The next thing I knew, I was waking up from the sleeping bag. Wasn’t I on guard duty when did I fall asleep? I don’t ever remember feeling sleepy let alone going to sleep. Did I really fall asleep without realizing? What a lousy guard I am. I hope we are not surrounded by monsters waiting to jump on us. I quickly got up on my feet and checked to camp to see if anything happened while I was dozing off. 

Looking around there were no hungry wolfs gushing their teeth at me so the camp was pretty safe. Letting out a small sight, I went back down to the sleeping bag. Checking the timer on my Calm Mind skill there were quite a few hours left to dawn. Since I was not feeling sleepy and had just woken up, I decided to keep guard till dusk. 

Speaking of Calm Mind, I guess this skill will completely disappear in a few hours. I am going to miss it even though I am not sure of its effects yet. While my 53 points in Sanity are nothing compared to 10 000 points Calm Mind gives me, I am confident I am not going to have an existential crisis once morning comes. At the very least I can kill another monster without flinching. There must be hundreds of Level 1 adventurers like me who experience life or death situation all the time. Hell, Maya went through the same shit as me and she seems okay, for the most part.

That poor girl, I hope she gets a good night sleep. I want to ask her about her situation, but seeing how she refused to answer any of my previous questions, I doubt she is willing to talk to me. There is nothing I can do about it, it is best not to interfere with other people's problems, especially if they don’t want you to. I am fine as long as she can lead me back to town.

While I was thinking I heard footsteps coming from behind me. I jumped away from the sleeping bag, thinking that it was another monster. I turned around to face the monster and prepared to activate my skill. I was not planning to waste any time to kill it this time.

“Don’t! It is me,” an anxious voice came over from the darkness.

I recognized the voice and sure enough, a familiar pair of crimson eyes came out from the darkness. I recognized Maya’s face thanks to the starlight above.

“Maya, don’t scare me like that,” I said to her as I went back to my seat.

“I am sorry. I just woke up and wanted to switch guard duty with you for the rest of the night,” Maya explained as she took a seat right next to me. I noticed she was no longer wearing her half-cut robe. She probably took it off when she was going to sleep.

“No need. I just woke up right now as well. I can keep guard for the rest of the night.”

“You just woke up?” Maya asked clearly surprised by what I said.

“Yeah,” I answered, feeling a little bit embarrassed, “I may have dozed off while I was keeping guard.”

“I guess you are really not a vampire,” Maya responded with a chuckle, “I am sorry. I never thought after all your big talk last night, you would fall asleep while you are on duty.”

Soon she broke into a full out laughter which made me embarrassed even more.

“Hey cut it out. You are going to attract monsters,” I spoke harshly to her fearing more for my pride than any monster that would come over.

“I am sorry. I couldn't help myself,” Maya responded, a grin still hanging on her face. 

“You look far better than you were this morning,” I spouted like an idiot. And with that, the smile disappeared from her face. Really tactful Felix, “What I meant to say was that you look better when you smile.”

Maya did not say anything back and played around with a nearby stick. It was a while before she was willing to talk again.

“Hey Felix, there is something I wanted to ask for a while now.”

“Ask away,” I responded. At this moment I was willing to do anything to get rid of the awkward silence in the air and besides all of our conversations so far were all me answering your questions. What is one more?

“Why are you so willing to talk to me? Why did you even risk your life to save me in the first place?”

“What?” I was taken back by her questions that I forgot my retort of her being allowed to ask only one question.

“I mean you saw my eyes, didn’t you? Even if you have not the first, why did you stick around after seeing them? If you were a vampire or you had evil intentions towards me, I would have understood. But so far you have been nothing but kind to me and that confuses me.”

Her eyes? What do they have to do with all of this?

“Maya, I am not sure if I am getting your questions? What do your eyes have to do with my willingness to save another human?”

“Human? As if I was ever treated like one,” Maya answered with a sneer,“ Just tell me what you want from me. Why did you save me? What do you want from me?”

I could see Maya’s eyes were starting to tear up. She had a pleading look in her eyes, expecting me to confirm her suspicions. I think the idea of me helping her for an ulterior motive is far more believable to her than me helping her out of kindness. Is she that scared of someone helping her? What kind of life had she lived to have such low expectations of other humans? I need to clear up this misunderstanding as fast as possible. Just telling her I saved for no other intentions is not going to cut it anymore. I need a new angle.

