Chương 173: 170. Discovery

It had been three days since he had made the compasses, and their two hunting groups had taken the gadgets with them the next morning. And this time the hunters' plan was to keep looking for bigger animals to hunt before they returned, which could take a few days to even a week.

He had also allowed each group to take a horse if needed, based on the path they wanted to follow on their next trip, so that it would be helpful for them to carry their gear more easily, not to mention the horse would make it much easier to drag the hunted animals. The group which had been going towards the eastern hill had chosen not to take the horse, while the group going west into the forest had happily accepted the help.

The stretchers they had been carrying with them would also be quite helpful if they really did get lucky and caught something big. Gorsazo had just returned after today's classes. He had already started teaching the villagers in the longhouse block regularly after they returned from work every day. They had also distributed more than enough charcoal sticks and wooden boards for them to practice writing.

Based on his mentor's report, while the adults still seemed hesitant to try such a new thing, mainly because they couldn't see what use it would be for them, the children had been more than happy to find something interesting to do. After the news had spread in the village, nearly all of the children had started joining the classes there in the evening. It would take years until they were ready to do any tasks which required even basic literacy, but at least they were on the right path now.

Lucem and Clarisa had also been joining the classes everyday, while Syryne - who had grown up in Cinran while her parents worked at an inn there - already knew enough that she didn't need to join the beginners' classes. He had asked her about it, and found out that there was a regular patron of that inn - probably the son of a minor noble - who had taken a liking to her in the past, and had started teaching her the very basics of reading and writing.

That meant she was already interested in learning more, but she never found the courage to ask Gorsazo to teach a commoner like her, even though she knew about his background as a teacher. But once Syryne had found out about Kivamus' decision for everyone in the village to get educated, she had hesitatingly asked him that she wanted to learn more.

But he was no teacher, and he mainly knew about engineering while her interests seemed to be more in studying about trees and nature, probably an effect of living at their isolated inn on the road to Cinran. So he had asked Gorsazo to teach her in his free time, and he had readily agreed so he would have something worthwhile to occupy his free time.

By now, Kivamus had also made many more compasses - even after giving two of them to each hunting group of four men, just in case they had to split up - so they could give them to other hunting groups when they started sending more guards out after Hudan returned with others, not to mention they could give this gadgets to any other group of guards like them when they had to go out of Tiranat in the future.

That made him think how it was going with the guard captain, since they had been expecting them to be back by now. If anything, they should have been back a day or two ago. Hopefully, it was only a temporary delay and they hadn't run into any serious problems. It was nearing evening now, and he was sitting in the manor hall with the others after he was done with today's diagrams.

He had been thinking that once he had made the blueprint for the things which were necessary for them in the near future, he should start trying to draw the blueprint for more advanced things, so that he wouldn't get out of touch with it. It had been more than two months since he had stopped going to his office in downtown London, after all. Soon, the outer door opened and a servant walked inside.

"Milord, the eastern hunting group is back," the servant reported.

"One of them is waiting outside to talk to you." Kivamus raised his eyebrows. That was unusual. Usually they just gave their hunted animals to the kitchen in the servants hall, to cook or preserve as needed, and then they went to take a rest. He gave a nod to the servant.

"Alright, send him inside then." The servant exited the door, and soon a guard entered the hall hesitantly. That was Yufim, one of their new recruits. His long blonde hair had made it easy to recognise him even without his warbow.

In the light of the fireplace burning on the other end of the hall, the young guard looked more than a little disheveled with bags under his eyes - likely the effect of not getting a proper sleep out there in the forests, with the sounds of who knew what kind of animals howling in the nights there. But the archer was still looking around the hall curiously, this probably being the first time he had entered inside, until his eyes went to Syryne, who was sitting nearby to keep an eye on the kids at this time.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. The young guard smiled while trying to fix his hair.

"Oh, Miss Syryne, you are also here!" Syryne looked at Yufim hesitatingly, and just nodded.

"Focus!" Feroy chided the archer.

"What did you want to report?" Yufim blinked, as if he had forgotten what he had come here for, and looked at Kivamus.

"I uh... I'm sorry milord. I wanted to report that we caught a boar this time, and we've brought it with us." Kivamus nodded with a frown.

"Okay, that's good to hear, but is that all you came here to tell us?"

"Oh.. Uh right!" Yufim shook his head, his ponytail moving behind him.

"No my lord. There is something else. Around two days ago, when we were somewhere in the middle of the eastern hills, we had gotten lost, and didn't know which direction we had to go under some heavy snowfall that day since our compass needle had stopped working by that time."

He added, pointing towards the east, "There were many tall hills in that area, and we had been travelling in the valleys between them trying to find a way out, when one of us suggested that we should climb to the top of one of those hills to get our orientation. That way we could also try to magnetise the compass needle again after looking at where the Arakin mountains are located, which would still be in our east." Kivamus nodded.

"Alright, carry on." Yufim continued, "After we climbed on one of those hills, I noticed that there were vines around most of the trees there. Although there weren't many leaves left on most of the vines since it seemed like these vines started shedding their leaves when snowfall started, a few of them which had been growing under some really large trees still had some leaves remaining.

That's when I noticed that they looked similar to the losuvil leaves that Miss Syryne had given to the injured guard to use after the bandit raid. So I plucked a few of them and brought them with me, so somebody could confirm if it really is the same plant."

"Oh! That's interesting," Kivamus remarked, and looked at Syryne who seemed to have been listening to them while the kids seemed busy trying to build a small wooden toy house again. She got up from where she was sitting next to the kids, and walked closer to them.

"Show it to me," she told the guard.

"Right. Uh..." Yufim reached into one of his side pockets and brought out a small bunch of long serrated leaves and passed it to Syryne.

"I only brought a few of them, since I didn't want to carry too much of it in case it turned out to be useless." Immediately, Syryne gave a grin.

"Yes, these are all losuvil leaves! You said there were many such vines there?" she asked excitedly.

"Can you tell me how many?"

"Uh... a lot," Yufim replied immediately.

"When climbing down from that hill, I was keeping a close eye on my surroundings once I thought those could be losuvil leaves, and I saw that basically every single tree there had such vines climbing on it. There had to be hundreds of such vines there on that particular hill, and probably thousands if we count those on the nearby hills." Kivamus' mind stopped working for a moment. Thousands of losuvil vines... That was more than they could ever use here.

"There are that many vines out there?" Duvas asked before sighing.

"If only the previous baron had allowed me to send a few guards in that direction earlier, we could have helped the villagers so much when one of them got sick."

"Well, I'd rather not say anything about the previous baron," Kivamus commented, "but at least we know about it now." Syryne looked at him enthusiastically.

"Milord, we need to get all such available leaves from there as soon as possible! Otherwise the few leaves which are still remaining will also be shed by the plants in the coming days, since it has already started snowing heavily there." Kivamus nodded.

"That's true. Yufim, how far away are those hills from here?" The archer hesitated.

"Uh... I'm not really sure, milord. But if I had to give an estimate... I'd say those hills are around a full day journey from here." Kivamus sighed.

"That's too far away, isn't it? Even if you brought all of them, they won't be of any use by the time you reach here." He looked at Duvas.

"That means it wouldn't really have helped you in the past either." Syryne stared at him.

"Not at all, milord. That's why I asked you to let the hunters bring those leaves in the first place." Kivamus was confused now.

"But I was told that the leaves lose their effect within a day or so after plucking them from their vines..."