Chapter 422: Black Orc Bait

"Raon!"

Poppy waved her hand in front of a Medicine Master’s store, waving across the street, where Fang Raon was.

Fang Raon waited for a couple of locals to pass by on the street, and then he quickly crossed it to get to the other side.

"Did you complete the quest?"

Poppy asked curiously.

"I did. It was pretty easy."

Fang Raon said with a chuckle.

Poppy nodded with a smile. Without having any idea what he went through. They all thought that it must’ve been a pretty easy one.

"We’re going to start making the Black Orc bait once we’re done here. It will take a couple of hours to make it. It’s a long process."

She said.

"Okay."

Fang Raon nodded.

A moment later, Gungan and everybody else left the store with a bag of ingredients in hand—it was mostly healing herbs, but there were a few rare spices mixed in as well.

"There is a Cauldron Room not far from here. We can make the bait there."

Gungan said, and they all followed behind him—they turned left, then right, and walked straight for about five minutes—then they arrived at the Cauldron Room.

After handing the Cauldron Room’s owner a couple of square coins, they walked to their rented Cauldron Room, followed Gungan inside, and shut the door behind them.

Gungan spread the items on the table while Poppy grabbed the cauldron from the back, and Skadi went and started a fire.

Then, Poppy placed the cauldron on top of the fire.

"Black Orc bait is ridiculously smelly, so take these."

Gungan handed Fang Raon something to block his nostrils, and everyone did the same—as it was so smelly that they could pass out if they inhaled it too much.

"Won’t everybody outside smell the stench then?"

Fang Raon asked curiously.

"That’s why we have this!"

Matthew proudly presented an enchanted magic box—it had interesting magic engravings on the surface.

"Once we’ve finished making the Black Orc bait, we will put it inside this box. It will completely block off the smell."

Gungan said, and then he took off his armor and rolled up his sleeves to reveal his muscularly toned arms.

He took the herbs and started grinding them with a mortar and pestle to create a fine powder—it was

The mortar scraped beneath the pestle in slow, steady circles. Dried marsh-mint, bitterroot, and a fistful of yellow flowers whose name Gungan had never learned crumbled beneath the stone.

"...Gungan is actually a really good potion maker, so doing this is like a walk in the park for him."

Poppy told Fang Raon, who had keen interest in everything that was happening in front of him, and he just nodded at her.

It didn’t look like he was paying all that much attention to Poppy, as all of his attention was on the bait-making.

As he thought that it might be useful in the future.

Gungan was soon done, and he moved towards the cauldron that was hanging over a low blue flame.

One by one, he added the ingredients.

The herbs went first, then the crushed beetles, then the sour berries, and finally came the fish scraps.

He tipped the cauldron—and they all heard a wet plop sound—almost immediately, the room filled with an unmistakable odor.

Gungan leaned back just in time to avoid a greasy bubble that popped against the rim and released a smell like wet socks, burnt onions, and something that had died several miles upstream.

It was disgusting!

Even with the nostril blockers, they couldn’t help but smell a little bit of the stench, and they all felt sick to their stomachs.

Gungan stirred the cauldron with a long black wooden spoon, and the brownish liquid bubbled and splattered against the cauldron’s sides.

"The vial!"

Gungan opened his right hand and reached it towards right—like he was saying, "Give the vial to my hand"—and he trusted that one of them would.

Kennelman quickly came with a glass vial and handed it to him, and then Gungan tipped the cauldron slightly and poured some of the liquid into the vial.

Once it was full, he closed the vial with a stopper and shook it gently to mix the liquid—then he placed it inside the enchanted magic box in one of its twelve compartments.

Kennelman then gave him another vial.

And he did the exact same thing until there were twelve vials filled with the smelly liquid inside the magic box.

"Can’t he hold these vials inside his inventory?"

Fang Raon asked curiously.

"Haha, we did that once, and well..."

