Chapter 21

 

Quest (?); Going to meet Akira….Part 1

 

The land here would be considered blessed and the type of green settlers and farmers would covet...if it weren’t for who knows what kinds of monsters.

In the back of our minds, we all know orcs are probably only a day away.

We left our hideaway spot rather quickly and within a few minutes of walking with a good pace, we’d already gotten to the area near where the others of our school were gathered. Slowly we wound our way down through the string of grass huts being formed along the woods edge and its interior pathways.

Much of this was also happening to be using paths of well worn deer trails that wound through the terrain. We could tell this because of the deer pellets they’d left behind, in addition to the foot tracks. This had been the case since our area started finding places for the huts to be built in the woods but I’d not noticed it until now when Asakura Sensei pointed it out.

“See the how worn and dry the trail is from years of deer roving through this area looking for the richer and longer grass, growing in the shadows of the trees,” Sensei said, pointing it out.

“They seem to be able to smell where the good grass is from a long way away huh?” I noticed.

“Ah, so that’s how they figured out how to arrange the huts!” Rina exclaimed in fascination. “I wondered why there was already a trail going through the area! It’s amazing! Maybe we’ll get to see a baby deer!” Rina laughed like an innocent kid.

Well we are all kids still, since we’re mostly around upper high school high school age around 18 if not already, except for Sensei. Somehow her laugh helped the rest of us feel better though.

“Actually maybe if we’re able to get to eat a baby deer that would be more interesting,” Yumi said smugly. She was partly messing with Rina, but also she was really hungry like the rest of us. If we were to get any hungrier I’m sure we’d become ravenous wolves.

Rina gave her a shocked look briefly but then got over it.

“Eating a deer, baby or not, would give us a lot of meat huh? If only we could figure out how to get one before it could escape,” Sensei sighed.

“I know right? The problem is they jump and run so quickly!” I exclaimed in frustration.

“Is it time for her heal treatment yet?” Yumi asked me, seriously.

“We can wait a bit first,” I said nodding to her.

“So do lots of deer come through here? If we don’t find one I’ll be upset!” Rina laughed again. Uh oh, she was obsessed with cute things. Girls wanting cute things can be dangerous sometimes.

Yumi brightened up, “ah that would be good for a stew huh? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“EEEEEK!” Rina exclaimed. “You’d murder the baby deer?!”

“Ah, I think it’s like triage Rina. Right now it’s either them or us, but life is harsh and there’s not room for both,” I joked.

“Actually, the way this world works I’m afraid the deer would be some kind of mutated monster of some kind,” Yumi grumbled.

“Don’t jinx us,” I whispered.

We keep our eyes peeled for any sign of trouble as we keep following our guide to where we’re supposed to find the douche that needs our help.

Some of the huts had developed a bit better now and were looking sturdier. People were getting used to the idea that we had to make our lives better on our own and that there wasn’t going to be an immediate rescue from anyone. They’d tried to reinforce the support branches most of all, and you could see kids climbing nearby trees to get the green flexible branches at the top. In some cases they didn’t bother to avoid stripping the trees of the same areas for branches, and now those trees had bald spots. Others had harvested big sheets of bark sheaths from some types of the very same stripped bare trees, which they’d used for ceiling panels.

It was effective for an emergency shack but the damage on the trees drew attention to the fact that people were in the area.

That, of course made Yumi frown when she saw it; she of course had a strong sense of right and wrong. “They don’t need to strip all the stuff from the same trees. They could have spread it out over several trees instead of just one,” I heard her say, shaking her head.

“Eh?!” Rina was surprised too.

There were also people going around coaching people on how to make their little huts sturdier, having been trained directly by the rangers, or in a few cases were a couple of rangers themselves. A lot of people were working steadily however.

Were the followers becoming more like soldiers though or NPCs? I wondered.

In theory, some of them might discover being an NPC is their ‘skill’ and true calling.

“Those rangers sure do have a lot of skills don’t they?” I asked.

