In lieu of going to training every other day, I was sent to the daily children gatherings yet again, although the age group was a lot older. Not surprisingly, I was yet again the smallest member. I did recognize a few faces from the hunting lesson, and thinking that it is unhealthy to only have relationships with my family and the elf, I went and talked to them.

                They were happy to chat with me, and when they introduced themselves to me, I learned that they were younger than me by about half a year, yet they still were bigger than me. That made my excuse that I never showed up because I was sickly even more believable, but it made me feel even worse. Just like the little furballs years ago, they were hyperactive and not content to just sit around and chat, so they invited me to play some kind of ball game. It was a weird form of football*(soccer for those in America) where they had no limit to the number of players and it was fine to touch the ball with your hands, as long as you weren’t holding onto it. It was pretty surreal because of that, since it almost looked like a volleyball match as the players were passing the ball around.

                Since this game is extremely low budget, there wasn’t really a strict out of bounds area, and instead of a goal post, you had to hit a stick for it to count as a goal. There was no referee either, and it was pretty much an honor system

                I decided to just camp near the stick as a pseudo-goalie because I didn’t need to move around much, but when the other players and the ball were near the goal, I quickly regretted the decision. Like a good goal keeper, I deflected the ball when it came flying from a distance, but it came back really quickly. Not only that, the players themselves were rushing towards me, so the distance became shorter and I basically was pelted by the ball over and over. That means I was doing my job, but these lupo were not gentle and it hurt if I didn’t hit it properly with my hands. When they were really close, a few defenders joined me, but to me, it became absolute chaos and I had no idea where the ball was or even who was on my team.

                I decided self-preservation is more important and slipped out of the ensuing chaos, which of course wasn’t welcomed by my teammates, especially since the other team scored. I claimed I was new to the game and didn’t know, and was told that practice makes perfect and I’ll learn quickly. I secretly thought to myself that I’d probably skip out on the children gatherings yet again if this is the bulk of what they do.

                After a few days of this, it turns out that is indeed what they mainly do, although the various sport occasionally changes. So, in the end, I still ditched the meetings and wandered around the forest and spent time with the elf.

                I didn’t completely cease any interaction with them, since there was always the weekly hunting practice. The lure of personally obtaining deer did wonders on their enthusiasm for training, and after a month, they had a decent chance of success.

                As for me, I just pretended to be useful and didn’t do anything. I wouldn’t have been able to hunt the deer anyway with my strength. Additionally, part of the hunting lesson included how to dismantle a deer properly. The kids apparently had no qualms using a stone knife and removing the hide, dismantling the bones, and cleaning the corpse, but I felt a tad queasy so I just avoided looking at what was going on.

                Or I would have except Beda noticed and forced me to do it, saying even if I couldn’t kill the deer, I need to help process it. I initially sort of blindly hacked away at the body, which earned me some scolding, so I had to properly cut at specific places and carefully separate the various parts.

                I eventually got used to it, and since I was useless in hunting, I was forced to do the dismantling to the point that I knew more about deer anatomy than my own. The plus side of all of that was I could keep the more delicious parts of the deer for myself, such as the liver.

                I thought these days would continue until I grew up, but I was wrong.

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Spoiler

This is definitely not ominous, I swear!

Spoiler

Or is it?

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