Chapter 45

Day 3 since entering the gnomes’ warren…

It’s taking getting used to the gnomes way of live and their terrible food. We’ve also had to punish some of the complainers that wanted to give the gnomes a piece of their mind without thinking of the consequences.

Daily we are trying to get a routine established and figure out how to live. Initially it seems that a lot of people are sleeping a lot too to rest from their mental exhaustion and from all of the trauma that they’ve seen. The gnome elder tells me that is pretty normal when I was worried about it at first.

We are also starting to realize that the gnomes are still worried about if they made the right decision to help us. So we need to focus on building trust with them.

But the argument of, ‘if the orcs don’t kill us, the gnome food surely will’ is hard to contest still. I’ve also building up my gag reflex against it, but at least we’re not starving. The lack of a sun and little light throughout their warren has made concept of time much harder though; but I’m glad I have a watch, though it’s not in good shape.

I wonder how long the battery would last in this world…

I made a breakthrough in training today, or rather a potential breakthrough.

It happened after my exhaustive work on trying to help get the others healed up and after all the naps I had to take. But it’s only one small part in the bigger scope of things. I have much further to go and to train harder to get stronger.

Despite gangster girl declining to help me train in magic, I bribed one of her friends during lunch to spy for me and watch her train. My reasoning was if she couldn’t do magic in the first place then they might not care if she watched since she’s already around those people most of the time anyway.

I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about it. I had hit her up for her help right after she had the gnomes’ soup, which made things easier. By doing it that way I think her nearly choking on the terrible smelly stuff stirred up her desire to find things that can give her a better life and made her more susceptible to give in from an already desperate situation.

First I had to think that if I paid the girl everything up front in total I’d get nothing out of her and there would be no incentive for success. So I had to structure it to where she felt a little bit of the honey, but not all of it. She had to also know the amount up front paled compared to what was coming for her hard work. So I gave her one silver coin up front, and told her every time she could tell me something new about how the other girl was practicing and with specific details she’d be given some bribe money, but of course she has to have details.

“But what if I get caught?” she asked getting stressed out.

“Well how would they catch you? There’s nothing for a non magic job to gain. You could just say you are fascinated with their skill and they’ll think they only saw you watching, not actually doing anything wrong,” I argue back.

She nods, “yeah I suppose you are right. They wouldn’t suspect me, huh.”

It worked for getting the spy to take the bait.

Of course, if she gets caught she has to deny it, and deny revealing anything about me. But the chances of that are slim to none. Most likely if they did see her they’d just think she was being curious. I also had to reassure her from the start that nothing would come to her friend in a hurtful way and she wouldn’t be doing anything bad. She’d just be helping the group of us survive better by giving me information on how the others train.

There was also a touch and go situation where she was worried I’d push her down like I did supposedly with Asakura Sensei, thanks to the false reputation I’d been given. She threatened to scream if I did. It wasn’t easy to lure her away from the others to start the conversation in the first place either.

Stupid rumors causing so much trouble…darn you Rina…

So now Miura the spy is working for me…with conditions. Of course the others can’t know about it. When she wants to talk to me she has to pretend it’s some kind of healer business, and act unfriendly towards me in front of the others. She’s still a bit distrustful thanks to the bad reputation we have but I think we can wear that down.

She will give me a signal if there is some kind of information to pass on by marking a spot near my tent on the cave wall at a certain spot.

It helps that Miura has a very unassuming girl next door look with glasses and an innocent face. Who would have guessed!

By the end of the day I found out the gnome ‘earth children’ mentor had been having her spin sand in a spiral formation like a really small dirt devil. Of course it goes without saying that he meant spinning the sand with the force of magic aura, not by the hands themselves or other tools. By reducing the amount of earth being moved she was practicing on a very finite amount. They were also trying to teach her to try to harden and pack smaller rocks against each other in layers on one of the cavern walls. She also didn’t understand why she should repack the rocks onto each other over and over.

I don’t think it was for manual labor…or to help the back muscles any.

I lost two silver coins to find this information but if it pays out with something I can work on I guess it’s worth it.

What did this mean? Was it a visual exercise only or was there something about the makeup of it? It would take some time to figure this out. It seems the two exercises are different somehow, but I’m not sure why. By the description of things it didn’t sound like much and didn’t seem to be an outright spell or big effect. But it did seem to be helpful in working on technique somehow.

After thinking about it awhile I hypothesized it was like push ups or sit ups for magic. Speaking of which…I need a training program for many areas and not just magic. I decide from today forward I will train the body too, but of course I’m more interested in magic.

