Jason awoke to the sound of conversation. Unable to make out a word however, he groggily got up and rubbed his eyes. Jason looked around and to his surprise, it was still dark. The morning sun had yet to peer its little head over the horizon, and Jason wondered who was talking as he sat back down.
"Boo!" shouted three voices, full of excitement, followed by a few giggles.
Jason jumped back with shock and assumed a fighting position. Remaining on guard, the black-haired teenager asked worriedly, "Eve? Alea? Are you okay?"
"Hey! Wait! What about me, Master?" shouted the Doom Monkey pitifully, having been excluded yet again.
"Oh, I guess you're fine then, Karl. Where are the others?"
Three figures slowly came into sight as they appeared from behind a tree.
"Come on, sleepyhead! Let's start training," said a younger voice sweetly, still laughing with the person beside her.
"Yeah, don't forget we have to hunt today too," replied the tallest figure.
"Did you see your face, Big Brother? You were so scared hehe."
"Good morning Eve. Good morning Alea," Jason replied with a smile. He stammered a bit before admitting, "Yes, I was a bit worried. It's still dark, and I was worried that you two got kidnapped or something. I-I just didn't want anything bad to happen to you beautiful girls."
"Beautiful?"
"Yeah."
Alea's cheeks immediately reddened, causing her to turn her head away from Eve in embarrassment. Though the hate reader was inexperienced with women, his candidness and uncanny talent with words made others feel special, and his sudden comment about her beauty had caught her off guard. Fortunately for the Elf, it was still pitch black, and no one noticed her blushing.
Eve also turned her head to the side, with a feeling of guilt now growing over her. She had wanted to pull a harmless prank on her Big Brother but seeing how worried he was left a bad taste in her mouth.
"Again! Stupid, shitty master. What about me?!?" yelled the Doom Monkey as everyone chuckled, lightening up the mood.
"Yes, yes. You too, Karl. Good morning."
Jason called everyone over to the center of the clearing as they began their morning routine. Removing his shirt in response to the high humidity of the forest, Jason revealed semi-visible abs with toned shoulders and a well-defined back. He had made significant progress since he had first arrived on the Isles and chuckled at the thought of his parents reeling back in surprise if they saw him now.
The group of four ran laps around the clearing, practiced their pushups and pullups — still at a max of 45 and 5 respectively, trained their splits, and conditioned their shins against the trees. As they started to wrap up their training, the sun finally peered through the clouds, slowly rising higher and higher above their heads.
Their stomachs grumbled, signaling to Alea that it was now time to hunt. Grabbing her bag of S-grade Paralysis grenades, the Elven princess, vampire, hate reader, and monkey headed Southward through the Curious Grove, silently crawling through the dead foliage and noting various pawprints to track the movements of the various inhabitants.
After a few minutes, their eyes landed on a giant Deerpaw, who was happily nibbling on the leaves of a BrittleLeaf Tree. With the silent draw of a bow, Alea murmured, "I wish not for slaughter but for sustenance."
The arrow whistled through the air, embedding itself deep into the flank of the Deerpaw. The C-ranked creature let out a muffled shriek and attempted to run as two more arrows quickly rained down on it, striking the beast straight through the head, killing it instantaneously.
The princess jumped with excitement and walked over proudly, chest puffed out, toward her prized catch. Jason stared at the Deerpaw and was grateful for the successful hunt. They were a species of peaceful deer the size of an elephant with large antlers and furry paws, and their single catch was guaranteed to last the group for at least a week.
"Now it's your turn to try!" said the dark brown haired Elf happily, wanting to teach her new friends some tricks.
"Yay! I want to go first," screamed Eve.
Eve picked up the bow and closed one eye. Nocking the arrow with her right hand and holding the bow with her left, the young vampire pulled back on the string and released.
Twang!
The string vibrated furiously as Eve's left hand recoiled upwards, shooting the arrow in a similar direction. Jason immediately jumped back, praying that the arrow wouldn't fall on his head as Karl and the princess did the same. After a few seconds, the same arrow shot back down to the ground, narrowly missing Jason's feet by an inch.
"Eve, remember to control your strength and handle the recoil. Your string bounced because you pulled too hard, which caused you to lose control. Be careful," the princess said with care.
"Yes, pretty sister," the azure blue eyed girl replied with a smile. "I will work on it!"
"Next is Jason."
Jason gripped the bow tightly with his left hand, similar to how Eve had done it, and nocked the arrow with his right. He pulled on the string as hard as he could but…it wouldn't budge. He tried again, bracing his core and pulling with all his might, but the string barely moved. The Doom Monkey beside him roared loudly with laughter as he watched him fail to pull the string time and again. Gasping for breath, the hate reader knew he needed to improve his strength.
"Jason, you will need to gain more pulling power before you can use the bow. Don't lose hope however, since it will all be worth it in the end. If I were you, I would practice pulling the string 100 times as hard as I can to familiarize the motion. How does that sound?"
"Sounds great," Jason replied with a smile. "I'll try my best."
Before Alea could even utter Karl's name, the Doom Monkey quickly grabbed the bow, and with the perfect amount of strength and stability, he released the arrow in a smooth arc, cutting through the air. A proud smirk grew on the monkey's face as the arrow gently dug itself into the trunk of an Elderwood.
"Hmph," he snorted. "Easy-peasy."
"Karl, your ability to use the bow is surprising," Alea praised, clapping her hands. All of a sudden, she stopped and pointing to another tree, she said, "However, you have aimed at the wrong tree. Please listen to instructions more carefully."