Sensei cocked her head to one side for a second to think about it. “Actually, you are right. Of all the different skills showing up, they seem to have the most skills and most diverse range of skills. They will clearly have a big advantage in the future.”

“Does that mean you think they are maybe…the best and top job or whatever they should be called?” Yumi questioned nervously. I think she was nervous what kind of skill she would end up with. I was a bit surprised that Yumi wasn’t a ranger either actually, because she was very outgoing in personality and actions.

“Hmm, that’s a good question. I don’t know,” Asakura replied. “Sorry,” she gave an apologetic look.

“It’s interesting that the top job might be the one that can provide necessities of life and survival not necessarily the most combat strength,” I said.

Yumi nodded. “Yeah that’s true. Even if you are the most powerful, if you starve you die.”

“We won’t really…starve will we Shun?” Rina asked me innocently.

“No,” I said to her, but it was more like I was trying to not have her worry than sure knowledge. But I hoped things would be fine.

“Do you really think there are really only eight rangers?” Yumi said distrustfully, “they seem to be everywhere and getting a lot done for there to only be eight of them helping so many people.”

Actually she’d asked a really good question.

We continued to go until I found one of the ranger’s huts. This one was sticking out like a sore thumb.

“Wow, what’s this?” I said in shock.

“Wow, that’s on a whole different level!” Yumi exclaimed.

We were so surprised that somehow we’d stopped in front of it, despite Ranger Kid wanting us to keep going. “It’s not as good as my hut,” he said proudly, but the others with me somehow didn’t believe him. There’s no way anything could be this good for the materials we were using however.

This was a hut of huts. It was no longer a grass shack, but had developed into a nicely built hut fully reinforced with sticks for all of the structure and only a few leaves. It wasn’t much larger than the others but the construction and design were a bit better quality and looking very straight and not sagging anywhere. The supports were thick long limbs that stretched up and straight, but then there were layers of sticks cross ways. It must have taken a long time to make, but still lacked any conventional nails or rope.

We paused to study it over. After all it was amazing.

“Oh hi,” a girl chirped seeing us at the entrance way from where she was trying to weave and reinforce material into the existing wall to make it stronger. She was weaving the support branches and the sticks separately using long sturdy leaves of some kind.

“How did you do that?” Yumi asked quickly, and flashing the most charming smile she could.

“Wow amazing! It really is good enough to keep out wind and rain even, instead of pretend to!” Asakura gasped, walking around and inspecting all of it as much as she could.

Rina pointed at the leaves, “what’s that for?” she asked.

The girl smiled again, she had two big ponytails and fairly long hair and bright happy looking eyes. “Ranger-san is letting me be his housekeeper! Isn’t it wonderful?” She accidentally squealed at the end in excitement with a kind of ‘kyaaa’ sound effect.

That’s a pretty good lure I guess.

Did he say something like; ‘Will you be my girl, if I can solve your being homeless on a new world?’

Or was it more like, ‘hey babe, check out my new grass hut!’

“Ah, he didn’t violate you or push you down yet did he?” Yumi asked darkly suspicious, and with narrow slits for eyes. Yumi was scary sometimes…as usual I could see her fists getting ready to protect all women.

Why is she so suspicious?

The girl blushed deeper and more crimson than she should have, “Oh my. Heavens no!” her hands were on the sides of her face like she was relishing it as a fantasy however. She started to look a bit too excited. Her nostrils flared suddenly, breathing hard.

“Uh oh,” I said under my breath so the others wouldn’t hear me.

“Is that the famous masochistic type?” Asakura Sensei whispered to me so quietly that the others couldn’t hear.

I nodded carefully, so as to not tip off our conversation to them.

“Well, err we just admired your skills!” Rina beamed cheerfully. “How did you get it to look so sturdy?”

“Ah,” housekeeper girl snapped her fingers. “A couple people asked that already. “See how the sticks are woven and interlaced with this leaf? It’s the key to everything. We’re using the leaf woven around for support and to tie the supports to each other in a way.”

“How so?” I asked, kneeling in the grass to look closer at the area near the bottom of the hut where things were already woven together.

