Once she got back she examined the area around the fox for anything useful. All she found was some rather simple rope and a muzzle around the foxes head, they all seemed to glow faintly.
'Well it kind of looks like there is some magic blocking on these ropes,' Nora tilted her head to the side a bit as she thought, 'makes sense, this fox looks magical.'
Nora once again got an idea, smiling inwards she thought, 'Unfortunately, they didn't account for this bird!'
Moving towards the main rope parts, she used her talons and her beak to break away key parts of the rope. Eventually she was able to unwind the ropes that bound the foxes' muzzle and legs.
No longer bound by the ropes it fell limply onto the cart. Nora, looking closer, made the terrible discovery that it was still injured.
Nora felt a pit form in her stomach as she realized she was now in a predicament, the fox was still struggling to move, and Nora definitely couldn't carry it.
Even though she was confident in how lost the humans that captured the fox were, she didn't want to stick around.
'Oh shoot, what do I do?'
Nora looked around, taking inventory of the tools she had around her. Spotting the rope that was attached to the cart, Nora had a crazy idea.
To test her theory Nora went over to the rope and grabbed it with her beak, she pulled it with all her might, a pain coming from her beak caused her to stop, however she did notice that there was some movement from the cart.
Nora felt a spark of hope, she could move this cart, but she couldn't use her beak.
'I remember taking a class on knots in my past life, maybe I can make a harness' Nora reasoned, fleshing out her idea.
'Time to do some engineering!'
After a few minutes Nora had managed to fashion a harness that wrapped around her body, distributing the force of pulling the cart evenly.
With the harness in place she began to slowly, and with much effort, pull the cart and the fox into the woods. Nora happened to spot some rocks poking out above the trees nearby.
She was hoping that there would be some cave-like structures by these rocks that she could hide the fox in while it got better.
5 hours later Nora finally managed to get to the rock area, and luckily, there was a cave right there. Nora just barely managed to wheel the fox into the cave before she collapsed in exhaustion.
She spent at least half an hour recovering, her and the fox laying in this cave in silence, eventually she gathered the strength to get up and move around.
The fox was still very weary, watching her with its limited movement. Despite the tension, there was still a mutual understanding between them, Nora didn't quite know why she was so drawn to helping this fox, but she was.
There was something very comforting about his presence, almost like she could finally breathe around it.
At first, she tried to write in the dirt, picking up a nearby stick with her beak, she began to scribble. After a few attempts she managed to write a legible 'hello' in front of the fox.
The fox lifted its head with some difficulty and looked at it with confusion. It didn't seem to understand the word that was written on the ground before it.
'Okay... so English isn't a known language here. I wonder if it's just this fox, or if English doesn't exist in this world at all? Hmm... If I have to learn another language, that could be tricky.'
Nora had technically learned many languages in her past life, although they were mostly programming languages and not actual languages.
'Ugh. If this were someplace more advanced or technical, I'd totally thrive. Unfortunately, I'm stuck here…' She pouted slightly, 'Anyways, it doesn't matter, I should look for some food to give this fox. He's probably hungry and these injuries are not helping him.'
Nora takes off scanning the forest for a snack for her new friend and eventually spots a very small mouse eating some seeds beneath the tree.
Looking at the stats, Nora saw that it was just a level one field mouse, so she quickly swooped in trying out a new technique of diving that she had learned during her battles with those small creatures.
She easily scooped up the mouse, the mouse, seeming to have a heart attack from being suddenly picked up, dies. Nora pays no mind to this and brings her fresh kill back to the fox.
The fox, looking grateful, eats the mouse and one bite, and Nora makes the realization that this is not going to be enough food for this fox.
She furrowed her brows in slight confusion because she wasn't sure how she, as one singular bird, was going to feed both her and this fox.
'Whelp, guess we're working overtime again.' Nora sighed.
For the next couple of days, Nora spent all of her time hunting food. She managed to go from level four all the way to level seven.
As a level seven now her stats improved dramatically.
