For a second, it felt like something had been watching me, but now I felt nothing. Maybe I had imagined it?
It took longer to enter Nevaria than it had to exit, which I chalked up to my dead tired body. The looks the guards gave me when they saw me enter the city were quite something. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone’s jaw drop that wide before.
While the guards’ reactions amused me, as I walked down the road, I could not help but feel like there was someone watching me. I glanced around. It seemed there were actually quite a few people watching me. A pair of kids were pointing at my bedraggled appearance and giggling as they made fun of me, an old man was gawking at me like he wanted to know what hole I’d crawled out of, and a pair of young women were whispering to each other as they pointed at me. I was getting a lot more attention than I’d thought.
My frown grew.
Because I didn’t want to be subjected to these stares any longer, I increased my walking speed despite how much my legs hurt. I wouldn’t say I made it to my room in record time; however, my motivation to no longer be stared at certainly lessened the time it would have taken.
Upon reaching my room, I took a moment to collect myself, and then began the laborious process of filling my bathtub with water. Given that I had just exercised until I felt like I was dying, it took quite a while to do.
When I finally finished filling the tub, I was dead on my feet. I couldn’t wait to hop in. However, there was one last thing I needed to do first.
Similar to how I dropped the Spiritual Reinforcement Pill into the bathtub for Fay, I dropped the Body Forging Pill into the tub as well. The effects were much faster than when the Spiritual Reinforcement Pill had been dropped into it. A vibrant red color like fire immediately soaked into the water, spreading until all of the liquid was the same color.
Sadly, it didn’t make the water hot like a Spiritual Reinforcement Pill did. As I stepped into the water, my body broke out in goosebumps as the coldness seeped into my bones. This young body wasn’t used to baths. What’s more, when I was older and lived in Midgard, all of my baths used hot water.
I sat in the tub, my arms crossed as I tried to keep my body from shaking and my teeth from chattering, waiting until my body had absorbed all of the medicinal ingredients that were mixed into the water. It felt like my entire body was frozen. I was pretty sure my balls had become shriveled from the cold.
The things I did to gain strength…
Chapter 12
There’s a Snake in my Bed!
The Demon Beasts who invaded Nevaria had not stopped at just destroying the city. Nevaria was a city state, so it consisted of more than just the walled-off city I had lived in my whole life. The plains surrounding the city, the farms that spread hundreds of kilometers across the Western Farmlands, all of it was a part of Nevaria.
Kari and I had run across several farms that had been completely demolished. Houses were nothing more than piles of rubble, livestock had been eaten and the remainder of their corpses were left to rot, and we found the rotting bodies of several people whose lives had been cut tragically short scattered across Western Farmlands.
We’d found a house that was left somewhat intact, though it was missing an entire wall. It was only one story, contained five rooms, and two of those rooms was exposed to the outside. Still, some of the rooms were more or less untouched. The bedroom also had a bed.
I couldn’t express how joyful Kari and I were to finally stumble across a room that had four walls and a bed. We just about cried for joy. Of course, while we didn’t actually cry, we did break the bed in pretty good.
Things became a lot easier after discovering the house. We had a place to stay for the night that wasn’t caves and trees, didn’t have to worry about Demon Beasts randomly discovering us, and could finally rest easy—sort of. There were still Demon Beasts roaming the area. However, they were few and far between. What’s more, between Kari and myself, we were more than capable of dealing with the D- and C-Ranked Demon Beasts in this area.
Using that house as our base, the two of us would go out every day to scavenge the other houses for things like food, clothing, and whatever else we could find. I felt a little bad about taking stuff from other houses. I was sure Kari felt the same. Even so, it wasn’t like we had much of a choice if we wanted to survive, and the people who used to live there were dead anyway.
It was late one night when I woke up. I glanced around to see what had woken me, but I couldn’t find anything. The only thing that might have done it was the naked Kari hugging and rubbing herself against me. That wouldn’t have woken me up, though. If anything, Kari’s warm, soft body lulled me into such a sense of peace and security that I always fell asleep when I was in her arms.
Except when we were having sex. I didn’t fall asleep when she was holding me then.
I looked over at the window, but it was closed. This house didn’t have glass windows. They were just square holes in the wall that had been covered by wood shutters. Whoever lived here previously probably hadn’t been earning enough valis to buy glass windows.
As I wondered what had woken me up, my entire body jolted as something warm and incomparably soft stoked my dick. I realized, with some shock, that Kari had grabbed me in her sleep. She wasn’t really doing anything. Her hand was just wrapped around my shaft. That said, I knew for a fact that her hand had been on my chest when we went to sleep.
At least now I knew what had woken me up.
Extricating myself—and my dick—from Kari’s embrace, I climbed out of bed and grabbed my clothes, which had been scattered around the room. I was about to put my underwear on when I realized they were ripped. Kari must have torn them when she pulled them off me.
“She didn’t even bother untying the string,” I mused before sliding my pants on. They were dark pants that felt a little snug around my thighs, but they were also better than the ones I had been wearing for months after the Demon Beast Invasion.
