"You're a quiet one, aren't you?" said Sylvie.

Li shrugged, focusing mostly on the Myrmeke that followed them from underground, almost swimming through the earth. Thankfully, it seemed, Sylvie's level was too low to possess the necessary detection skills to find out that the beast she and her comrades had been hunting was just beneath their feet.

"No questions to ask? About us? About this land?" she said as she daintily skipped over an exposed tree branch.

They had been making their way out for the forest for almost half an hour now. He had noticed every now and then that Sylvie would give him a glance, her redden eyes blinking as if she expected him to say something. He had responded only with quiet nods, not wanting to slow down their pace.

Li, being much taller than her, just took a big step over the branch and said, "Will the roads be open again? Now that this whole situation's been solved, after all. I'd like to be able to buy food so that Old Thane doesn't have to survive off berries."

"Certainly. Without the monster impeding traffic, there is no reason for the travel block to continue. But I am curious, why not buy at the marketplace? Riviera isn't the royal capitol, by any measure, but it's got everything you'd be wanting for."

"Old Thane doesn't have the coin for it. Hasn't successfully grown wheat in a while so he doesn't get money from the crown when harvest rolls around. Until I get my herbalist's license, we can only grow berries, and they don't exchange well for coin."

Sylvie withdrew a dagger from under her cloak and sliced apart a few low-hanging vines, holding them aside for Li. He gave her an acknowledging nod before passing through.

"Hm." Sylvie absent-mindedly played with her dagger by spinning it around her fingers. "An herbalist? I hear the exam is quite difficult."

Li smirked. He had always been book smart in his past life, and now, he had an even better memory. A test meant to challenge people who had medieval levels of education was nothing to him.

"The test itself is elementary," he said. "I like to think I know a thing or two about studying. I've seen the exam format and it's all just pure memorization. What's this herb and what can it be made into – things like that. And you only need to get sixty percent right to pass? I'd like to say that's almost a joke."

Sylvie cocked her head. "You're studying off Aine's tomes, right? That grants you an incredible advantage, it does. The greatest block to many professions is access to reliable tomes. Your average peasant cannot afford the luxury of such tomes, and you have at your fingertips the notes of perhaps the greatest herbalist that set foot upon Riviera."

"Greatest?" said Li. Of course, he could see that Aine had incredible dedication and experience to her craft. Every single page of her books was packed with notes that detailed things that weren't on the pages. Details that she had learned through first-hand experience.

The book might have identified a herb and its uses, but would have precious little information on how to grow it. But Aine had filled in every blank spot of knowledge.

But he hadn't thought about how Aine had fit in skill against others of her trade, just that her notes were incredibly detailed and useful. She definitely had an academic's sense about her.

"The indisputable greatest," Sylvie nodded. "When I saw her work, it was almost like she had a magical touch. She knew just which plants needed care and when, almost as if she could feel the ebb and flow of their lives. To adventurers like us, good-quality herbs are a necessity for elixirs.

Most city pharmacies sell things at bulk, and so the quality takes quite the blow. But with Aine, there was a guarantee that her herbs had been grown with all the loving care that a mother would bestow her children."

"Well, I don't know about motherly love, but I have her notes, and I'm pretty confident I can do just as well." Li clicked his tongue. "Just need to get the license."

Sylvie put a hand to her mask and cocked her head, as if she was thinking about something. What it was, though, she didn't let on.

"I look forward to buying from you in the future…ah, I didn't catch your name. Forgive me."

"It's Li."

"Li. Hmm. Li," she repeated, nodding. "Certainly an Eastern name, and, as expected, very pretty too. Well, Li, it looks as though we've reached the end of the forest."

Li stepped out from the forest to flat and grassy meadows. Ahead were rolling plains filled with verdant grasses dotted with summer flowers. He could see fields dotting the landscape and, in the distance, Riviera's walls looming high.

