CHAPTER 15: Feed the Girls
"So… is there a town anywhere near here?"
I asked the question quietly as I stacked a few bits of dry root and torn cloth into a crude triangle for a fire. My hands worked without elegance, this wasn't a camp, it was a pause in the wilderness. Nothing about it felt secure.
Seyla knelt beside me, striking a flint stone with practiced ease. Sparks danced. A thin thread of smoke curled upward from the kindling. Her eyes narrowed, focused on the fire like it was a living thing that needed to be tamed before it turned on us.
"I'm not sure," she finally said.
I frowned. "You said you were local."
"I said I was from Rostalio. Not this part. The nobles don't care about this region. Most don't even map it properly."
"Great."
She gave a dry, mirthless smile. "There might not be a town for days."
"Even better."
But we didn't have many options. The forest was too ancient. Too quiet in that way that felt like something was listening. And we couldn't stay here forever. Especially not with the walking corpses we were dragging behind us. No offense to them, but half of them looked like they'd fall apart if a squirrel sneezed.
Once the fire caught, Seyla left to tend to the others. They were beginning to stir more now, hunger finally overriding trauma. A few had even started speaking, just whispers, but it was more than silence. It was life.
That was her domain.
Mine?
Cooking.
Or whatever passed for it in this world.
The goblin food was... edible. Technically. The dried meat reeked of sour blood, the bread was stiff enough to double as a weapon, and the salted root vegetables had clearly been buried for flavor. I did what I could, used some herbs Seyla pointed out, broke up the hardest parts into a stew-like mess, and hoped none of it would kill anyone.
When I was done, I stepped away.
Let Seyla do the comforting. The feeding. The soft smiles and reassurance. I wasn't built for that.
Instead, I sat under one of the massive grey trees, roots bulging like veins, bark cold even in the light and crossed my legs into a lotus position. Same posture I'd been taught back on Earth. Same basics as any martial artist or yoga amateur.
I closed my eyes.
Breathed in. Out. Slowly. Deliberately.
Then I reached for it.
The Ki.
It moved sluggishly through my limbs. Still untrained. Still unrefined. But it was moving better than before. Like a river that had cleared some of its debris. I guided it, not by force but with patience. Flowed it from my chest to my arms, through my legs, and back again.
The warmth wasn't strong. Barely there.
But it was mine.
Still... the reservoir hadn't grown.
If anything, it felt exactly the same size it had when I first touched it in that cave.
Small. Cramped. Like a plastic kiddie pool.
I could stretch out in it, maybe. But I couldn't dive. Couldn't breathe in it.
And that bothered me.
Because the goblin Chief? He'd killed me in under a minute. Everything after that had been desperation, survival, luck.
If I wanted to survive mission two, mission ten, mission fifty… I needed to be stronger. A lot stronger.
I opened my eyes at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Seyla.
And a girl with her, human. Short brown hair, sharp cheekbones, tired eyes that had seen far more than her age should've allowed. She looked at me with a mix of respect and fear. Or maybe caution.
"This is Lira," Seyla said. "She says she knows where we are."
The girl gave a slight nod. "I'm from a farming village not far from here. Two days walk at most. Less if we follow the river."
"River?" I asked.
Lira pointed. "There's a tributary nearby. We used to hear stories about this forest from the old folks. They always warned us not to go past the red-stone outcrop."
"And where are we now?"
She swallowed. "The red-stone outcrop is about a hundred feet behind us. We're... at the very edge of the Edelmere."
Seyla stiffened.
I raised an eyebrow.
"That's bad?"
Seyla nodded slowly. "Go deeper than this, and the trees get older. Thicker. Things move in there that most soldiers wouldn't face with a battalion."
"Good to know."
"I think I saw the old watchtree near the slope too," Lira added. "Once we pass that, we'll be on the border trails."
"Perfect," I said. "We'll head out by noon."
Seyla tilted her head. "Why noon?"
"I want them to rest," I said, motioning toward the other women. "And I want some time to think."
"About?"
I gave her a crooked smile. "How not to die on mission two."
She gave a small snort and turned away with Lira. I watched them walk off, Seyla's posture like a blade wrapped in silk, Lira's like a candle trying not to flicker.
Once they were gone, I closed my eyes again.
And this time, I thought back.
Dragon Ball Z. Anime rules. Ki wasn't just magic, it was will made real. And more than that? It was forged in training. Real, punishing, soul-grinding training.
The kind that shattered your limits.
That was how Goku and the rest had done it. Not just yelling louder or glowing brighter. They bled for it. Every inch of power was earned in the dirt, under gravity, against impossible odds.
I wasn't Saiyan.
But I didn't need to be.
I had a week. And a sword I couldn't lift.
That sounded like a training arc waiting to happen.
I exhaled slowly and felt the Ki swirl around me.
Sluggish.
Limited.
But steady.
Tomorrow, we'd walk toward civilization.
But today?
Today I planned.
---
We left just after noon, like I said we would.
Most of the girls had managed a few hours of real sleep. Not peaceful, nothing about this was but the kind of sleep that quiets the body, even if the mind's still a battlefield. A few were walking better now. Still hollow, still haunted, but no longer one stumble away from collapse.
I led from the front.
Didn't say much. Didn't need to.
