We had been walking for a while and my ribs hurt but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it should’ve been. When we finally got to the store, it was filled with food, so we moved through the shop and took the stuff with a relatively short shelf life, leaving most of the meats, since they were getting a really bad smell. We then took as much of the other edibles as we could.

We then headed home, and since we didn’t get any more interruptions, it was still bright outside when we got back. 

“Glad to see you guys back, that didn’t take too long”, Alexander yelled while jogging to the entrance, “yeah,” I responded then waited for him to get to us, “Do you know what we should do with these?” I asked while pointing to the wheelbarrows.

“Oh, not- not sure actually, I can go ask,” he suggested but another person had snuck up on us before he left. 

“You can just move them towards the building, some others will deal with the rest,” the new guy announced. His sudden appearance hadn’t just surprised me, Alexander also jumped and even Eric jolt slightly.

‘His aura of mystery has completely shattered ’I silently remarketed before trying to give the guy who sneaked up on us a nod, but he had already snuck off. 

“Oh, well, need some help?” Alexander asked me while tilting his head..

“nothing to help with, but thanks anyway” 

“k, see ya then”.

As he walked off, the two of us pushed the wheelbarrow towards the building and left them there as the guy told us.

I said goodbye to Eric with a slight hand gesture before walking into the building.

My first thoughts after entering, it was hot, very hot, and even as someone with a high-temperature tolerance, it was burning. The area we had dedicated as the hospital was just to the right of the entrance. It wasn’t that full, which made sense since we have literal magic, but I shuddered to think how it might be without them.

As I walked through the hall, I could see Nathen in a room talking to a patient, before noticing me “Yeah, but I told you I can't, but, no, but- Oh sorry someone needs me,”, then immediately moved towards the door “anything you need?” he asked.

 “It's not so important that-” 

“Yes, yes it is,” he interrupted, moving out of the room to face me. After hearing the woman he had been talking to complain, I got the gist. “I broke a rib,”. His face moved from surprise to questioning, before just saying, “ok, I’ma just move you to your own room,” and then did exactly that.

After getting into a privet room he spoke again, “That was a bit exeem no, well, what do you need?”.

“I- I broke a rib,”

“Wait, you were serious, ok, well just sit off the bed, I can heal it,” I had been thinking of just a painkiller or something, but If he could spare energy then I guessed it’d be fine. Sitting on the bed in the room, he held his hand out in front of him, just over my chest and the green light started to shine and the throbbing stopped. After a bit, his brows furrowed, and the light stopped shining. “Are you sure that it was broken?”

“Yes? Oh, I have a regeneration skill, so I heal faster,” 

“You broke this today right, ha, ‘faster’ might be a bit of an understatement,”. Apparently, he had healed a few people with broken ribs already, and they all took 20 minutes or so while that only took 3 minutes. After thanking him, I left the makeshift bed bay before remembering what the weird pang in my head meant. 

“Show stats” 

 

(2 stat points not allocated)

/Species: Human/

Class: Beast tamer (1)

Titles:

  ____

Level:

  3 (7%)

Stats: 

  (2 stat points not allocated)

  Strength:10

  Agility: 10

  Stamina: 13

  Constitution: 13

  Mana: 12

  Intelligence: 19

Skills:

  ___

Class skills:

  Tame monster.

Special skills:

  Regenerator

 

Huh, another level up, I do wonder how much that really affects me, I at least haven’t noticed any differences in my strength or speed. No, actually I have, slightly, things didn’t seem quite as heavy, but I could only barely notice.

 “I wonder what someone could do with numbers in the hundred” 

Starting to speak my thoughts I figured I should probably make myself useful so after finding and asking Mary, I was told they needed someone that could cook. 

I was ok at cooking, but my family had always praised my stews, so after talking to the head chef guy, Sam, I started cooking.  

I spent a while preparing the stew, but there wasn’t a need for me to stand beside it while it simmered, so I took some time to just sit in the shade of the building. 

“Fuck, they still aren't back?” I could hear Mary swearing as she and Dave walked past me. “Yeah, It should have been closer but. I hope they are ok,”.

“I told him, I said sending groups of only 3 was bad and yet he still did it!!”

Group of three, they are talking about the other group. They haven't come back yet, shouldn't their place have been closer to the base than ours? 

“I asked John, but he said we shouldn’t send anyone out yet. Any ideas why he doesn’t want that?” Dan asked her. 

I took some time to think about it after they had passed, but couldn’t really come up with anything, I trusted him enough to believe he had a good reason.

But that wouldn’t stop me from being worried about Brandon, Curtise and Hanna. 