Would the same thing work for me if I’m a different element? It must affect her ability to do it somehow. The problem was that I’d never be able to tell until there was an effect break through, but by then I wouldn’t need it. I hypothesized logically that if there were training exercises that would work for earth magic, then surely there would be some that would work for light magic too.

I had also been thinking that my heal technique was based off picturing the light particles and sort of pulling them through into someone but I hadn’t tried anything like a spiral or spinning of the particles yet, or other things. I’d try this next time and do some experimenting to see what worked. This also brought up the idea again that different types of visualization may affect things a great deal in addition to practice and technique buildup over time.

So I needed to change how I was visualizing the flow of the mana and how it worked together. But that meant I’d have to study what was more effective in making it flow well and better rather than just average.

But another issue came up now from all of this.

I had been planning and thinking of sharing the information with others that I’d been given from Fox Girl and Sunghee but maybe now I should reconsider. They would take what they could and probably ditch me. Saiya had helped with the escape plan even but it had been my idea, yet she still wouldn’t help me even though it had saved her life. Even though my not being stronger in magic meant the critically hurt might die and she still wouldn’t.

I don’t think the kingship plan was entirely given up on either, which was a great source of anxiety for me.

I’d been assuming this whole time that the others would be trustworthy and stick with me through everything but I was finding out that was wrong. Even if I were to convince them, they’d easily turn back to the idea if there was any amount of trouble or adversity. It was especially a probability because the others would feel confident and powerful with their new skills and especially feel that way even more when nobody was wounded anymore, or if their new skill seemed to make them above others in strength.

Yumi of all people had been the one to teach me this, when I’d thought she was in my camp more than anyone else because of Rina. Asakura I wasn’t sure how far she’d go either, though things seemed to be going better lately. Akira and Yuriko were already barely in our camp.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I realized.

I needed to rethink my plan. If I just gave all the rewards of my hard work to others they’d leave me in the dust.

Akira and Yuriko were for sure going to break off on their own once we hit a city. They probably were gathering information on how to live from the gnomes already. I also think I hadn’t seen them around us as much lately. But because of the severe exhaustion created by the massive amounts of sleep incurred from trying to heal the wounded I’d been left out of a lot of the conversations and goings on around the camp.

It left me in a dangerous position. Being cut off, I could be left behind easily.

Despite being in demand, I would be forgotten once they had what they wanted and didn’t think they needed to be healed anymore if they were strong enough. They had such short range planning after all. I was also getting more isolated the last couple days because of the nature of my skill and the sheer number of wounded forcing me to get burned out really fast after maxing out all my power. This isolation meant a lot of risk from consequences of neglect and being forgotten for needs and things going on.

Would it be better in the long run to keep many secrets to keep one step ahead of the two king ship candidates?

I was lost in thought trying to decide what to do when I heard a voice near me. Asakura had returned from cleaning up at the springs.

“Hey do you got a minute?” Asakura asked when she found me waking up from my nap at the tent where we were all staying. She was leaning down over me where I was just sleeping a few seconds ago. But no matter how you argued how plain they were, Asakura still looked good in the gnome overalls and she does have nice legs that are fully exposed. She had her blouse on underneath the top two suspender pieces that went over her shoulders. A lot of cleavage is still there in the open.

Doh! Stop staring I managed to tell myself early on and looked away.

“Shun? You aren’t avoiding me are you?” Asakura asked innocently. She tapped her hand lightly on my back.

“No we’re fine, I’m just worried about a lot of stuff,” I said honestly.

“But you seem like you are avoiding me,” she insists.

“No I’m not. Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure?

“We’re good!”

“Oh, that’s good. I want you to know I’m going to try to work things out with you; just that we’re not going to rush anything okay?” She placed her hand on my knee then.

Instinctively I nearly jump. I’m not used to a girl touching me…it was a shock. But it’s not bad. It feels good actually. Her hand lingers there and I start to want to get closer to her to feel it more.

I also wondered if I could get a few extra pair of the overalls? Not all of us had them since we had to wait for the gnomes to produce them and they hadn’t planned on human sized colony members until now. Akira and Yuriko had also handled giving out the overalls, so I hadn’t been aware of all the details yet. They had trouble finding some of our sizes, particularly for Akira. I’d gotten mine only last night; girls had priority it seems.

“Is now a good time to talk?” she asked.

“Sure what is it?” I asked.

She kind of gave me a half smile. “Want to go for a walk? Let’s go talk and hang out,” she said.

Eh? Seriously? Was Sensei asking me out? Or was it business? I can’t tell which it is actually, or maybe both?

Probably business, my logic oriented brain reasoned.

“Sure,” I said. “What about the others?”

