The garden, or the forest on the east side of the temple, wasn't exactly a complete green path filled with trees, herbs, and shrubs. But instead, it was composed of a straight stony path, covered with vines and overgrown leaves, and led deeper into the garden.

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If one can see through the green patches that covered almost everything, they would often find white marbled ruins that once formed the various structures and statues present in this garden.

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As far as I remember, there were three major objectives to clear in this garden.

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One was to clean the entire greenery neatly, all the weeds that have teemed here, without disturbing the normal flora of the garden.

As long as we did not touch the original trees, plants, and flowers, clearing as much as 70% of the weeds would complete this task.

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The second was, once again, a dozen puzzle mechanisms that one needed to solve before finding the keys to the next area, that is, the cemetery behind the temple.

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And lastly, a bonus quest that required one to plant more flowers and trees in the area where the weeds had killed the original plantation.

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It was honestly just curiosity at that point when I had decided to plant the extra seeds I received later in the subsequent areas. I kind of wanted to see what would happen next. At that time, failing this raid more than a hundred times, I stopped caring about failure. I was completely fixated on exploring every aspect that I could possibly do myself. I recalled the old times as I slowly stepped deeper into the garden.

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The barely walkable path took us through thorny vines, a bunch of deeper ponds, and a few systemized puzzles that I decided to leave for now.

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Reaching the end of the walk, or to be fair, the center of the garden where the path stopped, I looked at the central Birdbath, filled with stagnant water. There were also words written all around the edges in the Ancient Language, giving it a rather sacred look.

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Reaching closer to the birdbath, I slowly brushed my fingers against the words, trying to see if they said the same thing as last time.

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Looks the same. I thought before speaking the words out loud.

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"Let truth be your reason."

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Speaking those words immediately activated the mechanism of the area, slowly shaking the birdbath as it circled for a brief moment and then pausing once again.

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[Sub-Quest: Gardening

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Difficulty: -

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Description: The temple's garden has been teemed with weeds, slowly rotting away the beautiful plant life that was once cared for by all the saints and saintesses of the temple. Though the dead cannot be revived, their will still lives on in these flowers and trees that they planted with their heart and soul. Will you be the one to make these little flowers bloom once again?

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Objective: Remove all the weeds in the garden without harming the original flora.

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Rewards: Keys to the Cemetery.

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Remarks: Put those hands to good use, will you?]

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Looking at the sparkling eyes of the party, I could see that they really liked the side quest. Blaze and Link must have liked the idea of exploring more of the lore of the area, while Trisha seemed to be just happy with an additional quest.

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As for Raven, I could guess that the reward mentioning the cemetery was something that incited her, while lastly, G… wasn't exactly interested. He seemed rather bored before, so finding out that there was something to do must have put his mind at ease.

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"All right. Let's get to work, then. First things first, though, how to differentiate between the flowers and the weeds. Honestly, I have no idea. But let's start with cleaning out the moss first," I said as I found it the easiest to remove without hurting the plants, even by mistake.

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Plus, cleaning out the moss would also clear various structures in the garden, making it easier for anyone to differentiate between the flowers that should be in the correct area and plants that are out of place.

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Nodding at my words, we began cleaning the area using our basic spells.

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Raven, Blaze, and I used Fire. Trisha, who was more familiar with water, used a water-based spell to clean the moss, while Link used his light magic to overheat the moss and burn it out.

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The one who struggled the least was G, who simply used a dark magic enchantment on his gloves before touching the moss, almost evaporating it in an instant. The only time he had a hard time was when the moss reached the nearby trees, which could or could not have been one of the trees that we weren't allowed to weed out.

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It was a time-consuming process, but somehow, as the garden started looking neater with every passing minute, it became a somewhat relaxing activity. The lingering tension of the Ancient Temple beside us slowly vanished as we kept on cleaning the garden.

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It took about 4 hours to clean the moss, and then we continued to select the most obvious weed plants before removing them as well. After that, there were also many overgrown vines which we removed slowly and then reduced them to an appropriate size.

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Since some of the vines came from the outer walls of the temple garden, removing them was easy. But a few of them that came directly from the central garden, we left them at the root level, unsure of what to do with them.

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Much cleaner than what I had done last time, this time we pretty much cleaned out the whole garden. The comparison of before and after was vast.

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The thorny bushes were gone, the overgrown watery areas were cleared, and the beautiful garden resembled a portion of its prime look, making it good enough to have a morning walk at least.

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[Sub-Quest: Cleaning Completed!]

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[You have gained (Key to the Cemetery)]

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And lastly, the quest was complete.

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Yet, our work in the garden was not.

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"All right. Let's level the grasses and the trees now," I added, signifying that we were going to do more than what the quest demanded us to do.

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After all, the real reward that this place has isn't just the key. I smiled as I got a little excited for what was to happen next.

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