A New Life In The Beast World-Chapter 63: Picking Apples

The next day, Theo and Serena got to work coating all the wood they had collected the previous day with the tree resin. They were only able to cover half of the wood before they ran out of the resin they had collected.

Thus Theo made a stop to check if more resin had been collected from the small basin they had left on the tree. It was only a quarter of the way full.

Seeing as it would take some time to get more, they left the treated wood to dry before they headed out to gather more food for the cold season. Theo was taking Kiro hunting again and Serena went foraging as usual.

Wilma had told her about a purple root plant that she could use and she wanted to try it out. The rabbit beastwoman had told her they were good for storing and tasted great roasted.

Brown roots and orange roots were great for the most part, but Serena felt variety in plants might be a good idea for them. It would get boring eating just those and she did wonder if it was good to just eat those.

She doubted they could get all their nutrients from just two plants and meat. She’d seen rabbit beastmen eat quite a variety of plants and she wanted to test them out herself.

They were adding some leafy greens that she had learnt about from some rabbit beastmen, however, there was a problem with them. They wilted quite easily and Serena wasn’t sure how they’d last the cold season in storage.

Well, she could probably make use of her subspace, but there was a limit to the space. She’d already added a few baskets of leafy greens anyway in there.

But it would probably be weird to have fresh leafy greens around in the cold season. At least with brown roots and orange roots, she could secretly stock up their underground storage with whatever she kept in her subspace.

Besides, she was planning to have her subspace work as an emergency food storage in the event she needed to run away. The rootless beastmen attack on the caravan had taught her one thing.

She always needed to be ready to go on the move.

Thus she didn’t want to be forced to stockpile a single type of food for the cold season because it went off quickly. The subspace was better off keeping a bunch of different foods, especially those that they could eat on the move.

The purple roots took a while to find and Serena had to get help from a rabbit beastman to finally find a good bunch of them. He showed her how to harvest them, warning her of its staining abilities.

Wilma had already warned of this, but she thanked the rabbit beastman anyway. He soon left to dig up his own bunch of purple roots and Serena went to harvesting hers.

She only took a few, planning to make them for dinner and see how they went. If Kiro enjoyed them, then she’d stockpile them. Theo didn’t really eat any plants unless they were in a stew or soup.

She had been concerned about his mostly meat only diet, but he explained to her that beastmen didn’t really need to eat plants and it tasted weird to him most of the time.

Seeing as he was a grown adult, Serena didn’t fight him over it. She would stockpile enough for the three of them, but if Theo didn’t consume any of the plants she foraged then that was his problem.

The food was there and she made it clear he was welcome to it too.

Once she carefully harvested several purple roots, Serena found a few leafy greens and medicinal herbs which she added into her subspace. She even found a few brown roots and orange roots which she collected too.

She needed about fifty pounds of four different types of plants and chose brown roots and orange roots as her first two choices. Purple root might become her third choice, depending on how it went tonight.

As for the final plant to stock up on, she was still deciding that. Perhaps she should chat to the other beastwomen again about food. Especially Emma and Wilma.

They had young cubs similar to Kiro’s age, so would probably know which plants cubs liked the best. Although Kiro being a snow leopard beastman and their cubs being rabbit beastmen could pose a problem.

Still it was worth a shot.

They both had lots of knowledge of plants, mostly the edible kind, and Serena was more than happy to pick their brains about it. Especially when they gave her different methods of preparing the plants.

It meant she didn’t need to make use of the system to find a cookbook. Perhaps it was selfish of her to use them like this, but if the chance arose, she would pay them back for the knowledge.

That was the best she could offer.

Serena was just about done foraging and was going to head back to the village when a sweet scent caught her nose. She couldn’t resist and wanted to see what was giving out such a scent.

She walked a few meters deeper into the forest to find several trees with bright, red balls about the size of a hand hanging from them. There were some red balls on the floor around the trees.

Her eyes instantly spotted a mouse under one of the tree roots, eating the round ball. Noticing her, the mouse scurried away, leaving Serena alone.

She turned back to the red balls on the tree, wondering if they were edible. The mouse seemed fine eating them, but for all she knew mice could have immunity to the fruit’s poison.

Knowing she was going to get nowhere, standing there, Serena observed her surroundings to make sure no one was around before she retrieved her field guide from her subspace.

Hopefully, the field guide would have an answer for her. Otherwise, she might need to speak to the others to see if they knew anything about the fruit.

She glanced through the pages, slowly losing hope as she turned to another page until she finally stopped a few pages from the end of the field guide. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the thick paper, a smile on her face.

Seemed luck was on her side and she had found the fruit. It was called apples and could be eaten. She also discovered that they came in green and sometimes yellow versions too.

They could be both sweet or tart, depending on the color of the fruit. Once she was done reading, a familiar notification came up.

[Gain Knowledge on Plants: 25/600]

[Reward: 10 Coins]

[Botanist Level 2]

She was a little surprised by the sudden increase in Botanist, but wasn’t exactly sure what that meant for her. She didn’t feel any different from before.

Shaking her head, she ignored the system and returned her field guide back into her subspace. She then turned to the trees and decided to pick some of the fruit. They’d be a good food for her subspace seeing as you could eat them by themselves.

She set the basket on her back down before retrieving an empty one from her subspace that she kept for such times. After hoisting it on her back, she walked over to the trees.

Serena ignored the ones fallen on the ground, not wanting to take a chance with them. Quite a few looked like they were beginning to rot and Serena didn’t want to take any chances.

Instead she focused on picking the reddest ones from the tree. She was only able to get a handful before she needed to climb the tree to reach the rest.

Serena took off her leather boots before shifting her hands into paws. She used her sharp claws to dig into the tree bark as she climbed the tree.

Her tail moved as she did, keeping her balanced until she managed to reach the first branch. Lifting herself onto the branch, she carefully crawled away from the tree trunk towards the other tree branches.

She stopped every now and then, making sure she was stable. Once she got to the center of the large branch, she gingerly stood up, shifting her feet into paws to dig her claws into the tree branch.

When she was finally standing straight, Serena began picking the apples, adding them into the basket. She moved from branch to branch doing the same thing until half the basket was filled.

She then sent the basket to her subspace to reduce the weight on her, shifted into her beast form and jumped down. Her body reacted on instinct and she landed on her feet, shifting back into her human form.

Serena then retrieved her basket from the subspace, adding a few apples to her original basket before sending it back. She then put her leather boots back on and shouldered her basket of various plants before finally heading back to the village.