As Jason was laughing his heart out Selene stumbled back over to the two of them and gave Caleb some water while taking the jerky from his mouth. Caleb nodded his thanks and sipped the water that she put to his mouth slowly.

“There you go Caleb. From the madman’s complaining we’ve been in meditation for at least a month and probably more than that. Drink slowly and once you’ve regained some strength then start to eat otherwise you’re not even going to be able to chew properly,” Selene softly spoke to Caleb as she gave him water. It took Caleb a minute to completely drink the water and then another minute of just sitting there before he felt like he had the strength to move his limbs. Eventually though he reached out shakily and took some monster jerky from the food piles that Jason had made before and started chewing.

Selene was doing the same next to him. She had left a bit after she could move so that she could exercise her muscles which hadn’t been used in at least a month. She found that atrophy had started to set in as it was difficult to move her limbs and she felt much weaker than before. Little Cub at least had been helpful and let her hang one arm over him as support. Right now though Little Cub was nudging Caleb with his snout to which Caleb weakly lifted his arm and put it on Little Cub’s head ruffling the fur.

It took a few more minutes of Caleb eating and Selene trying to walk for Jason to calm down. When he did he looked around and saw the twig-like bodies of the two and how they were trying their best to strengthen themselves through the limited exercise they could do and eating.

“Selene,” Jason called out to her. She had just made it to the rotting and mostly skeletal death dog and was turning to make her way back to the wall. At his voice she paused and looked over at him.

“Yes One-eye?” Her voice was hoarse and rough from long periods of disuse. It’ll take more than a few hours to get that back in shape. Jason walked over to her and started being a support for the child as she walked.

“What would help you two recover faster? We’re out of health and stamina potions and I’m pretty sure you two won’t need mana potions to fix your bodily problems. So what would help you all right now?” Selene's head tilted up and looked at the sky considering this. Then she slowly began to speak.

“If you can bring me brown roots, shimmer ivy, the petals of the emerald jessamine, wolf blood, and some water then I can make some stamina potions to help Caleb and I. If you bring me bark of the blood trees or alternatively blood fungus, beast blood, emerald jessamine petals, and water I can make health potions. Well lower tier health potions but still health potions.” Jason had no clue what any of those were, but at the end of the day his automatic inspection would tell him.

“Why emerald jessamine petals for both?” Jason didn’t know anything about alchemy and considering how the system only really gave skills for combat he probably never would unless he studied it.

“Emerald jessamine petals help purify the beast blood so that we can drink it. If I instead didn’t add them then it would just make you sick to the stomach, but if I added some poison plants like hemlock then the potions would turn into poisons and reduce the stats over time.” Selene had to drink water during her speech so that she could keep going. Caleb who they were next to just kept slowly chewing on his jerky.

“Gotcha. Alright one more question before I go. Well two more. First is that I assume those are going to be in the forest? Second is you said you poisoned the death dog. How come the poison effect doesn’t show up in the skill description because trust me I’ve looked at the poison balls skill description and it doesn’t mention it?” Jason had been wondering this on and off ever since he had woken up and so asked Selene first thing he could.

“One-eye does the system give any skills for smithing, alchemy, runesmiths, or any other profession besides fighters?” Jason shook his head. “Wrong. It does.” Jason immediately started looking through the Utility skill tree trying to find those skills. He had unlocked every tree to tier four a long time ago and he hadn’t come across any skill that upgraded those. As he was searching his eye was darting side to side obviously going through the panels.

“Don’t bother looking, Jason, you won’t find any,” Caleb weakly said from the ground. “She’s talking about skills that help you control mana and your body better. Those can… give me a minute… oh christ… water please,” After Caleb gasped a bit and drank some more water he was fit to talk more. “Those indirectly help you craft better. The system doesn’t actually help you directly with those skills.” Caleb started gasping and drank some more water as Jason’s attention drifted back to Selene barely even noticing that Caleb didn’t stutter at all that time.

“He’s partially right One-eye. Not completely, but partially. Us three chose warrior professions at the beginning. Well Jason chose an odd one, but the system includes any profession besides the initial worker one as combat related. If any of us had chosen the worker class at the beginning then we would’ve lost our offense and defense skill trees. It would’ve been replaced by a generic skill tree called crafting. Which would then be subdivided into more specific skill trees, you two know how it works.” The two nodded. “The point is that since we chose combat classes anything having to do with crafting classes doesn’t really appear in the system data. If an alchemist saw the description for the poison skills they would be informed about the poison effects it has, but they wouldn’t be informed about the impact or corrosion damage. What we see in the system is based on what type of class we chose. That’s just how it works.” At the end of her speech Selene shrugged. Caleb immediately after that asked the most pertinent question.

“How do you know this? Anytime either of us are confused you have the answer. It’s not normal.” Jason had to completely agree with that statement. In response to them Selene just reached into her robe and pulled out book after book. There was Breakthroughs for Dummies, Terrains and the Monsters Within, Korga’s Guide to Rare Beasts, The Basic Classes and their Progressions, System Basics, and a few more relating to runes and alchemy. A nerd. Jesus Christ a nerd.

“Where the hell do YOU KEEP THOSE?” Jason gestured to the pile of ten or so books that Selene had pulled out. Selene didn’t answer and just put them all back into her robe. Alright I get it. Have a spatial item that you don’t want us to know about. I understand now.

“Alright well you two just keep each other company in suffering. I’m going to go find the forest and go from there.” Jason started walking out before Selene called out to him.

“Do you even know where the forest is?”

“It’s somewhere in that direction. It’s a forest, how hard is it going to be to find?” Jason waved them off and then started going up the stairs of the ziggurat. As he got to the second floor he took off his cape and put it away transforming into his hybrid form. With his now strengthened body Jason reached the entrance of the dungeon and left looking at the sands all around him and the sun beating down at him.

He jogged on two legs until he reached the bottom of the steps where he started sprinting to what he considered the East on all fours. All the while listening to the music trying to find some prey and avoid the predators.

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It took Jason six days of alternatively running and walking to reach the forest. He slept twice during that period and although he didn’t level up he was still happy because in his mind he had crossed that distance extremely fast. Then again now that I think about it those two are probably almost completely recovered so my journey here was a complete waste. No it wasn’t a complete waste… After all we need health and stamina potions.

After raising his morale again Jason fully entered the forest and started looking around for those plants that she needed. The ivy and moss were quite easy to find as they were almost everywhere. Jason stuffed those into one of the two makeshift sacks that he had made a day ago by killing a few kanunnahs and sewing their skins into the sacks. Although the sewing part required him to go back to human form as he couldn’t really sew with his claws.

The brown roots were hard to find at first until Jason started to just dig into the ground. Then Jason found that almost every single piece of the underbrush had what the system considered brown roots. He did find the emerald jessamines growing from vines all over the trees.

What Jason never found was the bark that Selene wanted which Jason assumed was because they probably weren’t native to the area he was in. Either way after Jason had completely filled up a sack with all the plants he could find he decided that it was time to collect the wolf blood. Since Selene just said beast blood for the second one wolf blood should be fine right? Probably.

With those thoughts in his mind Jason listened to the world. He listened for the sounds of violins and drums that signified wolves. He listened as he moved slowly through the forest. His clawed feet softly hitting the ground with each step he took. His face tilting left and right trying to hear the sounds better. After a minute or two he heard the soft sounds of a violinist in the distance.

Whipping his head slightly to the left Jason headed in the direction of the sound. Keeping his feet quiet and his body low to the ground. Hunting his prey.