[Job - Solo] Ingredient Collector for the Elderly

The young man had explored some cities and towns across Fiore. That meant that he had been neglecting his main purpose, as to why he came into this country in the first place. To become stronger. /"So that my parents will finally shut the hell up and I secure my place on the throne."/ He still needed to actually win the next Burning Fields, though. The traditional event was still ways away, as the last Burning Fields happened fairly recently, with House Saffron being victorious and securing greater power for them for the upcoming five years. Vinn didn't care if his House didn't win the last Burning Fields, but it seemed that his parents thought the opposite. It had been a while since Vinn's House won, though, so he assumed that his parents were getting a bit antsy, not being in the seat of power. The young man sighed, as he walked through a mountainy area. The air was cold, which was something that he enjoyed, thoroughly. He was wearing a t-shirt with a loose shirt over it, the heirloom dangling on his neck. He was walking through thick woods, hoping to find some sort of clearing where he could stop and practice with his magic. The road however, just kept on going upward and upward, with no clearing in sight. As much as he wanted to explore outside of the faintly marked road, Vinn also knew that he would probably get horribly lost. It would then take him ages to get out of the woods.

With little choice, Vinn kept walking forward. Not much light was filtering through the treetops, making it hard to tell what exact time of the day it was. But the sun wasn't setting nor it was nighttime, so the young man was fine with the amount of time he had spent exploring, so far. He was slowly but surely getting annoyed. He just wanted to test the waters with his new magic, but at the same time, he didn't want to burn down a forest, if he managed to somehow to make a spark that would do that. Thankfully, he didn't have to walk too much further, to come to a sudden end of the forest. It almost seemed that somebody took a sword and cut out a part of it. But very quickly Vinn saw as to why that was. There was a rather large clearing in both width and length from what he could see, that suddenly ended, in the distance. "A ravine or a cliff. Or something of the like." Those were more of the more interesting natural wonders. He was used to seeing such sights back home, but everything was covered in snow and ice and occassional crystal or blood. This area had some more colour to it. Mostly in pale shades, but still better than white with specks of blue.

The young man walked through the clearing, along the edge of the thick forest. In relatively close distance he noticed a shack, that seemed to be somewhat protruding out from the woods, into the clearing. /"Somebody actually lives here?"/ Vinn didn't expect to come across somebody's home, this far out. To each their own, of course, he was just genuinely surprised. With a little shrug the young man decided to check out the little house. His hair and shirt were being ruffled by the wind that blew across the clearing. The ring on his neck quietly chimed as the young man approached the wooden hut.

As Vinn approached the wooden hut, he noticed a piece of paper on one of its sides, nailed to the outside of a wall. Intrigued, Vinn walked over to read what it said. There wasn't too much written on it. The gist of it was that there was supposedly an injured old man inside, who was requesting help with gathering supplies, as his movement is very limited. /"Then he should probably advertise that better."/ The young man thought bitterly, until he read that there was a reward, in form of Jewels. That piqued his interest, somewhat. It wasn't a lot of Jewels, of course. But for somebody who sadly had very little Jewels to go on, it seemed like something he should do. It almost felt like he was selling his body for a couple of coins so that he could survive an another day, like a peasant. With a sigh, the young man walked over to the door to the wooden hut and swung the door open. He didn't bother knocking, which very much surprised the resident of the hut. The interior was just one big room with only very few points of division to create a sense of privacy.

The bedroll where the bedridden, elderly man was on the other side of the room, out in the plain sight. The man was looking in Vinn's direction, his eyes wide in shock. "I read the paper on the outside." The young man would state his business and close the door behind him. The man let out a sigh of relief. "Ah, very well then. I am Midora. Please, have a seat." He would say and attempt to shift himself to face Vinn better, but ended up only grunting in pain. The young man shook his head. "I'm fine with standing." As long as the man would keep short and sweet, a chair wouldn't be needed. The man nodded. "I will keep it short, then." Nice. "As you may have read and you can see, my movement is very limited. I can barely get out of the bed, let alone go out and forage for supplies. That's where the help comes in. Or in this case, you. I need you to gather about a month's worth of supplies for me. It can be herbs or berries or maybe even some meat if you can get it. The sacks for the forage are right over there, behind you." As the elderly man said that, Vinn looked behind him, spotting the sacks, stuffed in between a crudely crafted wooden counter and a makeshift sink. "I would just like to ask you that everything is edible, of course." The young man looked back at the man, nodding. "Wouldn't have it any other way, old man." He would reply. Of course, he could go against that very easily, but he knew that it was probably for the best if he kept a low profile. While his title meant nothing to the people of Fiore, Vinn wanted to avoid any unnecessary attention. In turn, that meant that he had to go with the flow, for the time being. He turned around and walked over to the sacks, grabbing them. "And what is your name, youngster? If I may ask." The young man half turned his way back towards the man. "Vinn." He replied simply and left the hut.

