Merrick’s only context for the word mutation, so far as his status page went, was when he managed to qualitatively upgrade a combination of items via his innate skill.

  Even there, though, he wasn’t so sure that mutation was the most accurate term that could be used and he’d noticed some inconsistences in the [Skill Log] that had him thinking that perhaps he’d subconsciously labeled the results as mutations rather than the [Skill Log] doing so itself.

  The text results did seem like they were influenceable. For example, the second tier of goodberries had been appearing as ‘gooderberries’ since the first time he joked around about it with Rod.

  “Tap Root Pores…”

  Merrick mumbled to himself as he stared at his hands in the dark, ignoring Pinesol’s protests that he wasn’t using said hands to scratch her.

  Even if he’d managed to get a dark vision related skill that night, and he hadn’t, it likely wouldn’t have given him enough clarity to observe his pores.

  He realized there was also no reason for him to be assuming that the so called mutation was referring to the pores on his hands when it could just as easily be his face or, most likely, his feet.

  The feet would align more closely with what he knew of tap roots, after all. That being that tap roots were large, central, and dominate root that grew straight downwards in soil. Most frequently used to provide anchorage in the dirt as well as access deep water sources.

  It was a fairly common plant harvest used both in alchemical solutions and cooking so he had a brief familiarity with the concept.

  How that applied to his own biology was something that would need to be discovered, something tacked on to the ever growing list of things that needed to be answered.

  “Speaking of lists… come on, girl.” Merrick scooped Pinesol off the nearby branch she’d hopped to when he refused to pet her and started making his way toward the campfires in the distance.

  It’d only been a few hours since he stepped out into the tree line but the vast majority of the camp seemed to have retired for the evening with only a few people sitting around fires drinking and dicing while the guards patrolled the campgrounds.

  “Hopefully she’s still awake,” he muttered to himself as he made his way toward Jasmine’s carriage. Before falling asleep earlier in the day, Merrick had taken a moment to swap around his various goods. He’d moved his notebooks and most of his tools over to the new backpack he’d traded for before hopping through the portal and transferred most of the dungeon plants to his satchel that he was still wearing.

  Annoyingly, he’d put his notebooks in the backpack instead of his satchel and they were still resting inside of the carriage. He’d still been slightly groggy upon waking up so he hadn’t thought to grab them for experimentation during the night, an oversight he was seeking to correct at that very moment.

  Jasmine’s carriage driver eyed Merrick wearily as he approached. He’d briefly seen the woman the day before, hovering a little too closely to the scholar than he’d thought appropriate, but hadn’t had the time nor inclination to introduce himself.

  Even now, the older woman was shooting Merrick a look that rode the border between disinterested and disgusted.

  “What do you need, logistician?” She called out to him.

  “I don’t do logistics, I just had a lot of stuff to carry,” Merrick groaned out a response. He’d only just gotten Jasmine to stop calling him a logistics specialist. Apparently she hadn’t gotten the memo out to her people yet.

  “Sure thing, and I’m just a carriage driver,” she replied.

  “You aren’t?”

  “It’s a rude man that asks questions before responding to those asked of himself first.”

  “Oh, I was just wondering if I could sneak into the cabin and collect a few of my workbooks. I’ve got a few things I want to mull over and I’d like to reference my notes in possible.”

  “I’m fairly confident that the deal you worked out with.. Scholar Jasmine was that you would not enter the carriage from sunset to sunrise,” the woman spat the word deal and stumbled on the word scholar.

  “I can see why you’d think that, but our deal was that I’d vacate the carriage while she’s sleeping and be allowed to sleep in there during the day. A subtle difference.”

  The carriage door swung open and Jasmine stepped out with an annoyed look on her face. Surely, they hadn’t woken her up with their quiet chat.

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  “And where exactly did you wander off to?” The scholar squinted up at Merrick, one hand on her hip and the other on…

  “Hey, that’s my book! Did you go digging through my bag?” Merrick reached out to snatch his belongings back. Jasmine acted like she was going to withhold it for a moment but eventually handed it over.

  “You disappeared while I was talking to the scholars and the guards said you just wandered off into the forest at night. I had to make sure that you weren’t an assassin or something,” to her credit, she seemed suitable ashamed of her actions rooting through his things.

  Merrick was thankful that he’d moved the suspicious and likely valuable dungeon plants over into the satchel he was carrying on his person.

  “I told you I was going to speak to the night guard and I told them I was going to wander nearby looking for alchemical reagents for potion making. I didn’t bother bringing many with me since the Nexus Portal System is notorious for rendering most non-living organic materials magically inert. Someone should’ve told you,” Merrick shot back.

