71 Aftermath
A half hour later, the tall man who had just been defeated was scratching his head while watching a very peculiar sight within one of the houses in the village.
A man and a Tera were furiously eating a roast chicken apiece, and it would be fine if that was it.
Only…they seemed to be competing, for some reason, because their expressions ranged between ecstatic as they took a bite, and then cautious when they looked at the other.
Occasionally, they would also glance at the plate in front of them, on which one more freshly roasted chicken was sitting along with a few tubers that had been collected this morning.
The chicken was a special breed of a docile monster which was distributed to settlements by the World Government and grown for being eaten. They had apparently been engineered from a ferocious monster of the same type which had the ability to pierce the throat of its opponents using its sharp beak, and just like that monster, these were also mindless being which only followed their instincts, unlike Teras which could be Bonded with.
It was large, and typically, 3 people would be able to eat one for a meal.
Here…that chicken was finished off in the matter of a few minutes, and after that, the tall man finally understood why each of them had been so guarded.
They finished at almost the same time, and they lunged forward to get the last one.
A small fight ensued, and it almost looked as if this was a regular affair.
But these two had seemed so close! Why were they fighting now, over something like this?
If he had known that this was the only matter in which Aaron and Woof kept getting into fights, he would have been pretty shocked, as it was something he couldn't even comprehend.
Thinking that there might be a misunderstanding, he walked inside, but froze as both of them instantly came to a halt and glared at him as if he had come to steal their food.
He could only sheepishly try to calm down his rapidly beating heart which was convinced that his very life was threatened and say, "Err…there are two more, which you can have if you wish."
The Tera had used the opportunity where the man was listening to the words to make a pre-emptive strike, and it tore away the whole chicken before going to a corner and laughing victoriously.
It had formed a defensive barricade, of sorts, using its muscular back, and it happily began chomping away.
It even seemed as if it was making more noise on purpose when biting into the chicken, because after each bite, it would turn to Aaron as if it was mocking him.
"Oh, you'll be crying when I eat the other two."
As the tall man heard Aaron mutter this under his breath, he threw away all intentions of trying to understand just what was going on here.
Walking out, he decided to go check on Max.
Yet, what he couldn't have expected was that he would be greeted with another strange sight when he entered that room, too.
Max was lying on a bed and dozing comfortably, but the girl who had accompanied that weird guy, Anissa, as she had been called, was staring at him from within an inch of his face.
She had a fascinated expression on her face, as if she was looking at the most interesting thing in the world, and because the tall man's Body Practitioner skills allowed him to be more silent than most, she didn't notice that he had come, and continued in whatever she was doing.
She kept doing this from different angles, and it was only when one angle made her see the doorway out of the corner of her eye, that she managed to see that someone had arrived.
"Eek!"
With a startled sound, she stumbled back, and tripped on the chair before promptly falling on her butt.
The tall man hurriedly went forward to help her, as he knew her identity, and also knew that she was someone he couldn't insult.
Thankfully, she seemed more embarrassed than angry, as she blushed fiercely before getting up and saying, "I was checking whether he looked normal."
Yeah, right.
Crap!
The tall man had always had a problem with hiding his emotions, and this thought became clearly displayed in his eyes.
The girl spotted it and exclaimed, "All right, fine! I never saw anyone who killed so many people at such a young age, and that, too, for such a noble cause, so I wanted to see if there was anything different in his face. Gildart claims that before the apocalypse, there were studies which associated gallantry with specific features, but he just looks like a pig to me."
"Hey! Who're you calling a pig? "
Max had been having a happy dream, but loud voices had woken him up.
The first thing he heard was this insult, so he had decided to get up and shout to vent the indignation he felt.
What he couldn't have expected was the consequence of this shout.
Instantly, 40 men and women rushed into the room and began thanking him profusely, but just a second later, they all froze as a loud sound was heard from outside.
Turning around, they saw that it was the wolf which had defeated their Chief, and it looked at them threateningly while walking forward.
No one understood why it was acting like that, but thankfully, just before they were about to panic, the Chief had a brainwave and shouted, "GET HIM TWO MORE CHICKENS, OR HE'LL EAT US INSTEAD! AND MAKE SURE YOU START COOKING 2 MORE, BECAUSE HIS MASTER WILL SOON BE COMING AGAIN, TOO!"
