Chapter 183

183 Watch your back, please! part Anne’s breath stabilized after a fewminutes and Ryu’s face was starting to regain color, but their stamina was completely depleted and couldn’t move at all.

Sera was busy taking care of them, but there was no way she alone could do all the work and scanned her surroundings looking for Risa. She would have asked either Bob or Luke, but they were mister Ryu’s friends and she regarded them to be in higher standing that Risa, despite her being her instructor.

“Where is miss Risa?”

“I don’t know, she’s been awfully quiet”

Luke shrugged, without being able to see her either

“Miss Risa, I need your help, could you please go fetch some water?”

Sera shouted, not so loudly to avoid disrupting mister Ryu’s sleep.

“No way! over here!”

Risa lied on the ground just besides the amarok, her body was swollen and her hands were purple already. Luke hurried to fetch the medicine, but Risa shook her head with what little strength she had left.

.....

“Please make sure Ryu is safe first, I don’t care what happens to me”

Her voice was so soft they had trouble understanding her

“Don’t be stupid, you’re low on health and your hands...”

Luke scolded her, fearing she might lose her hands. He had never seen anything like that, but it looked gruesom. In fact, if he had seen something like that before being sent into this world, he would have probably puked his guts out. Nevertheless, things were different now, he was a summoned hero with a duty to uphold and these were his companions. He couldn’t let something like that scare him, and he had to make sure everyone survived.

“Listen Risa, this I’m not asking, I’m ordering you to take the medicine. With Ryu down I’m the acting party leader”

Luke’s words were backed up by the single truth all adventurers lived by, obey your party leader. She knew this by heart because she had been saved from terrible situations thanks to following the chain of command.

She had participated in many quests that required multiple parties to join, on these occasions party leaders had to coordinate in between them and it made things a lot more difficult. It only took a single team to disobey an order to spoil a strategy and during the battlefield it was simply impossible to explain why did they issued a certain order, they simply expected it to be accomplished.

Those thoughts rushed through Risa’s mind. She didn’t want to waste the medicine on something as unimportant as a little swelling, she had been hurt way worse than that, she was even half eaten by ants once. On the other hand, she remembered all the time she spent with Luke while travelling and how he took charge, she never thought someone as petty as him would be able to be such a good leader.

He always had his priorities on spot, he took responsibility for his mistakes and never pressured the others for making mistakes, instead he provided insight on whatever he could.

“Fine, give me the medicine”

It only took Risa a couple gulps from Luke’s bitter medicine to make her regret agreeing to take it. It was so numbingly bad that she couldn’t even puke it out,although she wished she could.

“Bob, guard the place until I come back”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll go to the edge of the forest to confirm if the enemy is still chasing after us”

“But they’ll be able to... oh right”

Bob was cut off by Luke’s stealth, which allowed him to lay low without disappearing from sight. His presence faint and his steps were silent. While it was possible to discover him, Luke hoped that the distance and the woods were enough to remain unnoticed.

It took Luke less than fifteen minutes to come back and he looked relieved, especially after noticing Ryu was already up, Anne was conscious and Risa looked a lot better.

“Thanks for taking charge Luke”

“I do all the work while you rest in a beauty’s lap and all I get is a thank you!? next time I’ll let Risa take the lead”

A look of genuine worry appeared on Ryu’s face, he was still to exhausted to notice he was actually joking. Sera kept Ryu’s head on her lap and brushed her hair gently, she tried her best to keep her excitement from showing but it was impossible.

“And?”

Eloquent as always, Bob prompted Luke to tell them about his findings.

“I can’t be sure, but I think they waited until daytime to cross the quarry. That should give us a couple hours”

“What makes you think so?”

“I just do, ok?”

“What do you think we should do now?”

The blond hero was taken aback by Ryu’s question. Of course he was eager to step in and save the day for everyone, but he never thought Ryu would ask him what to do.

He was jealous of Ryu for a long time, but eventually he made peace with the idea of following his lead because not only did he save his life, he also succeeded where he failed, he convinced all heroes to work together for their common goals.

Ryu also kept everyone safe in Ironwoods by scheming and taking every possible safety measure from the very start. Luke would have simply walked in and probably would have gotten everyone on their party killed, he knew this well.

But now, the first person in this world he got to respect was asking him what to do. The mere thought scared him a little, but he took it seriously.

“I think we should travel only by night”

Luke said with his eyes closed, but then he opened them revealing a sharp gaze much like Hiraku’s whenever he became serious.

“With the cover of the night we won’t be spotted so easily, but even if we are it’s really difficult they’ll notice how badly wounded we are. If we run into some beast or enemy at night we can scatter and at least some of us will be able to survive”

“You can’t possibly be serious! are you really thinking on abandoning someone?”

Bob was starting to get worked up again, he didn’t like people talking so lightly about abandoning others.

“That’s just how things are. We don’t know what they want, but maybe, just maybe, they want one of us alive and don’t care about the others. If it wasn’t like that they would have given chase to the soldiers first because they were on their way to inform about the sacred empire’s doings”