“They are still out in the fields working with the gnomes and the shift is nearly over. Now’s our chance to be alone!” she said excitedly.

“Aren’t you worried about the rumors of us having done it three times and being sexual deviants?” I wondered, raising an eyebrow.

She shrugged, “now that the damage is already done I don’t the reason to hold back. It’s too late to fix it. I wish that things hadn’t been so hard for me to wake up though.”

“Well what did you want to do?” I said.

“Come on, I’ll show you some place cool!” she led me by the hand dragging me firmly behind her. Not releasing her hand from mine also felt really wonderful. The huge cavern area we were in was really dark and hard to see as she led me along. Her other hand held up the bug hive lantern.

Because Asakura had one of the gnomes’ glowy lamps, I figured we were probably going away from the others for awhile. We kept going for some time but as we walked down the corridor I had trouble telling where we were. But she seemed to know where we were; sometimes she’d lift the lamp higher to look at the markings on the corridors.

That was my first signal that the gnomes had a marking system similar to street signs so you didn’t get lost in the tunnel network. They’d promised us some maps earlier on our first day here, but they had a paper shortage so it was taking some time to get them. It was a cleverly done system of tunnels that branched out with ramps, and curves while going up and down all over the place. In some places a tunnel came out in balcony areas overlooking other rooms.

In this way we could get some really good views of what others were doing in parts of the warren even.

After awhile we found ourselves near a bunch of the gnomes children that were really small. It was a quiet secluded area with strange alien like mushrooms all over it. In the middle of the clean rock floor the kids were chattering and cheering at each other. The kids were mostly between one and two feet tall, which made sense since the adults only grew to about just over three to three and a half feet. And most of them had odd straw texture like hair that seemed to point out to the sides, looking hard to comb.

“Aren’t they cute?” Asakura said pointing at the kids. She looked kind of happy and peaceful. She was showing off pearly white teeth with a fascinated smile. Then she sat on her heals to watch them, beckoning for me to sit by her too.

Some of them looked at us curiously but then seemed to be less alarmed when they saw we were interested in what they were doing.

I was too surprised to say anything.

This was what gnome kids did? Their hair was much like the adult gnomes in that it sort of hung down like pieces of straw, except a lot of them had dark hair or gray hair, and earth colors rather than blonde. They also had premature wrinkles like the older gnomes despite being young.

Were the wrinkles a racial trait then? They weren’t like horrific old age wrinkles but a lot of crow’s feet around the eyes and face lines.

They were playing some kind of game that looked like marbles, using polished well rounded rocks that had been rounded by one of the adults or someone in some kind of trade. It was surprising what the gnomes could do, since the rocks had been rounded so well. If someone didn’t know any better they might even mistake it for a machine produced marble.

“Amazing isn’t it?” Sensei asked. She wasn’t upset like before and now she was smiling again.

She waved to the kids and they recognized her waving back. They even let her approach and watch us.

Oh interesting. They recognized her. She’d been here many times then. Was this where she’d been when she wasn’t with me?

They gestured to her to watch their game and even pick sides. They weren’t sure what to do with me but tried to be nice, though they were nervous.

As we watched there was an intense marble game going on with three of the bigger kids, all with the same long pointy noses like the gnome elder. Then abruptly after several minutes one of the kids missed hitting the other marbles and lost. He didn’t have any marbles left and had to bow out of the game. Only the other two kids were left.

“Oh it’s getting tense for them isn’t it?” I said, noticing the kids’ behavior. They were firmly divided in two camps now, cheering for the two that were left. They had sweat on their foreheads and were studying angles of the marble circle to try to make a strategy to hit the marbles. If you missed your marble would be stuck in the middle and someone could pick it up on their turn if they were to hit it.

They agonized over trying to figure out the best way to strike and flip their marble in.

Then suddenly the one kid missed. He covered his eyes with his hands and fingers with only a small slit for peeking between the fingers.

He said something which probably meant, “noooooo!” as he lost his marble. He still had a small pile of them between his feet, but the fear of losing was agonizing it seemed. The rival had a larger pile than he did too.

The other kid smiled back now that it was his turn. He made a big show of doing a proud but playful pose in front of the others and flexed his tiny muscle, which to us was about the thickness of some chicken bones. The other kids even laughed at his skinny little arms with him. We couldn’t understand them since we were only able to talk to the gnome elders so far. But it was still fun to watch them play.

I decided Asakura was right. The gnome kids were kind of cute in a strange odd sort of way. Their small size and features seemed bizarre to a human, but not necessarily ugly.