The forest thinned a little the farther we moved, the trees less suffocatingly tall, the fog less oppressive. The sunlight filtered down with a little more warmth, enough to remind me that, yeah, I was still on a planet with a functioning sun and not trapped in some ghost realm.
We followed the path Lira pointed out, towards the river. Wasn't really a road, just a long stretch of dirt and broken branches running alongside a shallow ravine. Easy enough to follow, though it still felt like anything could crawl out of the woods at any moment.
"Hey," I said over my shoulder. "You said your village wasn't far?"
Lira picked her way around a gnarled root beside me and nodded. "Ronta Vro. Named after a Magic Knight."
I glanced at her. "Like a wandering knight?"
"From the Vermillion Empire," she explained. "Decades ago, he was passing through the forest when a horde of magical beasts came flooding out from deeper inside. Half the village would've been wiped out, but he stopped them."
"And they named the place after him?"
"He refused a reward, so the elder gave him the name as tribute. Said it was the least they could do."
I scratched at the back of my neck. "Huh. Knights with humility. Novel concept."
She cracked the smallest smile.
"Does that mean it's an imperial territory?"
"Technically but not really. But nobody important comes out that far. Not unless they're exiled or bored."
"And the nearest city?"
She brightened a bit at that. "Torak. It's a frontier city at the base of the forest. Adventurers go there to take forest bounties, bandits, monsters, even rogue spirits."
"Sounds lively."
"There's a train station too. You can head north to the capital or southwest toward Fort Defal if you've got enough coin."
That stopped me for a second.
"Wait. Train?"
"Steam rail," she said like it was obvious. "Most kingdoms on this side of the continent are on the grid."
I stared at the trees ahead of me as we kept walking. The image of a train, the whistle, the tracks, the smoke curling into the sky, didn't belong in the world I thought I was in. Goblins in leather scraps and bronze swords didn't scream industrial fantasy. But a train?
Yeah. That shifted the scale.
For all the blood and dirt and caves full of grunting filth, this wasn't some static medieval backwater.
I'd misjudged the world entirely.
Which meant I needed to stop making assumptions.
We made good time, but the sun was still up when the group started lagging. Some of the women couldn't keep pace. Not because of laziness, they were still emaciated, most half-healed, emotionally drained.
So we made camp again.
A patch of dry grass near a half-fallen stone pillar that looked like it had once been part of a much larger structure. Maybe a watchtower. Maybe a shrine. Whatever it had been, it was now just a shadow in the wilderness.
I built the fire this time while Seyla took stock of food. Lira fetched water from a nearby spring.
And once we settled, I sat off to the side, eating quietly and listening.
It wasn't long before one of the girls, older than most, maybe late teens, shuffled over and sat beside the fire. She had dull grey eyes and dark hair tied back in a frayed ribbon. Skin pale from malnourishment. Still recovering.
She spoke softly, voice low and deliberate, like reciting something from memory.
"You asked about the continent earlier."
I looked up. "Yeah."
"It's called Artaros. That's the official name. The Vermillion Empire pushed it as a unifying term when they conquered most of the eastern kingdoms two centuries ago."
I sat forward slightly. "That so?"
She nodded, barely. "My father fought in the last war against the empire. Prisoner of war. Spent three years in one of their military reeducation camps."
"Tough way to learn geography."
"He was a scholar before the war," she said, tone flat. "They tried to break him. Instead, he broke their curriculum. Came back speaking three dialects and quoting imperial law better than their officers."
I let out a low whistle. "Impressive."
"He died last winter. Frost fever."
I lowered my eyes for a second. "I'm sorry."
She just stared into the fire. "He told me everything he learned. About the empire. The kingdoms. The languages, the alliances, the fractures. Everything."
"I bet you remember it all."
She gave a slow, mechanical nod. "It's all I have left."
I wanted to ask her more about the rebellions, the alliances, the world beyond the trees but before I could, another girl asked the question I'd been dodging since we left the cave.
"You never told us where you're from."
Eyes turned toward me.
It wasn't accusatory. Just... curious.
I gave them the same lie I'd already committed to.
"Small village. Remote. Secluded." I shrugged. "Plague hit a few years ago. I was the only one immune."
No one said anything.
"Went looking for help," I continued. "Got lost. Woke up surrounded by green bastards with clubs and bad breath."
The dark-haired girl tilted her head. "You fought like someone trained."
I gave a half-smile. "Plague didn't kill my sense of self-preservation."
She looked like she wanted to push further, but her energy gave out. She leaned back, staring at the fire again.
I exhaled quietly. Lie intact.
No need to talk about voids or floating menus or voice-of-god administrators in red ties.
This was simpler.
Safer.
I leaned back against a log and looked up at the sky. The stars were coming out slowly, scattered between cracks in the canopy.
But the sun? It was still barely dipping below the horizon.
The day had gone on longer than it should have. I squinted. The color of the sky wasn't right either. A burnt orange that seemed to last too long, the twilight stretched unnaturally.
I wanted to ask. To say, "Hey, does the sun always take this long to set?"
But I didn't.
I was already labeled as an outsider, a foreigner, a mystery.
Asking about the length of a damn day would make it worse.
So I kept my mouth shut.
Instead, I stared at the dying fire, the soft breaths of the resting women, and the night slowly creeping in.
Tomorrow we'd reach Ronta Vro.
And after that?
I'd figure it out.
One step at a time.