Newbie wizard’s first assignment

A young witch is sent out to investigate magical creatures, and losing to one of them doesn't just cost her a fight. Defeat sends her into a proper defeat event, where she might end up transformed into an animal and kept as livestock, or turned to stone and used as a seedbed for magical plants.

Your job is to hunt down and defeat four of these creatures. Turn-based battles carry the weight, but item synthesis is where the real progress happens: build up gear and useful items between fights so the heroine can actually survive what's coming. The art is rougher than the creator's current work, by their own admission, and the English has a few awkward turns here and there. Neither gets in the way of the point.