The kid then flipped his marble agilely over a rock obstacle and it bounced against two other rock marbles. He smiled and bowed deeply to the others after picking up his newly acquired marbles. But I liked that he didn’t gloat.

That was the other thing I learned about the gnome kids behavior. They treated each other well even while winning. The kid who won more marbles patted the kid who lost his on the back. His playful pride was also mostly play rather than real attitude, I suddenly realized. Then his turn was over, and the other kid has his chance again.

Were all gnomes and gnome kids this well behaved?

We continued to watch them play and took sides clapping for them when they did good. It turns out we were there for several hours before we ended up walking slowly back to our camp.

As the game was over and the parents of the gnome kids called for them to come home, I found myself with Asakura alone as we sat on a big boulder.

“Come here,” She said suddenly.

“Huh?”

She gestured again, “Here, take my hand.”

“Eh? What for?” I said suspiciously.

“It’s fine. This is what two people do when they are getting to know each other.”

I was careful and wondered if it was a trick. It’s too good to be true after all.

Slowly Asakura took my hand in hers. It felt very warm and soft. She smiled. She kept my hand in hers. She seemed nervous at first, and both of our hearts were pounding from fear of rejection. I didn’t realize that until then that we were both pretty similar in personality. She seemed to like holding hands too. Because it was very simple I didn’t realize how wonderful it was just holding a girl’s hand until now. She was also standing pretty close to me.

But for my mind I’m trying to figure out where we are at. I didn’t get it. She asks me out on a date but clearly rejected moving forward before when I hadn’t asked. All that talk about just being like brother and sister; so confusing…

She’s looking at the glittering cave walls. It has a sparkly like effect from whatever the gnomes did to make their cave so beautiful. How come human caves didn’t look this cool?

“So what did you think of the kids playing?” I asked.

It seems silly but the gnome kids were just fun to be around for me. So talking about it seemed natural.

“It was really fun,” she said, smiling genuinely.

“Really? You aren’t just saying that?” I respond.

She turned to me, “well. I’m actually surprised you are the one saying it. I was hoping you’d like the gnome kids and like watching them play.”

“Because…why?” I asked.

She shrugged, “well at first I wasn’t sure why. I had a hope that you’d like some of the same things as I did. I was also hoping you’d like working with kids because I am a teacher and that’s what I do. So I was hoping you’d be compatible with that since it’s been part of my life. But then I realized it was a good chance to see if we liked things that were simple and good.”

“Eh?” I was surprised. Did she think that through?

“It was a fun date though wasn’t it?” she said.

“That was a date?” My mouth was wide open.

I’d like to think of it as a date, but I’d had such bad lucky I could hardly believe such a thing were true. When she asked to hold hands, I was just not believing this could happen. I suppose it could be a date, but I hadn’t really thought it was one until she said it. Because I’d never been very popular my mind had trouble accepting it.

“Yeah, it was silly. And hopefully it’ll be the first of many. Anything can be a date if you are trying to be with the person you are getting close too,” She blushed.

“So you are OK with us then? I thought you were afraid of being with a student before?” I wondered.

She paused for a bit. “Well I was worried about that. If we were back home it’d be a lot of trouble. But then I realized the gnomes here don’t have like social classes among them and they are happy. They just focus on equality and everyone helping out and everyone finding a place in their society. They are all equal and share with each other. We could learn a lot from them on how to live. If they can be happy like that with a simple life then so can we,” she said.

“Yeah they are nice and it’s peaceful here. If it weren’t for the food…” I coughed imitating the sound and look of a dying person.

She giggled. “Well you passed my test.”

“Eh?! There was a test?!” I exclaim.

She blushed again, but then came in close to me. She hugged me then while sitting next to me embracing me. “I had to find out if you liked children. I also needed to know if you could tolerate those weaker than you were. The gnome kids were a good way of doing that.”

“But I didn’t really play with them, I just watched?” I asked as a question.

“Yeah, but you showed interest in them and their game. That’s enough. I’m actually OK with the idea of you not playing with marbles,” she flashed her teeth in a smile.

“Haha,” I laughed with her.

I had a new doubt though…

“You know I’m not in a hurry to have kids. I’m still pretty young and want to enjoy life,” I said.

Suddenly her eyes got big. “Oh that’s not what I meant either. Oh gosh, so awkward. I don’t m-mean that we have t-to have k-k-kids…err I mean…” she suddenly got really flustered and embarrassed. Her face is now bright red and she’s looking down. “Uh, what I mean to say is that…I-I am not in a hurry to make kids-…” then she suddenly covered her mouth. “Uh, I don’t mean that either. There’s nothing wrong with ma-making kids part. N-not that there’s anything wrong with ma-making babies.”

