Chapter 139

139 Don’t rescue enemies, please! part Sera and Fena had been walking for a whole day and were still a long way from Celarent. It was all due to being forced to carry the still unconscious Thea. She wasn’t really heavy, but it was difficult to carry her through the vegetation and it was taking them way longer than they initially expected.

“I don’t understand mister Ryu’s intentions, why do we need to save this... thing”

Sera pointed at Thea. She would have kicked her if it wasn’t for Ryu’s order to rescue her and she didn’t know if she would survive.

Sera didn’t have her sister’s Claire soft attitude and gentle character, she didn’t care about Thea in the slightest.

“We need to extract all the information we can from her so we can catch the criminals that tried to capture us”

Fena replied coldly, she didn’t care about Thea either and the only thing she wanted was to go back home and tell her mom everything that happened.

The fire in front of the girls crackled and the smell of cooked food arose in the air. Sera took one of the skewers she had prepared and took a bite.

“Not bad, but I prefer mister Ryu’s cooking”

“What’s so special about that guy? when did he become so strong?”

.....

Fena asked.

“You’re not qualified to know and if you don’t adress him with the respect he deserves I won’t be talking to you anymore”

“Y-You’re right, I’m sorry, he did save us after all”

Fena took a skewer for herself and couldn’t help but let out a gasp. It was delicious, even better than the food back at Celarent. But then she remembered that Ryu’s cooking was indeed better and the only reason why she was taken aback by the mushrooms taste was because of her hunger.

All they had to eat were the mushrooms Sera picked, it was none other than Ryu who taught her which of them were edible and which were poisonous, and if it wasn’t for the experience she acquired thanks to all the gathering quests they took together she wouldn’t have been able to find anything to eat at all because goblins are excellent harvesters and their territory is huge which made it difficult for them to find food. Before leaving their village, they offered them some travel rations, but if their food was inedible then how bad would their travel rations be? Sera shuddered at the thought.

“We won’t be able to reach Celarent tomorrow, I think we should focus on gathering some more supplies”

“No, we need to arrive as soon as possible”

“We can’t afford to travel naked and unarmed through this forest, we may be strong but we’re defenseless. If we don’t eat properly we would be too weak even to run. Mister Ryu always prepares supplies before travelling and it’s worked for us so far”

Sera was aware that most adventurers would simply skip their meals, they had strong bodies and could afford to spend a week without food and days without water. The sooner they finished their quests the sooner they could go back to their city and eat their full. But Ryu, who had been the weakest in their group for so long, always made sure to have enough supplies for everyone.

She thought back at the time when she was starving and the difference it made when she finally started eating appropriately. She had always been weak, frail and ugly. It was only after eating Ryu’s cooking she got her womanly shape, her strength and even learned magic.

They spent the next day gathering berries, fruits, herbs, mushrooms, anything they deemed as edible and Sera was pleasantly surprised when she found out Fena knew what she was doing. At least she didn’t have to teach her the basics of gathering.

“Where are we? what happened?”

Were Thea’s first words when she woke up, but both Sera and Fena gave her the cold shoulder.

She was left alone with her own thoughts for a while and everything started coming back to her in waves.

Their plan to capture and enslave other adventurers, Kinta’s betrayal, her humilliation, the pain, everything came back on her mind so suddenly she couldn’t keep away the tears and started sobbing.

“So you remembered now”

Sera, who was standing right in front of her, looked down at her pitiful figure. Thea just kept crying, her wavy hair and slender body were covered in dirt and dried blood.

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, please don’t kill me”

“Kill you? why would we kill you? Mister Ryu ordered us to rescue you”

Thea breathed a sigh of relief, but Fena reacted differently when she heard Sera say Ryu ordered them. ‘Just who does she think that guy is to be ordering others around?’ Inside Fena’s mind there wasn’t a hint of the shyness she showed to the rest of the world. Needless to say, it was all a facade.

Never before had Thea been so hurt, dirty, humilliated as she found herself now, yet all those didn’t matter to her right now because of a single feeling she had never experienced so strongly in her entire life.

She was hungry.

It wasn’t the kind of hunger that made her stomach grumble and her mouth wasn’t watering either. All the damage she withstood and the exertion of her body trying to fight the poison left her without energy to move, it was the kind of hunger that consumed her from the inside and she had never experienced something like that before.

Sera knew that feeling all too well, but wasn’t planning on making things easy for her prisoner. Ryu asked her to rescue Thea, not to treat her well.

Thea crawled towards the fireplace and attempted to grab something to eat, but Sera stepped firmly on her hand.

“What do you think you’re doing crawling like a worm? If you want to eat, you need to beg first”

She said as she put more pressure on her hand.

“Please, give me something to eat, I’ll die if I don’t eat something”

Thea was too tired and too hungry to care about something as stupid as pride or nobility.

“Now I wish I brought some of their food with us”

Sera sighed thinking on the cold soup she tried at the goblin village.

Fena couldn’t laugh because she was still trying to keep up appearances, but she did find Sera’s malicious behavior to be rather funny.

“Sera, let her eat, we need her to walk on her own two feet tomorrow, we can’t carry her anymore”

“What if she tries to run away?”

“I won’t! I would never...”

Thea’s plead was interrupted by Sera replying to Fena.

“Fine, I’ll feed her”

She took a bowl, which was actually just half of the shell of a huge nut-like fruit they gathered in the morning, and placed it in the ground. Thea hurriedly took the bowl with her hands, It was a cold night and they were stark naked, just holding the bowl in her hands provided her some much needed warmth.

“Uh? why did you pick that up? you’re a beast and you should eat like one”

“I’m not a beast!”

Thea said tearfuly.

“Really? then why did you turn against us? not only you knowingly lured us into a trap, I remember damn well the way you looked at me when you thought you had us cornered. Only beasts attack adventurers so you’re a beast now”

Thea tried to think of something, anything she could say to rebuke her, but there was nothing she could say in her favor. When Kinta proposed her the idea of trapping other adventurers for profit she didn’t hesitate for a second, the first person she wanted to enslave was Sera. She had always been envious of her and seeing her suffering would have filled her with nothing but joy. Now the roles reversed she had nothing to do but to accept the consequences of her actions.

She nodded at Sera and got on all fours leaning towards the bowl of fruit slowly, her breasts made contact with the forest soil, but she kept going and started eating like an animal.

Not too long ago Sera had discovered the pleasure of making others suffer. Back at the shop she would always bully Mia, at least until Ryu caught wind of the situation and asked her to stop.

The noblewoman Thea, who used to be so arrogant in front of everyone, was now butt naked in the ground slurping the compote. That sight made Sera tremble slightly from pleasure, but she was far from satisfied, she wanted to push her to the limit.

“That’s a good girl, you do know your place after all”

Sera said placing her foot on top of the back of Thea’s head pushing her towards the hot liquid.

She was taking things too far for Fena’s taste and she was starting to get scared, but Thea didn’t react, she didn’t even try to push against her feet.

That’s what she got for betraying her comrades, she deserved that and much more. Nothing Sera could do to her would compare to what other people would have done to her had she been enslaved, once she realized they actually saved her from a much more terrible fate she simply surrendered to whatever Sera did to her.

But that was like stoking the fire that was Sera’s devious personality and things got even worse afterwards.