Chapter 90: The orc's uprising (2)

"I won't." He replied concisely.

Before I started working on it, I told general Emilio to lie down as I tossed him some painkillers, hoping that they might lessen his pain a bit sooner, although I doubted it myself. After he gulped them down, I opened the cloth that was wrapped around his wound, and twisted the alcohol bottle's cap.

"Hang on a bit, this might be painful."

"Y--ugh!"

Before he could finish talking, I shoved the relatively clean side of the cloth into his mouth to avoid him biting his own tongue, and applied the alcohol on his wound.

"Hrrnggh--!"

As expected, he started to squirm in pain, "sorry, I'll need to hold you down a bit."

Just as I was about to hold his limbs from moving too much, his squirming stopped. I took a glance at his face, and saw a burning resolve in his eyes. Well, that was a general for you. Not everyone could keep control of their body while their open wound was smothered with alcohol.

"Thank you, general Emilio," I smiled, "I don't know much about wound evaluation, but let's hope that your organs are a-okay."

I took a random forceps and began removing the visible debris as much as I could. Although messy and probably very wrong, I hoped that this would lessen the infection probability by just a little.

"Hngg--" General Emilio groaned, but managed to stay still.

"Just a bit more, general. Hold on." I quickly applied pressure over the wound with some gauze, and wrapped it up with a dressing.

"There you go. Good job, general," I smiled and grabbed his hand in assurance after I made sure that the bandage wouldn't come off, "now drink a lot of water so you won't dehydrate and get into a shock."

General Emilio removed the cloth inside his mouth using his other hand, before saying, "thank you."

"Heee~ Do I need to get injured so you can hold my hand, too, little cub?" General Zhang suddenly popped up beside me.

"What-- No!" I said as I tidied up the materials and separated the already contaminated ones into a separate cloth, before stuffing everything back into my bag.

"Then how can I make you hold my hand?" General Zhang continued to tease me while giggling like a madman.

"I'd rather go and hold Jeanne's hand," I sighed, "let's wait a bit until general Emilio can walk."

"I can."

Suddenly, general Emilio stood up with a straight face, as if nothing had happened. How could that dude be so nonchalant after losing so much blood? And wasn't he in pain just now?

"Then let's head over to the outskirts and catch a random orc~ There should be some of them doing labour work or something." General Zhang suggested.

"Well, if you're sure you can walk..." I sighed in defeat, "just to clarify, we will be going back to the Palace later, right?"

"Yeah. But not to give back the crest," general Emilio answered, "why did you ask?"

"Uh, I have a business there, I guess..." I said as I scratched my cheek nervously.

Honestly, at first, I didn't plan to go there at all. Why would we go back and meet that creepy elf king just to possibly get killed?

But now, I did have a reason to.

"Inventory." I muttered ever so slightly, even I wasn't able to fully hear my voice.

[Tree Sapling (material) x1]

[A small tree sapling. Too small for starting a fire. Might be useful as a decoration]

This. This little guy right here.

That tree sapling was the one that Ioriell gave his last drop of mana to. The one life that Ioriell managed to preserve. And I intended to do something about it.

"Oi, little cub, what are you doing, staring into oblivion again?" General Zhang's call snapped me back to reality, and I immediately looked up to see that general Emilio was already a few meters ahead.

"Ack, wait! I'm coming!"

--------

'Poof!'

"This much should be enough."

General Emilio popped a small fireball using his magic, and used it as our light source for the night. It was getting extra dark since Ioriell's comrades put out the forest fire not long ago. Furthermore, they had no street lights here, only a few lanterns here and there, with additional lighting coming from the distant houses' windows.

"And we've got the meat ready." I exclaimed as I laid down three dead birds I and Luke just hunted.

Even though we brought some food in our backpacks, I suggested that we should hunt while we could. Because, hey, we didn't know how long we would stay here, right? And most of our food was either canned food or ration packs, anyway. They could last pretty long.

In war, food allocation was crucial. Save what you could, and gather what you could, whenever you could.

"Ooh~ Are you going to cook for us, little cub?" General Zhang hummed in delight.

"Nope. I'm just going to prepare the meat, big brother Luke will be the one to cook," I replied while I pointed at the robed man beside me, "I don't know what he does while he cooks, but his cooking isn't bad."

