Feast

[So all we can do now is to wait.]

Groaning, Sazzy complained as I opened the door to our temporary house.

Walking into the living room, she crashed onto a chair.

"I mean there's not much else we can do. The anti-Colonizer faction are trying their best to find out if there was a mole in their midst, and the police are tracking down the intruders to our house. The only thing we can do is wait."

Going into the kitchen, I checked the inventory of our ingredients and made a note in my personal terminal of what we had, and what we should pick when we go harvesting.

[So now we have to play the waiting game?]

Hearing her voice from the living room, I quickly kept our ingredients back and prepared to head out before Sazzy lost her mind to boredom.

"We just came back from a serious talk and you are already bored?"

As I walked out of the kitchen, I saw Oliver with his hands on his hips frowning at Sazzy.

[I can't help it. Ever since becoming a system, boredom has become torture.]

Straightening up from her chair as she saw me walking out, her eyes were sparkling as they pleaded for me to find things to do.

"Why?"

Oliver continued to ask questions as I headed into my room to search around for a bag to put all our harvested ingredients in.

[In the dimension where most systems hang out in, where we can interact with each other and all that, there is nothing to do. No houses, no electricity, nothing. It's either you lie down on the white floor and space out, or you work. Once you live like that for a while, boredom feels like torture.]

Listening to her description of that dimension, I walked out of the room with a bag in my hand.

"But there are other systems there right?"

Sazzy stared at Oliver with dead eyes.

[Once a thousand years have passed, the amount of things to talk about is practically zero. Also, once you know everyone to a certain extent, it's quite boring to just hang out there.]

As Sazzy rolled her head around, she spotted me with a bag in my hands and shot up from her seat.

[Are we going harvesting!]

She walked towards me with shining eyes. Behind her, Oliver was shaking his head. But he still followed.

"I was thinking of refilling our ingredient inventory. Also, since we don't really have anything to do, I was thinking of streaming more for the next week to keep us a little busy. Since just waiting around for answers will only make us more nervous and uneasy."

I opened the door and the two tiny figures behind me walked out.

[Good idea! Food and a way to avoid boredom! Two birds with one stone!]

Closing the door, we headed towards the forest. Walking past one of the trees, I paused slightly to look at the carvings. This carving, similar to the one we saw earlier today. It seemed like a mixture of several different animals I had seen in my original world.

"I wonder if there are any stories behind all of these carvings."

Beside me, Oliver held my hand as he looked at the carvings as well.

"I'm sure there are some stories behind them. After all, they are carved all around this village. They must be significant enough to be this visible."

The three of us walked past the carvings and into the forest. Like usual, I taught Oliver which plants were dangerous to touch, which were safe, as well as how to harvest ingredients from them. In the future, although I planned to continue harvesting with Oliver, there would certainly be times where he would want to head into the forest without me. When those times come, If he knew which plants were safe and which were not, he would have a lower chance of being in danger.

"Pay attention to this plant. Its bark isn't edible, but the flesh behind that bark is quite delicious!"

Peeling off the bark of the tree, I used a tool from my tool belt and dug out a small chunk.

"From what I learnt from Margret, when collecting ingredients, we try to be as non-destructive as possible, and only take enough for a few days of food. The rest is based on what I have observed and what I think, but those who used to be with the Alliance are quite serious when it comes to conservation. Maybe it's due to the fact that the main reason the Loser's War broke out was due to the Colonizer's wasteful resource mining of their planets, but the anti-Colonizer's planets that we have visited before were all quite stringent about ingredient harvesting and conservation."

On the other hand, it seemed that the pro-Colonizers were the exact opposite. Although I only had Vastum to base this observation on, I believe they are part of the majority in that regard.

"What an insightful observation you have made."

Hearing a familiar voice from behind me, I turned my head to spot the two sisters from earlier walking out from the bushes.

"What a coincidence that we ran into each other."

Olivia smiled as she held an empty basket in her hands.

"Yeah. A coincidence."

If our past experience from Media Luna had anything to say about this, the two were definitely tailing me.

"We were out harvesting as well when we suddenly heard your voice. Would you mind if we traveled together?"

Olivia reached out and plucked a fruit from a branch and put it into her basket. Similarly, I placed the chunk of tree flesh I had cut into the bag that Oliver was holding out.

