After finishing the meeting, I went to explore the city and buy the new items on my list, not many more to have a pack during the quest. Abel really knows a lot about herbs, I can identify quite a lot of time resource, fruit, flora, roots, fungi, and a few other types of plants, but I don't know how to use them all even though I know their attributes.
Some of the herbs I went to buy had various detoxifying effects, but along with those characteristics, there are others that can be pretty bad, like causing serious bleeding or even mild poisoning. I wouldn't feel safe using these herbs on anyone and I'm very curious to see how Abel would be able to use them, but I hope I'm not the one who needs the treatment. Watching from afar would be the ideal situation.
Finishing my duties, I went back to the inn to meet Hilda or Ingredi to say goodbye, although I will probably have some free time between missions, I won't be able to control where I can be to enjoy my free time or even know where they are. to find them.
If I'm not lucky I can go two or more years without candles, apart from the single dumbest idea that might work of writing letters to Hilda I have no idea how to keep our relationship going. I don't think staying together would be good or bad, as the chance of us dying is pretty big and maintaining the relationship can simply be a constant source of worry and distraction.
But even if we break up, I doubt I won't worry about her. We both avoided talking about it for as long as we could, I'll stay in her room waiting for the chance to have our last conversation before we part.
I really wasn't excited to have this nasty conversation. It still took a few hours for Hilda to appear, it seems that her team meeting was much longer than mine, the leader Ana is really straight forward and I wouldn't be surprised if she forgot some interesting points that she should communicate to the team.
"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with your unit doing something?"
"No, actually the meeting didn't take long to end. Our leader is very direct and likes to save time, combining that with the shock she caused the team members, basically no one was able to ask her many questions."
"You're lucky, my unit leader is a very annoying and boring idiot. He managed to make the meeting so boring I almost fell asleep on my speech."
I think Hilda had more bad luck than I did today, but I hope her team leader is good enough not to lead her team to death.
"But is he competent? Because my leader is, despite some quirks she has. She gave me the impression of being quite competent in the very short and direct meeting."
Hilda sat on the bed next to me after taking out her super special spear and luggage.
"Maybe, I'm not sure. He is a very smart mage and has poured a lot of information on us showing that he is very smart and knows how to organize the unit, if not for his horrible voice and peaceful atmosphere he could be a good teacher."
"I'll have to wait and see if he's competent as a leader during this training mission, we're going out tonight so I only have a few hours to say goodbye to everyone."
"Are you going out tonight? I thought you would only leave tomorrow like me; I think I fear very little time."
A sad face stares at me, it's a beautiful face but not the happiness in it. I hug Hilda on the bed.
"It's going to take a long time for us to get together again, isn't it? Even sending letters must be time-consuming and complicated because of all the bureaucracy and security rules of the military."
Hilda rests her head on my shoulder.
"Yes, but do you really want to do this?"
tricky.
"I don't know, but I think you've already made up your mind, don't you? You have been avoiding me for a while before entering your seclusion and now, we are being watched over by two very nosy old owls."
"I haven't exactly avoided you, and my mom and aunt are watching us to make sure nothing bad happens. I have an annoying secret that I've been avoiding telling, but you also didn't insist that you spend too much time with me before I had to start trilling behind closed doors, you could have taken the initiative."
What kind of trouble is going on with Hilda.
"I didn't want to insist because I thought you had a good reason to avoid me a little bit, but whenever you were with me, I focused all my attention on you. I just didn't want to be an idiot."
"What do you mean by idiot?"
"Well, after what happened in your tent during the final part of the test, I thought we would get closer when the test was over, but when we got back home and you were busy like I was nothing happened, then you started to avoid meeting me several times. Sometimes I thought you weren't ready and were using training as an excuse not to throw the truth in my face."
"I didn't make a direct move because I didn't want to be an idiot, it's if I was wrong about why you were swerving you would have just made the first move, it's not like you were going to wait for me to be the first to take the initiative seriously. you were sure you want to have sex with me."
A low laugh comes from Hilda. Looks like she's not mad at me for what I've done.