As soon as Vinn closed the door to the hut, his mind went blank. Picking herbs and wild produce was not a hard task, but when the person who was the gatherer was not from the country they were currently in, it created a certain challenge. Vinn imagined that Phaeton's wild produce was not too different than Fiore's, but he would have to be careful, nonetheless. There were four sacks in his hands in total. He decided to go one by one and placed three of the empty sacks at the side of the hut and placing a rock on top of them, to both weigh them down and mark their location for when he would come back to pick up an another one. Vinn patted his lower side, checking if the heirloom was still in his coat. Once he felt the familiar bump, he let out a quiet sigh of relief. This cliff was the last place he would want to chase his family's treasure around.

Seeing as he had no weaponry at hand, Vinn decided to stick to just foraging, for the time being. First, the forage that he could recognize and was sure that was alright to consume. He reckoned that his best bet to find anything would be in the forest behind the hut. The young man saw some wild animals prancing about in the distance, but they were not his primary concern. Instead, he directed his attention to the lush foliage that covered the forest area. Thankfully, due to the altitude, the air was not too heavy to breathe and Vinn was quite on board with that. He welcomed anything that made the task at hand more bearable, even if it was something as remote as that. Among the various flora that was scattered on the ground he noticed a few that he could say with certainty that they were wild variations of garlic and onion. Very fragrant ingredients. Vinn actually enjoyed eating both of those, but he could do so only very scarcely. It was due to the smell that would then come off of him which was not permitted for a member of a Noble House, especially when it the heir in question. The young man took off his white gloves and picked out several bulbs of each ingredient, leaving them intact, even with their flowers. They were edible, afterall. "And nobody can damn stop me." He would say to himself with a smirk and snap off the flower bit off of one of the onions he was about to place inside the sack and munch on it. The taste was strong and pungent. And Vinn loved every second of it.

If Vinn had to be honest, he was getting kind of hungry himself and eating those tiny flowers only amplified that feeling. Sadly, the sack he had at hand was only barely one quarter filled. The young man hummed to himself as he walked further into the forest. He walked past a few berry bushes, but he didn't exactly want to mix the berries with onions and garlic, so he kept those in mind. He felt like his hands were too dirty to pick any berries, anyway. However, on his left he could hear running water. Seeing as he needed to wash his hands, Vinn decided to follow the sound. Soon enough he found the mountain stream that was the origin of the sound that he was following. It was crystal clear and when he placed his hands inside of it, it was pleasantly cold, almost freezing. Vinn thoroughly washed his hands, revelling in the cold feeling of the stream. The young man took a quick glance around the area, noticing some other root vegetables to add to the collection of forage in the sack. /"At least if I follow along the stream, I will be able to wash my hands whenever I need it."/ Vinn was raised with a mindset that he had to be clean under any circumstances. Even if, if his hands were dirty, he wouldn't be able to put his gloves back on. Thus, he picked up the veggies that he had just spotted, which turned out to be kind of sad carrots. But it was better than nothing.

Filling up the first sack was quite the painful experience, but getting back to the hut was even worse. It took Vinn a bit of time to get his bearings straight until he found himself at the older man's dwelling once more. The young man set the rather heavy sack down near the door, leaning against the wall. One down. Three to go. This was going to take him the whole rest of the day. To speed things up, Vinn decided to check up on the berry bushes he passed by earlier. That particular bunch of bushes filled up the sack up to a roughly one third. It was technically a lot of berries, but the sack still needed to be filled up completely. The fact that it was now berries inside the sack made Vinn move the sack considerably more gingerly, so as not to squash the fruits of his manual labour. Thankfully he found more berry bushes not too far away. Up until then, he regonized every berry, but there was one bush that seemed kind of suspicious. It was entirely possible that it was very much an edible type of berry, but Vinn chose to be careful, rather than daring and assuming. Even for this collecting of berries he decided to take off his gloves, as soon enough his fingers were stained with varying colours. With his sack finally filled up, the young man thought that it was high time he took a little bit of a breather. The previous sack was quite heavy and this one was no different. Especially when with this one he had to be extra careful with.