Poppy wryly smiled, like she was remembering something funny but also something disgusting that left deep traumas on all of them.

"The inventory is a dimension storage space. It means that he can also smell. Gungan once stored these vials without any protection inside his inventory, and next time he opened it, the smell was absolutely putrid.

"It took him nine months for the smell to completely disappear."

Skadi said.

Gungan then poured water inside the cauldron and added lots of pleasant-smelling herbs, beautiful-winged butterflies, and a sprinkle of fairy dust.

The smell started to disappear from the cauldron.

"We can’t just dump the remnants of the cauldron. The smell wouldn’t disappear. That’s why we need to do an anti-smell potion to neutralize it."

Gungan said, and that’s what he exactly did just now, and the brown liquid inside the cauldron turned plain gray.

It was done.

He then walked to a drain and poured the potion down.

"Clean up."

Gungan gave the cauldron to Matthew, and he started scrubbing the cauldron clean, and the rest cleaned up the table and put away the excess ingredients.

It looked clean once again.

"These should do the trick."

Gungan looked at the enchanted magic box with a smile, and then he stored it inside his inventory.

As it was safe now because the enchanted magic box would completely block off the smell that would otherwise kill them.

"We will then spill the contents of those vials in the far corners of Black Orc’s realm. It doesn’t matter how far we are from them; they will still be able to smell it."

Poppy told Fang Raon and gave her a nod.

"Black Orcs have excellent smell, and without these vials, they would be able to smell us from miles away.

"They hate the smell of these vials—just like we would—but they will become desperate to get rid of this smell.

"So they will start looking for the source of the smell while the King of the Black Orcs will stay behind at his village.

"The King is unable to leave the village.

"The smell of these vials will also mask our smell, so it’s a win-win situation. It’ll also be impossible for them to get rid of the smell.

"So we don’t even have a time limit to defeat the King."

Gungan said.

’They’ve already failed the raid once. That realm must’ve already ’reset’ then, and Black Orcs will have zero memory of them.

’If they could remember, then they would never leave the King of Black Orc’s side, no matter how smelly it is.’

Fang Raon thought.

"We’re done here. I think we can start heading over. However, before heading, Fang Raon, what is your role within Rose Records?"

Gungan asked.

Fang Raon understood what he meant by "What is your role?" as he was talking about his raid during the raids.

Well, he hadn’t been sadly in any raids with Rose Records, as he had a lot of things to do—but it was obviously Team Leader.

"Team leader, but I can be a damage dealer."

Fang Raon said.

"You and Matthew will be our damage dealers. Kennelman and Skadi will attack the King from afar, and I will protect Poppy while she focuses her healing magic on the two of you."

Gungan said.

Fang Raon nodded.

This wasn’t his party, so there was no way he could take the position of the team leader from Gungan.

And besides, they seemed to be trusting him, so he must be a rather decent leader.

"Let’s not fail this time."

Gungan said with a serious look on his eyes.

...

The tall tower stood in the middle of the forest.

A party of six players approached the tower, and then Gungan retrieved a Tower Key from his inventory.

It was a larger key than most with spiraling ridges and a golden emblem at the top—it honestly looked like a dart.

He inserted the key in the door, and then with a quick twist, the door clicked and clanged open like the door of a fortress.

They were immediately welcomed with a sight of a long and dark hallway—they knew that there was a door on the other side of the hallway.

And that door would finally lead them inside the Black Orc realm.

"Let’s go, guys!"

Gungan took the lead and entered the tower first—then Matthew, then Fang Raon, then Kennelman, then Skadi, and finally Poppy.

BANG!

The doors banged shut behind them.

They walked down the hallway, and soon enough, they arrived at the end, and Gungan immediately pushed the door open.

Without waiting, they walked through, and Fang Raon saw that unlike the icy forest of the Ice Elf Realm—they were inside an enormous swamp with vines hanging from the trees and a thick mist covering the ground.

It was really wet.