  “Ah, yes. I knew that. About the portal that is, it’s why we needed to pay extra for experienced Hunters to tag along and supplement our food supplies. Anyways, I saw all the tools you’ve got in your bag and decided you’re probably actually an alchemist after all.”

  “That’s what I told you, and I wasn’t asking for your approval either. If you don’t trust me to the point that you need to root through my personal belongings then I can find somewhere else to sleep,” Merrick was growing tired of the conversation.

  “Don’t be like that, I was worried because you hadn’t come back in so long. I got curious about the notebook and started reading. Or at least, trying to read. It’s like half your book is in a foreign language and the other half coded, what’s with that?”

  Merrick was confused about her question. He only spoke one language and didn’t see a need to cipher his journals like a spy. At least, he hadn’t seen the need previously. He was already debating the merits of doing so moving forward.

  “What do you mean?”

  She pointed out a few massages and Merrick managed to get the gist of her problem.

  Half the terms in the notebook were the various different dusts that his innate skill would produce upon a failed [Merge] and the other half were his personal shorthand abbreviations for various experimental values he frequently used.

  That combined with his good, old-fashioned, terrible hand-writing had her confused and scratching her head for a large period of the time he’d been away.

  “So nothing in this book made any sense to you?” He asked again, fishing for information. He knew for a fact that he’d written the word ‘mutation’ in the book a few times before short handing it to mutn.

  “No, why would it? Even the words I did recognize didn’t really make sense out of context like that.”

  “Because you’re a scholar? Don’t you guys have skills specialized in pulling information out of texts?” Merrick squinted his eyes at her, trying to discern her facial reactions in what little light was provided by the distant flickering campfires.

  “Right, I’m not a very good scholar. You already said as much when I couldn’t figure out the math for navigation, you don’t have to keep rubbing it in. The only thing I really understood is that you’re using weights to measure something, fairly accurately, but you don’t even have a scale in your tools,” Jasmine said, once again reminding him that he was supposed to be feeling violated from the invasion of his privacy.

  Instead of arguing, Merrick took a deep breath and recentered himself.

  “Okay, well thank you for the concern but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go through my bag in the future. Some of those tools are very expensive and easily damaged and I’d hate it you accidently poisoned yourself or got a rash from touching a not-so-clean tool that I’d used for alchemy,” Merrick said, plain and simple.

  “It won’t happen again, I was just worried and a little curious. We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to talk and get associated with each other before you crashed.”

  “Thank you for your concern. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other in the coming days,” He decided he’d pressed hard enough and decided to let it go for the time being. It had nothing to do with the ‘just a carriage driver’ glaring a hole into the side of his head as the conversation went on.

  Nope, nothing at all.

  “Do you need any of your alchemy tools for the night?”

  “No, like you said I don’t have a scale so it wouldn’t be very wise to try and make potions. I’m not one of those wizened elders who can tell exactly how much of each reagent to use based off a quick glance. I’d also prefer a more sterile environment and better lighting.”

  “Right, well I’m going to retire for the night. Once again, I’m sorry for rooting through your stuff. I could have lied about it though and just put the book back where I found it. That should count for something,”

  “You don’t need to keep apologizing. So long as you don’t do it again, we’re good.”

  “Right. Goodnight then.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Her name is Pinesol, by the way.”

  “What?” Jasmine turned around from where she’d been heading back into the carriage. A minor twitch seemed to develop in her eye and mouth at the same time, barely visible in the dim lighting.

  “My cat. She’s a girl, and her name is Pinesol.”

  Merrick seemed to have caught her off guard. Perhaps she was still wallowing in her own guilt or was otherwise lost in thought, but his statement appeared to invoke an emotional whiplash.

  “Pinesol?” she asked, skeptically.

  “Yup. Pine- after the needle like hairs and fresh wood smell and -sol after the warm glow of her horn, like a miniature sun,” he said.

  “That’s such a silly name.”

  “Meow!”

  “I mean beautiful name, obviously.”

  Jasmine slowly reached out and scratched Pinesol’s ears from where she was standing on Merrick’s shoulder.

  He specifically didn’t think about how close her delicate hands were to his face and absolutely didn’t notice the way Jasmine’s carriage driver looked even angrier than before and started hovering closer.

  “Does Pinesol want to come sleep in the carriage with me?” Jasmine offered, pleased with the sensation of the kitten’s softness beneath her nails.

  “I appreciate it, but no-“ Merrick didn’t get a chance to finish politely declining before his feline friend pounced from his own shoulder into Jasmine’s arms.

  The cat smugly glanced at him from its new warm embrace and Merrick could have sworn the night got five degrees colder as Jasmine turned to retire for the night.

  “Huh,” Merrick decided to make himself scarce and wandered toward the largest campfire present in the area, ready to dig into his [Status] and hopefully source some answers.