75 - Rescue Quest

Relief bloomed on Miss Draper’s face, and she visibly swayed on her feet—Sable almost reached out to steady her. The exaggerated reaction doubled Sable’s guilt—the selfish exasperation she’d felt at this distracting event having landed in her lap. She knew these sorts of distressing events were happening all over the world, and Sable couldn’t concern herself with all of them, and that her plans for world conquest would be causing a much larger amount of strife, but none of that logic held up in the face of Miss Draper’s panic for her son.

And, Sable supposed, she did have the day free. Depending on what this ordeal was, she might be able to solve it without too much trouble.

“He and his group went hunting a forest troll,” Miss Draper said. “There’s been reports of it, though no deaths. They wanted to nip it in the bud before something bad happened.”

“And what level was he?” Sable repeated. That was frankly the most relevant part of this situation. Assuming he’d run into monster trouble, Sable could only handle up to level fifteens in her human form—and that was being generous, since she’d far from tested her limits. Perhaps twelve to thirteen was a safer number. As a dragon, she’d be able to go much further than that, but she couldn’t risk revealing herself.

“Level seven,” Miss Draper said. “Velvet and Merry—those are his teammates—are both level six, as far as I know.”

Sable paused. That was lower than she’d expected. She’d claimed Ethan was one of Sunstone’s better adventurers. Then again, this was a small, nowhere town deep in a green zone—weaker possibly even than the Red Plains. And Sable had only interacted with so many level fifteen goblins because they were the elite force of an entire tribe. Regular people simply didn’t reach higher levels—and that might not be all too different in yellow and red zones, either. More common, sure, but possibly not common.

So level seven was good for this tiny region. And she’d never claimed Ethan was some prodigy either. Just ‘good for Sunstone’.

Unless something strange was going on, even the strongest monsters she could find in this part of the world wouldn’t cause her much problem—even recovering from her fight against the Frostfang Titan and stuck in her human form. In a worst case scenario, she could transform to her dragon self and certainly be impervious to whatever she found. It would just reveal herself. But that was better than ending up dead.

“I should be able to help, then,” Sable said. “I’ll need directions. I don’t know this region well.” She just hoped the detour didn’t take too long.

Again, Miss Draper nearly sagged in relief. Then, in a very awkward display, the older woman stepped forward and crushed Sable in a hug. Even more shockingly—though she supposed not that shocking—the woman started weeping, mumbling out a barely-coherent string of ‘thank-yous’ and ‘bless-yous’. Sable stayed there stiffly for a moment, then awkwardly starting patting the woman on her back.

The whole display was rather undignified. Dragons were not supposed to be hugged. But Sable tolerated it. It had obviously been a distressing past few days for the woman.

***

Sable dropped off her newly purchased books, as well as a few of her other belongings, with the guild outpost so that she didn’t have to lug them along for this unexpected trip. Ethan and his team had gone hunting the forest troll in the Silverleaf Woods, which was about a four hour trek—four hours by a normal pace, at least, but much shorter for her—and was fortunately not that large of a region. Still, any size forest would be annoying place to search through for a missing person, especially when Sable didn’t have a [Diviner] to help.

Sable didn’t have great hopes of finding the man and bringing him back. The most likely scenario for an adventuring team going missing was the worst—they might have found their quarry and been bested. Seeing how forest trolls probably didn’t have many merciful bones in their body, odds were high that they were simply dead. The other likely option would be that Sable wouldn’t find a hint of them; they would stay missing forever.

That second likelihood was at least mitigated by an impromptu teammate. Quintin Burge was another local classed of Sunstone, a [Trapper] who had volunteered—probably in the same way Sable had—to track down the missing party of adventurers. At level five, and being a non-combatant class, or at least only a combat-adjacent one, he wouldn’t be any use in a fight against something that took down three real adventurers higher level than him. He was also no diviner. But having a woodsman accomplished at navigating and tracking would be much better than Sable wandering around the Silverleaf Woods by herself. With luck, he could at least find hints of the troll’s movement, then bring Sable to the beast. Possibly he would find tracks of the adventurers themselves.

