The Dungeon Crawler's Academy

"Worse than Desired."

Emerald eyes flitted from place to place, searching the forest undergrowth beneath the mottled light seeping through the canopy above. On the lookout not for monsters, but rather for herbs.

"Could you tone it back a little, please?"

Gauge called out from the trail, some thirty or fourty meters to the left, clearly frustrated by Argent's less than subtle crashing and snapping through the trees and plants. The Alchemist had cut off to the sides of the path not long after they had begun their journey, gathering up various usable plants. Once the first two or three miles had shown nothing more threatening than the songs of fluttering birds, he considered sticking to the path an undue caution, and the bushes and ferns covering much of the forest floor were not so overgrown that they blocked motion or visibility to a serious level anyway. The only true hazards being the occasional fallen logs, large stones, or dramatic changes in the terrain's elevation. These things were few and far between, thanks to the normal day-to-day travel this immediate area saw from the orchards.

"Relax. I can't see through these ferns if I don't move them a little... Besides, if something does get close, won't you be able to sense it?"

"That's not an excuse. Also, that's not how it works, either. Even if I did sense something, I wouldn't know what it was unless I'd had a chance to see it before."

"You have to see things to identify them?"

"No, not literally. But I don't know what everything's aura looks like just because I can sense them. There are colours, and wavelengths, and... Ugh.. It's just a lot, okay? Unless I know what I'm looking at, half the time auras may as well be psionic white noise."

"..Huh.."

Argent thought he understood what Gauge was getting at. The closest thing he could approximate was learning another language, or writing system, he supposed.

"Still, that's not really a problem for now, is it? It just means if you see something weird or unknown coming towards me, then you-- AH!"

"Argent? Argent!"

Gauge shouted Argent's name as the alchemist let out a shout and suddenly disappeared from view into the forest. Dropping his pack from his shoulders, the rogue drew his bow and nocked an arrow while running towards the last place he had seen his friend. He hadn't sensed anything other than Argent, had he somehow missed something? Drawing back and spinning himself around a trunk, he jumped in surprise and nearly put an arrow through Argent's foot as the white-haired boy popped up from the ground where he had been crouching over a swath of jet-black flowers.

"Look! Raven Daisies."

"Kioku's tits..."

Gauge swore, rolling his eyes in exasperation as he lowered his bow. Argent had already knelt back down to begin cutting flowertops, separating the stems and placing them into a glass jar from his belongings. He spilled a few with a yelp as he received a reserved yet firm kick in the hindquarters.

"You can't do that to me! You were in the middle of a sentence, for God's sake."

"Sorry, these are really useful. I wasn't expecting to find them in a place like this."

"Uhhuh."

Gauge scoffed, but he knelt down all the same to watch his companion work. He looked at the growing pile of flowers being left on the ground, reaching down and picking one up. Rolling the pitch black petals lightly between his fingers, he noted that even the leaves and stems were coloured a deep, blue-black hue.

"No use for the flowers?"

"Ah, not really... For these, you want the stems. They're very energy-sensitive, and can be used to make inks that are good for inscriptions."