Chapter 119: To Catch a Predator

Merlin accepted the quest.

"You wont have to travel far, several wildcats live in the patches of forest just outside of the walls." Tuli warned. "Please don't travel too far, as you may encounter threats far above your current capabilities."

"Thank you." Merlin said, before adding on another question. "Oh, by the way, are there any stores that sell good bows in the area?"

"There are a few, but your best bet would probably be the merchants association." Tuli said before picking up the slab of bark and disappearing behind a corner.

Merlin thanked her before walking out of the building, he noticed that someone else was now sitting around at the front desk, and one of the people who was filling in a form before had left.

As Merlin left through the door, a large red alert box appeared before him.

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[Message from the devs!]

Hey guys! We'll be closing the server down in roughly an hour. Due to some technical difficulties on our end, we're unable to collect data. So there will be no briefing at the end of today's session either.

Not to worry, your progress will still be saved and we'll be running at full capacity next week.

You will receive another notification when it is time to log out.

If you do not leave by that time you will be forcibly disconnected, please make sure you're in a safe location when you log out.

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'I guess they're still scrambling to get Gaia's core back to full capacity.' Merlin thought to himself as he began walking back down the hill towards the merchants association building.

Once he reached the front of the building he opened the door and walked in, what greeted him on the inside were large shelves that were packed full with a large variety of wares. He was greeted by a worker manning a counter near the exit.

"Good morning. Could you point me in the direction of bows, please?" Merlin asked.

The worker pointed towards the weapons section, and Merlin made his way over there, passing by a section full of nothing but clothes.

Merlin walked past a vast array of melee weapons until he came across a section for ranged weaponry. There didn't seem to be much within his price range, so he was limited to a few basic choices. He picked up a longbow made from a relatively pale wood and inspected the stats.

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[Maple Longbow. (Common)]

• Damage: +14

• Required strength: 15

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"Not bad." Merlin mumbled to himself. He looked at the price, which was five gold pieces.

He looked around at a few shortbow alternatives, but they didn't really have the damage to price value that the one longbow did. Of course, they would have different benefits that could suit him in other scenarios, but at the moment he was just concerned with damage output.

He wanted a recurve bow, but even the cheapest one was well out of his budget and hardly worth the price. Merlin eventually settled for the maple longbow and bought two quivers of twenty longbow arrows, priced at two silver coins each.

He finalised his purchase, leaving him at a paltry sum of fifty silver and two copper.

Merlin was now ready to set out on his journey. He threw one quiver into his inventory and equipped the other at his side. He climbed back up the hill and approached the wall, there was a large open portcullis with four guards standing by.

"Good morning" Merlin greeted the guards as he walked through the gateway.

It was still dark out, so Merlin summoned his ball of light and left towards the nearest patch of forest. The area around him was still mostly hills, but there seemed to be a lot more foliage than on the other side of the wall.

Merlin noticed the remnants of a road, but it was mostly overgrown, and if it were still used as a road, it clearly wasn't used very often.

Merlin slipped into the forest, his ball of light clearly giving away his position. Merlin didn't bother with hiding his presence for now, he was looking for something. It took him a few minutes but he found it, a tall wildflower with purple bell-shaped flowers.

Merlin pulled out one of his arrows and plucked one of the flowers from the stem, he began coating the arrow tip with as much of the flower's sap as he could manage.

There was a reason plants were brought up in the training after target practice. It was supposed to give you a hint of how to complete the third task, which significantly ramped up in difficulty compared to the first two.

One arrow would never be enough to kill the wildcat at such a low level. If you could even find one, so you were supposed to use poisons to disable it. If you failed to disable it in one shot, it would run away and you would never be able to catch up to it.

Once Merlin had coated the arrow, he cancelled his light, causing his surroundings to instantly darken to an almost pitch black. The issue was that his eyes were used to the light, and he had to wait a few minutes for his eyes to properly adjust to the darkness once more.

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Merlin's eyes had finally adapted, and when they did he immediately began hiding his presence. He stalked around the forest for what seemed like twenty minutes before his eyes caught a glimpse of a large four-legged silhouette walking atop a fallen tree.