'Stats'
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Name: Nora
Species: Crow
Class: Crow
Level: 7
EXP: 10/400
Stats
HP (Health Points): 600
MP (Mana Points): 100
(STR): 25
(INT): 60
(DEF): 30
(MDEF): 30
(DEX): 40
(AGI): 60
(VIT): 30
(LUK): 45
Elemental Affinities
Weaknesses: Lightning, Fire
Resistances: Wind
Immunities: None
Abilities & Skills
Peck, Caw, Greater sight active skill, Feathercloak
Passive Traits
Basic inspect, Basic flight, Aerial Dodge, Greater Sight, Glide, Flock Alert
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System inventory
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Coin
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After just a few days Nora felt completely exhausted because the fox was still really very injured, and she had been his only source of food. Nora shook her head to clear her brain fog, and in doing so, caused two of her brain cells to collide.
She shot up from where she was laying, remembering something. Her eyes widen as she realizes 'wait a second, if I could find this fox some medicine I probably wouldn't need to work this hard! system. Where can I find medicine in this forest?'
Ding!
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Yes
Host has unlocked side quests
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Ding!
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Side quest: find medicine
Rewards: Exp+60, INT+5, passive: Forest Forager
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Nora's eyes widened in surprise. 'Oh shoot, I didn't think that would actually work.' She thought 'I was assuming that I could only do main quests, I didn't realize that there was actually a difference.'
'It looks like these quests give lower XP and lower stats, but they seem to have some better rewards, which is interesting.' Nora thought, noting the rewards.
'Anyways I should probably complete this as soon as possible so that I can get this box better and then I'm not stuck hunting constantly.' Nora spread her wings, taking off into the forest and she begins to scan around. Nora quickly realized that she was too high up to really find anything up above so she went down lower to the ground and started weaving in between trees while scanning the ground.
Nora made the most use of her passive greater sight ability, scanning the ground intently. Her flight speed decreased a lot since she needed to look very intensely. Several times she landed near plants that she didn't recognize to inspect them, none were what she was looking for so she kept looking.
Eventually, she stumbled upon a silvery white flowering herb that Nora found growing in the middle of a kind of ominous clearing. The air had a heaviness to it, and the grass fluttered in an unnatural way. These silver flowers were scattered around the field randomly.
Not really thinking much of Nora quickly looks at the description.
Ding!
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Soldiers lace
Description: this silver white flowering, herb, grossing, battle, scarred fields, grave soaked soil, when crushed or steeped it releases a strong, earthy scent and emits a faint glow. Ancient legends claim it first bloomed where the blood of heroes fell.
'Interesting' underneath it Nora noticed the category:
wound healing herb
Rank: rare
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'This is perfect. I can't believe that I just found this herb so quickly' Nora hastily plucked two of them, placed them in her inventory, and flew off.
In her hastiness to get the flowers back to the fox, Nora didn't notice the shift in the field, far below were the bones of ancient warriors.
What Nora didn't know was that this field used to be an ancient battleground, these flowers had been growing untouched for a very very long time, and as such were much more potent than normal soldiers' lace.
She had accidentally stumbled upon the best medicine she could have found for this fox.
Nora, still unaware, spends her flight back praising herself on how quickly she managed to complete this side quest.
After a short flight she arrived back at the cave. She takes one of the flowers out of her inventory and places it next to the foxes mouth.
She gestures to the fox 'eat it' the fox looked at her confused, it sniffed the flower and turned its head away refusing to eat it.
That's when Nora remembered what the name of the flower was. Oh wait I should probably put this flower on the foxes wounds.
As she moved to the foxes back leg she noticed that underneath the foxes stomach there was this huge gash that was mostly stabbed up but looked delicate.
Even though it wasn't bleeding heavily anymore the fox really couldn't move anywhere and its breathing was really labored. Nora, realizing why the fox had such trouble moving these past few days, decides that this is the area she definitely should focus on.
She picked up the flower that she placed by the foxes mouth and used her beak to carefully place the flower on its stomach, right where the scab was. She watched intently for a few minutes before realizing that the flower was doing nothing.
'Wait, why isn't it doing anything? Ugh why is this flower not working?! She stomped around a little bit to get her frustration out, then she realized that she should probably turn it into a salve.
'Right! People have been crushing up plants and mixing them with other things for years! I probably have to turn the flower into a pulp so that it releases the healing properties or something…'