CH 14

Episode 14 – Ahmed’s Doting Care

After that, I had barbecue again for lunch with Ahmed. I was trying to hold down my rising stomach ache and nausea as meat was being forced down my throat. It should have been a long time since I last had meat, but I’d already reached the point where I didn’t even want to look at a single piece of meat anymore. However, Ahmed was eating even more than me and had had an ecstatic expression on her face this whole time… making me realize all over again that this person was truly a monster in all meanings of the word. It really made me wonder how that much meat could possibly fit in a single person’s body.

When I had finally finished eating, I looked over at the place where we had dismantled the bear and had piled up the meat, but for some reason it was completely empty. Dion did say that the meat would be gone in two days… but, even after seeing it, it was a little difficult to stare reality in the eyes.

“Haaa, I ate so much! Ahhh… the meat’s all gone, huh? Oh well, can’t help it. We don’t have anything left for dinner, so I’m going to go do some exercise and hunt for a bit. Hey, Lewin, you want to eat meat, too? Okay, I’m off!”

Without even giving me the time to respond, Ahmed ran off somewhere. I really didn’t want to eat anything else for today, but at this rate she’d come running back with some kind of gigantic monster or beast carcass again. Thinking of the massive portions of meat I’d end up having to eat tonight, my shoulders drooped in dismay, when I suddenly felt two firm hands patting my shoulders to comfort me.

Turning my head, I saw Dion and Smash, who were looking at me with encouraging gazes.

“Oh man, Elisa’s taken a liking to you.” (Smash)

(TL Note: Smash talks with different speech mannerisms, so in Japanese you can easily tell who’s talking, but when translated to English, it’s sometimes hard to tell who exactly is talking, so if this occurs in the future I’ll try to make it clear by adding their names in parentheses.)

“Dion-san, Smash-san, please tell me the important points on how to deal with Ahmed-san… ” (Lewin)

“No, I didn’t think she would take a liking to you so quickly… Sorry, bro.” (Smash)

“Hmm… As far as I know, using any last-minute wishy washy lines might hurt her feelings, so I think it might be a little difficult for Lewin-kun.” (Dion)

“Well, I think calling her by her real name like I do was a pretty good technique. Or, you could try punching her.” (Smash)

“Well, would I even be able to continue living afterwards if I punched her?” (Lewin)

““……………””

Wuuuu… They were both saying it was impossible. Well, no matter how much I continued to think about this, it’d be of no use, so I decided to forget about Ahmed for now and get back to collecting plants.

“Well, no need to think about it too hard. I want to go do some plant collection, so could you guys escort me?” (Lewin)

“Of course. Where to?” (Smash)

“Okay, let me be the one to escort you next time then.” (Dion)

“Certainly. Thanks so much!” (Lewin)

I pulled myself back together and decided to set off once again for more plant collecting. If possible, I wanted to reach my goal in this next session. From what I had seen so far, my chances of doing so were probably about fifty-fifty.

Under Smash’s escort, we moved to another area overrun with plants and vegetation, and I got back to work. I had really gotten the hang of it, but when it came to searching for Dumbbell Weed, I had to literally go through and appraise every single weed in order to have any chance of finding one. Therefore, I couldn’t really hope to speed up this work any further at this point.

This tidbit of information most likely wasn’t entirely accurate since I’d only collected two of the weeds thus far, but the probability of finding Dumbbell Weed seemed to be about 1 in 50,000. At this rate, it would possibly become necessary for me to reconsider whether it would be more efficient to give up on collecting Dumbbell Weed for now and to concentrate on collecting other useful plants and herbs instead. At the moment though, I wanted to find a little more Dumbbell Weed, so I decided to go with appraising everything for now.

With that said, the appraisal and collection process was completed in around 2 hours this time. Since I finished a little ahead of schedule, I took Smash up on his offer, and immediately headed to the next area to continue collecting plants.

It was nice that this next area had comparatively fewer plants around, but I felt like it was necessary to rethink things a little bit. If I were to collect plants nonstop for four hours, it might inconvenience the person escorting me too much. It would probably be less burdensome on them if, each time I finished collecting the plants in the area, I were to go back to the camp and have the two switch off.

“Smash-san, sorry you had to escort me twice in a row. Thanks to you, the collection has finished safely.” (Lewin)

“You don’t have to thank me every time, you know? It’s not like I’m doing it for free. It’s easy to get used to this level of labor, so it’s really nothing much.” (Smash)

“It makes me glad to hear that. Thanks, Smash.” (Lewin)

“…As I was just saying, you really don’t need to thank me so much.” (Smash)

After making sure I had conveyed my thanks to Smash, who had put up with escorting me twice in a row, I returned to the base. By the way, I met my goal of 4 gold coins just now from that first area alone. However, after meeting the goal, I stopped counting. I guess the total number of plants I ended up collecting would be something to look forward to finding out when I actually go to sell them at the end of this expedition.