"You're pretty weird, but I like it when you're so worried about me but you're quite wrong about why I avoided sleeping with you. When I got back home, I had a conversation with my mom and she told me a few things about the path we both planned for me to take."
"Like the problem you didn't want to tell me about?"
"Yeah, during the conversation my mom got really upset with me for the fact that I'm still a virgin. She was absolutely sure that I was going to sleep with you during camp, I admit that her expectation wasn't that wrong or misguided, because I intended to sleep with you, but since we didn't have as many opportunities to have a nice place to be together and had all the rush of the encampment clumsy, we ended up putting it off."
"Doesn't she seem to be against us being together?"
"She is not. She liked you a lot to tell you the truth even though she didn't know you in person at the time, now she likes you a little less, but it wasn't because you got my ass and extremely nervous in front of her."
"During my conversation with her I was informed that I kind of missed my opportunity to lose my virginity for a while, we made a big mistake not having sex on the floor with two animals in the tent."
"I'm going to need you to explain a little better Hilda, I'm having trouble understanding your train of thought."
"It's just that if we had slept during the camp, I would have had enough time for my body to be 'cleansed'. Usually people don't talk about it, but when two people have sex their energies mix at the very small level but big enough to get in the way of certain cultivation methods of some arts."
"Is yours one of those arts?"
"No, but the process of forging the spear is. As it's basically a copy or sub-core of mine so before the spear is forged, I can't have anything affecting my core, and after the spear is forged, I can't be 'contaminated' either because that would affect my sync with my spear. I know that I have to wait six months after the day my spear was made to make sure nothing can affect the period my core and spear are only fully stabilizing."
"Are you kidding me? We 'missed' our chance and have to wait several months to be able to have sex which is quite difficult since we're both going to be in different units that don't have a fixed base, and we also can't tell each other our location. because that would be against the rules. So, we would have to be the targets of a divine miracle for us to be lucky enough to find ourselves in mine from a period between missions and have enough time to get away from our units."
"I'm not kidding, I know this suck. I blamed my mom a lot for not telling me before this, but when she told me the reason, she didn't tell me was to keep me from getting too rushed to have sex because of the deadline, I can't be too annoyed with Is it over there."
"So, I was wondering what you want to do with our whole situation, Ulric?"
"Do we break up or stay together?"
"Are you sure? I'm going to be direct now, so don't be upset with me. I like you a lot but I've always known that we have some issues about our futures I've always known what my life path is going to be I have some initial goals already set like being the leader of my clan, I'm going to surpass my mother and grandmother, I want to dominate the entire southern city."
"I won't lie to you, Ulric, but I have big and dangerous ambitions after my initial goals are accomplished. And I don't want to force you to go down that path with me, not that I don't think you're good enough to be by my side or any other idiocy it's because you don't seem to know what kind of life you want to have or don't want to decide now."
"Have you always given me the impression that you want to explore the world and not get stuck in one place or just have no intention of making a plan right now, I don't want to force you to do anything you didn't want to do, but I want you to. know what my life goal is. I don't intend to ask you to marry me right now, because that will either ask to be rejected or leave our relationship completely ruined."
"So, I have an idea, I've been thinking about it for the last few months. I want to break up with you and make a promise."
I didn't expect this, I think I'm more shocked now than when I found out I was going to be reincarnated or when I realized I was dead. I've never felt like a cheap or ordinary romance protagonist, but now I feel like I'm the secondary character in the ice queen Hilda's exemption story.
I had no idea she wanted to be queen or maybe even empress, she really knows how to hide her plans well. She always gave me the impression that she was being a little forced into the heiress position by being the eldest daughter, but now I know she wants to be much more than a powerful noblewoman.
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now. She's right about me not even having a very clear goal since my biggest and almost only goal is to enjoy this life to the fullest, but realizing now I think I'm not living so well.
I'm focused on becoming stronger and surviving, because the only method to be safe in this world is to be stronger. Being weak in this world and always having your fate decided by the whims of others, I just need to meet a crazy person at a bad time and I'll be dead it almost happened before I just survived by luck.
What will I achieve to be remembered by others? Or I will simply be a minor figure in someone else's story. Making the most of life is just living well? Or should I create a grandiose goal to accomplish during my lifetime?