Chapter 189 Volume IV - Chapter 34: Desperate Situation in the Bunker
My eyes, once again opened. It was because the door to my room had opened, but also because of the light that came into the room after that.
Someone had entered my room again.
I quickly sat up, wiped my dazzled eyes, and looked at my visitor. As I expected, it was Dorhud.
"It's been two hours, but... how're ye feelin'?"
"Fine, I can walk."
I raised my hand and looked at my palm, opening and closing my fingers. Then swung my legs front and back. There didn't seem to be anything wrong.
"I've recovered enough, more than enough."
With that, I tried to stand up and succeeded.
As soon as my foot made contact with the floor, my whole leg tingled. It was the downside of sleeping on a hard floor for too long, but it wasn't much.
I stretched like this, realizing that my body was indeed not in too bad shape. In fact, I was relatively fine.
I turned to Dorhud and nodded to him, and then I noticed something else... Something that I hadn't noticed much until now, lying in bed. There really is quite a height difference between me and him...
I've grown a bit taller lately with all the things I've been doing, when I first found myself in this body I was one hundred and sixty-five centimeters. Now... I should be around one hundred and seventy-one centimeters, I think.
Aside from my height, Dorhud... he barely reaches up to my chest, if at all.
"Them other two in the bunker got themselves healed up well enough. That's why I've come to wake ye, and seein' as ye're awake, we can start discussin' what we're gonna do next."
I tapped the tip of my foot lightly on the floor twice, the tingling had finally gone. I was feeling more better.
"Got it, we can go."
Dorhud nodded, then walked out of the room. With a deep sigh, I followed him, and for the first time I stepped out of my 'sick room'. What I saw was, frankly, exactly what I expected.
Old, rotten walls and the warmth signaled that we were several meters below the ground.
This place is literally ancient, at least it feels like that. It's probably a bunker that people used during the awakening eighty years ago and nobody has ever touched it again.
Also, I don't remember a place like this in the game, so it's new to me.
"We ain't gonna be walkin' too far, right around the corner."
When Dorhud saw that he was right behind me, he started moving through the old corridors. The further we went, the more I noticed the structure of the bunker, which looked like it was about to collapse.
Can a place look like this just because it hasn't been touched for eighty years? It's... a bit strange. It feels like something in particular has worn it down.
The corridor widened as we went along. Eventually, it led to a large door. It was half open and beyond it was the 'meeting room' Dorhud had spoken of.
Dorhud walked through the door without hesitation and the first thing that caught my eye was that this was not a 'meeting room' at all.
It was a warehouse, that much was clear. That's exactly why this side of the bunker was so large and sheltered.
In the center of the warehouse, or the meeting room, there was something they used as a table. It was a shabby thing, but it looked sturdy compared to the rest of the bunker.
There were two people sitting around this table, facing each other. One of them was the dwarf I had seen when I first woke up, and the other was someone I never expected to see here.
No, I didn't recognize the woman in her twenties, I don't know her. It was just... she was a hannya.
With a single horn curving up from the right side of her forehead, jet-black hair like mine and brown eyes tinged with red, she looked like a demonic being, even if she wasn't.
Add to that the fact that she can read emotions and feed on them, and the situation only gets more complicated. No wonder people call the whole race the demons...
"Dorhud, ye finally arrived!"
The second dwarf sitting at the table put a big smile on his face.
"Heh, I woke up the lad."
With that, both the dwarf and the hannya suddenly focused on me. I didn't show any sign of backing away, though, and I sat down in the last available seat while Dorhud took his own.
It was the first time the four of us in this bunker would speak together, and Dorhud was the first to speak.
"First off, let's get to know each other again. I'm Dorhud, Dorhud Gen'dai."
The second dwarf spoke immediately after him.
"Hardil Dhur'a."
Hannya looked briefly at the three of us, then sighed.
"Ezareth Mansaar."
So I was the only one who had not introduced myself.
"Aiden Tenebra."
That way everyone had introduced themselves. Dorhud spoke again without waiting for anyone, as if to show that he was the leader of the group. He turned to face Ezareth.
"How much food do we got left?"
Ezareth's expression fell a little and she spoke fluently in the dwarves' language.
"About two days. I have that much food in my ring."
Oh? Ring?
