Extra's Guide to Surviving a Dark Fantasy World-Chapter 45: Precaution

I silently stood up and forced my body to walk towards her.

"Good morning," Tess said casually, giving me a glance. She then proceeded to put some of the stew into a bowl and hand it to me.

I silently grabbed the bowl and sat down in front of her, my eyes slowly darting toward Aria, who was still fast asleep at her side.

"I didn’t know when I passed out; we were all out cold by the time I woke up. Thank god, no beast attacked us while we were asleep." Tess spoke while putting some stew in her bowl as well.

I slowly waited as she took the first bite. "Aren’t you going to eat?" She asked, looking at my wistful expression.

"You don’t look very tired," I questioned while putting a small bite of floating meat in my mouth, carefully chewing it before swallowing. I hadn’t eaten in days, and getting sick from eating too fast was the last thing I wanted.

"I am. In fact, I am going to sleep the very moment Aria wakes up," Tess answered while taking a sip of the broth.

"I have already bandaged Aria’s injuries; you should bandage yours as well as soon as you finish eating," Tess suggested.

"You should bandage yours as well, your arm is bleeding," I suggested while pointing at her shoulder. Her previous silver armor was long gone, replaced by a black shirt. The same went for me and Aria as well.

Tess nodded in understanding.

"You and Aria." She continued after a while, "What were you arguing about when I came to the camp that day?"

I looked up from my bowl, only to see her looking at me with eyes full of curiosity.

"You don’t need to ask me; I am sure Aria will tell you once she wakes up." I carefully dodged the question.

Tess let out a deep sigh and turned towards Aria, slowly grazing her hair. "Aria has stopped telling me everything in the last couple of days; she doesn’t tell me things like she used to."

Hearing this, my eyes shot up in surprise.

"Maybe you should talk to her about that," I carefully suggested. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"No, it’s fine," Tess replied. "I am sure there is a reason behind it." She then turned towards me.

"Zane, you remember that commission I gave you, correct? It’s in the red room."

I paused. Of course, I remembered it; how could I forget? That was one of the most weird conversations I have ever had.

"I do; why do you ask?"

"No reason, just making sure." Tess smiled and once again began lightly grazing through Aria’s hair.

--

"This is a good enough spot; let’s stop here for tonight," Aria suggested from ahead as the sun began hiding under the horizon.

Tess and I agreed as well, prompting us to stop and set up the camp.

Several weeks had passed since we survived that sandstorm and left the city. Since then we had kept walking north, dodging sandstorms as best as we could, and not stopping to rest for even a day.

Not that we had anywhere to stop; since then, we hadn’t exactly come across any landmark. Like the ruined city we had come across.

We quickly set up the tent, making a bonfire to warm ourselves as the desert began to freeze with the night.

After taking a small rest I took out the batch of sandweavers we had hunted this evening from the spatial storage. We had lost a large part of supplies back in the ruined city, then even more in the sandstorm. The entire thing has forced us to live on whatever we had managed to hunt on a daily basis.

"Here, let me help you with that." Tess offered and sat down closer to me, taking a couple of the carcasses, and began pulling out the legs. Aria followed as well, silently taking some of the bodies near me.

The tensions in the camp had been high for the last couple of weeks. Aria and I hadn’t spoken to each other since our fight. Tess had tried to force us into talking it out, asking again and again why we were fighting, but it hadn’t worked either. Honestly, I didn’t care about the situation either; I was fine as long as I knew she wouldn’t kill me in the middle of the night.

Not to mention, I had much bigger issues I needed to deal with.

Once we were done separating the legs, I placed all the wasted body parts into my spatial storage. Predators generally didn’t come out at night in the desert, but we didn’t want to risk it by sleeping with a mountain of carcasses beside us.

After that was done, Tess took out our cooking supplies and began cooking the meat. Aria, too, took out several bottles and summoned a shard of pure ice; she then proceeded to fill out those bottles by putting small shards of ice inside each of them.

We had only discovered she could do this a couple of weeks ago, during a desperate time when we’d completely run out of water. The situation had been grim, the kind of pressure that forces you to think of things you wouldn’t otherwise consider. Thankfully, Aria had come up with this idea, saving our lives and elevating her status in the group.

Once we were done eating, I went inside the tent and went to sleep. After all these weeks, we had come up with a schedule; since I was the one constantly scouting with stormraven the entire day, I was given the last watch.

It was in the middle of the night when Tess woke me up; it was time to change shifts.

Nodding to her, I exited my tent and began stretching out my limbs. I then walked some distance away on a nearby rock while the two of them went to sleep.

Several hours passed and once I made sure that both of them were sound asleep, I took out some of the leftover sandweaver corpses from my spatial storage