The Dungeon Crawler's Academy

Herbs and Dragonkin

Argent had been standing over a hanging section of potted Ginka when he felt the tug at his sleeve, he and Gauge both glancing down to find a pair of big, black eyes staring upwards with their owner standing dangerously close.

"Hey... White Fox."

Startled by the girl's sudden appearance and proximity, Argent jolted back a step despite Remelia's soft-spoken manner of address. Raising a hand to cover his mouth as he cleared his throat, Argent took an extra moment to compose himself and shake off this second use of her odd nickname for him before responding.

"What's up, Remelia? How can I help?"

He questioned, eyes following upwards as the girl pointed an arm behind her just in time to indicate Shizuka approaching with a shyly apologetic look.

"Shizu needs help... I can't help.. Sorry..."

Argent blinked, but as the words registered he could only smile at the smaller girl. The urge to pat her on the head hit him like a sack of bricks thrown from a rooftop, but he forcibly resisted the temptation. It was an insanely prevalent impulse, consistently recurring whenever the small girl interacted directly with him, but something about patronizing a daughter of the Epstein house seemed inappropriate if not downright dangerous. Neverminding the fact that Remelia herself could knock him clean through the greenhouse roof if she wanted to.

"And what about you? Aren't you doing the assignment?"

He asked after a moment, noticing that Remelia didn't appear to be carrying her classroom materials. She seemed to think about this for a second, tapping one foot against the ground as she finally shrugged her shoulders.

"I will. Shizu will help me.. So Shizu needs help first."

Argent chuckled a bit as Gauge exasperatedly covered his face with his off hand. The rogue might had little patience for Remelia's usual antics, but in all truthfulness, Argent found the majority of her habits quite endearing. He had always been good with children, and it was difficult for him not to think of her as a little sister or niece.

"Alright. Let's help Shizuka, then. I need to collect samples anyway."

"Thanks."

With Argent's expertise the four managed the assignment with ease, as it also became apparent that Shizuka's knowledge of several plants was actually quite detailed, so long as she could properly understand their scientific names and types. The exchange was one Argent found both interesting and beneficial, as he was able to note several new references for the plants which he had never before come across considering the scarcity of published literature from her homeland, The Rim. Even in his extensive studies he had rarely come across works from those exotic northern regions, and even then it was not uncommon for the few transcripts one might stumble upon to be poorly translated.

"I hadn't considered using it that way... But now that you say it, I can definitely see how it would work."

He commented thoughtfully as Shizuka stopped to point out an exotic jungle orchid she called a Mizukap, giving an explanation of how they were used in the river towns to seal the underside of small hunting boats.

"The film on their leaves is extremely hydrophobic when refined, it's one of the reasons it can be so hard to concoct solutions from. It doesn't play well with many other water-soluble compounds... But if combined with the proper oils, I imagine it could be applied very effectively for the kind of use you're describing."

The beastkin nodded.

"The hunters mix it with stone-oils and use it to treat Koleppi skins, which are stretched beneath the hull. It makes the boats quiet, and fast."