“Yeah, please show us,” Yumi asked.

“Um, do we have time for this?” Ranger kid asked, but he was ignored. He hadn’t realized that women doing small homely crafts and homemaking activities fell under the cute things that distract easily category yet. So in effect, even if there was a forest fire that we were in the middle of, somehow the women would all still want to look at cute artsy stuff.

I never understood women…

“Well, we use this type of long palm leaf to weave and loop the sticks together. It doesn’t have any special properties on its own, but because its long it can be woven around and under stuff,” she held one up that she’d just done and what the leaf looked like before she put it in to weave through sticks. It was a strange type of non-tropical long and broad leaf that was built sturdily enough to be bendable without breaking and snapping. She then demonstrated its flexibility.

“So how does that help? I still don’t get it,” Yumi said bluntly again. I was starting to realize Yumi’s personality was blunt most the time, however. She scrunched up her face, trying to look at the weave of sticks and leaves together, because that’s what it was.

“Ranger-san came up with this design because of his job somehow,” housekeeper girl said. Then she pointed over to the weave. “See how this part naturally holds itself together? First you use the long thin leaves in front of a crosspiece, and then weave behind with the next one, and in front with the one after that next. Then you continue on all the way up see with a network of them supporting each other all the way to the top. You have leaves parallel to each other just like how wicker baskets are woven, and then you can coat it in something to hold it all still.”

“Wow!” Rina and Yumi were both mystified.

I was starting to see what she meant although she didn’t have a lot of them in there yet; it was clearly starting to look like a lattice work that was clever. But it took me a minute to see it.

“But won’t it break if there’s a storm?” Yumi asked with a doubting look and arms crossed over each other.

“It’s true that you can only get so far without nails and real lumber, but yeah, that’s the beauty of it. You see, this leaf will be more secure after the weave of leaf next to it and under it, overlap with it and thereby hold it in securely. Then we continue the weave all the way up to the top of the hut and even in the roof. So the vertical support branches have two each with horizontal stick “logs” being held at one end between the vertical supports. Then they meet the same thing at the other end. Then the next cross piece horizontal “log”, even though they are actually sticks just keep getting stacked all the way up with this weave going all over and in between all of it.”

“You probably need pretty good finger dexterity for all that though,” Sensei remarked casually.

“Well, I still hope we can get something sturdier,” Yumi said sighing.

“It’s OK; we’re together so we can still be OK. Right Shun?” Rina said, slugging my arm playfully.

“Yes, but this is pretty industrious and will eventually open up the door for that as it promotes the stability to get to that point of finding something sturdier like you say,” Sensei said, impressed.

“So don’t we all want something sturdier. I miss hot water especially,” housekeeper-masochistically-inclined girl said, still happy. “But this isn’t meant to be forever, but just long enough for everyone to get to figure out what their skills are and how to thrive and build to the next thing.”

“So if we don’t stay here, is it even worth making them?” Yumi wondered again, making the girl frantic trying to defend herself.

“You don’t like this spot?” Ranger kid asked suspiciously. After all, he’d invested time to tame this area…he seemed edgy about leaving. Maybe he was still tied to the king idea after all. We’d soon find out.

“We’ll see…Part of that is that this layer of sticks and weave will then be coated with fine clay from the river that was found recently. It’s not that hard to find clay in river and stream beds. Then after that bit by bit we layer it on the outside all the way to the roof as it dries. So after the clay has dried it will actually stay together during a lot of the wind storms,” she smiled.

“Ah, I get it now!” Sensei exclaimed. “This is good! With clay it will become more interesting.”

“It is?!” I said. I thought so too, but I was surprised the girls would find it fascinated since it was very similar to camping. I’d never heard of girls liking camping much before. I hadn’t thought it was possible.

“Eh?!! So that’s how it works!” Rina echoed her excitement.

Nearby Ranger kid was looking at us sullenly with his arms crossed over his chest, waiting for us to get moving again. He had an impatient look on his face of course.

