The Gamer's POV-Chapter 213: Raven’s Benevolence

Since no creatures wandered this far out, the cadets were forced to choose between traveling back to the territory toward the east of the Stone Crag wastes or the territory toward the west just to hunt Grade Two monsters for food.

However, such a journey was currently impossible, because they were far too exhausted and battered from their raid on the hollow ones to venture out, especially to hunt prey as dangerous as Grade Twos.

Fortunately for the cadets, they did not have to venture out, and they did not have to starve because they had Cedric’s party with them.

As it turned out, Cedric had a vast amount of food stored in his inventory. In fact, it was not an exaggeration to say that he had enough to feed more than a thousand people for a full month, provided they ate sparingly.

Of course, this abundance was the result of Cedric’s foresight and benevolence.

Actually, during the time he stayed behind for his level up quest while everyone else was still in the Puppeteer’s Grove, Cedric had been storing up food. Whenever he came across monsters that were good to eat, he made sure not to kill them with his flames of decay so that he could store them in his inventory. This included creatures like the yetis and, of course, the wasp monsters. He gathered them because he knew that if they survived the raid on the Home of the Hollow Ones, the cadets would be too weak to hunt for themselves.

And so, while the cadets were initially in despair over the past week wondering what they were going to eat, he fed them despite being unconscious.

Well actually, since he was unconscious, Aika did it for him.

She had commanded the feathers held by his party members to shift into ravens, which then opened up the inventory delivering food to the fewer than six hundred cadets who remained.

After the first day they were fed, Ino took charge of the distribution operation. Twice a day, she would speak to her feather, causing it to shift into a raven. Once it opened the inventory, Ino and a member of Aurora’s party would distribute the food to the party leaders.

This made every cadet grateful to Cedric beyond words. Most even sang his praises, worshiping him like he was some kind of god whenever it was time for meals.

If Cedric were alive right now to check his status, he would have been surprised at the sheer number of positive karma points he had earned.

That aside, the fact that Cedric’s ravens appeared every day to feed them placed the hearts of his party members at ease.

To them, it was proof that even though he was away, he was at least alive somewhere. Now, their only hope was that he would come back to them soon.

***

In these barren plains covered by fog, it was hard for the cadets to tell the time of day exactly. So, they all relied on their whisperglobes, which projected some kind of luminous holographic clock that they could use in telling the time.

It was currently long deep into the evening, and many of the cadets began to murmur because it was well past the time when Ino usually distributed food to the party leaders. For some reason that they did not know, there was no food tonight.

This got a few people worried and a few frustrated, and so many began to pay visits to Ino themselves, curious as to what was happening. One of those who did was Princess Aurora herself.

She walked past her party members and walked toward the section where Cedric’s party was seated, huddled around a large fire. When she got there, she spotted Leon still sleeping. He had been sleeping for the past two days.

"Is he still not back?" Aurora asked as she crouched near him to study him.

She was addressing the question to Dion, who sat close to Leon. When she glanced at Dion, she noticed that his mood and demeanor were uncharacteristically somber tonight. This made her arch a brow.

Slowly, Dion shook his head and replied, "No, Princess. He is still in his inner sanctuary."

...Indeed, Leon was in his inner sanctuary.

Two days ago after he had checked his level on the whisperglobe and found out that he had met the conditions to advance a grade, he was quite excited. As such, he had told the members of his party that he would be leaving to advance to the next grade.

He had to tell them because, unlike advancing to the second grade, the process of advancing to the third was much longer. His party members needed to be aware so that they would look after his body, as he couldn’t tell exactly when he would be back from his sanctuary.

Of course, Aurora was also aware as she usually liked being in his company. During the last few days, she had been frequenting Cedric’s party just to hang around him.

Cedric’s party members were beginning to suspect that the Princess had a bit of a royal crush, and Dion even began teasing Leon about it relentlessly.

Anyway...

Aurora kept looking at his flawless skin, his sharp jawline, and his beautiful golden hair, until Ino spoke behind her, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin.

"Do you need anything, Princess?"

Aurora spun around quickly, cleared her throat, and stammered, "I uh... yes." She stood up, then quickly tried to regain her composure. At first, she raised a folded palm to her mouth as if trying to hide a cough or perhaps the lingering blush on her cheeks. Then, she pointed a hand back vaguely toward the direction of the crowd of cadets behind them and added politely, "Pardon my intrusion. I just came to check if everything is alright."

Hearing that, Ino could understand her intention, even though the princess did not explicitly say it.

She let out a long exhale and didn’t reply immediately.

Aurora suddenly felt that something was wrong. Come to think of it, ever since coming close to the party, she had felt that the mood was a bit gloomy tonight. A frown crept up as her eyes darted from Ino to the rest of the party. They all had the same unsure and haunted expressions.

"I’m sorry, Princess," Ino finally replied. "But we think that something bad may have happened to Cedric."

"What?"

"We no longer have his feathers anymore. They have all vanished."