["I'll count that scale just now as one favor. Give me another nine scales, and I'll give you all ten of my favors. How about it?"]
[The bearded man looked at you expectantly, hoping you would produce more scales. You chose...]
Mu You refused, of course.
The bearded man was pretty shrewd; he had clearly realized Mu You had more scales on him. But Mu You had no intention of handing over too many. These scales were precious to him too, and one would only buy a single favor. How many did he even have in total? Even handing them all over would not get him many favors. Only an idiot would use something so valuable to scrape together a thousand points.
[You asked the bearded man whether he knew an herbalist named Sescia.]
Sescia was Wildman Muro's mother.
Fortunately, before Mu You came, the wildman had anticipated the situation in the tribe and deliberately left him a fallback. Muro's mother was the tribe's finest herbalist. Given her standing, simply taking him to meet the Tribal Chief should not be too difficult.
["An herbalist? Sescia?" The bearded man frowned at your question. After thinking for a long time, he still shook his head. "There's no such person."]
["There's no one named Sescia in the tribe?" You were somewhat surprised and wondered whether Muro had misremembered his mother's name.]
["It's not that there's no 'Sescia.' The Ancients aren't very good with language. When choosing names, they tend to just pick familiar ones, so people in the tribe keep using the same few dozen names. Sescia is a very common Ancient name. There must be eight hundred people named Sescia in the tribe, if not a thousand. It's hard to find someone by name alone."]
["As for herbalists, not just anyone can