I nodded. I’d been so quick to not realize the hut wasn’t going to stay in the basic design but could be continually upgraded upon piece by piece. The housekeeper turned masochist girl was actually pretty happy because she was in a thriving environment and the home…or hut. But the whole thing I just realized now was the hut was a symbol of hope and support, rather than an actual need for shelter from extreme weather, because it wasn’t that cold out yet still. The need for a symbol of hope for the future was as important as winning a battle with the orcs however.

But the main point was that the girl could be happy because of the hope of the future she’d seen, and that surprised me. She just needed the vision to believe that things could work out and be improved as they progressed together. The girls had picked up on this idea of a home being a symbol of hope, but somehow they didn’t realize what they were picking up and hadn’t identified it. It was still just subconsciously working I noticed too.

So as a result the girls in our party had ended up just hypnotized in the trail by what they saw.

It also made me curious which ranger it was that had set this up for housekeeper -san. Surely it must be someone with a good heart because he’d built a hut that was loads better than his neighbors huts, and it was done more quickly too. In short, he’d done something wonderful made from good feelings. Plus he wasn’t even there to enjoy it most the time, but still had done so for his girl.

“Well this part I haven’t done yet, but we also discovered after doing the leaf weave that we can use morning glory vines and other weedy vines in this area as tying pieces after making them into a braid first, to tie the vertical supports more securely together to each other to strengthen things,” the girl also showed us as she tied the first one into place.

“But won’t the vine pieces dry out and wither away?” Yumi wondered.

“Yeah but it’ll be covered with clay after that see? We haven’t gotten to the part of applying the clay yet, but that will be like tomorrow probably,” she smiled again.

“I…can’t believe it…” I exclaimed.

“Oh my gosh Shun! Can we make one too?” Rina was giving me the most earnest innocent happy hypnotized look I’d seen in her yet. If I said no I’d dash her hopes to pieces…Yumi also was seeing and understanding that and giving me an, “or else…” stare. She was afraid I’d dash away Rina’s hopes of course.

“Hmm, well I think we might be able too, but I’m worried about dealing with the orcs first. We need to form a defense and fence line first before anything, so it may have to wait. But yes we will build a place where all of us can live together,” I said. But then I hurriedly added, “I’m not saying we can’t though,” so Yumi wouldn’t hit me. After all she might have misunderstood me.

“Ah yes, the other rangers are really worried about that right now. Ranger-san mentioned they’d spotted orc scouts this morning,” housekeeper-san looked really unhappy thinking about it.

“What?!” Yumi said alarmed.

I was even more alarmed, “How come none of us ever heard about this till now?!”

“They were chased off. We won! So what’s there to talk about?” Ranger kid said smugly. “Orcs are weak. Seriously I wonder why we had so much trouble with them at the school.”

Was he for real? He hadn’t fought the boss orc and the ones that were tougher. Plus I think he was just underestimating the orcs anyway. I didn’t feel they were weak at all. Did the other rangers share that same attitude?

He didn’t get it either about their tenacity and ability to covet women…I was sure they were coming back. Yumi and I looked at each other, giving each other a look like ‘this kid was a moron’. Yumi gave herself a face slap in addition, because the pity was too great and it overcame her. But the pity I was feeling was at its limit. If something else were to happen I’d be overcome too.

“You don’t understand that was a scouting party, not a force. They will come back” I said, taking a deep breath.

“You can’t know that,” Ranger kid said. “Yuta says not to worry. We beat them so badly they’ll fear us.”

“We need to get going. Let’s go to Akira and get a defense effort going. But I’m still glad we learned how to make a good hut and not just a big tumbleweed,” Asakura admitted.

“Yeah, let’s leave now please,” ranger kid was getting annoying. It’s true we were helping him, but if we found a way to make our lives better on the way we couldn’t ignore it that easily.

“Yeah five minutes seeing that hut and how it’s built won’t hurt Akira anyway. Especially him being a king candidate, maybe the extra patience will help him see clearly and the error of his ways,” Yumi added with a kind of aggressive look on her face. I think I agreed with her but stayed silent. I was trying not to smirk of course, so Ranger Kid wouldn’t think badly of us.