I didn’t bother putting on a shirt as I left the room. Making sure I closed the door quietly so Kari wouldn’t wake up, I entered the “family room.” Although I called it the family room because I was sure it was where the family gathered, it wasn’t much of a room anymore. The eastern wall had been destroyed, the furniture was ruined, and there was very little left that resembled a room.
Wandering over to the wall-less side of the room, I checked outside to see if there were any Demon Beasts, including in the sky. There were a lot of flying Demon Beasts. Some of them hunted at night. One could never be too careful.
Once I was sure there were no Demon Beasts, I went outside, bent my knees, and leapt onto the roof. Then I sat down and stared up at the sky with its twin moons. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed there, letting my thoughts drift to and fro without really thinking about anything in particular. However, it must have been a long time because a presence soon joined me.
“The moons are really pretty tonight,” I said as Kari sat by my side.
“They are.” Kari scooted closer and leaned her head on my shoulder. “Seeing the moons and stars like this always reminds me of how small I am. In the grand scheme of things, my troubles and woes are insignificant. Life will continue for this world and those stars no matter how much I suffer.”
“Does that bother you?” I asked.
Kari shook her head, causing her long hair to drift across my shoulder and arm. “On the contrary, it’s kind of relieving to know that I don’t really matter to this world.”
Her words made me frown, but I think I understood what she meant, which was why I didn’t say anything at first. However…
“Even if you don’t matter to this world, you matter to me.”
“I know.”
I wrapped my arm around Kari and pulled her closer, and she in turn snuggled into my arm, placing her hand on my chest. As we sat there in comfortable silence, a thought occurred to me.
“We can’t keep living like this, can we?” I asked.
K
ari lifted her head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this.” I gestured toward the house. “We might have a place to stay, food, and clothing, but all we’re doing right now is surviving. We aren’t really living, are we?”
“… You do bring up a good point.” Kari agreed after wiggling her nose in thought. She worried her lower lip between her teeth and contemplated the situation. “This isn’t really what I would call living either… but what else can we do?”
Her words brought me up short for a moment, causing me to sink into silence as I thought about our situation. What could we do? There really wasn’t much, was there? Our home was gone, our lives had been shattered, and though we had each other, it didn’t seem like anyone else had survived.
Didn’t seem like anyone had survived…?
“Do you think other people might have survived the Demon Beast Invasion and fled?” I asked.
Kari’s brow furrowed slightly. “It is certainly possible. I mean, when you really think about it, we can’t be the only ones who had the same idea and left before we could become Demon Beast food.”
“What if we searched for survivors?” I proposed. “Maybe we can never rebuild Nevaria, but it would be a good idea to have more people with us. There’s safety in numbers.”
“This is true.” Kari didn’t seem as receptive to the idea. I had the feeling she enjoyed the two of us living together without anyone else around, but I think she also understood why I had proposed this idea in the first place.
“Right now, we haven’t run into any of the stronger Demon Beasts,” I continued. “We’ve only faced D and C-ranks… but if we run into one that is B-rank or above, I don’t have any confidence that I can watch your back… and if we run into a horde of them…”
Kari shivered. “We’d be killed easily.” She sighed. “You have brought up a very good point, so we’ll go ahead and begin searching for survivors soon. We’ll need to come up with a plan, though. We can’t just go randomly wandering the countryside, looking for people. We’re likely to get ambushed that way.”
“Right.”
Despite her words, I couldn’t help but feel excited. We had a plan, a goal to work toward. I really hoped there were other people who had escaped Nevaria. If there were, then we could build a small community and would have more hands to help ensure our continued survival. We might be able to relax more as well. Excitement bubbled inside of me when I thought of that.
“That said…” Kari began, snapping me from my thoughts. There was a strange glint in her eye that I couldn’t figure out… at least, not until her next few words. “I’m not going to let anyone stay in the same house as us. I enjoy having sex with you and refuse to keep quiet because other people are living with us.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just remained silent.
I think I had made the right choice.
I think…
As I woke up that morning, the lingering sensations of my dream drifting through my mind, I realized that there was something on top of me. It wasn’t my blanket. Whatever it was, it was very heavy but not very big, though it was kind of long. It stretched across the entire length of my body and I was sure it extended even further beyond the bed. That was just the sense I was getting.
Wanting to know what was lying on me, I opened my eyes… and found myself staring into another pair of eyes. However, these eyes had no whites. They were all black. Actually, looking closely, I noticed they were kind of a goldish-black when light was reflected off them.
The eyes I found myself staring into belonged to a snake. A very large snake.
I screamed in shock. The snake hissed in what sounded almost like surprise.
Leaping out of bed, I jumped to the other side of the room. A weapon! I needed a weapon!
I was seconds away from grabbing the metal sheet I used for alchemy, which I planned on using as a weapon to deliver blunt force trauma… when I paused. I looked back at the snake, which was still on the bed and staring at me, not attacking. It flicked its forked tongue out, but it didn’t do anything else. More importantly than its actions, I think I recognized it.
