Chapter 38 - Sleep
Combat experience. It is a tricky thing to get. It requires the person to put their life on the line and fight others. Ed, as a regular person was not too keen on the idea.
‘But there is no other choice…’ Ed thought to himself as he looked around the cottage. He was keeping himself busy as he awaited tomorrow.
What was he looking for? Books. Or for anything magical in fact.
‘A shaman is bound to have some books in their room, right?’ Thus thinking so, Ed scavenged through the shaman’s room without a tinge of guilt. The crypt helped him develop such an intrusive personality, there was not even a tread of hesitation as he scoured the room.
After a couple of minutes, Ed found… nothing. For some reason, there were actually no books whatsoever. It made him feel quite puzzled. How did they learn magic then? None of the residents seemed to be capable of teaching Vorgarag any magic either, they all seemed quite young. I mean sure he wasn’t quite acquainted with orc biology but none seemed to have lived past 30. Ed couldn’t ascertain the reason why things turned out that way but it did beget the question, why?
‘Is it the skirmishes?’ Ed thought it was quite possible. At least if he made a couple of assumptions.
The first orcs that were spawned were most likely young as well. How did they feed themselves? He doubted it was through battle like now. Regardless, the orcs continued to expand until they became the undisputed kings of the plains. Maybe the orcs couldn’t support their now large numbers and broke into some sort of internal conflict dividing them into tribes. The older orcs might have died in battle if that was the case.
‘But don’t you usually send the young to war first?’ Unless the orcs had a compassionate heart, they would send the younger orcs into battle. At least that was what Ed thought.
‘Unless this all happened within one generation…’ If it all happened in one generation then they might have been too young to fight. Then again he didn’t know how long it took for orcs to grow into adults.
‘But how would the numbers grow large enough to incite conflict then?’ It didn’t make any sense.
‘Well… maybe if the dungeon spawned them in large quantities from the start’ It seemed logical enough to him, a dungeon would probably try to spawn everything at max capacity to protect itself.
Ed was pretty much done with his internal monologue as fatigue finally caught up to him. He spotted a bed like structure in a corner of the room and laid down on it. He put his hands behind his head as he looked up at the thatchy ceiling. He intended to keep thinking about things until he fell asleep.
‘I can figure it out later…’ He had grown drowsy after all of the events that transgressed.
Ed even completely forgot about his shoulder injury as he drifted off to sleep.
After many hours passed, Ed was awoken by someone nudging at his side. He groggily moved around the uncomfortable bed finally opening his eyes.
‘Hm?’ He lifted his head and saw the tall Vorgarag in front of his bed. ρꪖꪕᦔꪖꪕꪫꪣꫀꪶ
“Wake up, you promised to help out yesterday did you not? You can’t stay a guest forever” He nudged him with his staff a couple more times as he said so.
‘When did I promise anything?’ Ed glared at Vorgarag but he remained completely unfazed. He chose not to mention that it was his first day in the settlement as well. He let out an exasperated sigh and got up from the bed.
He then noticed there was a missing message. Naturally, any system alerts took priority for him. He opened up the missed messages…
[Assimilation is off cooldown]
‘Oh’ Ed forgot about the skill after falling asleep. He usually used the skill right away but sleeping could put a wrench on things.
‘I don’t have anything to assimilate right now anyway, let’s leave that for later’ He dismissed the messages and instead looked at the waiting Vorgarag and asked him a question.
“What are we hunting anyways?” Ed knew that for him it was orcs since the other tribes definitely wouldn’t wait around as they starve to death but he still asked the question.
“Boars” Vorgarag replied simply.
Ed was a bit surprised by that answer as Boars were regular animals back on earth. His memory might be a bit foggy but he was sure of that at least. Then again, there were also things like demon boars in fantasy settings. It wouldn’t be too farfetched for those to be simply dubbed boars if there isn’t a non-demonic version.
What Ed had to worry about though was an entirely different matter. And that was how many enemy orcs he would have to defend against.
“How many orcs from enemy tribes usually come to this event?” Ed asked while hoping that the numbers were much smaller than during the previous skirmish.
“Don’t worry too much about that, we have me after all.” Vorgarag confidently replied. Ed didn’t really know if he should ask again after hearing him. But It wasn’t like he could back out anyways so it was much better for him to simply steel himself.
‘I was actually kind of curious as to why he didn’t participate…’ He mumbled internally while looking at the confident shaman.
“Stop lounging around, let’s go” Vorgarag smiled and pointed towards the exit.
Ed wanted to complain but there wasn’t much point in doing so. Therefore he easily agreed.
“Alright”
Gaining Ed’s approval, Vorgarag made his way out.. Ed followed right after him.