“I agree!” Rina said, raising her fist in the air cheerfully excited like a kid. She could be really spontaneously funny like that and playful.

“Still, I’m just surprised they already found clay deposits,” Asakura exclaimed with an impressed look.

“You knew they’d find clay?” I asked.

“Not clay per se, but I felt like if their job skills were finding things, which it does, then they would find some useful resources at some point,” she explained.

“Yes, ranger-san says this area has a lot of really good things to draw resources from,” the girl said, blushing.

“You call him ranger-san?” Rina asked puzzled.

The girl looked embarrassed again, “well, uh…he didn’t like his name from real life and he always liked rangers in RPGs…so he likes being called ranger-san. And it shows he’s moving up in the world, the new world anyway.”

“Eh? Is that so? Ranger-san does sound a bit weird though,” Yumi said, scratching her chin.

“Well….his first name was Ahnass Rhammar,” Housekeeper-san said, clearly embarrassed. Suddenly I understood better after that.

“Oh,” we all exclaimed.

“Yeah Ranger-san is pretty creative! Let’s go with that,” someone said.

“I agree! Go Ranger-san!”

“I never knew a name could give such pain,” I said in shock.

“How could someone give their kid a weird name like that?” Sensei asked.

In my last school a boy was named Chevrolet,” Yumi shrugged.

Long silence.

“Yeah Ranger-san sounds better,” Rina said cheerfully, bringing the good atmosphere back.

“If my name was Ahnass Rhammar I’d change my name too,” Yumi admitted. “Or find a cliff…”

“Back to before, is finding clay deposits so good?” I asked, turning to Sensei.

She nodded appreciatively. “Clay absorbs water better than sand and other soil. It will cause the rain water to run off more than other soils would at first, before then absorbing some of it in a good way. Then it shrinks and is more cohesive than other earth types. Then you can decorate it better after hardening than other compacted earth.”

“Sensei sounds like a scientist,” Rina said in a loopy kind of way with her tongue partly sticking out, still in her ‘loopy positive’ mode.

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“Well…I fail at science…” Yumi looked down and was suddenly depressed. Rina patted her on the back and then she looked a bit brighter after that.

“Eh?? Ranger-san said clay was really good for the huts, but he couldn’t explain why! Now I can tell him what Sensei said! It will make him happy!” Rina smiled.

“You sure are happy all the sudden?” Yumi wondered seeing Rina, “I’ve not seen you like this for awhile. What gives?”

“Well of course I’m happy! I get to be out walking around with Sensei, Yumi, and Shun!” She flashed a smile that almost made us forget we were in a fallen world resembling hell.

“Uh let’s get going now, please!” Ranger kid called to us, but he was staring at Rina…And the Yumi alert was going off for boy trouble.

She growled low under her breath so only we could hear her, “why does Rina attract so many vultures? I can’t believe how often it happens…” she shook her head sadly.

“Ahh I wondered about that too,” Asakura said. “I think there are a few girls really pretty like Rina, but her innocence is like honey to them…right?”

“Ahh, you’re right!” Yumi exclaimed. Her girl protect radar had pinged at exactly the same time Sensei said that.

“Thanks for showing us your hut!” I waved, thinking we were about to leave.

But Rina had looked inside the doorway. “Ah, wow it’s bigger than I thought it was from the outside!”

Now suddenly all of us were looking at this mysterious cleverly done shack.

“Wow, so clean,” Yumi gasped.

There was a nice clean bedding of fresh leaves and stuff and the ground was swept clean of anything dirty. It actually looked really good and appealing.

“Wow, thank you so much!” Sensei bowed to the other girl.

“We better get over to see Akira now, guys,” I said.

“Was it bad that we stopped to look at her hut? Selfish I mean?” Rina asked worriedly.

“Hmm I’m not sure. We did get side tracked,” Yumi said.

“I guess it’s not good. But I think we were just surprised because it was the first thing that looked really good about this world. We’d not seen anything really that gave us hope yet. I think you were surprised and shocked to see it because you needed to see symbols of hope for a future. And we don’t know how to live here yet, so naturally we’d be distracted by something that could help us,” I said thinking about it.

