Chapter 71: First Step Out, One Meter Away

Before heading out, he went to check out the [Potions] tab, too.

He hadn’t paid much attention to it before because he was cozy in his inn.

If he got tired or a bit injured, he could literally just enter his room, lay down anywhere, and he’d practically be in a healing pod.

In those times, he particularly loved being the Innkeeper.

Too bad he hadn’t had many customers yet— I.e. more than one—to appreciate its greatness with him.

Not to mention, those potions were…one-time consumables, and he had to pay the minimum of 1 gold, which was not cheap. Since he hadn’t needed them, he simply didn’t bother before.

Anyway, for potions, it was interesting. There were fixed options at the top, while the other three were rotated and changed daily, like many other items.

Today, the ’temporary’ options didn’t seem particularly useful to him. It was just a potion to grow hair, a potion to smoothen skin, and a potion to improve sleep. He already had the first two, and the latter one wasn’t difficult since he’d be dead tired by the end of the day.

The ’fixed’ potions though, would always be useful. They also had higher purchase limits. Consumables were still fair, after all.

[Special Healing Potion (Bound to Innkeeper)]

[Information: Concentrated reddish liquid infused with vitality. Capable of restoring 20 HP and an increased HP regeneration by 10% for 10 minutes.

Cost: 1 Gold

Purchase Limit: 5/5 (refillable every 5 hours)]

.

[Special Mana Potion (Bound to Innkeeper)]

[Information: Concentrated blueish liquid infused with magia. Capable of restoring 20 Mana and an increased Mana regeneration by 10% for 10 minutes.

Cost: 1 Gold

Purchase Limit: 5/5 (refillable every 5 hours)]

He bought it all, of course. When he got a stable source of income, he’d probably maximize and buy whenever he could, even if he didn’t need it.

The sad part was that, like the other ’innkeeper’ items, it could only work when he was holding it. This meant that, for the most part, only he could use it…unless he fed it to them by himself.

Each bottle was really small, like literally a test tube, but made with ceramic and had a flat bottom. They also seemed to be very fragile, as if a little press and it’d shatter.

Fortunately, he had a magic space, and he carefully placed them on opposite sides, just to make sure he wouldn’t drink the wrong bottle when he couldn’t afford to look at the space, particularly during battles.

Anyway, it was time to head out for real (really!). As an extra precaution, he also took out some innards as well as jerky and placed them on two corners of the barrier. He would be foraging in the area opposite of these areas.

He knew that open wounds and blood attracted beasts, and his jerky seems to be a crowd favorite, so even if he was outside, he might

be less attractive to the monsters.

He also wrapped a sapsurge sap-coated cloth (his change of cloth, since the towels in the utility room unfortunately could not be taken out of the barrier) and hung it on the halberd’s pole. He tied it between the hook and the pole so it was secure, and also had little chance of accidentally touching it.

He didn’t know how much it could repel/weaken monsters (probably not much), but he’d take what he could get. He also made sure to forage near the sapsurge trees so he could run there in case of emergencies, and he couldn’t just run back to the barrier directly.

Finally, he prepared a branch+vine basket that he carried on his back for his foraged items. He could put some fragile ones in the space, but his space wasn’t large, and he needed it organized enough, otherwise he’d have trouble getting stuff when he was in a rush.

The basket was made with a similar methodology as the traps, and the straps were made of ivana vines (whose gel was now inside his stomach).

“This is about as much as I can prepare…” he mumbled to himself before turning to Pang, who was lounging on the front porch again.

“How do I look?” he asked, wearing commoner’s clothing with a random wet cloth wrapped around his halberd, and a makeshift basket hanging on his back.

“You’re the most ’coated’ Innkeeper I have seen.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Pang looked pensive. “I’m not sure, la.”

Finn shrugged and finally headed out to his foraging destination…which was 10 meters away from the barrier at most.

He wanted to see how much of his plans worked, though, so he squatted a meter away at first. He technically decided to go out to encounter a customer, but he wasn’t willing to bite more than he could chew yet. He wasn’t at the point where he’d be willing to die to get a customer (yet).

He was planning on taking it one step at a time, literally, and hoped that maybe (maybe maybe) he’d encounter potential customers.

Anyway, there were plenty of plants he could forage from this distance, as he rarely dared to even reach out, let alone take a step away from the barrier.

He made sure his back was always facing the barrier, so he had a clear view (well, as much as he could) of the danger zones. Hopefully, his [Monster Instincts] actually worked well this time.

It would be great if he had someone to watch his back so he could forage as much as he wanted, but he would just have to adjust to the lonely life, at least for now. He didn’t even have a customer, let alone a staff member to accompany him.

He picked and gathered everything within the area. The ones he encountered were plants he already knew about. He didn’t mind, of course, since he had a use for everything, and there were still plenty of preparation methods he hadn’t tried yet.

It seemed like biodiversity here wasn’t that great. He still hoped to discover more.

Who knew what he’d find? Most importantly, what dishes could he make out of them!?

His amber eyes looked deeper into the forest that surrounded him. He used his [Ingredient Scan] to take a look.

It was just that…it was all colored, just mixing with each other. This skill was useful if he had already zoomed in on a material. If he was looking at an overview of a forest filled with materials, then it was relatively useless. All it could be used for was to determine which was poisonous so he could avoid them.

To know more about each item, he had to closely look at them. And this meant he had to go farther from the barrier, and he would no longer be able to run into the barrier within a few seconds.

One had to know that these monsters were fast. Beasts were generally better endowed in terms of physiques than humans of the same level. If he got just a bit careless, even if he let his mind fly for a moment, he could literally lose his head.

But then he had an inkling that he’d find some new and fascinating things if he just took a leap.

Oh, well, he thought. He’s already outside, might as well take a few more steps forward.

This must be what those conquistadors were feeling back when they went around the globe, looking for spice, when they believed the earth was flat.

Anything for good food!

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