She gets even more embarrassed, “Oops, err w-what I m-meant was I don’t th-think it’s wrong to b-be in a relationship and have fun m-making love. B-but I don’t want to get pregnant for a while. In a world like this with no safety nets, no healthcare, and war I can’t imagine getting pregnant here. It terrifies me.” She lets out the rest of the air in her chest with a sigh.

We’re both beat red.

So…the brother and sister thing was all because of fear of pregnancy? Or wait, what if it’s not the only issue? Did she have other concerns?

I sort of didn’t know what to say. My mouth was hanging open. My heartbeat has increased a lot. It’s like suffocating me, because of how nervous I feel.

As she leaned in next to me she kept hugged me for a long time, making me really frustrated sexually. We didn’t talk for awhile but then she had me lay down with my head resting on her hips and upper thighs as a lap pillow. Despite what anyone says this is the most amazing thing ever. It was so soft…I can’t even describe it.

Lap pillows are awesome!

My gosh…her boobs were huge too. I had thought they were big but I’d underestimated her. Of course the incident from the other day had shown me this too, but…being right under them is also amazing! From this view I couldn’t see them but their size was like magnified through the thin cotton of the blouse. Without trying to they were eventually touching my head when she exhaled and was just being natural, relaxing with me.

I didn’t look at porn but…I couldn’t help but think this had a resemblance to certain girls with over-sized boobs. They did look too big to be real. Maybe she did have implants. If she did they must have been one of the top sizes.

“You know it’s OK to have a good sibling like pure relationship,” she said with her hand patting my head. “This wasn’t about trying to see if you were into the idea having kids but seeing if you were normal enough to be responsible.” She’d calmed down a bit so she wasn’t all flustered anymore.

“Are you sure you aren’t afraid of being with me? That whole brother and sister idea seems weird to me,” I asked.

Man this was so frustrating. Did she realize what kind of effect she was having?

She then held me tighter. “Well it’s a slow start. I still have some anxieties because of our situation in a world we don’t know. We have to be careful and go slow. But I realized if I don’t adapt and be different we won’t survive. You are all I have. My sister and my family I don’t have here to help me and I need people with me. My reasons aren’t perfect but I’ll try to be good to you. Please be patient with me. So let’s just go slow but remain steady over time OK. Even if it’s only as a brother and sister it’s OK.”

Also this wasn’t brother and sister to do a lap pillow with your boobs touching my head, I wanted to say.

“So we’re siblings not dating? What are you suggesting?” I wasn’t sure if we were thinking the same thing.

“Well it’s more like we’re siblings for now yes. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to go further than that,” she said. Ah, this wasn’t too bad. I should be more grateful for even getting this far. I’d actually remembered hearing rumors that Sensei rejected everyone flat out no matter who it was, a few months ago.

Could it be she was putting up a front to avoid getting close to people?

“So you think survival will go up in pseudo-family group situations or with people in a family rather than separate individuals?” I asked.

“Absolutely! Just look at penguins. They group together and survive the arctic blizzards only because they huddle together to protect each other. The others haven’t thought of it this way, but didn’t we survive all those other things because of it?” she said.

She was right.

“Penguins…I don’t care to be one, but I guess the idea sounds interesting,” I thought about it. If Yuta and his penguins had stayed with our penguins many more penguins in our circle would have survived beyond the forty two that were left.

We just held hands while I used her for a lap pillow lying down. It also felt good because the air circulating in the caverns was cool, making touch much more appreciated. I wanted this lap pillow and boob sandwich mode to last forever.

So it seemed that Asakura purposefully led me into what was supposed to be something boring to see if I was emotionally mature enough to handle what others might take for granted or if I couldn’t enjoy something too simple. She was very mature and smart I could see. Probably most the class would have failed such a test. Even among adults a lot of them would fail it.

So clever…

We enjoyed the silence. After a minute she cleared her throat.

“I’m scared of relationships Shun,” Asakura said. “When I was younger…” suddenly we were interrupted.

But then we were interrupted.

“Yo, Shun! You guys aren’t making out or doing anything R rated are you?” Rina was here again to cock block me right on schedule…

Oh my hell!

“Because you know that’s not allowed. I’ll stay here to chaperon you guys so you don’t do anything wicked,” Rina made a big showing of winking really big to both of us.

“You…” Asakura’s concentration was broken. She I think wanted to do something hurtful to Rina. The date was ruined.

Thus ended the date.

I kept wanting to yell at Rina for most the day after that.

But I began to wonder if Asakura really did have implants the longer I thought about it. She had such a big bust and such big size that it was hard to say.