Since I couldn’t force myself to relax, I walked back to the stew to look at the stew but it naturally wasn’t done so just started walking around.

While walking around, I saw John leaning out of a window, staring into nothing.

An hour passed, then 2, and then we started to eat dinner, and they still hadn’t gotten back.

“What do you mean it's too dangerous, they might die!” I had been sitting by the gate for a while now when I could hear Dan shouting at John. “please, just listen, if we-” Dan cut Jon off with a sudden question “Is that them?”. Out in the distance, I could just about make out the silhouette of three people walking out from behind a building. Actually, there was a fourth person was being carried on someone's shoulder.

“Go, go!” John and Dan also noticed that, because they immediately started sprinting towards them. Leaping to my feet, I sprinted to join them. As we got closer to the quartet, we could see that it was indeed Brandon Curtise and Hanna, but besides them, the fourth guy over Brandon's shoulder was someone new, and in a pore state. Curtis was also a mess, his shirt was in ruin, and had giant bruises along his arms. Brandon wasn’t much better off, he didn’t even have a shirt on, instead, it was being used as a makeshift bandage covering his chest, with a large red stain. The only person that didn’t seem that bad off was Hanna, Who just seemed to have a rash on her left forearm.

John rushed the new guy off to the med bay while Dan took over for Hana in supporting Curise. I felt a bit pointless there since Brandon refused any help and Hanna had no issues standing.

It took a bit of time for the four of them to be healed and even after exhausting the two healers only the worst of it was fixed.  After taking some time to relax they expanded the situation

They were walking down a street when they heard someone shouting. They rushed over to see someone, Morgan, with one of their legs trapped, fighting for his life against 2 roaches, one of which had a broken leg. They managed to kill the 2 roaches without sustaining too heavy of injuries, but it took them a long time to get him freed. While they were doing so, they got attacked by another roach, now with the element of surprise. They managed to Kill, but it managed to do a lot, It was also much larger than the others and even spat something acidic at Mary. After managing to free Morgan he when. They were constantly vigilant on the way back and moved away from anywhere that even could be remotely dangerous, which took even more time. Because of their worry for Morgan, they decided to not retrieve the wheelbarrows to save time. Lucy they managed to evade any attacks, The conversation continued for a while and concluded with them drawing on a map of where they had been. 

…

Waking up, I did the same routine as the day before, sat on the bed, when for a jog and then when everyone was up, ate breakfast.

John also came up to me again, saying he wanted to send us out, once again for food. Since last time we couldn’t take everything, we’d be going to the same place again. 

“You good?” I asked Erik, as we trodded along the same road. He turned to look at me, gave a second of thought, face forward again and responded with a “yeah”.

We filled the barrow again and were already on our way back before anything happened. 

 

Like last time, he noticed it first, let go of the barrow and turned to the left. “There’s one,” he muttered to me as he prepared his spell. Knowing there was only one, I lowered my guard and walked to where Erik was facing. When it peeked its head out from behind a house, Erik released the spell, landing cleanly centre. But it wasn’t its head, it was a tail. 

Buzzz, buzz. It was hovering.

though obviously that made sense, they all have wings, it was the first time I had seen one do it. On top of that, it was faster in the air and had somehow already gotten to me. I widened my stance and ducked while holding my knife in front to take a defensive stance. It stabbed at my head with its front leg, but I managed to dodge out of the way so that only one of the spins scraped my arm. Ignoring the sting, I jumped back towards it but was a split second too slow and it successfully evaded. No, it was headed to Erik.

‘This is a problem’,

I tried to sprint towards him, but knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up. 

It was nearly on Eric but he was still standing there casting. “No-!” I started to shout, but Eric just disappeared just too reaper 3 meters away. The bug got just as surprised as I did and looked incredibly goofy with its head jotting around. But unlike it,  I hadn’t stopped moving and leapt up to its right and slashed its wing. 

“Greahahgah,” it cried as it fell, just about landing on its feet. As soon as it got its bearings, it sprinted towards Eric again, but I was close enough this time. I jumped onto its back and griped onto the space between the back and the head. Like the other times I had done that, it tried to push me off, albeit better than the others, but I continued to hold on. It was thrashing too hard for me to stab it, but that didn’t matter, the goal was something else. Thrwadonk. A jolt shot through the bug as a horrible feeling engulfed me. Now

Using my arms to do a vault over the insect, I landed right by its face and stabbed where it had been shot, and it collapsed.

We sat next to a house for a short time so that he could get back “mana” before we walked back to base.