Chapter 221 - Recovery

As much as Zaos wanted to hunt Ferdinand and his asshole friends at that very moment, there were several things on his way. First of all, was the ocean. He couldn't go anywhere without a ship, so he had to wait for the smugglers to bring their ships. The second thing was his health. Zaos was weak and lost a considerable amount of muscle mass, but he could solve that problem somewhat while he waited for the smugglers.

"For a young man who was bedridden not long ago, you sure can eat," Orleand said with a forced smile while he watched Zaos's eating like a man who never saw food before.

"The trick is not to drink too much water alongside it," Zaos said. "If you don't mind, sir, I would like to go with you and the others. I won't be a burden."

"Well… what do you say, Captain?" Orleand asked Erean, who was also eating with them. "I think it will be easier to defeat Ferdinand in a single day to convince this blockhead to stay behind and recover."

"I have recovered enough," Zaos said. "I am sure that I can defeat most people without breaking a sweat."

"With or without magic?" Erean asked.

"With the magic, of course," Zaos said. "I will sweat a little if I use my sword alone."

"At least you admitted that to us," Erean said. "Let's hope that such understanding of your condition will prevent you from doing anything reckless again."

"I won't make any promises, but I will try my best to behave," Zaos said. "Besides, it is not like I can fight the way I want in the ocean, not like I can jump from one ship to another without a care."

"You can't?" Erean frowned.

"Well… unless they are like twenty meters away from each other, I can't jump such a large distance," Zaos said.

That was already impressive enough since most armored guards couldn't do that with their armor on. In the end, even wounded, Erean knew that Zaos would be a valuable asset. He could reach other ships using his magic before the enemies could do the same and cause some havoc inside them. After imagining that, Erean's face palmed and sighed, he was relying too much on a kid that had too much of a bright future ahead of him, and by relying on him too much, he felt like one day, he would send him to the grave.

"So, when are we departing?" Zaos asked.

"We are negotiating some of the valuable things that each family still had left at their homes with the smugglers," Erean said. "Once we finish that, we will have enough money to pay for the people of the island who decided to fight with us. While some of them are retired sailors, they still know how to fight. In three days, we will depart in ten ships and with an army of three hundred."

It didn't seem like an army with that number, but Zaos couldn't say that in such a situation. Three hundred didn't seem impressive, but ten ships seemed pretty impressive… since Zaos had no idea how many battleships the whole country actually had.

"We heard today that a few days ago, five ships of our kingdom were sunk in battle," Erean said, and that made Ameria clench her fists and lips since they had come to rescue her. "That only shows that we can't underestimate Ferdinand's fleet."

"Considering that, it didn't seem like a good idea to challenge him with our numbers alone," Drannor said.

"Yes, that is why we are going to attack some of his bases and make sure to prove that the rumors that he has been using were just a bunch of lies," Erean explained. "This battle might take several days, so be careful."

Erean said that while looking at Zaos since, despite his looks, he was pretty hot-blooded. In any case, Zaos had three days to recover his physical fitness as much as possible, so he just began to stuff himself and then train as hard as possible. Fortunately, his sword was so heavy that it didn't take long for him to swear and spend all the extra energy in his actual condition.

Drannor offered to spar with him at some point, but Zaos didn't have to sharpen his fangs by sparring. He had to get rid of the dust on them. Besides, while he was out of shape, his spirit wasn't the same as when that journey started. He didn't spend much time researching these days, after all. Even though he wanted to, he just couldn't since he had to focus himself on the mission. The last thing that he needed was to return home after failing to protect Ameria. That certainly would be devastating to his mother since she would know why he would have failed… Still, now that he thought about it, Zaos focused on attacking more enemies than actually protecting her.

During that time Zaos was training, Drannor also accompanied him. Despite the fact that he was a genius, he never ignored his daily dose of basic training. That much was fine. Zaos didn't mind training with others, even without sparring, as long as they didn't get in his way. Still, things were a bit weird since Ameria and Noemi accompanied Drannor, and then she watched both… Zaos actually liked to train in front of his mother, but it seemed he didn't feel the same way when other women were looking at him. Even though those two were too young to be considered women.

"Why did you stop?" Ameria asked.

"... For no reason," Zaos said after a long sigh.

Zaos wanted to ask if they didn't have anything better to do, but he couldn't be rude to the people who looked after him when he was unconscious. Besides, he knew that they spent a good part of their day training as well. Ameria took a liking to crossbows, and she was teaching Noemi how to aim with one. Regardless, Zaos couldn't help but think that he missed something.