruit of Skill as well, and I’ll start gathering any new odd poisonous looking plants that I may find on the way too.

Having finished my prep at the base, me and Snow left to look for the Ongneer.

In the last four days I also came to a conclusion. As long as Snow’s with me, I don’t have to be worried of getting attacked by any monster here for the most part.

The variety of monsters residing in this forest was huge but, they weren’t as rampant as they were in Carlisle forest so if I stick with Snow, I’m less likely to accidentally un into monsters.

Outside of the Orc herd battle that I instigated myself, I only ran into a couple of monsters throughout the last four days, and even those were hunted down by Snow itself.

And while I’m busy building the base, Snow would even go into the forest alone and hunt animals for us for dinner. Seriously, Snow was a huge help to me now.

Those days of Snow spending most of the day playing with a squirrel seemed so far away now. While reminiscing, I let Snow continue scout as we continued exploring the forest for Ongneer.

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From then, we continued searching every corner, nook and cranny of the entire area for the Ongneer but……..

After many days of not sensing anything, we continued going in a circle from south region of the South area, then west region of the south area and finally when we were exploring the east region of the South area——–I sensed a presence similar to Ongneer here.

This was the sixth day, since we began our search for the Ongneer.

It took a whole lot of time but, we did gather other things in these six days so if this presence really was Ongneer, it would all have been worth it.

“Snow, you will stand by here. No matter what happens, you cannot come close alright?”

Since it would be very dangerous for Snow to come anywhere close to Snow, I specifically warned Snow to stay in place, and then started walking towards the presence alone.

You could always sense monsters nearby in this forest but the further I walked towards this supposed Ongneer, the lesser these monster presences became.

Judging by this, there’s a good chance that this was in fact actually an Ongneer.

I suppressed both my rising expectations and impatience and carefully continued walking towards it when——–in slightly open area, where the sunlight was reaching in, I saw an Ongneer plant fully grown in all its glory.

It was just one plant but, the pressure it was releasing was intense.

The monster it used as its host was……..one I had never seen before.

It looked like a strong rabbit-esque monster and had scars all over its body.

It was almost as big as myself in size, and it had spiked brass knuckles equipped to its hands.

I had no idea what this monster was but I gave it my thanks for being strong enough to become a host for Ongneer, and then I approached closer.

………from just the look of it, it was similar to the Ongneer in Carlisle forest.

Perhaps because the host monster was a strong one, the tree that had grown out of its heart looked splendorous and had a bright green fruit ripened on its branch.

I plucked the fruit and collected it, and then wrote down the exact details of the location in my handwritten notes.

I wrote down all sorts of details previously as well but on comparing, the only real similar characteristic to the Carlisle Ongneer was that it grew in a slightly open place, nothing more.

They were hard to find, and reproducing the plant required fulfilling all sorts of tough conditions.

I think perhaps Ongneer doesn’t even have a natural habitat or environment where it grows.

………..Regardless, having found one was a great achievement.

It was located in the west of the East region of the South area; making it quite far from the base but it was still in permissible range.

Tomorrow, I’ll bring the Orc King’s corpse to this place, first thing in the morning and with that, my first exploration trip to the great forest of Roza will be marked as finished.

Looks like I’ll be able to continue doing here what I was in Carlisle before, and I even gathered more new interesting looking plants as well to test.

Since the forest was so vast, I hadn’t even fully explored half of one of the 4 areas that I had divided the whole forest into but, the fact that I had been able to find Ongneer alone was a huge success in and of itself.

But, I didn’t really fight much monsters in the great forest of Roza and I’m sure there are still a lot more new plants to gather and check that I had missed this time around.

I even sensed a stronger presence than the Orc King while I was searching for the Ongneer, and I haven’t even properly begun my search for the Fruit of Skill yet.

There was so much to do here that my head would start to spin just thinking about where to even begin but, my first goal was to make sure if I could continue my activities from Carlisle forest, here as well, and I have succeeded in that.

Once I return to Edestor, I need to thoroughly go through all the info I have gathered here, check the effects of this new Ongneer, and then also discern whether any of the new plants I gathered had any effects.

Also, I think I need to start gathering more info on the great forest of Roza itself as well.

Furthermore,……….I’m going to need to draw a map for this place.

Best case, the general store has a pre drawn map of the forest but, I doubt even the most curious type would have bothered to do so, so I’ll probably have to do so myself.

Honestly, there was so much stuff to do that my head was already starting to hurt but, just like during battles ——–no even more so than that, a sense of exhilaration rose within me. Moments like these did I truly feel alive.