"You really mean it?" Luke suddenly questioned me with big, sparkly eyes, "hmm-hmm! I'd say I'm quite the chef!"

"Nevermind, I take that back." I said as I flashed Luke my biggest smile.

"Too late. You always take back your compliments. So mean." Luke pouted.

"Ack! Why are we debating cooking skills when we should hurry? Any orc might pop up soon!" I sighed and started to remove the feathers from the birds.

It had probably been roughly almost an hour since we hid ourselves near an outhouse just a few hundred meters away from the village's gate, just waiting for a random orc to stroll here. Judging by how well-kept the outhouse was, and by the fact that it still had a bucketful of water, that meant it was still regularly used.

The question would be, by whom? And of course, there was no better explanation than by the orcs, particularly the ones tasked to gather resources around the village's outskirts.

"Is it okay if we light a fire here, though? Wouldn't we get spotted?" Luke asked while he casually took a pack of wet wipes from my bag to clean his hands with.

"What do you think, general Emilio?" I lifted my gaze up from the naked birds to look at general Emilio who was busy standing there, looking into who-knows-what.

"...We should wait." He replied, only sparing me a quick glance.

"Alrighty." I nodded as I continued removing the feathers from the other birds, too.

"Aw, but I wanna eat~" General Zhang pouted, "also little cub, where did you learn how to prepare a bird?"

"If you want to eat, then wait," I threw a feather at him, who was slowly scooting over towards me, "and of course I know how to. Just like how you guys have taught your soldiers, I was taught early on to avoid starvation in the wild."

"Hmm? But from what you told us in front of the Headmaster, you were just an ordinary food stall owner? Or what was it, truck-kun owner?" General Zhang smirked as he took a few strands of my hair into his hands.

"Ahh, well. I didn't lie about that. And it's not truck-kun. It's a food truck." I sighed.

"Then why would a food truck owner know how to fight and sustain herself in the wild?" He inched closer and closer, until we were just centimeters apart.

"That's--"

"Too close. Not good for kids." Luke's hand suddenly came between our faces, and shoved me backwards.

"Ack! Be gentler, would you!?" I exclaimed in annoyance.

"Pfft-- I see that you have an overbearing 'big brother'~" General Zhang chuckled.

"Anyway!" I interjected before we got into another meaningless spat, "your question. That would be because I was a food truck owner for only a few years. I had another job before that."

"Surprise, surprise, tell us what job~" He giggled like a little kid.

Ugh, it was painfully obvious that he already knew anyway, so why bother asking? Now general Emilio even looked over here. Oh, right, he was suspecting my origin before, wasn't he?

...Oh well, elaborating a bit wouldn't hurt, since I had practically given it away with me using guns and stuff. No need to pretend to be an innocent little girl.

"Army job, I guess. Similar to a soldier in your Vanguard, but more... Uh, specialized?" I tried to answer as best as I could.

"But not a lot of our soldier knows how to use a gun." General Zhang giggled, as if finding this amusing.

"And not a lot of them have killed a person." General Emilio suddenly chimed in. Ah, not you, too...

"I mean, where I come from has a different situation. Lots of us knew how to use a gun, but those who knew how to wield a sword and spear were pretty rare. And not a lot of us have killed a monster, either." I explained. I didn't need to tell them that instead of monsters, we were fighting other humans, did I?

"So people fight using guns over where you lived? Fancy~" General Zhang remarked.

"Fancy in what way, you freaky eel? It was horrible," I let out a deep sigh, "and yeah, that's true, although we also use other methods. We had various weapons like cannons, artilleries, and this huge, armored vehicle called tanks."

"I see, I see, you guys had a lot of toys, huh?" General Zhang continued to listen to my story with a smirk while sitting patiently beside me.

...Wasn't he going to question me about what those words mean? No? Or like wouldn't he ask me to elaborate more, at least? Oh, well.

"Not toys, they're deadly, mind you." I reprimanded him with a little huff.

"How long have you been enlisted in the army?" General Emilio suddenly questioned while he deadass stared at me for longer than 5 seconds, probably the longest he had ever stared into my eyes so far.

"Uhh, hard to say, since I was enlisted as a soldier ever since I was a little child."