“You are right Shun! People do need to believe they can have a future in a place. Just going from one emergency to another doesn’t cut it,” Sensei said, nudging me in the arm again…again with her side boob and its hypnotic warmth. I tried to not look at Sensei’s really stretched out blouse, I was afraid I’d not be able to stop looking at it. Come to think of it, Yumi’s weren’t bad looking either, though a bit smaller.

I struggled to control myself and my composure…counting to ten in my mind.

She…didn’t realize how much that made me crazy. I felt so embarrassed. Plus Sensei was older…wait a minute. Come to think of it, Sensei wasn’t that much older than we are…and it’s true we were stuck on another world and just trying to survive…conventional rules wouldn’t work here. So complicated…but she was my teacher too.

“Hey is it just me or are people sick?” Yumi noticed quickly as we got to a new area while following ranger kid. He’d pushed us to move faster the last few minutes after leaving the hut of huts. We were now about a quarter of a mile down the trail and in a new sectioned area.

“Huh?” Sensei looked up alarmed.

We were moving along fairly easily enough, but suddenly now that I could point it out some of the kids were sick in some of the little homemade shacks. We could hear coughing and all kinds of crying out. It wasn’t everyone of course, but there was a noticeable amount of them.

“Uh oh,” Yumi said darkly.

“I hear people groaning,” Yumi said explaining, when I gave her a confused look.

“Eh? Are you sure?” Rina wondered innocently.

We were trying to go into a part of the woods that was near the edge of the plains and sure enough a few people could be heard in pain.

“What’s going on?” I asked, calling out to ranger kid ahead of us.

“I-I don’t know. This wasn’t like this an hour ago when I was trying to find you guys. Last I checked Akira was the only one coughing,” he said.

“I thought you said you didn’t know what was wrong with him?” Sensei demanded.

“Well, I honestly don’t but I do remember hearing moans and coughing,” he replied.

“So how much farther are Akira and Yuriko? We aren’t even there, and they were the first people to start to cough right?” I asked.

“About another hundred yards I think?” ranger kid said. “See that spot near where there’s more elevation in the ground and an incline with less trees? For some reason Akira liked that spot because it stays sunny there all day but is also kind of cool without getting wet. The two of them staked it out as their homestead claim for Yuta’s homestead program,” he said trying to be helpful.

“Eh?! Homestead program? What the hell?! Why is all this stuff going on and nobody is sharing the information! How come we didn’t know people were already claiming land and where to live?! If we’d known that we would have claims too!” Yumi was really upset. I could see why she was upset and our group was too.

“I never heard about any homesteading program too,” I said dourly.

After all, we didn’t want to be without a spot of our own…

“Uh, did nobody mention that to you guys?” The ranger kid seemed to act dumbly like there’d been a miscommunication. But I could see he’d just gotten a little bit stiff all the sudden. He was suddenly defensive, but trying to hide it.

Bingo…there was more going on than we realized.

“Yumi, we’re going to have to make this guy spill everything he knows,” I whispered, desperately wanting to crack my knuckles and hit something. He was just enough ahead of us to not hear me.

Yumi nodded, she had a spear with her luckily enough that we’d gained from the orc fight. Plus I’d had my steel axe hidden in the demon item box so it wouldn’t be stolen, but the other two didn’t have weapons with them. After all, we thought we weren’t going to be doing anything dangerous, but just going to help someone.

But we couldn’t help but notice the coughing all around us in the little tumbleweed shacks was still happening and not going away.

“Uh, Sensei…it’s not a plague or something is it?” Rina wondered aloud.

Orc scouts recently in the area and lots of people sick…not good. Not good at all, I thought.

Rina being weak, made this the worst possible place to bring her either. I felt like hitting myself, and I was burning with anguish.

But somehow Sensei sensed what I was thinking, “It’s not your fault. We couldn’t have known everyone was getting sick. We thought he had some kind of work injury, Shun.”