“You… aren’t you that snake from before?” I wasn’t sure who I was asking that question to. It wasn’t like the snake could understand me—
The snake nodded.
I froze.
“Do you… understand me?” I asked. The snake bobbed its head up and down in the approximation of a snake-nod. I scratched my head.
There were many highly unusual creatures out there, too many to count. Not all of them were Demon Beasts either. There were the Lamia of the Great Desert, the Dragons who made their nest on the Misty Mountain Range north of Vesperia, the Werebeasts who lived alongside humans on the Northern Plains, and the Merpeople in the underwater city of Atlantis. I’d met all of them at some point during my travels across the continent. In all that time, during all my journeying, I’d never met a snake or any other regular animal that could understand human speech.
It left me speechless.
I’m not too sure how long the snake and I stared at each other, but I eventually realized this would get us nowhere. The snake seemed harmless enough in either event. I set the metal sheet back on the ground.
“Did you follow me?” I asked after I settled down. The snake nodded. “Why?” It said nothing, and I almost smacked myself in the face. This snake might be weird and somehow understand what I was saying, but that didn’t mean it could talk. “Are you planning to stay here?” It nodded again.
I thought about how this bizarre one-way conversation was playing out, and then I decided that I could think about it later.
“Well, I guess you can stay here for now,” I said, running a hand through my hair. I needed to get ready to open the library. I could deal with this weird snake who could understand the human language later.
That day at the library was pretty boring. Kari didn’t show up, though she rarely ever showed during the shifts where I opened. If she wasn’t having classes at the Spiritualist Academy, then she was training with her instructor. I once asked if her mother had ever trained her, but she’d just given me a sad smile and changed the subject.
I had given Kari the Three-Way Spiritual Widening Pill and the Body Forging Pill when I met her the other day. She’d thanked me after I instructed her on how each pill was supposed to be used. I hoped they would help her gain the strength she desired.
My own training hadn’t been making much progress, but this was only the second day I’d started. Forging a body that was physically fit and capable of incredible feats of strength wasn’t something that could happen in a day. Back when Kari had been training me, it had taken three whole months before I had been capable of defeating C-Rank Demon Beasts on my own.
I didn’t believe it would take that long this time around. With the pills helping increase my strength, I suspected I would reach the same level of physical strength I had been at back then in less than a month. My Spiritual Power was already vastly more powerful than what it had been during that time. While it was nowhere near the strength I possessed when I was at my peak, it was enough that I didn’t think there was anyone except maybe Empress Hilda who could contend with me in terms of raw power.
When I arrived home after exercising, I found the snake from this morning lounging on my bed like it owned the thing. I stared at it. It stared back. After several seconds of staring, I left the door open and walked into my room.
“I’m glad to see you’re making yourself comfortable,” I muttered as I grabbed the large bucket and began once more filling the blasted tub with water. I couldn’t wait until I introduced the many uses of runes to this city.
Once I had filled the tub and dropped the Body Forging Pill in it, I sat in the vibrant red liquid, ignored the cold to the best of my abilities, and began absorbing the medicinal nutrients.
I could feel them working. While these pills weren’t necessarily top-tier, they were still strong. As my body absorbed the in
gredients, I could physically feel them strengthening my bones, muscles, and even skin. My bones felt denser. My muscles seemed sturdier. My skin felt tougher. Oddly enough, despite feeling strong enough to withstand being cut by a knife, my skin was actually softer than before. This was a side effect of the Body Forging Pill.
As I was soaking in the tub, the snake slithered up and stared into the water. It bent its head, tongue flicking out as it licked the water. There was a brief pause before it licked the water again.
I watched the snake with an odd sense of detachment. I was too cold to care about what it was doing with my bath water.
“You like the water?” I asked. The snake stopped licking up the water. It lifted its head, stared at me for a few seconds, and then bobbed once. “Well, good on you, I guess. Feel free to keep drinking.”
I didn’t know if the hissing sounds that escaped it were happy hisses or not, but it went back to drinking the water, until it eventually had its fill and slithered back over to my bed. I stared at the creature for a little while longer. I was not sure if I would use the word “content” to describe the reptile, but it certainly appeared to be enjoying itself. Withholding a soft sigh, I turned my gaze from the snake and looked up at the ceiling.
This might just be one of the weirdest days of my life.
Chapter 13
A Reason to Become Stronger
Sleeping on a soft, comfortable bed was a luxury that I had never known before. The mattress was made of a type of soft foam that conformed to my body. It gave me the sensation of sleeping on a cloud.
I opened my eyes and gazed at the ceiling. It was pure white and made from a material other than wood. Most homes had simple wood panels or a log ceiling. If a home had a white ceiling like this, it meant the owner was wealthy, or in other words, a noble.
WIEDERGEBURT: Legend of the Reincarnated Warrior: Volume 1 Page 19
