Jasmine was worried; Gren didn't show himself after the fighting had ended. The mercenaries began to search for him and managed to find women and children that needed to be gathered together while they were investigated. When Annie found Gren, it was in the infirmary.
"I won't let you harm him." An older woman stood between Annie and Gren. He was laying down on a hospital bed with his mouth covered with a bandage. "If you want to harm a patient of mine then you'll need to go through me."
The old woman, a doctor, was not intimidating in the slightest to Annie. "We're not here to harm him." Jasmine wouldn't be able to squeeze into this room so Annie figured that it'd probably be best if she moved Gren before yelling out that she found him. "Can you wake him up for me?"
"He'll just be in pain if I wake him up now. The herbs haven't done their job yet." Annie didn't know what herbs the doctor was talking about but figured out that they were probably used on his mouth.
"He'll be fine. Just wake him." Annie used more of an intimidating voice to help get the doctor moving. "If I try waking him then I don't know if I can keep my word and not harm him." Technically true. Gren sometimes slept so heavily that people needed to whack him awake.
The doctor reluctantly pulled out a small vial and opened it before waving it in front of Gren's face. Gren slowly opened his eyes before suddenly becoming alert, backing away from the doctor. He tried saying something but there was only a muffled voice coming from his bandaged mouth. Trying to talk must have hurt since he grabbed at his mouth and entered the fetal position on the bed.
"Remove your bandages and heal yourself first. After that, you can tell me how you ended up like this." Annie really wanted to know how what happened to Gren.
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After he healed himself up, Gren told Annie about his trick with the hot soup and how the doctor used a smoke to knock him out before he could respond. As a result, he got hit on the head by her. "Why didn't you just hide in a crate or something like that?"
"I didn't think about that. I didn't have much time and I saw the soup. It seemed like a plan that would work and it did, in a way." Gren thought about it and decided to ask a question, "By the way, how did the rest of the battle go?"
"It would have gone better if you were there. We technically won but the leader and a few lackeys got away. We've got lots of people with small injuries from arrows and two people with major injuries." Annie didn't blame him but she really thought that if he was there then they would have had fewer injuries. "Dill is missing part of his right arm and Letta doesn't seem capable of moving. We don't know what's wrong with her."
"Where are they located?" Gren was hoping that they could be healed with his current skills. He didn't want anybody to have long term negative effects caused by his negligence.
"I'm not sure where Dill ran off to but Letta is out by your wall. I'd suggest checking out Dill first since he lost a lot of blood." Annie pulled Gren towards the center of the fort, leaving the tied up doctor on the bed. When they reached the area where their captives were being held, Annie yelled out, "Where's that idiot, Dill!? Tell him to get over here if he wants to be healed!"
"Give me a moment, boss lady! I'm, uh, a bit preoccupied right now!" Dill's voice came from the top of the wall. "If you see part of an arm down there then can you check to see if it has a tattoo on it!?"
Gren and Annie left Dill to look for the pieces of his arm while they went to check on Letta's injuries. It didn't seem like he was actually that injured if he was up and about. Outside of the fort, Cammie was sitting down next to a tied up kid that was trying to bite her. Letta was on Cammie's other side, laying flat on her back.
Gren made sure that all mercenaries in the guild gave him permission to examine their bodies after the first mission just for situations like this. There was some internal bleeding that he healed but the major problem was her spine. Gren couldn't heal spinal injuries since they required delicate control that he didn't have. She can breathe without a problem but chewing would be out of her league.
"I need to find some monsters to kill or she won't survive for long." Gren had twenty four research points after the battle and he needed to create something to help him grind food for her. Just one more point was needed. He didn't know how long it'd take to research the Simple Mechanics project so it was best to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
"It will take a while for Mimi to go through the memories of everybody left behind so that'll be fine. Just take Shenzi and Ahk with you after healing everybody and placing enough of these shelters for everyone." If Jessica knew about Annie's decision then she might get angry but what Mimi said had her thinking that Gren became stronger with each kill.
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Everybody was healed, except for Letta, Dill, and the poor guy that survived the jump off the top of the wall. Dill's arm couldn't be recovered and Gren had different plans for the last remaining enemy. Unlike the people he fought before, this man would be publicly executed. Osmond didn't like it but Gren explained that it was to help the women that had been held captive. They had been assaulted by these men for months, if not years.
Gren gave a small speech in front of the people liberated and captured from the fort before using an axe to behead him. There were people that winced and recoiled when they saw the axe coming down but nobody shed tears for the man. Even the wife of the man looked on in contempt at him; few women in the fort had a say in who they married and the alternative was being communal property if they resisted it.
Unfortunately, the hell that they just went through would be repeated if they went anywhere else. Gren would need to open up a shelter if he wanted to protect them. Jessica would probably be angry with him for increasing their expenses but it would be for a good cause. Gren didn't want to leave women and children to fend for themselves. It might seem odd for people in the modern world to think that way but his reasons for saving women and children were related to his past life.
His mother only became pregnant with him because she was sexually assaulted. She was against abortion because of her religion but she didn't want to raise the child of her rapist. Gren--or Tommy as he went by back then--grew up in an orphanage, but the care there was poor because there wasn't enough funding. Many kids just ended up becoming criminals because the system set them up for failure; without parents--and, to a lesser degree, with parents--most kids didn't get to learn how to succeed in life.
His general apathy towards men was closely related to his protective nature towards women and children. Part of it had to do with finding out about his father but the rest was formed from his experiences. The men in his life were either uncaring or abusive so he grew up with a twisted viewpoint. He recognized that it wasn't healthy now but the memories from this world didn't help. The only people that the old Gren spent a meaningful amount of time with were his mother and the old lady that taught him.
"Shenzi, Ahk. Annie gave me permission to go hunting so I need the two of you to help me." It would be nice if he could earn all of the points in one trip. "If you can, try to find something that I'm actually able to kill." It wouldn't be funny if they had him fighting a warbear; he would need a powerful weapon to kill something like that.
In his past life, firearms were sometimes called 'the great equalizer'. When he was younger he thought that they were evil but, in his mid twenties, he realized that they were the only way for the weak to defend themselves against the strong. In this world it should be no different, even when it had monsters.