Chapter 28

I only woke up the next day.

The sound of birds chirping came through the blue sky.

It must have been mealtime. The savory and sweet smell of roasting wind reed tickled my nose.

“You’re awake?”

“Ah… thank goodness.”

Mom and Dad were the first to greet me, and Teacher Sena poked her head out beside them.

“Finally awake? I have a lot to say.”

She helped me sit up.

“Can you stand? Let’s eat something first.”

At first, I didn’t think I’d be able to stand. I remembered how battered my body had been. Even now, my whole body ached as if I’d been beaten. But… when I actually tried to move, I was surprised by how easily I could. My body hurt in its own way, but I was also overflowing with energy.

‘What’s going on?’

I walked perfectly fine on my own feet and sat by the campfire.

Teacher Sena and Mom had already finished eating and were discussing our next destination, while I was busy devouring wind reed.

“When will the mobile barrier be repaired?”

Mom asked. The mobile barrier had been significantly weakened after a harpy feather pierced its side. Fortunately, once the feather was removed and special mud applied, the barrier could largely restore its functions on its own. Truly an all-purpose magical device with self-repair capabilities. It deserved its premium price starting at 1,000 Mornings.

“It should be repaired in about a week.”

Teacher Sena answered. Mom’s expression darkened.

“So we can’t leave the Guardian’s Graveyard for a week…”

“Why? The Guardian’s Graveyard is safe as long as we don’t go too deep, right? Couldn’t we continue to the Talon School Caravan by following its boundary? Is it too far out of our way?”

“No. It’s not about the distance. It’s actually closer. But… this place isn’t particularly safe either.”

“What? This is a famous safe zone, isn’t it? I heard that if mages were as active now as they used to be, this could have been a crossroad… no, even a city?”

“Of course, that’s true. But… it hasn’t yet been tamed by mages. In the end, this is still wilderness.”

“…Did something happen to you here?”

Mom skewered some wind reed and placed it around the campfire. I stealthily grabbed the well-cooked pieces and ate them while watching Mom.

“The usual story. Calamity appears—poof!—and people die—wham!”

Mom laughed wryly. Her lips curled like frost-covered grass leaves.

“But… there are no calamities here…”

“It’s generally known that calamities can’t invade this place. Usually that’s true. That’s why people call this the Guardian’s Forest. As if… that Guardian is some kind of protector watching over us. But the truth is a bit different. All guides know. The Guardians here are also calamities. …I’d rather leave as soon as possible.”

Mom and Teacher Sena fell silent. With the two of them quiet, only the sound of me eating wind reed was conspicuously loud.

Crunch. Crunch.

Munch munch munch.

Mmm… delicious.

Well-roasted wind reed is crispy on the outside and hot and soft inside. The sweetness that lingers on the tip of your tongue brings pleasure, and the warm feeling inside heats up your body.

Crunch! Crunch!

Munch munch munch munch munch.

I couldn’t care less about the serious atmosphere between Mom and Teacher. I just kept eating and eating. I focused solely on eating.

Like someone possessed, I kept bringing wind reed to my mouth, chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing.

“Slow down, Jun-woo. Eat slowly.”

Dad tapped his water container and handed it to me.

“Ah, yes.”

Gulp gulp

Drinking the cool water in one go felt refreshing. The tension that had been pressing down on my shoulders finally seemed to wash away a little.

“Haaa…”

After letting out a long sigh, I finally looked up and asked Teacher Sena. It was somewhat out of the blue, but eating all that wind reed had naturally led me to realize something.

“We’re short on food, aren’t we? Right now.”

She smirked.

“You know that and still eat so much wind reed?”

“Well, I need to recover my strength.”

Teacher Sena gestured with her chin toward the beautiful forest where trees stood scattered here and there.

“That’s right. Eat well today, because from tomorrow, we’ll have to hunt and gather our own food.”

I had noticed the food shortage because of the meat broth.

Savory and mild wind reed goes perfectly with meat broth, making them inseparable companions. If they hadn’t lit a campfire, I might not have noticed, but with a fire already going, there was no reason not to have meat broth. Unless there was no meat.

Seems like among the wagons that were destroyed… some carrying food supplies must have been included.

Anyway, hunting and gathering… I was worried.

“But I wonder if there’s enough food out there to feed our entire nomad.”

The Guardian’s Graveyard was a cozy and beautiful place, but it didn’t seem like fertile soil with lush vegetation and dense forests.

Trees and grass spaced out like in a garden. Honestly, even calling that area a “forest” seemed a bit of a stretch.

Gardens are… nice to look at, but there’s not much to eat. I couldn’t help but worry.

Teacher Sena met my concern with a bitter smile.

“Well, it should be fine. We have fewer mouths to feed now.”

Startled by those words, I looked around and indeed… the nomad seemed sparse.

Teacher Sena’s explanation made it even more serious.

Ten households in our nomad. Forty-three people in total.

Of those, eighteen had died, she said. Twenty-five survivors. But three with severe injuries committed suicide before dawn. Considering how many supplies we’d lost, they wanted to reduce the number of useless mouths to feed.

So the final survivor count was twenty-two.

