Raoul was glad to have a chance to meet someone who was not only a military officer, but also someone who had been right beside me in the fight with the orcs. The reason for this being, he wanted to hear the unedited version of what happened once we got split up, juicy details and all.
Once Ulrick finished recounting how he had met me, Raoul nearly died of laughter. "You were so scared you actually wet yourself? HAHA… and while you were running so slowly behind everyone else you tripped and were too scared to even keep moving? HAHA" he wiped the tears out of his eyes and as if he was bipolar he suddenly looked very serious "Jokes aside… due to your recklessness you nearly died. Don't rely on others to save your life or else one day no one is going to be there to do so and you'll die having left the world with no memory of you. We can't become adventures together if you die on me."
"I know I know… that's why I've started training. I'm going to get stronger. Soon you'll be trying to catch up with me." I replied with a smirk on my face.
"Okay enough with old memories it's time you boys told me the results of your scouting mission what did you see out their." Ulrick decided to jump straight to the point, which was very much appreciated by me now having the chance to skip by the embarrassment of earlier.
We soon told Ulrick our rough estimate of the number of orcs at the camp as well as our finding of the war orc hybrid. Surprising enough, none of this seemed to surprise Ulrick in the least. "You both did well to accomplish your mission, your gold pieces are in this bag, I hope the military can rely on you both in the future." While to some that might sound ominous, to Raoul and I it was genuine and kind.
We decided to part ways for the night and meet the following day for some more training. 'Hopefully I'll hit some more targets in the morning. At least now I get to go home and see my mom… Oh shit… My mom…'
I told my mom I would explain everything that had happened with me in the morning. But, due to everything that happened with me finding out about the system I completely forgot. Hopefully she's not to upset with me.
"Mom I'm home… I'm sorry I didn't see you this morning, I went out with Raoul for some training." I decided getting the first word in once I got home might help to ease the stress my mom was under, and in addition relieve the stress she'd put on me.
"You have a lot of explaining to… GODS what is that smell?!" she held her nose tightly while opening a window to air out the house. 'Shit… ha, literally; I forgot about us covering ourselves in manure to mask our scent.'
I thought up a quick excuse that wouldn't cause her to much stress, "Raoul was teaching me how to shoot with a bow and arrow when I slipped in the field…"
She cut me off "Field. The only field is outside those walls… you know with those orcs. Please don't lie to me what is going on?" While she was trying her best to hide her tears, her face was flush red and you could see the water forming in her eyes.
I decided to tell her everything I had told Raoul, as well as our need for gold coin for a bow and arrow and the job the army paid us to do… only instead of telling her about scouting I changed it to receiving Intel from a scout who had completed the mission for us. I also changed the reward from 100 gold each to 25 each to make the story believable. I then proceeded to show her 50 coin while explaining that Raoul had given me his share to help pay for a bow and arrow.
While much of what I said had been a lie, seeing the relief in my mothers' eyes further strengthened my belief it was the correct choice. If she knew the truth she would likely have forced me to stay home, and had she let me go she would be worried the whole time I was gone.
"Thank you for telling me, I feel much better now knowing your safe. I love you so much and I'll always be there for you Jerrik." Her saying this on the other hand made my heart drop.