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The silhouette appeared to be stalking a small group of deer that were sleeping under the shelter of a tree with low hanging branches.

Merlin silently nocked his poisoned arrow and began holding his breath as he watched the silhouette slowly prowl closer to the deer herd.

The wildcat stepped out of the shadow, the moonlight lit its shiny black fur as it stealthily closed the distance. Merlin could see the creature in full detail now, it was a panther.

The panther finally pounced on one of the deer, clamping its jaws on the deer's neck. Merlin took this opportunity to quickly draw his arrow back, aiming it at the panther's neck before releasing the arrow.

The bow was quite hard to pull back, and it made a loud slapping noise as the string snapped back into position. The arrow flew incredibly fast, piercing the panther's neck before it had time to react to the sudden noise.

The panther, who currently had a deer hanging in its jaw, began sprinting away with the deer. Merlin quickly chased after it, he noticed that after about two minutes the panther was forced to drop the deer. And after another three minutes of chasing later, Merlin had caught up with it.

The panther was waddling around as if it were drunk. It seemed to have lost a lot of its leg strength, which gave Merlin the chance to catch up to it. But the biggest factor in it slowing down was because it kept running into shrubs and trees.

Merlin loaded another arrow into his longbow and aimed for the head, putting the panther down.

「You have completed the quest, "Target Practice III", bring the wildcat's corpse back to Tuli to receive your rewards.」

And it seemed the elusive wildcat in this instance was referring to a panther.

Merlin pulled his arrows out of the panther's corpse gently, making sure not to break the arrows. Fortunately both arrows were in good shape, so after casting cleanse, he put them back into his quiver.

Merlin threw the bow and quiver into his inventory before picking the panther's body up and throwing it over his shoulder. He summoned his ball of light before carrying the panther's corpse back to the gate.

The guards gave Merlin an impressed nod as he hauled the large beast's corpse towards the rangers guild building.

He entered the building and found the same man who replaced Tuli at the front desk was still there. He looked up from the desk to see a panther staring back at him, causing him to recoil somewhat.

"Hey there, Do you know where I could find Tuli?" Merlin asked him.

"Oh, yeah, she should be in the medicine room." He said.

Merlin made his way through the building, parading his kill around to all the rangers who were going about their day. He knocked on the medicine room door and Tuli opened it a few moments later.

"Oh wow. That was fast." Tuli said as she immediately spotted Merlin under the panther's corpse. "Please, follow me to the skinning room."

Tuli lead Merlin to a room down the hallway, it featured several racks and various skinning tools, alongside a large table in the centre of the room.

"Please place the corpse on the table." Tuli asked as she walked to one of the racks and grabbed a pair of gloves.

Merlin did as he was told, and once the panther's corpse was safely resting on the table, Tuli approached and began inspecting the body.

"A total of two puncture wounds, no other lacerations." She mumbled to herself. "The puncture wounds, I would like to guess that they're from a longbow?"

"Correct." Merlin responded.

"I see. So you utilised poison." She said as she poked around at the corpse. "Congratulations, you pass!"

「You have no empty soul slots, "Class Soul: Ranger (Level 1)" has been sent to your soul receptacle.」

Unlike the souls acquired through killing, where you could store them in your inventory and trade them, souls acquired through quests were automatically bound to you and sent to your soul bank if your slots were full or if you refused to absorb it.

"Now, the next step after killing a creature is to make sure you don't waste it. I'll now teach you the basics of animal harvesting." She said, before remembering who she was talking to. She asked another question instead of continuing. "Unless you already know how to?"

"Unfortunately I don't know how to harvest animals, please teach me." Merlin said with sincerity, causing a quest notification to appear.

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[Common Quest]

A bountiful harvest.

Once you've hunted, the next step is to harvest your kill to make the most of the lost life. Tuli has offered to teach you the basics of harvesting, follow along with her instructions to successfully harvest the wildcat.

Harvest the wildcat.

• Reward: 60 EXP, Life Skill: Animal Harvesting (Beginner)

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