They nodded, though their modes of payment varied.

"Will this do?" The pretty elven lady asked, showing him seven gold, a few awakened cores, and a toughened core. Toughened cores were around 5 times the value of an awakened core. In the hearth market, a toughened core could sell for 3 gold (and a lot more in the actual towns).

The others also contributed, and frankly, the payments were in excess. They probably wanted to pay him for saving their lives as well.

In total, he should be receiving around 18 gold, but he received a total of 12 gold, five awakened cores, and three toughened cores instead.

Finn nodded, not rejecting their extra payment. "Could you tell me which one of you would receive which potions?" he asked.

They could have one each, but he honestly doubted a little bottle was enough for the men ravaged by rats and whatever else hurt them so much.

Interestingly, they pointed at each other. The men pointed at the girls, while the girls pointed at the men.

His lips twitched. "I'll… give it to the boys, then," he said. Before the men could disagree with him, he cut them off. "Do you want the ladies to carry you?"

An awkward silence passed by, and the men succumbed. They extended their hands to get the bottles, and it was Finn's time to feel awkward.

"It only works when I'm holding it, sorry," he said. "It's hard to explain."

Everything in the [Hearth Market] was bound to him for some reason. It was to stop the precious Innkeeper from taking advantage and becoming a Merchant, instead.

The men looked awkward, but they had no choice but to go with his whims at this time. Of course, they did use an assessment tool (the elf-lady had one) on the bottles to confirm their legitimacy.

She looked a bit surprised at what she read, but she just nodded, telling the others they were safe to consume. The healing potions would be given to the men, 2 each, while a bottle of mana potion would be given to each of them.

Like the repellent, the potion bottles were quite small, smaller than a small test tube, and a single tube was needed to serve a person. He fed the men first. The others lifted their head so he could pour the potion into their mouths.

They watched as the bleeding on the men stopped almost immediately, with their wounds drying up and scarring.

They blinked, but Finn wanted this over with and revealed the mana potions, too. The men drank first again.

The case with the women was a bit awkward, as it would anyone. Letting a strange man feed them a mana potion was not a normal occurrence, after all.

"That was awkward," the raven-haired woman mumbled as she wiped some excess. "Please don't make me do that again."

She did, however, appreciate the feeling of mana coursing through her body.

The elf lady shook her head as she gulped her own mana potion. "It was really bound to him," she said. "I saw it in the assessment tool."

They looked at her and then at him. [Bound] items weren't unheard of, but those were usually limited to equipment. Potions could come in those forms, too? Wasn't it too wasteful?

After all, setting up bounding runes was expensive. Why would anyone add that to one-time-use consumables?

Finn smiled, pretending not to feel their confused stares. "How is everyone?"

"We are fine, thanks to you," Marcus said, friendly as always, despite almost bleeding to death and still dead-tired. "I'm Marcus, the team's close-range damage dealer and captain."

"This is Leiah, our archer, though she uses magic bows," he said as he pointed at the half-elf, oversharing again, before pointing at the other woman. "And this is Nona, our striker."

Ren was also a striker, which in Earth LitRPG lingo, was equivalent to the Assassin occupation. It was just that they didn't really do that here, and it had different implications, so the term wasn't used in this case.

"Durgan here is our tank."

"And you…what exactly do you mean by innkeeper?" Was that a new occupation they didn't know about? He didn't mean it literally, did he?

But it was.

"Long story," Finn said as he looked at the four pitiful beings. "Er…so, what do you plan to do next?"

"Head to the nearest Town and our hometown, Lotus Town, recover and…report everything that happened."

"How many days is the trip there?"

"About three days from here."

"I see…" Finn said, making a mental note. "Just to reiterate: the beast repelling potion only lasts five hours," he said. "I only have, probably, one more batch after this."

Hopefully, the [Hearth Market] could give him another batch sometime soon.

The group looked at each other. The potions helped them recover from death, adding some points in their stats, but it wasn't nearly enough to sustain them all the way to the town.

Finn smiled. He was trying to make them fully absorb their situation right now. Around this time, Marcus' stomach growled so loudly, it made everyone flinch, thinking a beast had climbed up to them again.

"While you recover, why don't I cook for you? I am a chef, though some ingredients are lacking."

"What?"

"I'd like to show off my skills while you guys rest (and think about what you want/need to do next)," he said, saying the latter sentence with a lot of meaning.

"Why don't you guys get me some brindlejaw meat?" he said, ignoring the rats around them. He still couldn't stomach eating them, sadly.

"...well, he's not wrong. We need more energy if we want to stabilize our stats. Otherwise, it'd just keep decreasing even if we're not in a fight."

Like this, the group quickly made plans and delegated tasks, following Finn's instructions as well. This included throwing out the carcasses from the cave, gathering the cores in the process.

That said, they weren't particularly looking forward to the food because they knew that monster meat wasn't particularly delicious. However, they would need to consume things, so it was just as well.

Looking at them so unexcited, even when they were hungry, made Finn smile. They had no idea how memorable a single barbecue from him was.

Challenge, accepted~

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