Even the next morning, the blue haze over my vision had not passed, and I was thankful the radius right now was short, but sitting in the dining room, I could easily spot where the pantry and cold room were, as they were glowing considerably.
“How’s the eyes?” Milo asked.
“Better than yesterday. Still got a haze over my vision, though,” I rubbed at my eyes as I said it.
“Well, as you heard yesterday, your eyes have changed colour, fairly drastically, from the hazel before to a vibrant, gem like blue now,” Milo comnted.
I’d never really paid attention to my eye colour or my reflection over the years, so I wondered just how much they stood out.
“I always saw people with strange eyes and hair to be powerful magic users,” I mused.
Milo let out a chuckle. “Trev, you are a powerful magic user.”
“I guess. Where is everyone today?” I asked, looking around.
“Jen and Hari are at the guild. I think they are looking for possible job options. Liane I believe, is still asleep, or she left without breakfast, which I doubt,” Milo said.
Soon the doors to the kitchen opened, Archie ca out holding what I had to assu was a plate of food, but to my eyes right now it just looked like a mass of blue glowing objects.
“Will food items always stay as blue as they are now?” I asked, looking at Milo.
“No, likely not.”
Archie placed the al in front of , bowing. “Breakfast, sir.”
Seeing Archie reminded of yesterday. “Thanks, Archie. Sorry, if you or one of the staff get so spare ti, could I have you buy sothing for ?”
“Of course, sir.”
“I wanted to buy a sausage filler and at grinder. However, the store owner tried to overcharge due to being dressed as a noble,” I comnted, still a little annoyed about it.
“I can send Caron to get those. That won’t be an issue, sir,” Archie said.
I began to pull coins out of my storage, but Archie just waved it off.
“What are your plans for today, then, Trev?” Milo asked as Archie left the room.
“Oh, well, I wanted to do the jerky and work on the runes, but…” I just let out a laugh.
Even Milo let out a small laugh at that. I knew full well any chance of being able to work on runes while my vision was hazy like this was simply not going to work.
“What you could try, we have a garden full of plants, and I know you found so rare items out there, but it might be worth going out and picking so, and perhaps when you get a level up, you’ll get better control of it,” Milo explained.
This actually sounded like a great idea. Assuming I got experience for harvesting like we thought, then perhaps if I could get a level, I could tune out common items like before. Crisplet clearly agreed, sending off a burst of sparks next to .
I didn’t waste any ti after breakfast, going straight to the smoker before loading up all the racks with strips of at, also using the colder parts of the room to do several bundles of lemon tea grass as well, before starting a small fire to begin the smoking process.
Joined by Crisplet, I was soon walking in the back garden, where everything glowed blue, so far brighter than others, which was a relief to , as there was clearly a difference in rarity, which I was slightly concerned about.
As I pulled up my status just to get an idea where it was starting for the day, I got a surprise.
Notification:
You have earned 100 bonus experience for a buff used in combat.
…
You have earned 25 experience for making an enjoyable al
…
You have earned 50 bonus experience for healing soone with your al
…
You have reached Level 26 in Arcane Chef.
You have 2 unspent stat points.
I had gained a level overnight! And clearly the jerky had been used in actual combat if soone managed to heal from it.
Forager’s Sight (Passive)
Level: 1
Experience: 0/100
A magical eye for the freshest of ingredients.
Buzzing with excitent, I started. I would need to keep track of everything to make sure I understood how I was gaining experience, and importantly, I didn’t want to overdo it, in case my only future skill evolutions were related to harvesting my own grown plants or sothing, but also, I didn’t want to entirely rip up the garden.
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I went for what appeared to be glowing the least first, starting with so leaves of a small tree, picking a single leaf and checking, noticing nothing had changed with that. There was a small sliver of doubt that crept inside that this wouldn’t work at all, but I picked several more, holding ten leaves, checking again. I saw it: 1/100.
“This is going to take a long ti if I need to pick that much,” I said to Crisplet, who just responded with confusion.
Rather than stripping that tree bare, I moved on, picking sothing that glowed a little brighter, which appeared to be the small flowers on a hedge bush. Picking one of those, I noticed imdiately that a single flower had gained one experience.
I went to store them both away, wondering if perhaps the flower was uncommon compared to the leaves, and was shocked to see they were both common.
What’s the difference, then?
I knew this garden contained uncommon and rare items, so next I tried to search for an uncommon item, but struggled to really tell the difference between it and a brighter common one.
Figuring I may as well go straight to the rare, I knew prior there were the Morvella flowers and the Alren root. Unfortunately, returning to the spot of the flowers, they were no longer there, not having grown any more since I picked them, but what I could still tell were there was the Alren root.
Heading back to the bush itself, I noted it was by far the brightest object in the surrounding area. I dug down again. Only the main root and a single offshoot remained. I really didn’t want to remove the main root, as that would certainly kill the plant, so reaching down, I gently removed the single secondary root and checked my experience.
