Chapter 273: Unexpected Encounter

The next few days the awakened adventurers were there as usual for the staff members, except for the occasional hospitality work in taking care of the guests.

Fortunately, the guests there were simple people who only wanted to train as much as they could. Their trip was only sponsored for 3 days, too, so they had to earn a lot of cores if they wanted to keep staying there comfortably.

They also did not neglect their own training. The [Staff Training Room] was powered like the other utilities like electricity and water. Since Pang had eaten a lot of cores, he really didn’t have to worry about it for a while.

By this time, the two goblins had also decided on their weapons of choice after trying several weapons in the training room.

Ranran chose a whip, though in her case, she’d be stuck with whatever was there until they found her a suitable whip (though she had, in her adorable voice, asked Leez for a favor already). Tumble chose the axe, which was fortunately among the weapons Milo had brought in.

Micc would also occasionally clear the monsters there, though when a toughened monster was there, it would be assigned to him for efficiency and because the core would still have use for him and for Durgan.

Other than clearing beasts, he’d practice some of the recipes Finn gave him, and he’d also work on the pathways.

As for Finn, he focused on hunting down toughened cores along with Gideon outside of the barrier, but they stayed within the level 1 zones, which was sufficient for Finn anyway. He would also train in the [Staff Training Room]. He used various weapons to maximize his growth-type transforming weapon.

As for the essence food, he limited it to 10 set meals (a main dish, side, and a desert) every day. The minimum spending per person would be 20 points, and if there were more people who wanted to buy than the maximum slots, then they could bid for it.

It was also impressive how those people managed to get so many points i

in a day, getting a few nicely uprooted plants.

Since they didn’t know enough about flora to find unique species, what most chose was to uproot the plants already found in Finn’s garden.

These were all still useful, so the points added up were decent.

He also got a lot of toughened cores from the fortified rank folks, since those were not as useful to them at their level.

Whenever Finn and Gideon went out to train, they also went to check on the progress of the pathwalks. It was not even to find customers anymore, because that was already guaranteed thanks to the adventurer guild. It was more of the fact that he wanted more people to survive.

He also felt guilty for attracting more toughened rank in the area. However, this was lessened slightly when he thought about how he pulled toughened rank monsters from other nearby areas, making those areas easier to traverse instead.

At the very least, he had the barriers here so the fighters here could safely handle more toughened level monsters. In a sense, perhaps he also saved a lot of lives, albeit they were just too far to know their existence.

That said, this also meant that for the ones who ended up in the vicinity of the inn, finding the barrier at the earliest could be a matter of life and death, because it was more dangerous than before.

Because of this goal, he now planned pathways to all traversible directions. The only exception was the north side which was the mountains. He did open one on the northwest and northeast though.

As of his date, Micc and them had managed to tile about two to three hundred meters south. He had uprooted the plants here, moving the top soil underneath it, to make sure there were no more plants growing there any time soon.

They also placed the spores of the surgefern—blessed by the plant sprites– parallel to this pathway.

The sprites were very happy to be useful.

The quality of the tiling was good and improving, as well. They were uniform and nice, definitely durable.

As they observed the path, Gideon couldn’t help but ask. “Wouldn’t these crack when monsters came through?” he asked. The surgefern spores weren’t beast repellents.

Their effect was limited and monsters would still pass through. They certainly wouldn’t stop toughened-level beasts.

The cracked tiles could injure people that went through.

“It’s fine,” he said. “The important thing is that people would have a path to follow. Besides…”

Finn paused and smiled. He kneeled down. “This is special ceramic,” he said. “If monsters stepped on it and broke it, it would just break into smaller pieces, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone.” It was much like how tempered glass worked, and fascinatingly Micc figured it out himself.

He just mentioned what he knew about tempered glass and its effects when it was broken, and the vague idea about how it worked (something about manipulating the heat process). Unexpectedly, Micc figured out how to do something similar with these tiles a few days later.

Anyway, eventually, all these tiles would break but then they’d just be like crushed gravel.

They walked along this path, observing, with Finn foraging a bit along the way. He had a bit of time before he had to go back anyway.

He looked at the path and added a sign every hundred meters or so. Hopefully, people who were lost would find the place.

Soon, after observing a bit more, Finn and Gideon gestured to finally head back. It was just that Finn’s feet stopped, and he couldn’t help but shake the heavy feeling in his gut.

“Finn?” Gideon asked and Finn raised his hand, asking him to not utter a word.

Finn continued to look around. Since his passive was [Monster Instinct] he dared never to ignore what his gut told him. So far, it has been working well for him.

He also used a few other skills, just in case, and this included the [Tracker] skill, which he had bought a few days ago when he saw it available at the [Hearth Market].

After seeing the corpses of those young men, he was determined to be more helpful. He kept thinking that at least a few of those young people might’ve survived if he had this skill earlier.

His feet moved on their own and stopped.

His eyes landed on a familiar silver-haired elf was on the floor, tightly embracing a small boy, both covered in blood.

His heart dropped. “SYL!!”

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