“Oh yeah. That promise to build my apothecary for me. Once you’re better, we can talk about it some more.”

It was just silly banter we shared when Tanta spent time with me. We talked about all sorts of stuff—like how I was going to build an apothecary, what sort of layout it should have, where it should be built, that sort of thing. The young half-elf had sworn to build it for me, saying “When I become a carpenter, I’ll build your store for you, Big Bro Red.”

Well, yeah. It was clear what I was going to do from the start. I mean, that was the promise, so there wasn’t really any helping it. My beautiful, slow life wouldn’t be complete without a modest but no less lovely little shop to go with it, after all.

“Right now, the Adventurers Guild has placed the mountain off-limits…”

“Y-you can’t do it?”

“I can’t take this job as an adventurer. But I’ll do it as a friend. Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“Red!”

“I’ll be back soon. I’ll leave Tanta to you until then, Doctor.”

“I’ll do the best I can. But it will take an hour to prepare the medicine.”

“It would take me three, so if you can do it in just an hour, I’d be grateful.”

High-speed preparation was something that could only be done by people with a blessing in the Medical or Alchemical trees, or else maybe someone with the Herbalist blessing.

It was beyond my ability.

* * *

I had no intention of staying up in the mountains this time. I just filled a waterskin, secured my bronze sword, and left town. I jogged along the outskirts of the village a bit and then had a look around.

“All right, no one is watching.” How long had it been since I last ran all out?

“High-Speed Mastery: Lightning Speed. Endurance Mastery: Immunity to Fatigue.”

They might’ve been common skills, but by raising the skill level to 11, you gained access to the mastery ability. Quite powerful despite the skills being so common. Not many people built up common skills that high, though, so it wasn’t a very well-known boon.

Lightning Speed increased movement by a factor of ten. While I was running, other people would see me as little more than a flitting shadow. Immunity to Fatigue meant my body wouldn’t tire. Regardless of whether I was working through the night, engaging in heavy manual labor, or even sprinting all out for an entire day. Effects other than fatigue still applied; it wasn’t as if I could go without sleep for days on end. Sleep itself was still necessary, but the skill was undoubtedly useful.

I took one powerful step, then another, and another. I gradually accelerated, and the scenery transformed into a green blur as I left it behind. Once I reached my top speed, I was covering one kilometer every thirty seconds, moving around 120 kilometers per hour. With magic support, I could run even faster, but this was my personal limit. That velocity could match the flight speed of an adult dragon more than one hundred years old.

As the last light of day was swallowed up by night, I sprinted toward the mountain. It took a while to reach my destination. If there had been even the barest of roads, I could’ve maintained my speed, but the rough forests of the mountain made moving that quickly unfeasible. I had to go normal speed here.

Taking out my map, I plotted my route.

I didn’t want to take any longer than necessary, but I also wanted to avoid any route Albert’s party was likely to take. I looked over the more common paths. This side got a lot of direct sunlight, and owlbears tended to dislike strong sun; hopefully, that meant it would avoid this area unless given a particular reason. Likewise, it would mean that Albert’s party would naturally save this portion of the mountain for later in their search.

“All right.” With a route set, all that was left was to move forward.

* * *

When I noticed the smell, I felt impatient for the first time in a long while and gritted my teeth as I ran.

“Dammit!”

The area where blood needles tended to grow in clusters had been scorched. My skill-enhanced hearing caught the shouts of Albert’s party fighting in the distance.

“They used fire magic!”

Someone in Albert’s party had used a fire magic while they were fighting the owlbear. Fire magic was powerful and the standard move when fighting something able to take a lot of damage, like an owlbear. But the conifer trees that blood needles grew on burned easily and were the perfect kindling for the hungry tongues of flames. On top of that, it was spring, when the winds were strong. It was incredibly dangerous to be summoning fire on the mountain, given the circumstances.

If it were Ruti or Ares, or anyone else from the party, they could have used an innate skill or a magic to extinguish the fire and halt the spread. But I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t have any means of extinguishing the growing blaze.

