I was in a pretty strange situation right now, I was sleeping until I was awoken by the voice of Nozomi, I was super happy to see her again, but she woke up Hope which caused a lot of problems, I saw that I was now back in my normal form so I had to turn into a humanoid shape to help the baby settle down. Now that I've done that I was tasked to explain to her why it was with me.

I currently couldn't speak with her in a humanoid form as my throat was literally unable to talk to her properly, so I had to compensate by using telekinesis.

"Oh her? She's Hope, an abandoned child I found."

Suddenly while I was explaining to Nozomi, Ethan had barged in.

"Rai, did you just steal a child?!"

"W-What? No! I found her abandoned by her parents in the forest!"

I was dumbfounded by what Ethan said, it appears he actually meant it as he sighs relievedly, seriously Ethan?

"So, it also doesn't have any parents? Poor thing, but are you sure it's very safe to bring it with us?"

Hearing Nozomi continue made me return my focus to her.

"Well, it's either we bring her with us or we leave her to die, so anything would be better than leaving her be."

"But wouldn't she hold us back massively? You already saw how she reacted to a loud noise, and how long would she remain that useless?"

"Eh, maybe for like a couple of years."

"A couple of years? How many days is that?"

"Hm, well, one year is 365 days."

"365 days?! Rai, we haven't even lived for one year, we are still not even adults!"

Oh right, now that she mentioned it, I guess we still aren't full adults, we were still juveniles.

"But, I do feel bad for the little thing, so we will all raise it I guess, but you better think of something to do with it when we get into combat."

She did have a ton of good points there, but I'll think of a solution to those problems.

"Hey Rai? What's the name of the little one?"

Oh yeah right, I haven't told them her name. I use telepathy to talk to them both this time.

"By the way, her name is Hope."

"Hope? Nice name."

"I can guess why she's called that."

Alright fine Ethan, it isn't the most complex name in the world but it is still nice.

"Ahem, alright you two, there is something else I want to tell you, this forest, as you may have already figured out, isn't the forest of Naher."

"Yeah, it was too different from our home forest."

"So! If we wanna find the kingdom of Almot, we're gonna need some directions or a map."

"You can't be suggesting... to go into a city or something?"

"Well Ethan, that is what I was thinking of."

"How will you get in idiot? In case you haven't noticed, your humanization is pretty bad, and I can tell in an instant that you aren't human."

"Hey, is this village thing like the goblin village?"

"Ok, first off, Nozomi, a village doesn't have to have goblins only, this one has humans in it. Secondly, I already know that Ethan, I was planning to find or make something to hide me as I try to go into one of those villages, and if that doesn't work, I'd just investigate in my normal form and try to avoid being seen."

"Well then, that means you need to do a hell of a lot of scouting and planning before you try to go in there."

"Is it fine with you two though?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Well, Rai, I guess as long as you promise me not to do anything reckless, or get caught."

"Yeah, I promise you."

Well, I'm glad that turned out well, and now we have to start planning for how we'll get any of the things we need to do that.

Before we start planning I see that hope was reaching at me and pulling my fur and trying to reach my ears at the top of my head, was she tired or something?

"Oi Rai, you better feed her, I can tell that she is hungry."

"Huh, how do you know a lot about children?"

"Well, I worked as a baby sitter a couple years ago, so I do know a bit when it comes to children."

"Wow, that's impressive, I didn't experience much since most of my life i was at home."

"Huh, didn't take you for a sheltered young master."

"Haha, but what is important here, is what food should she eat?"

"Well, seeing as she is a toddler, you can feed her soft fruits, chicken, and some vegetables, although I dunno where you'll get some chicken or if the same foods are in this world."

"Hm, that means I can use some bird meat or something huh? Well, I guess I'll head back into the forest to find some more food."

I set down hope with Ethan and Nozomi but she clings to my leg, it looks like she might've been a bit scared of them, but then Ethan gets closer and suddenly all of the caution was thrown out the window as she lunged at him.

"Well Ethan, have fun being Hopes' toy"

I change back to my normal form and then run into the forest, I could still hear Hope laughing as she was pulling at him from every possible place.

When I get into the forest, the familiar smell of blood returns, I've been smelling it ever since I was born so I never minded it, but now I was realizing how strong it smelled, to be honest, everything in the forest kills each other, it wouldn't be uncommon to see corpses that are rotting, since essence was needed to survive, almost as important as food and water, I never mind it then I see a bird pecking at some bones, before it notices me I cut its head clean off, I take the bird and remove all the blood from it, I look around for other foods, I find some more berries that I knew were safe to eat, and I find a couple of strange vegetables, one looked like a leek and the other was sort of a mix between broccoli and kale, I also take them with me, I realized that I myself was also getting hungry and so I also hunt for a one of those deers too, I store all the thing I picked up with space time techniques, and then I head back.

When I get back there I see that Ethan was trying to get Hope to walk toward him, I take out all of the food I had collected and drop it on the ground, now that I think about it, I'll need to prepare the bird properly if I wanna try feeding any of it to Hope, Nozomi instantly tries to get eating the deer, but I also wanted to test something out. I stop her from eating which made her slightly grumpy, but I promised her to make the food taste better which made her wait, uh, now how do I properly remove the meat from these animals?

"Hey Ethan, do you know how to remove the meat properly?"

"Nope! I've got absolutely zero clue how."

Well, my last glimmer of hope has disappeared, guess it'll have to be trial and error, for the blue bird, I try to pluck its feathers firstly, then I remove the feet, I didn't know what to do next so I did what I thought I should do, I then try to cut off the thighs and breast to be able to prepare them, I didn't do the best job and so quite a bit of meat was wasted. I then take those pieces of bird meat then cook them over a fire I made, the end result was some pretty soft meat, it was slightly burnt though, but I think maybe the kid can eat it, well, I'll wait for it to cool then I'll actually feed it to her. Now the other deer, first off I remove the skin, and when I do I was a bit overwhelmed with where I can take proper meat from it, I end up taking some from its back and cutting them into pretty large portions, I store the deer then get to working on the meat itself, well I didn't have a frying pan, so I used a rock that I had heated to really high amounts, I put it on the rock then flip it when each side was done, finally I completed all three of them, and I was pretty proud of myself.

As for the taste, well, it was better than eating it raw but it was pretty lacking, although Nozomi did enjoy it and wanted to eat it cooked from now on, but at least I experienced something new, although Hope didn't eat all of her food but ate quite a good bit of it.

"Alright now, it's time to start planning for how will we be able to enter one of the villages."