Out of ten households, only two homes, including ours, had no deaths or injuries, and three families were completely wiped out.

Ahem! Sniff. Ahem!

Sniff. Ahem!

Now that I noticed… there was a lot of throat-clearing among the nomad members eating wind reed.

Fake coughs instead of suppressed crying. If this were Earth, children who lost parents and parents who lost children would be wailing endlessly together. But… wilderness nomads of the Star Continent grit their teeth desperately to avoid mourning death.

That’s how we were taught from childhood.

Death is nothing to mourn.

It’s just a joke the world plays on us.

Responding to every silly joke is just a waste of time.

“Hmm… I see.”

Perhaps sensing something in my gaze as I looked at the others, she stood up, brushing off her bottom.

“We have a lot to talk about, but let’s do that in the evening. For now, eat and go greet everyone. You’re a pillar of this nomad now… seeing you up and about will reassure everyone a bit.”

Though Teacher Sena said this…

Ripple

Magical power was violently fluctuating around her as she returned to her tent. It seems she was having another fever episode. Rather than me reassuring people, it would be far more important for Teacher Sena, the true pillar of the nomad, to show that she wasn’t faltering.

+ – + – +

The wilderness nomads consider the height of class for survivors to be a cool attitude that casually jokes about death.

“If you’re going to leave, at least leave some property behind. What is this? Wagons, horses, protective talismans! All gone.”

That’s why even this kind of sacrilege was acceptable.

Red-eyed Monggu kicked the ground and spoke bitterly. He had lost both his parents in this incident. He seemed to be trying to smile playfully by twisting the corners of his mouth… but his terribly distorted face just made him look pathetic.

But… when a survivor makes a joke, the polite thing is to laugh at even these absurd jokes.

“Haha. Oh, my stomach…”

Of course, like all social niceties, sometimes it’s worse to try than not to try at all.

“Umm…”

Seeing Monggu looking at me with a hurt expression, I felt a bit sorry.

Monggu. The one who still spoke to me when everyone else was shunning me. Except for Yuria, he was the closest to me in our nomad.

I patted him on the back.

We weren’t particularly close friends, but… maybe there was some bond from studying together? The five surviving students of the Sena School Nomad sat in a circle, talking after finishing our meal.

Kallin.

His eyes were bloodshot too. And he didn’t seem interested in the wilderness virtue of being a cool survivor.

“My father was a great man.”

I have to admit. Unlike Kallin’s character, his father was essential to the nomad. He was a man with considerable medical skills. His death made it harder for the injured to recover.

“I’m going… to become a great man just like my father.”

Kallin said, biting his lip firmly. Well… I think you need to fix your personality first…

It was awkward when someone I wasn’t even close with got so serious. I had nothing to say. I guess this is why survivors are supposed to be cool about death.

Meanwhile, Mukuru had lost his siblings. Unlike Kallin, he grinned and chattered away.

“I swear! That idiot Surut! I told him so many times to practice his shield techniques, but he completely ignored me… you know what his face looked like when he died? His eyes were wide open like this…”

Mukuru’s comedic and exaggerated imitation made all the children sitting around burst into laughter.

Truly, as if death was just a joke, we finally laughed like that.

Out of the seven students who survived the orc attack.

Lidia was sprawled out in the wilderness after being hit by the harpy’s blade feather, and Mika, who had been paralyzed by the orc, flew into the sky along with the wagon she was being carried in.

We created horror movie-like stories about Lidia being resurrected by the Calamity of Immortality and searching for the nomad that abandoned her with a knife stuck in her forehead, and fairy tale-like stories about Mika riding that wagon to travel the whole world.

We giggled and laughed for quite a while.

In that moment, we looked just like…

The adults of the wilderness.

+ – + – +

“Yuria.”

After eating and talking with my fellow students, I naturally found myself sitting with Yuria on a tree stump.

“Yes?”

“I’m curious about something.”

“What is it?”

“We almost died today, right?”

“Obviously.”

Yuria showed me her right arm, wrapped in a blood-soaked red bandage. A wound from a blade feather. With few medical supplies left, we couldn’t change bandages often.

Seeing that made my heart ache a bit.

“Anyway, you’re so fragile… what about it?”

When I teased her, Yuria pouted.

“This is all because you won’t teach me how to become a Mana User.”

“That’s not ‘won’t teach you’ — it’s ‘can’t teach you’!”

“La la la! I can’t hear you!”

After bickering for a moment, I got back to the main topic.

“Anyway, I’m curious about something.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing major… just, when I thought we might die, something suddenly popped into my mind.”

“What was it?”

I smiled at Yuria as she tilted her head curiously.

“Back then, you said you’d give me a present. When we flipped that coin. You said if I won, you’d give me a present. I lost, so I never got it. Instead, I’ve been giving you private lessons.”

“Oh… that?”

“Yeah. I was just curious what that present was going to be. Could you give it to me now? As a celebration for surviving near-death.”

I stared intently at Yuria. Why? My heart was pounding for some reason.

Yuria smiled with a strange expression.

“Want me to… tell you a secret?”

She spoke like that, half smiling, half whispering.