“Were you not listening to me, Maya. I have lived all my life as a lab rat to my master so I never came to the outside world. The first person I met other than my master is you and you were in danger. So I rushed in to save the only other person I have seen in a while. I had no other intentions beyond that, my master had always taught me to be kind to others. As for eyes, I have never seen anything like them before and my master never taught me about them so I have no idea of their significant, other than the fact that they are quite pretty.”

“Really?”

“Really, so please stop crying. You are kinda scaring me a little.”

Maya used the sleeves of her shirt to weep the tears of her face. I need to make use of this and get more information out of her.

“Maya, I have been answering all your questions all day. Can you please answer some of mine and can you start by telling me what all this is about.”

“Well, I guess that is fair, but it is a long story.”

“We are stuck in the middle of a forest with both of us unwilling to sleep, I think we got plenty of time.”

Maya chuckled at my remark and began to narrate her story.

“You see, a long time ago, back when the universe was not even created yet and the gods were not yet born...”

“Do you really have to go all the way back then?” I asked. Is this what she meant by it is a long story?

“No, I am just messing with you,” Maya answered with a giggle. Wasn’t she crying a few minutes ago? What with the sudden mood change?

“Okay, I am serious this time. To tell you my story I first have to start with why my eyes are so special. You see, red eyes are a symbol of bad omen. Just like the monster, you faced this morning, all the monsters of Chaos have red eyes. Not just monster even the gods of chaos and Chthonic gods have red eyes. So you see to be born with red eyes is to be born a monster or at the very least as a follower of a dark god. Neither is a good thing as people are not so accepting of monsters and followers of dark gods. That is why people see kids born with red eyes as bad omens. Abomination, they call us. Considering us as catastrophe incarnate, an Abomination is lucky if it is not killed on the spot. Though those who are not killed are not let alive by the kindness of the people. But because they fear the curse of a dark god.”

“But aren’t those superstitions. You know, people making shit up and accepting as truth without evidence to back it up.”

“No, it is true. Having red eyes does cause bad things to happen around you. There is one common factor among all kids with red eyes.”

“What is it?”

“...They are all orphans. As a curse for being born a monster, they are stripped of those who will love them the most at the moment of birth. While some say that it is kids themselves who kill their parents”

I couldn’t help but laugh at what Maya said. I was not laughing out of amusement but rather of pity and sorrow. Wasn’t I myself born an orphan, how could the death of someone’s parent be related to their eye color. Do all kids like Maya grow up believing that they were the cause of their parents.

“What are you laughing at?” Maya asked raising her brows, she must have thought I was making fun of her.

“I am sorry, I just remembered something. Please continue.”

“It does not stop there, whenever an Abomination stays a place for too long bad things start to happen. People start dying for unknown reasons, droughts start happening and all kinds of weird random things.”

“Okay, that is enough of that. I don’t quite believe your Abomination story, but I do at the very least understand what your eyes mean to other people. Can you tell me about your childhood.”

“Why can’t you believe me? I am serious about this?”

“I know you are serious, but can we move on from this topic. I am  not buying this red eyes story and I doubt anything you say will convince me any time soon.”

“You can be insufferable at times. Well like all other red-eyed children, I had no parents and had to live in an orphanage. I lived in the orphanage until I was 5 before a drought happened and food grew scarce. The orphanage blamed me for the drought and kicked out. After that I was on the streets, trying my best to survive by fighting stray cats for food, shoplifting and pick-pocketing rich merchants. Luckily, when I was a 12 I met an adventurer who took me in and trained me to be mage….However that adventurer died a couple of years ago and I have been living alone ever since. I did some quests to earn a living, but no other party will accept me because of my eyes so I was never able to make that much. Luckily I am in good terms with the town’s herb master and I used to collect herbs for her, but she had not made any request for last few weeks. That was why I accepted this quest yesterday and joined this party.”

I think that was the first time I felt sorry for someone other than me. Compared to her, I was practically eating off of a  golden spoon my entire life. She not only lost her parents but was made to believe that she was somehow responsible for their death. The people of the town must be pretty shitty to let a young girl believe that her entire life.

