Elemental Cats

Toz and the cats safely got back to Sleepless Brights, where the light dimmed slightly, and they could remove their goggles. Since it was constantly brighter than a day with clear skies in the area covered by the Lightning Clouds, the group had lost track of time, and it was pretty late when they arrived at the guild building. The cats took the opportunity to snag some rest while Toz went inside to deal with their haul.

Thankfully the guild was still open. With exploring being a lifestyle more than a job, the Explorers' Guild worked in a way that suited that lifestyle, and the opening hours of most branches stretched late into the evening after beginning early in the morning.

And it wasn't for no reason since Toz wasn't the only explorer returning late at night with things to sell. Although Toz wasn't the only one, it wasn't like the guild was packed, and he quickly got to the front of the line, where he coincidentally encountered Rick.

Rick received Toz with a smile. Their spar earlier during the day had made it easy for Rick to remember Toz.

However, Rick's smile trembled as he unloaded all the containers of tree sap and then began retrieving spatial ring after spatial ring from his pocket while explaining that they were filled with Stone Blood and Stone Ball remains. Toz also took the opportunity to explain that the containers wouldn't last forever and would dissipate within a few days at most.

Listening to Toz's calm voice brought Rick's alertness back, and he began counting and weighing the materials Toz had brought. In exchange for taking the spatial rings containing Stone Blood from Toz, Rick handed over a bunch of new ones to replace them since it would be simpler, logistically speaking.

After Rick finished measuring and storing all the tree sap and Stone Blood, it was time to determine the price, and after Rick finished calculating, he started putting gold coins in a bag that he got from who knows where. Even while Toz was looking at Rick working, he couldn't figure out where both the bag and the coins had appeared and continued appearing from.

Rick noticed Toz's star but didn't say anything.

Eventually, the stream of gold coins ended, and after a few silvers, the bag was handed over to Toz.

"Slightly more than a hundred gold, one hundred and three gold coins, and thirty-seven silver coins."

After saying thanks and goodbye, Toz returned to the inn where he had rented a room. There he slept deeply through the night.

The next morning the group headed directly to the Quarry as soon as they woke up.

While the group was still pretty far from reaching their goal of eight thousand gold, the haul from yesterday's resource gathering had pushed their funds quite a bit closer to the cost of purchasing a grimoire.

If the group continued amassing funds at the same speed, it wouldn't take long for the group to be on their way toward Treblor Forest, the place where things more exciting than gathering tree sap would happen.

But despite how boring it would be to spend all their time draining trees and abusing rocks, Toz and the cats left the city fully motivated to get another great harvest.

And so, the group continued their routine for a few days, gathering several hundred gold coins in total. But eventually, they couldn't find as many Stone Balls to harvest Stone Blood from. Although there were still a lot of untapped trees, what really gave a lot of gold was the Stone Blood.

And when there weren't enough Stone Balls, the group's income naturally decreased. It got to the point they weren't even earning more than ten gold per day. Although it wasn't by much, the group had even put a dent in the market price of the Stone Blood.

In their zeal and eagerness, the group had almost hunted all the Stone Balls in the Quarry. It was also possible that the Stone Balls had learned to stay away from Toz and the cats by now and hid as soon as they got close to the valley of Stone Trees.

Although the group had approached their goal with great leaps, now that they were barely budging the limit of their funds with each day, they had to find another way to get money.

There were a few more mundane things they could do, like pest eradication for the fields or gathering herbs. But it was all smaller stuff, and the rewards couldn't really be compared to the profit they had made from the Quarry.

Although the reward for the investigation and eventual solving of the problem occurring in a nearby forest had been increased, it sounded a little bit too risky for Toz and the cats to handle at the moment. It was the forest where a lot of people had disappeared after all. And unlike the mysterious place they had read about before they decided on Roaring Skies and the Treblor forest, the ones who disappeared in the forest didn't come back with only memory loss. If anything more than their tracks were found, it was their torn bodies.

While not as important to the city as the Quarry, the Tumbling Thunder Forest also held several resources that were practically essential to the city's continued prosperity and growth.

If the deaths of those harvesting those resources continued and the rate at which people died increased, an important factor of the city's economy would be severely affected.

So far, several explorers had been assigned to deal with it since it was in the wilderness, and because it was officially classified as a fourth level danger zone, fourth level explorers had been sent to deal with it. The reward hadn't been quite enough to move fifth level explorers.

But when more than a week had gone by without any results from the first group of explorers, the reward was increased to the point a few of the more desperate fifth level explorers headed into the forest. Although there were still no results yet.