Experience: 52/100
That single rare item had given fifty experience!
I had to fight the urge to just cut that final root and hit level two, but I couldn’t justify killing the plant and losing more roots in the future, especially since there were so many other common and uncommon ingredients in the garden I could use instead.
With a sigh, I covered the root back up, gently patting down the dirt and storing away the one I had. At least this was valuable information.
Wandering around and not wanting to destroy anything fully, I picked random items to figure out what experience I would get and if it was all consistent. What I found, though, was that there seed to be so variance, with common items seemingly giving a maximum of one experience per pick, while uncommon was giving a maximum of ten.
It also seed like it depended on the type of item I was picking, so anything that had high density was providing far less experience per item compared to singular flowers or roots.
Soon, however, I saw the notification I was hoping to see.
You have reached Level 2 in Forager’s Sight
The blue haze over my vision didn’t go away, and I attempted to tune out all common ingredients like I’d learnt to do with the previous skill, and although it wasn’t entirely successful, it clearly had so effect. Most of the garden went from every item glowing blue to there just being a dull blue glow outlining each of what I had to assu were the common items.
Looking over to Crisplet, who had been spending most of his ti hunting bugs in the garden so far, I did my best to convey success and happiness, getting a burst of sparks in return.
I spent the rest of the morning working my way through the garden, making sure I didn’t take too much of any single plant that it would kill it, and reconfirming my test results with the experience.
I was only interrupted when Crisplet threw a piece of coal at before shooting off a spark towards the smokehouse, reminding to switch over the lemon tea grass.
By late afternoon I was thoroughly covered in dirt, but importantly:
Forager’s Sight (Passive)
Level: 3
Experience: 16/647
With this level ca the ability to mute the brightness of almost all ingredients in the garden. It didn’t fully remove the slight blue glowing outline around each item; however, it was far more manageable now.
Heading inside, I made my way first into the dining room before spotting Hari, Milo, and Jen in the living room. I’d only made it a single step into the room.
“Absolutely not! You look like you’ve been rolling in dirt all day! Go clean up first,” Jen said.
Hari let out a boisterous laugh. “I’m glad it’s not always !”
Looking down at myself, I had to admit I had been pretty careless. I was completely covered in dirt, with my hands being nearly black after digging into the ground. Looking behind , I imdiately felt guilty when I saw a trail of dirt I had left behind myself.
So rather than taking the trail through the entire house to my room to clean, I retraced my steps and used the bath area that was on the ground floor near the sunroom at the back of the house. Then I could apologise to Archie and figure out how to clean it up myself.
As soon as I was clean and in a fresh set of clothes, I left my shoes stored for now and made my way back towards the dining room where I had left the tracks, only to find that nothing was there anymore.
It had already been cleaned up.
“Just how fast are they at cleaning?” I questioned aloud.
I was startled when a soft, feminine voice I didn’t recognise ca from the kitchen door. “It’s our job, sir, so we do our best.”
Looking up, I saw one of the new staff and felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I don’t rember your na?”
I knew this was likely very rude, as I knew for certain that Archie had introduced them all, but I couldn’t rember.
“Vanessa. Vanessa Clearwater, sir,” she responded with a bow.
I didn’t recognise the surna at all, though I rembered Milo telling all the new staff were children of nobles, with Caron being the only exception.
“I’m sorry for the ss, Vanessa. I ca to clean it up myself just now.”
She just waved it off with a smile. “Always a pleasure to help.”
Not wanting to stand there in awkward silence, I just waved and quickly rushed back to the living room, falling onto the seat, exhausted after the day.
“How’d you go? You’ve been out there all day,” Milo comnted.
I proceeded to run through all my findings, all of which Milo appeared to be writing in his notebook.
“How about yourself? Any luck finding a job?” I asked Hari and Jen.
Hari just shook his head, while Jen let out a laugh.
“Most things are grinding to a halt with that storm going on. Even the lower quarter of the city is under a foot of snow. I can’t imagine how bad it is outside of the protections,” Hari explained.
I was confused, there was no snow on the grounds around the house, it was a little cold, but there was no snow, clearly though my confusion was showing to Jen,
“Fairly sure this house is the only building in the entire capital that is snow free right now.” She said.
“I don’t rember it snowing that badly back in Dunhearth,” I comnted.
I rembered back to all the winters in the orphanage, and although we didn’t go outside, the snow there was never truly past waist height that I could rember.
“This storm is far stronger than normal,” Jen said.
“You don’t think Lily has gone off to bring back so mythical ice creature, and that’s what is causing it, do you?” I said, laughing.
“You don’t know sothing we don’t, do you?” Milo asked.
“No, no, it was a joke. Are there actually mythical ice creatures?” I asked, confused.
“Not that I know of, but I also didn’t know about Sylverith until she showed up,” Milo said, shaking his head.
I was confident it wasn’t the case. After all, Lily was returning every night to drain my mana before vanishing again. Unlike when she went to get Alira, she had left for a long ti.
Right?
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