get help for your journey

You've never been much of a fighter or even a survivalist, so if you're going out into nature to face powerful monster girls, then you'll need someone to help you. A reoccurring pattern that you've noticed in stories about monster girls is that they usually struggle the most against either the knights of a noble or the guards of a village. You have a close connection to one of the guards at your village, named Sara, who you were friends with since you were young. She is extremely likely to join your adventure, but she's somewhat of a ditz and is too jealous of nobility, as well as anyone connected to them; such as a knight to work with them.

A short distance away from your village is a castle belonging to the countess Diva, who is known for being relatively inactive in the region, so of course she could lend you a small battalion of knights for your journey, but last month was a knight recruitment festival; which had the most daring fighters show off their skills to be recruited as knights, meaning that she'll either lend you her most untrained new recruits or her most aged knights to make room for fresh meat.

You can probably get Sara to help you as a favor, but there's no telling what the countess might ask for in exchange for her knights, she could send you on a quest to capture a specific monster girl; to fulfill some sort of collection like most nobles would do, or she could **** you to join her staff and become the official scholar of countess diva; strictly limiting your research to whatever she wanted. Whether it's the village's guards or the countess's knights, you're going to need help if you're going to research securely.