Campfire Stories

Night in the Caliginia woods was relatively quiet, with only the occasional howl of the beasts in the forest and the soft crackle of the fire in the clearing where three people camped. Ethan stoked the campfire and added more firewood to it, sparing a glance to the two siblings who slept snuggly in their sleeping bags.

After setting up camp, Ethan had learnt a bit more about the two and their lives in Aurumville. For starters, both children were actually twins, with Caleb being the older of the two by an hour. They were ten years old with only their mother to look after them. Tragically, their father had died during a beast siege before they had even been born. Their mother owned a small noodle shop in one of the markets in the city and although business was slow and customers sometimes scarce, Caleb's and Ava's mother worked hard everyday in order to provide for her two children whom she adored with all her heart.

Earlier during the night while they were having dinner, Ethan had asked whether or not their mother was aware that they were out in the forest at this hour, the twins exchanged complicated looks.

"We snuck out.", Ava admitted after a brief moment of hesitation. "She would have never let us come here if we had told her."

Caleb nodded his head in agreement while bitting into one of the meat kebabs that Ethan had roasted over the fire. "She once told us that she would rather die than let her two babies anywhere near a beast."

Ethan frowned. "Why did you guys sneak out then?"

The twins' demeanor turned a little wistful as Ava explained. "Tomorrow's the anniversary of our Dad's death."

"Oh...", said Ethan, realizing that he might've touched on a topic he shouldn't have. "I'm sorry for asking so insensitively."

"It's alright, we don't really mind.", Caleb reassured him. "Every year, our mom visits our Dad's grave and each time, she always comes back home with such a sad expression on her face."

"Mm.", Ava nodded slowly while hugging her knees to her chest. "Dad was all she had before we were born. Our grandparents past away long ago and mom had no other family besides him, which is why it hurt her so much when he died too."

Ethan felt a pang of sympathy for the siblings and their poor mother. "Your mom must be a very strong woman."

"Oh, she is.", Caleb smiled faintly. "Any other woman might've snapped after losing their husband and having to raise two children all on their own in this crazy world that we live in."

"But not mom.", Ava smiled as well. "She accepted us wholeheartedly and made a way to provide for us little by little with her own two hands. We honestly couldn't be happier."

"What an amazing mother.", Ethan praised with a warm smile on his face. "I can't wait to meet her in person."

"Mm, us too. I'm sure she'd like to meet you as well.", said Caleb before finally deciding to explain the reason they were trying to earn money. "Ava and I were planning on saving enough money to buy mom her own buddy bot."

(A/N: Buddy bots are little advanced AI rebots the size of an adult's fist. They hover in the air and follow their users wherever they go and function as smart phones in this era.)

Ethan blinked a few times before staring at the twins with a deadpan expression. "You two are really out here risking your lives for a piece of fancy machinery?"

Ethan could admit that having a buddy bot was cool and all because of all it's fun features and the like, but that didn't mean one had to endanger themselves trying to get one. How were you supposed to enjoy such a luxury if you were dead after all?

Caleb scratched his head in embarrassment. "It does sound a little stupid when you put it like that. But there's more to it than that."

Ava nodded. "Our mom has a special hard drive that she keeps in a small box right under her bed. We once found it and asked why it was so important to her and she explained that the hard drive had memories of all the good times she had spent with our dad."

"Oooh, I see where this is going.", said Ethan in realization. "You want to get her a buddy bot so that she can relive those moments that she had with your father."

Caleb and Ava nodded. "Hopefully, we saved enough for a really good one. We've been doing this kind of thing for the past three weeks but because we're just regular kids, we've only been able to hunt Vanishing Dust Bunnies for their low level beast cores. We can only hope for the best."

The two carried anxious expressions on their faces as they bid goodnight to Ethan and decided to retire for the night. Ethan chose to stay up and stay on look out, keeping the campfire going so that the twins would be warm as they slept.

Ethan gave Caleb and Ava another sidelong glance, his thoughts going over everything they had just told him about their family. He couldn't help but envy them a little because although their family had been through it's struggles, the love they had for one another remained as strong as ever. Something he had never personally received from his own family.

'I wonder what expressions they'll make once they see what I picked up from the bodies of the bandits I killed.' thought Ethan in amusement.

While Caleb and Ava had been gathering firewood for their campfire, Ethan had taken the liberty of collecting his spoils from the thugs he had slaughtered. To his pleasant surprise, not only did Ethan finally collect some decent weapons and armor, he also managed to pick up a collapsible storage unit device from the corpse of the first person he had killed.

Just like Buddy bots, Collapsible Storage Unit devices (also called CSU's for short) were pieces of advanced technology that utilized spacial magic. They were small disc shaped devices embedded with beast cores carved with spacial runes in their centres. Each device varied in terms of space depending on the level of the beast core that was used to make it. The CSU that Ethan picked up had the space of a small room of about 4 square meters and it was filled with several dozen low and high level beast cores, rare beast materials, thousands of credits and even more pieces of weapons and armor.

Safe to say, Ethan had made an absolute killing off his first expedition into the Caliginia woods. Of course, he did feel a little remorseful for the poor people who had their valuables stolen by the bandits but that was just the way the game was.

Ethan was nothing but a player himself in this ruthless game called life, so who was he to deny such opportunistic loot? All Ethan could do was enjoy the spoils on their behalf.

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A/N: Apologies for the late upload guys. This one took me a while to edit for some reason. Hope you enjoyed!