"Where will you go now?" said Sylvie. She kept under the shade of the forest, her black-clothed figure almost melding into the shadows. "Back to the farm, I suppose?"

"First, I have to buy some chicken at the market," replied Li, remembering Old Thane's other request. "Old man's a little under the weather. Would do well with some soup."

"Oh my," said Sylvie. "Sick? Age really must have caught up with him. I understand you are quite capable, but please, would you tell him that if he needs it, that we are always ready to help him? We owe him the offer, at the least."

"Last I checked, nobody's given him any help ever since his wife died," Li said. "Figure if you all cared, you'd have helped him out beforehand. He's not one for charity either, and I'm doing a good enough job keeping his farm going."

"Please, do not see us in bad light. Circumstances had pulled us away from him. But I understand" Sylvie pulled down her mask. Her lips were as red as her eyes. "Then, could you tell him just this? Tell him that his little troublemakers have come back home."

_____

"How were the fields?" asked Old Thane as he sat cross-armed on a chair by the dinner table.

The sun had set by now and Li had returned to the house, having finished watering his herbs and weeding the fields. But that wasn't the only thing he had done.

"Fields are looking incredible. I guarantee you that come next planting season, you'll be growing some of the best wheat around town."

"You've a good spirit on you, lad. I look forward to our mighty success."

Li smiled. He had finally figured out the reason why the wheat fields hadn't produced anything in years. It was because the topsoil was completely barren. When he focused, he couldn't hear any life beating in the earth. Even weeds were hesitant to make their homes there.

But far underneath, the earth was still rich and bountiful, packed with dissolved minerals and nutrients that had never before seen the surface. And he now had a new helper to push all that soil up: the Myrmeke.

Over a few hours, the Myrmeke had buried the barren topsoil and replaced it with rich, dark-brown soil. Li had tried to tear off the topsoil with brute force, but it would have attracted far too much attention, needing a display of superhuman strength he was unwilling to show out in the open.

But the Myrmeke could shift the earth like water and do it all from the secrecy of underground. When the ant had finished replacing the soil of the field, Li had let its head poke out and given it a good pat. That was all it needed to be happy.

Li had worried a little about how to feed such a creature, but realized that it simply ate dirt, treating flesh like delicacies that it liked but didn't need.

"Oh, and the roadblocks gone. The adventurers chased off the monster," said Li. "I also met some people you might know. Little troublemakers, they called themselves? Ring a bell?"

"Really now!" said Old Thane as he leaned forward in his chair and slapped his knee with vigorous force. "Those three?"

"Careful, old man. You might break your knee like that," Li said as he tended to a pot boiling in the fireplace. Inside was the chicken and a few vegetables he had bought at the marketplace.

Old Thane didn't have many coins, but what he did have, he let Li use them freely, and Li had decided that this soup was worth it to make Old Thane feel just a little bit better.

"Bah, you're treating me like an invalid already," said Old Thane. "But lad, tell me again, what did they look like? Gods, I remember when they were wee little children clamoring at my feet. Little rascals, they were, always asking me for shoulder rides and stealing snacks from the pantry."

Li stirred the pot as he recalled their features. There was Jeanne, the blonde templar, Sylvie the ninja, and then Azhar the ranger. "Jeanne, she's tall. Very tall, actually. Almost as tall as me. She's got long blonde hair and good looks. She's also silver-ranked, highest out of all the adventurers out there. Sylvie is on the shorter side with white hair, kind of like yours, but healthier and fuller, and very red eyes. Likes the color black, apparently, judging by how she dresses. Azhar looks foreign. Same height as me. Good build. Lot of tattoos and darker skin."

"If only I could see again," sighed Old Thane. "I still remember one day, they came knocking at midnight, all grimy and full of tears because they had stolen from the market and the guard were after them. Aine, blessed her heart was, took them in for the day, and every day after that, they learned to take advantage of our goodwill, haha!"

"Stealing from the market? Were they homeless?"

