Adventuring in another world was not a romantic affair. Between the thrilling ruins, magic, colossal beasts, and heroic tales, there were far more mundane, unavoidable problems to deal with, like roughing it in the wilderness and figuring out how to fill your stomach.
Everything about their flight had been rushed. Especially given that the castle had been breached and they'd fought to the bitter end alongside the last few guards, nobody could have possibly had ti to prepare a pack stuffed with provisions. And the place they'd departed from was an ancestral crypt, which didn't exactly look like a food storage facility...
So the mont Amber's stomach growled, everyone realized the crisis staring them in the face.
The surrounding area was barren wasteland, stripped bare without so much as a blade of grass. On the far side of the slope lay the smoldering ruins of Seawright territory. But a bit farther down from the slope, there was a dense forest.
In this place, a magical version of the Middle Ages, dense forests beyond town walls were synonymous with danger. Where civilization's light couldn't reach, there were only wild beasts, bandits, and monsters. But dense forest also ant sothing else.
There would be more food.
And reaching Gulltown to the north required passing through this very forest.
The group found a flat, open spot at the forest's edge to rest temporarily, then began assigning people to forage.
Gwayne first glanced at the slightly dull-witted little maidservant. This girl called Betty truly had minimal presence, yet her nerves were surprisingly sturdy, she hadn't even cried when the dragon flew overhead. Then again, she might have been too scared to react at all. She still clutched that frying pan tightly, standing in place with a touch of nervous unease. When she noticed Gwayne's gaze, she shrank her neck slightly.
"Betty, Hestia, Rebecca, you three stay here. Byron, you stay as guard," Gwayne said. "Everyone else cos hunting with . Including you, Amber."
Betty had no combat ability. Hestia and Rebecca, as mages, were different, but they weren't suited to chasing ga through a forest. Moreover, they were severely drained, from the battle in the castle until now, they'd had no opportunity to ditate and recover. For spellcasters who needed sharp ntal clarity to perform, this was a critical problem. Better to have them stay behind, and if they could restore so mana, the group would have more fighting power for the journey ahead.
The three loyal family soldiers naturally had no complaints about these arrangents. Amber, however, widened her eyes. "Why do I have to go too? I'm tired as well!"
Gwayne glared at her. "Feel your ears. You've got at least half Wood Elf blood. You can't co hunting in the forest with and still claim your ancestors lived in the woods?"
Amber pouted, full of grievances. "That's racial prejudice, who told you elves have to hunt in forests? I trained in stealth, not rangering..."
"You robbed my grave."
Amber: "...Fine."
Gwayne led three soldiers and one self-professed non-hunter of a half-elf into the forest to hunt, leaving the loyal Ser Byron with three ladies at the temporary camp.
After using what little magic she had left to set up so warding sigils, Hestia sat down wearily on a rock. Rebecca took Betty on a circuit within Ser Byron's patrol range, then returned carrying a small bundle of dry branches they'd found nearby.
After piling the branches on the ground, Rebecca stepped back two paces, raised her staff, and intoned the most basic ignition cantrip. An unstable, volatile fireball promptly coalesced in the air.
Hestia stopped her before the fireball could explode.
"Never mind, let do it."
After lighting the campfire with a sowhat more normal magical fla, the chill that had accumulated in the underground tunnel and the pre-dawn night air was finally driven from their bodies. Hestia breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Rebecca with a hint of exasperation. "When are you ever going to learn a spell besides fireball...?"
Rebecca hung her head in sha.
"I'm sorry, Auntie."
"Don't look so pathetic at the drop of a hat. Even when you're apologizing, don't bow your head that low," Hestia said, rubbing her forehead with even greater exasperation. "You've inherited a title now, you know that? Your performance today... honestly, the Great Ancestor is probably quite disappointed, even if he hasn't shown it."
Rebecca imdiately grew tense. "Th-then what do I do?"
Hestia paused for a mont, then sighed. "What can we do? Look at the state of the family. I doubt there's a single Seawright descendant who could satisfy the ancestor. The way we are now... it's simply too far from the family's forr glory."
Rebecca pressed her lips together hard. For soone who had grown up following the standard trajectory of a noble child's life, every single thing she'd experienced recently had far exceeded anything she'd been taught to handle. No tutor had ever told her how to face any of this, not the Dark Tide and the Others attack, not the fact that an ancestor had climbed out of his coffin. It all left this young viscountess completely at a loss.
After a mont of silence, Rebecca finally mustered her courage. "Auntie, do you think the ancestor... has he really co back to life?"