“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”

I used my bronze sword to cut the water bag I had brought with me and dumped it over my head. The only thing I could do in this situation was gather as many blood needles as possible. Goblin-fever season was over, but it was the time of year when white-eye, the deadly red-tongue disease, and the airborne trembling fever could break out. Blood needles were a crucial medicinal herb during Zoltan summers, and they were all being burned to ash.

Despite being so critical, blood needles grew in relatively few places. This mountain was the only major source in all of Zoltan.

I ran through the flames and smoke, plucking every one of the mushrooms I could find. The smoke coated my throat and scorched my lungs. Immunity to Fatigue did not help with smoke and oxygen deprivation, and the heat stung my flesh. But I could still move. I possessed no special skills. My blessing was a high level, pure and simple, and my resilience to physical punishment befit that level. I could take this much.

But there was a limit. Surrounded by flames, I started having trouble breathing, and hypoxia began setting in. The oxygen deprivation made my head heavy and dulled my senses.

A sudden rustling caught my attention. An owlbear covered in wounds stood before me.

You let it get away, Albert?

The wounded creature was in a frenzy. It raised its claws to attack, an instinctual drive to protect itself. I took the hilt of my bronze sword in hand. The wildfire had heated the grip, and there was a sizzling sound as it burned into my palm. The owlbear roared down on me, swinging its arms to tear me apart.

I drew my bronze sword, slicing upward across the owlbear’s stomach to its shoulder.

* * *

“Over here, sir!”

Relying on the tracking ability of Campbell, a member of the party with a Thief blessing, Albert’s party arrived at the owlbear corpse collapsed on the ground, its body encircled in flames. They had been granted Resistance to Heat and Resistance to Environment by a magic spell, so they were unhurt by the smoke or the heat of the blaze.

“That’s a B rank for you! And I did my part, so I’ll be getting my reward, too,” shouted Dir the Fire Mage. He was hunched over, his cheeks were hollowed out, and his skin looked generally unhealthy.

He was the adventurer who had guided them in Red’s stead, who Albert had only just barely been able to find in time.

According to Megria, he had a history of abandoning his party members and running away, rendering his reputation abysmal, but they had gone with him anyway, since no better option had presented itself. His poor guidance through the woods meant they’d been walking around the mountain until late into the night.

The owlbear wasn’t moving, but Dir didn’t dare draw any nearer to the beast. The creature would tear him apart if it was still alive, though it was a one-in-a-million chance.

Albert approached the owlbear and severed its foreleg. That would serve as the proof of having completed the job.

“We did it!”

“…This wound…”

“What is it?”

“No, it’s nothing. Let’s get out of here before the magic wears off.”

Campbell the thief raised both his hands in agreement at that. “Yeah, even with the resistance magic, it’s still hot and hard to breathe,” he complained.

The woman with a Priest blessing furrowed her brow.

“That’s just how it works. This isn’t the sort of situation people were meant to survive in the first place. Just be grateful this is all the pain you have to suffer,” she responded.

“I know, I know. Look, it for sure beats dying” came Campbell’s response.

The effects of the magic that granted resistance to the fire lasted ten minutes. If it ran out while they were in the flames, even a B-rank party like them would be incapacitated almost immediately. The group of adventurers ran fast to escape the growing blaze.

* * *

“Wh-whoa! Are you okay, Red?!”

It hadn’t even been six hours since I left. By now, most folk would normally have been sleeping, but everyone was still awake and watching over Tanta. I rushed into the room as if I was about to collapse, my whole body covered in black soot.

“Dr. Newman, I got the blood needles.”

“What?! That fast? How?! Wait…that looks like a really bad burn. What did you…?”

“This is all of the blood needles we’re going to be able to gather in Zoltan this year… I’ll explain later, but right now, preparing the medicine is more important.”

“Okay, I understand. I’ll get started at once.” Newman took the bag of blood needles and went back to his clinic to get the medicine ready.

“Red, are you okay? I’ll get something for those burns…”