An hour later, Boonsap village, 10:30AM—
Syla finally arrived after walking from Beakwood, and as she had expected, Boonsap was a checkpoint village that carriages usually went through if they want to reach the next town on the North side, its like a toll check, you pay another fee to pass through the village while also capable to stopping to rest for those who had been travelling for a long time.
As Syla entered the village gate which is made out of wood instead of cobblestone, she showed the locals that were standing on the side of the gate her adventurer's plate and they instantly let Syla through since they're not brave enough to fight back against an A-Rank adventurer.
Syla pulled the quest paper again from her satchel and saw the written text, it seems like this village is facing a few problems, and one of them is the rumored orc sighting that has been terrorizing villagers over the past few days.
'Hmm, so i just need to search for 5 orcs and bring their nose to the guild– That's not too much of a problem..' Syla thought.
When she entered the village, Syla who still wore her cloak and covered her face beneath the hood was getting a lot of attention from the villagers around her, they looked scared and suspicious of her uninvited presence, although they didn't know that she was a demihuman, her appearance alone was already enough to make them uncomfortable, unlike towns who had a lot of cloaked and mysterious figures coming in and out of the guild and the town gates itself, villages, especially small ones like Boonsap that doesn't have a lot of people living in it, tend to be more aggressive towards visitor.
'I guess i won't be staying here, i doubt they'd let me stay anyway, if there's an inn here i would probably get kicked out..' Syla thought.
Knowing that she might get into unnecessary trouble if she stayed in the village, Syla decided to just patrol on the border, thankfully the village was surrounded with the same forest that Errick and his friends went into a while ago, Syla noticed that the village only has two entrance gates, one in the south and one in north. She previously entered from the south gate, and it seems like the west and east side was considered the forest area, so they didn't bother building a road or a gate there.
'I'll start with the west side...' Syla said to herself, walking closer to the edge of the village until she arrived at the border, which just a wooden fences being pierced to the ground along with hundreds more to form a circular line, similar to the ones in her hometown a few years ago.
Swoosh!
Syla jumped across the fences with ease and landed on the other side, where she met with nothing but trees as far as her eye could see.
'No one saw me right? and i doubt anyone would come here except maybe for another adventurers.' She thought while observing her surroundings.
"Hmm, no sign of any orcs.." Syla said before slowly taking a few steps along the village walls, sticking close as she wanted to see around the village first before going any further.
Syla circled the village for an hour, avoiding any eye witnesses as much as possible, and by the time she came back to the same spot, it was already the middle of the day, the sun was shining right above her head, if it weren't for the trees shielding her, Syla would've been sweating her ass off and possibly get tanned by the time she was done with the quest.
"There's nothing around this village.. Did the orcs went away?" She said. "I guess i'll have to go further into the forest.."
After confirming that there was no orcs that were near the village, Syla ultimately had to go deeper, she walked between trees after trees, stepping on a few stones and large rocks in the process, traversing through an uneven terrains, and almost touched multiple poisonous plants and insects along the way.
.
.
A few minutes later—
"Damnit! At this rate my cloak will be torn apart first before i could find any orcs.." Syla scoffed with slight frustration.
She was leaning her body to the tree beside her and rested there for a while, behind her was a few corpses of rogue goblins, it seems like she encountered them while she was searching. Syla thought about ways to find an orc, one of them was to draw her own blood so that they would smell it from the distance, however this could also mean that other predators and monsters will also come to her, and if there's too many of them, Syla might find it hard to handle.
"Agh, i never encountered an orc before except from that one time when i was still learning magic.. I never smelled their scent so i can't use my nose to find them.." Syla said as she looked in between the countles crevices that was made by the swinging leaves above her.
Syla was about to continue her search, going deeper into the forest when suddenly, she heard a sound in the distance, it was quiet, but Syla had an enhanced hearing, and she could tell from the specific noise that it sounded more like a pig groan than a monster.
"An Orc!" She said as she pushed her leg to the ground and dashed towards he source of the noise.
Swoosh!
Syla moved at an insane speed, she skillfully avoided any obstacles that came in her way, her body was flexible enough to be bended in a normally impossible position, and she soon found the creature that made the groaning sound from earlier.
True to her assumption, Syla saw an Orc walking slowly among the trees, not just one, but there were three of them. Their hideous pig head was drooling with saliva as they moved and their meaty hand was holding a stone axe, with one of the holding a club instead.
'Hmm, three.. That's not enough to complete the quest.. But atleast i found some, and from their distance with the village, although i had to travel a bit to reach them, they're definitely too close to the village.' Syla thought.
She then pulled her sword on her waist and prepared to attack first.
The orc had no clue about their surroundings could only continue their mindless search as their mind was only filled with food and their insatiable hunger.
Graakkhh..
Grakh!?..
One of the orc then looked startled, as if it just saw something moved infront of it, the orc quickly told its friends and they all began to march towards the location of where the orc from before was pointing at, but when they were about to check what it was that moved earlier, a shadow suddenly loomed behind them.
And within just a second, a straight line was seen and Syla appeared infront of the orcs, her sword was being held and soon, one of the orc's head fell from its body.
Thud!
Grakh!!?!
Blood began to pour like a fountain as the orc's body collapsed to the ground, the other orcs that saw their friend being beheaded right infront of them obviously were enraged and they raised their weapons high into the air before swinging it to Syla.
Swoosh!
The orcs thought that their attack was successful, but just as their weapon was about to touch Syla's skin, she disappeared from their vision, her feet slides to the side and Syla soon was out of the orc's attack range.
"If i got hit by that, my head would be crushed.." Syla said.
She didn't want to prolonged the battle and beheaded the remaining orcs one by one, the battle ended in her victory, overwhelmingly at that.
Syla saw the orc corpses but decided to ignore them, she instead goes for their head, she picked one of the orc's head and used her sword to cut its nose, separating it from the head.
'If i stored this inside my satchel.. It'll stain all off my gold coins.. I'd better wash it off first with water..' Syla said to herself.
Once she acquired three orc noses, she placed them on the ground and washed each of them using her hands, she used her right hand to rub the orc nose carefully while her left hand was used to conjure water magic.
"And.. Done." Syla said as she placed the now clean orc noses inside her satchel. "Two more.."
Grakh..
As soon as Syla was saying that, she heard another groan near her, and it wasn't just another orc, but rather, a group of them.
'Hey.. What a good timing.' She thought.