Hestia looked into Rebecca's eyes. It was easy to guess what her niece was thinking.
"Are you doubting the ancestor, or doubting the resurrection itself?"
"I know I shouldn't doubt it, but this whole thing is... truly hard to believe."
"I feel the sa. But the facts are before us," Hestia shook her head. "Rember the first lesson every magic apprentice learns? It's not so theoretical formula, it's an adage. Truth may defy common sense, but truth is always truth. That applies just as well outside the realm of magic."
Seeing Rebecca fall into thought, Hestia added quietly. "Regardless of the reason for the ancestor's awakening from his eternal rest, the resurrection of House Seawright's progenitor must be accepted as fact..."
Betty glanced at her two mistresses, found she couldn't understand a word of their conversation, and looked back down, continuing to hug her beloved frying pan and stare into space.
Before long, Gwayne returned from the hunt with three soldiers and one Amber in tow.
The haul wasn't extravagant, but it was satisfactory. They'd brought back three rabbits and two large, unidentifiable birds with spectacular plumage, along with a big pile of assorted wild fruits. Filling their stomachs shouldn't be a problem.
Watching Amber deftly and skillfully dress the carcasses, Gwayne pursed his lips. "And you said you couldn't hunt. Your technique is practically on par with the gray elves of Mosswood Forest."
Mosswood Forest was a vast woodland on the border between the Kingdom of Andraste and the Dothraki Horde to the west. The Gray Elves who lived there, a subspecies of the High Elves, were considered the world's finest hunters. In terms of pure ability to track ga through dense forest, they even surpassed the Wood Elves.
After realizing he desperately needed to brush up on this world's common knowledge, Gwayne had been idly browsing through his mory banks whenever he had a free mont. He'd only just found this particular nugget and was putting it to imdiate use.
Trying hard to pass as a genuine local.jpg
Amber didn't look up as she gutted the magnificent bird, tossing back a reply. "Truly worthy of the great hero from seven hundred years ago, that bit about gray elves has to be at least a few centuries out of date, right? Did you know that gray elves are in the herbal import-export business now? They don't hunt anymore."
Gwayne: "..."
Amber's hands never stopped. She deftly skewered the cleaned ga on a long stick and propped it over the campfire, then glanced at Gwayne. "I'm telling you, I really can't hunt. I may be half elf, but from the earliest age I can rember, I've been living in human society. An old thief raised ..."
"Then how did you learn to..."
"I may not know how to hunt, but I know how to steal chickens," Amber bead like a child who'd just robbed soone's ancestral tomb and could still chat amiably with the victim afterward. "Picked up all these skills back then."
Gwayne: "..."
Nearby, Hestia overheard Amber's words and frowned slightly. "How vulgar."
Amber wagged a finger. "Yeah, yeah, I'm vulgar. What can I say, I'm just a petty thief who occasionally lifts a few coppers from passersby. Can't compare to you nobles, sitting in your castles, openly reaching into your subjects' pockets."
Before Miss Amber had even finished speaking, Ser Byron's longsword ca out of its scabbard and settled against her neck.
The half-elf broke out in an instant cold sweat.
Gwayne waved for Byron to sheathe his sword, then studied Amber with curiosity. "What I can't figure out is, everything else aside, with that mouth of yours alone, how have you not been beaten to death by now?"
The half-elf hadn't even opened her mouth before Gwayne was already mimicking her tone, bobbing his head from side to side. "Escape skills, top-notch, right?"
Amber: "..."
"All right, set aside whatever class-consciousness conflicts you've got for now. We're all in the sa boat," Gwayne exhaled, grabbing a piece of fruit from beside him and raising it to his lips. "Everyone focus on recovering your strength. Casters, use this ti to ditate and restore your mana. We leave before noon. We already spent a night underground, we can't waste the entire next day too."
"Betty, you can set that down for now," Rebecca glanced at her little maidservant and kindly reminded her. "We don't need it right now."
Betty looked at her mistress, then looked at the frying pan in her hands, as if torn by indecision.
Gwayne was a bit curious. "Why have you been holding onto that pan this whole ti?"
Betty seed a little afraid of Gwayne. She shrank her neck, clutching the pan's handle tightly. "Mrs. Hansen told that from now on, I'd be in charge of frying sausages and bread... with this frying pan."
"Mrs. Hansen managed the castle kitchen," Hestia explained quietly to Gwayne. "But she's dead."
Gwayne sighed, looking at the freckle-faced little girl.
"That pan is yours. It will always be yours," he said. "But for now, you can set it aside and co eat."
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