“Don’t worry Maya. You were not the cause of your parents' death. No matter what those idiots in the town tell you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because like you, I am also an orphan. I was told my parents died the day I was born and you don’t see me having red eyes, do you. There must have been other children in the orphanage with you, right? Did they all have red eyes as well? Don't take what other people say at face value.”

“Do you think I am an idiot? Of course, I thought of that but is hard to differentiate the truth from the lies. In all honesty, I wish that my eyes were the cause of all my hardship. At least then I will have something to blame for whenever things don’t go my way. Without them, I would have suffered my whole life for nothing,” Maya admit while staring at the ground.

“Well if that is the case then I guess it is up to you to make up your own truth,” I told Maya with a smile.

“What do you mean by make up your own truth?” Maya asked looking up at me.

“ You see over the course of my whole life, I have learned that people are quite good at deceiving themselves. Though this is not a healthy way to cope with problems it is still an effective strategy nevertheless. All you have to do it is draw your own conclusions from all that is happening to you and believe in it wholeheartedly despite the lack of evidence. ”

“I am still not getting it.”

“Let me finish. What I am saying is that we have no way of proving whether your eyes are cursed or not, we can just choose whichever to believe in it or not. You can choose to believe that your eyes are cursed and continue to blame them for all your and the town’s misfortune. You can live the rest of our lives taking no responsibility for your actions and not blaming for how they mistreated you. Or, you can believe that your eyes are not cursed and that all those bad things that happened to you are a mixture of your own bad choices and bad coincidences that people have blamed on you with justification. You can leave the rest of your lives knowing that your eyes have no control over your future and that it is up to you, Maya, to decide how your fate turns out to be, good or bad. Of course, those are just two of the many possible lies you can tell yourself. But you must remember that they are just that: lies. And they will stay like that until you choose to act on one of them and make that one your truth.”

Maya stayed quiet for a while before breaking into laughter.

“ Hey, what are you laughing at? That was quite deep, okay. Here I am trying to cheer you up and change your outlook on life and your laughing at me.”

“Haha, I am sorry. It is just that it was out of nowhere and was not expecting you get so wise all of a sudden.”

“Hey, get off my back. I'm just trying to help, I don’t want you to drain the fun out of every conversation we have in the future, going all soppy and what not.”

“You are finally revealing your true colors. I was wondering why you were so keen on helping me. You were trying to save your future conversations.”

“It is not my fault that the first person I met for a while was a troubled girl with a lot of issues.”

“Hey, who asked you to save this girl. When you saved me, you also inherited all my troubles.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get up, It almost sunrise. Let us pack away the camp and get going. Don’t want to spend another night listening to your complaints.,” I said getting off the sleeping bag and walking towards the tent.

“Hey, what you are complaining about? You spent the night with a pretty girl beside you,”

Maya’s voice came from behind me as she also got on her feet.

 “Thanks,” a short whisper came from behind me.

“Don’t mention it.”

We started packing up but we realized that the tent was too big for us to carry so we left it behind. We decided to take the bag with the food rations and the two water sacks and leave everything else. Before we left, we went back to the place where I killed the lizard monster yesterday. Maya wanted to collect her teammates' Adventurers’ Badges and take them back to the town. 

She also wanted to get some parts of the monster to sell back in the city. its body parts for a lot of money back at the village. To our surprise, there was only a pile of skeletons left in place of the monster. It seemed like some other monsters have gotten to the monsters’ corpse before us and had eaten all of its flesh.

Luckily, they have left the skeleton, which was, according to Maya, far more valuable than the actual meat. She said that high-level beasts bones made fine armor and that their fangs and claws could be used to craft weapons. She was not sure just how strong the monster as she had never seen it before. We decided to take what we can anyways as body parts of low-level monsters still sold at a good price in the market.

With all our preparation done we started our journey back to town. 

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DiskOball

For those of you wondering, Felix did see the announcements on the previous chapters. It is just that I didn't include his reaction because it will slow down the pacing of the story.

By the way, I try my best to edit these chapters the best I can, but since this is my first book there might be some errors that I might have missed. Feel free to point those out to me and give me feedback on my writing.