Chapter 2

A few days went by after the accident. Einar was still without consciousness, but he had been taken to a safe place by a strange man. Einar didn't know this man, even if he was awake.

It was a man who wandered around this world. He did not look like someone special, but he still seemed like someone wise. He had long grey hair with a messy beard, ragged robes, and an average build.

At the moment, he was applying some kind of ointment to Einar. As Einar was still unconscious, he did not know what was going on.

"How did this happen, why did the monsters start to move so soon?" The old man was muttering something, only the old man himself heard it.

If other people were there, they would pay attention to the 'soon,' since this meant that he knew that the monster was going to move.

A few more days went by before Einar woke up. 'I am still alive?' as he woke up, this was his first thought. He expected that he would die at that time. He looked down at himself and saw that the injury on his shoulder had been healed and that he had gotten some poorly made clothes put on. I was straw pants with a straw shirt.

After asking himself that question, he started to look around, he was not at the place where he collapsed. 'How did I get here? where am I?' He couldn't help to think these things.

He was in a small room at the moment. the walls at the roof were made of pure wood, there was something that looked like a research table at the side, with many different vials, with different liquids in them.

Beside this table, was bookshelves with a lot of different books. Some of them looked like old books, damaged by books, others looked like new and high-quality books, Einar was quite curious about these.

The bed he was in, was made of wood and hay, it was not really comfortable. He could not complain though, since it seemed like someone saved him from dying.

As he was looking around, the door at the side opened up, and the old man walked in. Einar was shocked for a second before he calmed down and looked straight at the door. He saw the old man walk in, and look straight at him.

The old man ignored Einar though and went straight to the research table. He was carrying something in his arms, and he seemed very serious about something. He kept muttering to himself as he walked towards the research table.

Einar chose to not disturb the old man since he didn't want to do anything to disturb him. After all, Einar was thinking this man was his savior.

Einar had been sitting on the bed for a few hours now, waiting for the old man's experiences to end. In the end, he couldn't take the wait anymore, as he walked up to him.

"U-Uhm, excuse me!" He tried to be polite and spoke in a quiet tone.

"Hmmm" The old man turned around and looked at Einar.

"Were you the one who saved me?"

"Hmmm, uuhh" The old man looked confused as he looked at Einar, as he scratched his head. "Who are you?"

Einar was quite baffled, had this old man forgotten the boy that slept in the bed. How do you forget someone you bring to your own house. 'is this old man senile?' Einar could not help but think so.

"I am the boy that has been sleeping in the bed over there ..." Adrian said in a surprised tone while pointing at the bed.

"Oh, you're the boy I found in the destroyed village!" The old man said as he remembered him. He turned around after this though, it seemed like he lost interest In Einar straight after that.

"D-Destroyed?" Einar was shocked to hear this, he thought he had at least saved some of the villagers. "Did you say my village was destroyed?" Einar asked again in a shaky tone, this was a shock to him. He sat back down on the bed, with a blank look.

After sitting there for a few minutes, thinking about what he was just told. He thought that there was not really anything he could do, except live on for the village. He was still quite sad, but he didn't want to dwell on it anymore. He chose that it was time to figure out where he was since the old man was ignoring him now.

He went over to the door that the old man came in from. As soon as the door opened, he was hit by the hot sun burning on his skin. It was like walking into a wall. The light of the sun was shining into his eyes, rendering him blind for a few seconds.

When his eyes finally started to adapt to the light, he saw that he was at a deserted place. There was a small pond, by the shed that Einar just walked out from. Around the pond, some trees and plants were growing, which made it quite idyllic. Everywhere else was just a big desert, with nothing but a lot of sand mountains in sight.

This made Einar quite surprised. The place he came from was in the middle of a country where there were no deserts at all. The nearest desert he knew of, was in the neighboring kingdom Taifa, which is a country made up of almost only women.

Einar was not particularly smart or strong, but he was the son of a village leader. He did get a good amount of knowledge from teachers. He did know how the countries were placed in the kingdom.

He also knew how dangerous it was to be a man in the Taifa kingdom, they did not trust men, and they only used them for breeding. In this kingdom, women ruled, and they could decide any man's fate, As long as he did not belong to another woman.

He walked around outside for a few hours, but he would stay in the vicinity of the shed, so he would not get lost. After doing that, and not finding anything useful, he chose it was time to see if the old man was done with his experiments.

As he was almost at the shed where the old man was, he heard a small explosion. He saw that smoke was coming out of the open door, so he started running to the shed by now. He was worried if the old man had hurt himself.

When he got there, he saw that the old man was laying on the ground, with a big wound on his chest. The skin around the wound had been burned black, so it looked like a big burn wound. He was breathing heavily and throwing up blood. Einar hurried over to see if there was anything he could do. He did not know how to treat a man though.

He then thought about the books on the bookshelves, maybe they could help him find a way to treat this old man. The first thing he did now, was to lift the old man up to the bed, so he could rest. He put some poorly tied bandages on him too, to stop the bleeding.

As he had done what he could for the old man now, he walked over to the bookshelves. He was motivated to learn whatever he could, so he could save his savior.

As he looked through all the books there, he found two books that looked intriguing. One was called 'Herb Knowledge' while the other was called 'Low-level medicine crafting.' It sounded like it was not anything special, which is why they were intriguing to him, he knew nothing of herbs nor medicine.

He chose that he had to read through the 'Herb Knowledge' book first, so he could get some knowledge of the different herbs, and what their properties are. He sat down by the research table in the middle of the room and started reading right away.

The first few herbs he saw, were basically only for stopping bleeding, he knew that he needed those too, but he also needed something that could stop infection, and heal him at a faster rate. He also recognized all these plants from the first few pages. Not from his home, but from the pond outside the house.

A few hours went by, and he had gathered a lot of knowledge of the plants in the 'Herb Knowledge' book. A lot of them he had never seen before, but a lot of them were also outside, around the pond.

He didn't start reading the 'Low-level medicine crafting' book yet, he needed to stop the dangerous bleeding of the old man. He chose that he had to go gather a few plants and grind them down to a paste to put on the wounds of the old man.

At the pond, he was looking for a small plant that was called Iosnilpos. It was not a plant that could heal wounds faster, but it could stop bleeding and infection to some extent. The plant was really small, with a green stalk with a blue flower on top.

It did not take long to find it, as Einar had chosen that plant since he had seen it grow around the pond a lot. As soon as he grabbed the plant, he went inside to use the mortar and pestle to grind it into a paste. It was surprisingly tiring to do, but he did not mind that too much.

After a few minutes of constant grinding, he had finally made a green paste with a blueish tint. It looked quite poisonous, but he believed in the book.

He took off the bandages he had put on the old man before he started to apply the paste he had made.