"Aye, very much so. I suppose they saw us as parents of some sort, and Aine, ever the mothering one, cared for them until they hopped on off to train in the Adventurer's Guild, no doubt inspired by my stories. Jeanne as a silver! Incredible! To think she used to cry at the sight of the slightest little rat.

Li withdrew the stirring spoon from the pot and tasted the soup. Needed more salt. "They lived here?" he said as he went to the pantry and retrieved some salt.

Old Thane shook his head. "They were in an orphanage of some sorts, I am sure. They came to us often, but never permanently, only ever spending one or two nights here. Mostly to keep out of trouble."

Li scooped up a pinch of salt from a bowl and carried it to the pot. As he sprinkled it in, he shook his head and said, "They must owe you so much, but they never thought to help you when Aine passed?"

"Don't be so hard on them, young lad," said Old Thane. "The adventurer's curriculum takes five years at the least and would have taken them far from a peaceful city such as Riviera. I am sure that when my sight failed and Aine left my side, they had been sent far, far away."

"I guess." Li shrugged. "They could have helped a little more, in my opinion. You went more than five years blind and alone on this farm."

He knew he was starting to lose many human values. His innate curiosity. The value of human life. But there were some human parts of him that didn't dim, or at the least, deteriorated slowly. One of these was his love of the farm.

In fact, on the farm was when he felt the most human, perhaps because he had decided to build the farm up with his own two hands, minimizing the amount of power he called upon from his inhuman side.

Another thing he still valued was family. Family had built him up. His parents' sacrifices had made him who he was, and he had striven for most of his life to give them all he could in return. It defined a core part of his existence as a human being.

Though he would feel nothing at seeing a beggar's corpse rotting in the streets, he could still feel touched by a mother giving up her only portion of bread for her child. This was also why he could appreciate Old Thane, for he treated Li like a son. Li knew nobody could replace his father, but that didn't stop him from appreciating Old Thane any less.

"I handled myself well enough," replied Old Thane with a grumble.

Li took a bowl from the dinner table and scooped up some soup. He placed it in front of Old Thane.

"Though with all your hardwork, I do wonder how many years of easy living I missed out on," chuckled Old Thane as he took the bowl in both hands and sipped the soup.

"Is it good?" asked Li. He was no cook, that was for sure, but it wasn't like chicken soup was hard to make.

"Warms up my throat, aye," said Old Thane. "I can feel my sickness retreating in terror already."

Just as Li was about to relax and let Old Thane enjoy the meal, knocks sounded at their door.

Extremely odd. Literally nobody ever came to visit, especially not at night. Old Thane said that once a year, the tax collector would come by and ask a few questions about income and harvests and all that, but even he had stopped showing up when the fields grew barren.

By Old Thane's furrowed brows, it was apparent that he too was concerned.

"I'll get it." Li went to the door and opened it slowly.

He raised a brow as he saw the very three adventurers they had been talking about. They were out of their adventurer's garb. Jeanne stood there in a blue dress embroidered with golden floral patterns. Sylvie had on a dress of plain black. Azhar stood far back, tugging at the tight collar of a desert-brown doublet with one hand while carrying a large basket in the other.

"Why are you all here?" asked Li bluntly.

Jeanne clasped her hands together and frowned. Li noticed her hands were heavily scarred. "Oh, have we come at inopportune time?"

"Jeanne? Is that you?" said Old Thane from inside the cottage. "Your voice is as clear and loud as ever! Come in! It's been years!"

Li stood there for a second.

"We've come to check on him and discuss a few things," said Sylvie as she recognized the hesitance in Li's eyes. "Please, I know you don't believe we've done our due for him, but now that we're finally living stable lives, we can start to give back the care he's given us."

Li blinked. He saw a shadow of himself in Sylvie's words, when he had driven himself to study through late night after night so that he could give back to his parents.

"So long as you're here to help," said Li as he opened the door.