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Treading carefully while keeping her eyes and ears strained for any sounds or movement out of the ordinary, Kari made her way down the mountain. She knew she couldn't afford to let her mind wander while she was supposed to be paying attention to her surroundings, but she just couldn't help but question a few things. What did they want with a Wyvern egg in the first place? Were they going to eat it? Was it valuable? Did they need it for medicine?

Most of all, Kari wondered if the villager who requested the egg would even be there when she got back. So far, no one had waited for the item they requested... well, save for the one asking her to find the diseased minipet.

As the ghoul absently rubbed her arm where she'd been bitten, the sound of shifting earth caught her attention and broke her out of her woolgathering. Underneath her. Stifling her breathing, she found her way onto a pile of solid rocks and ducked down with her egg just as the culprit rose from the ground. A Sand Crab. It scuttled around a bit in what she could only assume was confusion. Had it been following her? It seemed the answer was 'yes' when it proceeded to burrow back down into the ground after a few more seconds of scurrying. Was it using the vibrations of her footsteps in the ground? Well, if that was the case, there was a pretty simple way of solving the problem. Hoisting the egg onto her back and wrapping the tails of her scarf like a pack, she lightly jumped from rock to rock. A few minutes of this put her well out of the crab's possible range, allowing her to step back onto the ground and continue her journey.

Nearing a narrow pathway along the edge of the cliff, Kari gasped as a sand whale hurled itself into the air from below. Trying to flatten herself against the cliff wall without damaging the egg, she just barely managed to avoid being landed on as it crashed back down into the sand below. Never mind the egg, even she probably would survive being body slammed by something of that size!

As the rocky cliffs gave way to thick foliage, the reaper made as little noise as possible while trudging through the fallen, dead leaves and gnarled tree roots littering the ground. Catching movement from the corner of her eye, Kari backed up behind a tree trunk and eased her head around. In the distance, a Zombie Deer was picking at what looked to be a fresh carcass. Holding back the need to squirm at the unpleasant scene, she quietly ducked into a clump of some tall plant and waited for the now-audible slurping and crunching to cease. Even after a minute, two minutes, five minutes, she didn't move just in case it was still around, searching for new prey. After ten minutes, Kari gingerly peeked out to find herself alone. Rising from her hiding spot, she checked the egg once more, then carried on.

Finally, she could see the spot where she set up camp at the base of the mountain a little ways from the village. After all, the locals weren't remotely friendly, never mind accommodating enough to provide lodging. It was too soon to rejoice, however, as she noticed track marks along the ground. Remembering that she'd seen something like this before, Kari scaled up a tree as the creature making the tracks reemerged. The Sand Lobster was racing around her camp, not particularly doing anything other than rolling around since everything looked to still be intact from the last time she left. Perhaps it had just happened to like the same spot she'd set up camp?

After a few minutes, she was proven correct when the creature tore off into a seemingly random direction and disappeared into the undergrowth. A hesitant climb later, she was back on the ground and making sure everything was still where she left it. Once that was taken care of, she put her feet on the road to the village.

Once again, she was met by no one. "Why are they bothering to request these items if they don't bother sticking around to accept them?" Silence was her only response as she tucked the egg under her arm and jogged back to camp.