They set off without dallying. Quintin was an older man with graying hair, well into middle age and even approaching seniority. He had clearly been working as a woodsman for many years. That he only had reached the low level of five in his profession indicated just how difficult classes were to obtain and progress for a regular person. Most people didn’t even get one, a lifetime of dedication to their field or not.

Sable was pleased to find that he was a reserved, quiet man—and not a curious one. She didn’t need to field and deflect dozens of questions as to her background. She was also satisfied to discover that his age didn’t slow him down; a four hour one-way trip would have been a disappointing waste of time, but though Quintin didn’t hold a combat class, he was sturdier and faster than most others—and his class even seemed suited to moving long distances. A not that unexpected result of a [Trapper]. So the trip took much less than four hours.

Sable also helped the two of them out with speed enchantments. Basic empowerments like that were well within her reach after additional practice, as well as her improved spell dexterity in human form, and though she didn’t want to waste mana, even a few mana-points speed boost made traversing the distance to the Silverleaf Woods much quicker.

The show of magic clearly intrigued Quintin, and it prompted some of the only questions of the trip. Mages were rare even among classed, and though magic was part of everyday life in some regards—namely in utilitarian ways, like plumbing and heating—seeing an actual mage forming spellcircles was enough to intrigue even the quiet man.

They arrived to the edge of the Silverleaf Woods within an hour. Sable needed to slow herself to let Quintin keep pace; he was five full levels beneath her, and a regular human besides.

From there, progress slowed. Quintin took over primary search efforts; obviously, there wasn’t much Sable could do besides run around until she hopefully found something, and that wouldn’t be efficient in the slightest.

Fortunately, Quintin picked up a trail without too much effort. There was a common path leading to the Silverleaf Woods, and picking up adventurer tracks wasn’t difficult to an experienced—and supernaturally enhanced—[Trapper]. Quintin’s skill set was specifically geared towards trapping—obviously—but he had plenty of peripheral talents too. Geared for animals, mostly, but they were easily applied to humans.

Quintin led the way, and Sable guarded over the two of them. The Silverleaf Woods were hardly some Fang Hollows, but they were a more dangerous part of the region than normal—hence the sighting of a forest troll, and being a common adventuring spot for nearby towns.

It took another hour or so—and the waste of time did grate on Sable, though she could hardly have turned down Miss Draper’s pleading—before Quintin’s search yielded results.

The thick forest opened into a small clearing, and sitting there, on a rock, skinning a full sized brown bear, was a troll. To its back was a cliff face, towering fifty or so feet up. Oddly, there seemed to be a collapsed pile of debris covering up some sort of cave-entrance into the cliff face. It looked recent. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Sable had seen a troll before. In fact, it had been the first monster she’d ever seen. Back when she’d first struggled from her dragon’s egg, a [Mountain Troll] had come slinking out from the depths to scare her away. She’d long lost track of that particular location, since she’d fled in a panic, but the encounter stayed solidified in her mind.

The [Forest Troll] was that beast’s smaller cousin. The mountain troll had had gray-blue skin, not greenish-brown like this one, and had been much larger, but there were more similarities than differences. Seated on a rock, she couldn’t make out its exact height, but she suspected it would stand nine feet tall. The masculine creature had bulging, powerful arms, though wasn’t rotund in the way an ogre might be—rather, it was somewhat lanky, despite well defined muscles and an intimidating build.

Seeing how it had taken down a grizzly bear, and was now skinning it for whatever reason, the creature was clearly nothing to be treated lightly—at least for a regular adventurer of this region.

[Forest Troll - Lv. 10]

Sable wrinkled her nose. Level ten. That was certainly within her capabilities of killing, but would also be the strongest opponent she’d fought in her humanoid form, and she’d drained herself just this morning fighting the [Frostfang Titan].

To her side, Quintin tugged on Sable’s robes, then indicated silently for them to leave. He wanted to talk, but not risk being heard by the forest troll. Sable intuited the beast wasn’t the cleverest, most aware creature in the world, but some stealth was still in order.

She briefly considered just attacking it. She could probably take it out without too much difficulty; it would just be a waste of mana. But Quintin wanted to talk first, so she would handle that first. She doubted the troll was going anywhere.

Plus, the whereabouts of the adventurers was still an unknown. They might not even need to fight.

They peeled away from the clearing, putting some space to the beast so they could talk.