Karl's scratched the back of his head and whistled while avoided eye contact. Ashamed, the little monkey scampered off with the excuse that he was "going to look for more berries" in the meantime.
"Wait, I'm going too. I want to play more too!" Eve said hurriedly as she ran after the Doom Monkey, leaving the princess and hate reader alone.
Jason sighed before shouting, "Just don't wander too far, and come back in a couple hours to eat!"
The princess giggled as she watched the entire interaction.
"Shall we prepare the Deerpaw then while we wait for them to come back?"
"Sure, Alea. If you don't mind showing me how," replied Jason.
Alea began to skin, debone, and slice the elephant-sized deerpaw into pieces, with Jason watching closely and following her every movement. After a few minutes of awkward silence had passed, Jason mustered up his courage and tried to lighten the mood with a conversation. After all, these tasks were rather boring and repetitive to do for hours on end in silence.
"I guess I'm pretty weak seeing as I can't even draw the bow," Jason said with a disheartened look across his face.
"I wouldn't worry too much. Really," replied the princess with encouragement as she removed a piece of the Deerpaw's hide. "If you put in the effort, I'm sure you can do it too."
"Look at me," she continued. "People used to always laugh at me and call me talentless, my own friends even, so I practiced secretly with the spirits every day until I became more comfortable holding the bow. I'd even argue that I'm probably one of the best sharpshooters in the nation now, even if no one else in the empire knows."
"Ah, I don't believe you! From the way you shot that arrow earlier, I never would've imagined that you were called talentless. Just look at me haha," Jason grinned.
"No, don't look down on yourself, Jason," Alea said, staring the hate reader directly in the face. "You have earned the Spirit King's approval, and though I'm not sure exactly what you had to suffer through to get to where you are today, that alone is enough for me to believe in your potential. After all, he said that we are quite similar in our characters, so I trust that you can do it."
Jason's face reddened as he saw the princess's stunning emerald green eyes. Alea, too, noticed the shrinking distance between them and blushed before jumping back shyly.
"Sorry," the princess said meekly before putting her head down to "focus harder" on the work before her.
"Y-Ya me too. Sorry," Jason said, similarly putting his head down.
'Why is my heart beating so fast?' she wondered. She had grown up around mostly females given her dad's overprotective nature, and the only men she had talked to before were the dirty retainers who had betrayed their empire or the greedy princes that wanted her to serve as a bed warmer or use her for political power.
However, unlike all the other guys she had interacted with previously, Jason seemed to be reliable, kind, hard-working, and funny, all of them being traits that she looked for in an ideal man. All of her friends had already found their soulmates, and she was getting older too…
'No. Wait. Why am I even thinking about this?' Alea shook her head. 'It's still too early. I only met him just recently.'
On the other side of the Deerpaw, the teenager lectured to himself as well.
'Jason, calm down. She's going to hear you if your heart keeps beating so loudly. Calm down. Never forget who you are; you are just an ordinary, weak, and average novel reader. You don't have a chance anyways.'
An awkward silence spread through the air as portions of bone and skin were tossed to the ground. Embarrassed, the tag team duo nearly doubled their productivity, hoping to escape the tricky situation and continued until the Deerpaw was neatly split into various cuts of meat.
As Karl and Eve returned home for lunch, they were spooked by the eerie silence.
"What do you think happened?" Eve whispered quietly to the Doom Monkey beside her. "Do you think they fought?"
Karl looked around and instinctively guessed what had happened. He had been quite the womanizer back in his tribe and was considered by some to be quite the romantic monkey.
"You will understand the way of the heart when you grow older," Karl soliloquized. "It's a fragile and complicated thing, but for now, let's not bother them too much."
"Okay!" replied Eve with a whisper.
—
Soon the sun set, leaving nothing but darkness in the air. A cold wind whistled loudly as it blew through the forest, disrupting Jason from his meditation. He had wanted to spend a bit of time thinking about what he would do after he finally met Eve's father and she left him for good, but the freezing wind gave him no time to think.
He glanced around and noticed that the others had fallen asleep, likely due to over-exhaustion, and decided not to wake them. He caught a glimpse of the shivering vampire, Elf, and monkey and quickly took off his long black jacket and covered them with it to shield them from the cold. The teenager blew warm air onto his frozen hands as he waited for a few minutes until he was sure that they had warmed up a bit before heading deeper into the forest to practice the bow.
For hours, Jason repeatedly pulled the string hundreds of times. Though he was not naturally gifted, he knew that he would need to grow stronger if he wanted to protect the people precious to him, and learning the bow was the first of many steps.
His fingers numb with pain, Jason sat down and rested his head on the trunk of a nearby tree. Within minutes, the hate reader fell asleep, visions of a dark netherworld plaguing his mind.
Alea appeared silently from the shadows and walked over to the sleeping teenager. She covered him with her warm cloak, which she had tossed to the ground as a sign of surrender not long ago, and sat beside him, returning the favor from before. Eve and Karl trailed not far behind.
"I told you all this morning, right?" Karl whispered with a stupid grin on his face. "Master can be a bit silly at times, but at the end of the day, he works really hard and cares for us all."
"Mm!" replied Eve supportingly. "I love Big Brother."
"I suppose you're right, Karl," said the beautiful princess dreamily, her hand stroking the hate reader's jacket in a daze.
A gentle smile began to spread across her face as she repeated, "I suppose you're right."
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