"Not at all. In fact, I wanted to ask something. What are those carvings on the trees surrounding the village?"

As a whole group, we moved forward and took some ingredients here and there. We made sure to not take all the fruits on the trees and avoided trees that had signs of being picked from.

Olivia shot a glance towards me, before giving a slight sigh. That sigh seemed to be filled with a small tint of sadness and the slightest bit of rage.

"When visiting Ferus, you might have heard a bit about the Loser's War."

She looked at me expectedly, before pausing.

"Or maybe you didn't since the people I know from Ferus were always overly secretive."

She sighed again before continuing on talking. Using this chance to take a small break, Pansy dragged Oliver over to the side to play and sometimes harvest something. It seemed that the sisters wanted to keep this conversation away from Oliver's ears.

"Since I don't know how much you know, I'll just state all I want to say. Before the Colonizer's came, all the planets had a variety of species, both people-shaped as well as non-people shaped. However, that changed drastically when the Colonizers started colonizing everything. Firstly, they looked down on all the non-people shaped species. If you noticed, the space bullet is shaped specifically for people-shaped beings. There are no versions that can accommodate any being that is larger or wider than a person. So when a planet was sent hurtling towards its doom due to resource mining, only the species approved by the Colonizers were allowed to board the space bullet to escape. Everyone else would perish together with their planet."

I could see Olivia clench her fist hard and a tiny blackhole of hatred spawned in her eyes.

"And as if that wasn't enough, not only did they not consider any non-people shaped beings as sentient. they considered them lower than that. Food. They would 'make friends' with them, then raze their villages to the ground and eat every single one. Regardless of gender and age, they were just seen as easy food to eat. Some Colonizers didn't even bother speaking with them before hunting them. Soon there were markets and vendors that specialized in selling 'non-sentient meat' and a lot of non-people beings were hunted down or went extinct. Ferus had a lot of non-people beings so it was quite natural that the first spark of war started that."

"From Ferus, most of the planets that had just about had it with the Colonizers joined that war. Those that were majorly one-species ruled, or wanted to lick the boots of the Colonizers, joined the Colonizer's side. Since Ferus was predominantly non-people dominated, the Colonizers were driven out from there, but that couldn't be said for most places. Furthermore, the only transport between planets were the space bullets the Colonizers built, so only the people-shaped beings could participate in the war. However, despite all that, we were winning! We should have won! We should have. If it weren't for the poisoning that wiped out the majority of our warriors. And for those still alive, they were now plagued with the fear of their food and water sources being tampered with. The overall morale of the Alliance fell and we lost the war. And with that loss, the Colonizers had the largest feast they had in history."

Doing her best to keep her voice soft enough that Oliver couldn't hear her, Olivia wiped away the tears forming in her eyes.

"I had a childhood friend, a non-people being that I had loved even before the war. And during it, I was on the front lines with him. Since our species and his lived for so long I thought we were a perfect match. At that time I was considered a teenager. A madly in love one at that. But with that war, I lost everything. Him, his family, and many friends. The same could be said for a lot of the people in this village. That's why we carved all the allies we lost in the war on these trees. As a reminder for us to not lose sight of our goals."

Until here, the black hole of hatred in Olivia's eyes grew and grew, seeming to consume everything in its path. And then it vanished.

"That's the reason we have all these carvings."

Ending off the conversation with a pained smile, I nodded my head stiffly.

Nearby, I could hear the laughs of both Oliver and Pansy. But they seemed so far, almost as if we were separated by a whole galaxy.

"Thank you for listening to my rant. But I hope that answers your questions."

[I think that is more than just answering the question.]

A little speechless, I nodded my head once more.

"This is just an old story, so I hope you aren't too stunned by it. But please be assured. If there is anyone who is pro-Colonizer and seeks to harm others, nobody in this village will forgive them."

Olivia's smile turned from pained back to normal. But for some reason, the smile was unsettling

[Scary!]

"If you don't mind, Charles and Amanda added more details about your situation in our own village server, so most people know the details of your house being invaded. You don't have to worry. Our village takes cases like these quite seriously so we'll find the mole between the three villages quite quickly, and if we can we might also help the police to catch whoever else is involved with the intruder. You should be able to go home within this week."

Being faced with Olivia's mask of a smile, all I could do was nod my head as I felt cold sweat run down my back.

She's very scary.