After he returned with his second sack and set it against the wall next to first one, Vinn realised how much of a disarray his being was. His boots had mud and stains on them and some mud specks even made it onto the bottom of his precious coat. There were pearls of sweat forming on his forehead, showing the physical exertion he had to endure. /"That's what happens when I travel too much and don't have time to keep myself in proper shape."/ The young man thought to himself bitterly. Not that he ever trained too vigorously, but now that he was unexpectedly given the secret powers of his Noble House, he would have to pick up the pace.

The young man opened up his coat to cool himself down and stretched his back. Unfortunately for him, he was only halfway done. He patted his coat again, checking for the heirloom. Thankfully it was still there. "Let's just get this done." Vinn murmured to himself as he grabbed the third sack and ventured back into the forest. He had no idea what else to gather. He had gathered vegetables, fruits and he wasn't feeling like getting his hands dirty with hunting wildlife. That only left the option of repeating a previous type of forage that he had already gathered and delivered. Maybe he could at least vary it up a tiny bit.

Vinn wandered about the forest, keeping an eye out for anything the he could grab and stuff into the sack. He was about to turn back and see if he could find anything to the sides, when he spotted a peculiar tree. A tree that had ripe apples hanging from its branches. "Well well. High altitude apples. Those are going to taste absolutely minging." Vinn chuckled to himself as he made his way over to the tree. The apples were rather small and had pale red hue to them. They were hanging on the higher branches, so Vinn had to climb up the tree, carefully, so as not to lose his family's treasure. It took some thinking and quick reflexes to get the sack filled up with the apples, but the young man managed to do just that. There were still some apples left on the topmost branches, though. "Hopefully the old man loves apples, because that's what's he's going to be eating for a month." Vinn chuckled to himself as he hauled the stuffed sack back to the hut.

The young man did the same with the last sack, but he threw in some random herbs aswell, to make it just a tiny bit different. He didn't inspect the herbs he was tossing into the sack too closely, hoping that none of them were poisonous. Not that anyone would probably discover the old man being dead in his hut in this remote location, anyway. The last sack got filled up quickly and Vinn was happy with the progress he had made with the task. When he finally came upon the hut the fifth time and set down the last sack, he let out a sigh of relief and swung open the wooden door. The old man Midora jumped a little again upon Vinn's arrival, but quickly calmed down once he saw who was intruding into his home. "Ah, Vinn. How goes the gathering? You've been out for quite some time." He asked the young man, noting the time he had taken aswell. Vinn had no idea how much time he had spent foraging. "All four of the sacks are filled to the brim." He would reply as he crossed his arms on his chest. The old man smiled at him. "Thank you, thank you. Please, could you bring them inside?" Oh, of course. Midora could barely move, so that was a sound idea.

Without a sound, Vinn walked back outside and hauled the four heavy sacks into the hut, setting them against the kitchen furniture. He also noticed that it has indeed gotten somewhat late into the afternoon, since the sun was casting various hues onto the sky. As soon as he made sure that the last one was not going to fall over, Midora spoke up again. "Much appreciated, youngster. Now, if it is not too much of a bother, could you also fill up the two flasks that are below the sink with water? There's a stream nearby." More work. Figures. That was probably why Vinn was raised to never be too kindhearted. Once more, without saying anything, he simply grabbed the flasks the old man had mentioned and went out. It was most likely the stream he had encountered earlier, so Vinn decided to go in that general direction.

It didn't take him terribly long to find it, since he had been walking around the woods for most of the day. It had gotten to the point where Vinn could tell apart certain sections of the forest from one another. The young man crouched and filled up the flasks with the freezing cold water and brought it back to Midora. Strangely enough, the old man didn't jump at his entrance. Perhaps he was getting used to it. Vinn came closer to the bed he was resting in and crossed his arms. "So, for my pay..." He would begin and Midora nodded. "Reach in between the bedframe and the wall. You will find your pay in there. It's all I can afford to give you." Without any hesitation, Vinn did as he was told. He had to fiddle with it a little bit, but he managed to pull out the Jewels. Four thousand, in total. Vinn nodded to himself. Such an amount would have to suffice for the time being. "Thanks." Vinn said to the old man and spun on his heel, heading outside. "No no. I thank you, Vinn." He could hear as he closer the door behind him.