After the battle, we go to the nearest town to report.

Even for a shit hole, the place is a shit hole.

Just what you would expect from a place located as deep into the Wild as this village is.

The town had big walls with four gigantic ballistae surrounding it. Without those weapons provided by the Guild of Hunters, they wouldn’t have been able to survive for this long.

But surviving was the only thing they were able to do. And even that was just barely.

There are not many animals around, and the ones that you can find are sharper and faster as a result of having to survive monsters preying on them. If you aren’t a skilled hunter like Rosa, chances are you won’t be able to hunt enough food to fill your belly.

Because of that, most people that we see are visibly starving.

Not as the homeless and beggars that you see in the big cities, living with the scraps and pity of others. No, what you find here is more a general poverty. The contrast isn’t as big, because the healthy and fed are rare.

Besides the food problem, there are also other factors that help to guarantee that life in here is miserable. The inferior quality of the water, the lack of medicines, the meager supplies to survive the cold of harsh winters, and dozens of other small inconveniences that make things a little more unbearable for them.

And of course, the constant attack by the monsters. The endless fighting, the rebuilding of burned houses and destroyed buildings, and the burying of loved ones.

It took us a while to comprehend why there are still so many people living so far from the safety of the civilization. Being honest, it’s still a little confusing.

But during our time travelling with the Shinning Siblings and visiting different places, we got to understand the world a little better.

And the world is not a fair place.

For what we gathered, their destiny wouldn’t be any better if they left. The big cities are already overpopulated, and even basics resources are scarce for some.

Chances are they would eat even less, sleep in crowded and dirty places and be ignored at best or  despised at worst by everyone else. Soon, they would become all beggars, thieves and whores, doing what they can to survive. At least here, they have each other. Here, they are equals.

So they prefer to keep with their familiar crappy condition instead of being at the mercy of an unfamiliar crappy one.  Accepting the bad cards they’ve been dealt, and doing what they can with them.

While we walk on the city, lots of curious faces come to take a peek at us. Hunters are heroes all over the world, but for people like those villagers, Hunters are even more. For them, Hunters are hope. Hunters are the living proof that it’s possible to stay into wild territory, and thrive.

So here we are admired by all. Even we are looked with respect.

We wonder what would happen with their hope, if they find out that one of their heroes is a monster.

Our first stop in the village is, of course, the city post. As the good hunters they are, everyone wants to report as soon as possible and wait for the next orders. We need to know if the situation with the werewolves is dealt with, in which case our group could separate and focus on smaller threats, or if we should travel there to help finish the job. Either way, it means we’ll stay here for at least two days, waiting for orders.

A time we plan to use to decide our next course of action.

We managed to get all the bodies out of the way. The good thing about being the head of security of the group is that they trust us to know what is happening around. Which means it isn’t that hard to manipulate the flow of information. If we say there’s nothing happening, everyone believes it.

The only problem is Rosa.

Even with all the safe measures we took, we saw her reacting when we killed the creatures.

It took us only seconds each time, and we made sure none were capable to scream. Still, she noticed. She was focused on taking down the Cyclops and covering for everybody, but still, she noticed as wrong.

As always, she is dangerous to us.

Fortunately, she doesn’t know what was happening. She was too busy, and we didn’t give any alert. She is wary, but she doesn’t have all the pieces necessary to get to a conclusion.

But her eyes are falling on us twice the time now.

We’ll need to act more carefully.

How ironic it would be if, just after deciding to save them, we ended up having to kill them all.

It seems that, whatever is happening with the world, it’s just beginning. More monsters will come, we are sure of it. We need to be prepared. It will probably not be so easy to lure them next time. They won’t trust us forever. And Rosa will be watching attentively.

We need more information. But how can we get it?

What did humans usually do when they needed to find out new things?

Oh. We actually now that.

They go to the library.

Dozens of time we watched Diego, Daniel and Rosa studying old books, searching for information that could help our group with a quest. It always took them hours, even days some times, but they would eventually find something useful.

We know how to read the human language, even though we don’t know how or why we know that, but we do. We just never got interested in wasting our time with books.

It is worth the shot now.

We wait until the night, so we don’t raise any suspicion. The town has only a small library, in a building besides the main square. We enter it easily, hundreds of us skittering on the shadows, emerging from every crack of the wood.

It takes us only a few minutes to look around and to gather what we need.

We find three books that can be helpful.

The first is called “tales of the ancient kingdom”. It’s mostly reports of the biggest events from the past.  The second is “A basic guide of monsters”. It’s the longest by far, but it’ll probably be the most useful.  And the third is named “Travel to the Unknown. It’s a set of records of a hunter from centuries ago, who decided to explore the deeps of the Wild with his party. He was the only one that came back in the end, and on his writings he depicted what they discovered on the furthest parts of this world.

It isn’t much, but it’ll have to be enough for now. So we start reading them. All of them at the same time. Time is short, after all.

The library is completely dark, but that’s fine. We never needed light to see anyway. The darkness allows us to work without risking being seen.

Our bodies crawl on the pages, studying their contents. We don’t just read the letters; we feel their width and length on the paper. With our collective minds, we are able to get a full picture of what is written in a matter of seconds. Then we turn the pages and repeat the process.

We learn about a mystical creature with seven heads, each of a different animal. About the first king and of his son, that burned him alive while he slept. About a place made only of sand, where you could walk for days and still find nothing else. About races of monsters incredible rare, that can only be found far far away from here. About a city built on the top of trees, with inhabitant as skilled as gorillas.

It is amazing. And with each page we finish, there are new information. New wonders of this world, depicted within pieces of paper.

During this last year, we have travelled a lot. We got to know a lot of places, but there wasn’t a lot of variety. We started getting used with things. We knew what to expect. There weren’t many surprises anymore, and we liked it. We felt safer.

But on those pages, everything is new. And although new usually is dangerous, this doesn’t scare us. It just make us eager for more.

The night goes on, and we keep with our task. Lucas, Rosa, Ronaldo and all of the Knights of Spring spend it at a bar, celebrating with the populace. Kevin visits a brothel; Anna practices for a while then go to sleep. Diego and Daniel discuss strategies together with some guards.

The town isn’t that big, so we can cover a big part of it even though most of us are busy reading the books. It’s important to always have an eye on the members of our group. If we always know what they are doing, they can’t surprise us. We can blend better.

We aren’t finding a lot of information relevant to our situation, unfortunately. Still, the activity drags us and we happily focus on it.

When we finish the first one, we decide to start another. It seems a waste of time to do anything else now. This one is about the history of the town, it says who the first lord was, which were the most remarkable residents, and other things. Not really relevant to our situation at all, but we keep reading it.

Every time we finish a book, we get another. We keep this rhythm, but as the hours go by and most of the town goes to sleep, we grab more of us and increase our reading speed. Before long, we are reading four books at the same time. Then five. Then six.

When the night is over, we have already finished a third of the books inside this library.

We didn’t find out much, at the end. Besides those first three books, the other books were more random. One was about the cultivation of plants to make tea.

Still, we liked reading all of them.

Now that the morning is beginning, we will have to spread more and be ready to interact with the others. There is also the possibility of someone entering the library and seeing us, so we need to be careful. No more snooping around here until sunset at least.

This realization fills us with an indescribable anguish. How odd.

But it’s alright. We know how to be patient.

The moment the last ray of sunshine fades away, we’ll start reading again.

There are still a lot to learn, after all.

A whole world of information, waiting.

We wonder what else we had been missing, all this time.

FeverDream

After so many battles, we finally have a peaceful chapter. I always liked reading about characters studying and getting smarter, so I hope this was enjoyable to you all!