Dorhud folded his hands across his chest and grimaced.
"If I only hadn't lost my own in the war... We could've lasted at least a week."
As the two engaged in a short dialog, I focused more on the word 'ring'.
Do these two have... dimensional inventory items? Dorhud is one thing, but I didn't expect this from hannya... I guess I'm dealing with someone rich.
"So we need to be movin' within two days..."
Ezareth, like Dorhud, was not happy with the situation.
"Yes."
Dorhud sighed deeply at the answer he got. He looked a little frustrated. No, all three of the three people in front of me were. They were a bit depressive, even.
Who wouldn't be? They had seen with their own eyes the destruction that Caleuche had caused, they had fled from it, they had been forced to enter this bunker, who knows how many meters underground, and now they were going to be short of food.
Who could maintain perfect composure in such a situation?
Well... except me, thanks to the Absolute Mind.
"Is Caleuche still on the ground?"
In response to my question, the focus of the trio suddenly shifted to me. Dorhud replied, maintaining an ugly expression on his face.
"Aye, I ain't expectin' it'll be takin' off anytime soon."
"Do we have any maps?"
At my question, all three looked at each other, nobody did anything for a while, and then Dorhud stepped on the bracelet on his wrist. A huge holographic map suddenly appeared on the table.
We were not far from the city, a kilometer or less.
"Where is Caleuche?"
Dorhud looked at the map briefly, then pointed to a spot on the map.
A faint smile suddenly appeared on my face, while Ezareth and Haldir, who had been ignorant of this information until now, stared at the map with glazed eyes.
"Damn it."
Haldir cursed his luck and Ezareth uttered a few curses in Demanil, the language of the hannyas. Dorhud sighed expressionlessly because he knew this would happen. That's why he had kept it hidden until the last moment.
As for me, I felt as if I had fallen into despair for the second time since I woke up here.
There were only six hundred meters between us and Caleuche.
The moment we stepped outside, we would be picked up on his radar, and when that happened, escape was next to impossible.
*******
"Clara..."
I kept looking where I was focused as I gently twirled the pencil with the top between my lips, there was a question in front of me. Yet I wasn't reading the question, I was thinking about something.
"Clara, are you there?"
"Huh? Ah, yes. I got distracted for a moment. Sorry..."
Paul raised his eyebrows and squinted slightly, fixing his yellowish-brown eyes on me.
"Are you sure? Did something happen, you never used to be this absent-minded."
"I just didn't sleep much last night, that's all. Nothing extreme."
I don't feel like telling him what I saw... The flame that burned my heart, the brilliant glow that triggered the flame, the gray sphere covered with cracks in that nothingness...
Everything is like a dream... like I'm imagining it, but I know. Those things weren't a dream, they were real. That's why they confuse me, especially my real brother.
He's probably responsible for my memory loss, for the death of our family, and for everything in my past.
We weren't a normal family, I've accepted that. Even though it was hard... I did.
But I'm still preoccupied with it all the time. I don't understand, because I can't remember a single scene from those times... I get confused, it feels like they're not real.
I stopped twirling the pen over my lip and leaned back with a deep sigh. Paul folded his hands across his chest and sighed.
"I told you to go to bed early."
"Shut up."
"You know I'm telling the truth. You always tell me to shut up when I say something true."
I clicked my tongue.
"That's enough for tonight... We've already finished the project homework. I want to go home and sleep."
Paul didn't look satisfied, his yellowish eyes full of doubt. After a short while, though, he managed a slight smile.
"Sure, whatever you want."
I stood up, picked up my bag, and threw it on my back. Paul was similarly ready. We were going in different directions as he was staying in a dorm room. So, he smiled one last time and then spoke.
"Shall we meet again tomorrow?"
"For what?"
"I'm bored, to be honest. I don't really have any friends other than you. You are somehow popular again, so there are a lot of people who approach you, but..."
"Except for some, almost all of them are just smiling, I don't even consider them friends. Popularity is not as beautiful as you think."
Paul paused for a moment.
"I wasn't talking about that, but... okay. Basically, I'd like to make use of tomorrow as it's the weekend."
"Got it."
I thought about it briefly, it was actually a good idea.
"Sure, we can meet. Now... I really want to go home and sleep, we'll talk tomorrow."
"Okay, bye."
"Bye."
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