Chapter 45 – People? (3)

Chapter 45 – People? (3)

For a long minute, Rowan sat in silence. He’d thought he’d had it bad—and he certainly did, at least when it came to how dangerous his situation was—but the people before him, he couldn’t imagine how many friends someone would have to lose to be able to shrug off a death like this.

Or, perhaps, they were all sociopaths, but from what he’d seen, he didn’t think it was a viable theory.

If he had to decide, he knew that, every single time, he would choose to be in his current situation over theirs. Even though he’d nearly died so many times, he had genuinely enjoyed some of his time stuck in the caves, gaining power.

“Oh,” He whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Eren let out a little laugh, but there was no joy behind it. “It’s alright. You look like you’ve been through much worse.”

Rowan smiled in return. “I doubt that.”

There were a few moments of nothing as he took a drink from his waterskin before the silence was broken by Cynthia. “Why are you naked?”

Nearly choking on his water, Rowan looked down at himself in alarm. As he stared at himself, wide-eyed, he heard Henry chuckling.

“Sorry about that. Cici here is very…blunt with her questions.” But Rowan wasn’t paying attention.

“Oh, fu—” He took a deep breath, calming himself. He didn’t want to curse in front of Cynthia. He breathed in and out a few more times before trying to take a look at himself from the perspective of the party.

The only things left on his body were his belt and the top foot or so of his pants, but even that was tattered. To make matters even worse, he was covered in dried blood and gore. Lots of it.

He’d done his best to clean himself up by scrubbing himself, but without being able to access more than a bit of water at a time, bathing was impossible.

To anyone else, Rowan realized he must’ve looked like a crazy murderer or a living corpse.

“I’m sorry.” He cringed, still looking at himself. “I didn’t realize I looked like this. I’ve just been stuck down here for so long…I must look crazy to you.”

It was a bit embarrassing to realize that it’d been so long since his last social interaction that he hadn’t even considered his appearance. Still, they’d been in a life-or-death situation, so Rowan decided to just blame it on him being too focused on saving them.

“I’ve seen much worse, trust me,” Henry said. Then, his expression turned to one of concern. “But you said that you’ve been ‘stuck down here’? You mean that you’ve been trapped in the caves?”

Rowan nodded.

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been here since the start of the Tutorial. I’ll be honest, you’re the first human beings I’ve seen since the first day.”

“Seriously?” Eren interjected. “You’ve been stuck here for the entire Tutorial? And you were saying that we had it worse?” She shook her head. “How did you even survive?”

“Wow! You must be really strong!” Cynthia jumped in. “What level are you?”

Rowan glanced at her. She was young, but something about the way she was talking seemed off. After a second, he thought he understood what was happening. Cynthia was almost buttering him up to try to learn his level.

But it didn’t seem malicious. No, it was more like the little girl had latched onto it and truly wanted to know out of pure curiosity.

“Cynthia,” Henry chided. “Don’t pry at his secrets.” He turned back to Rowan. “Sorry ‘bout that. She has an odd obsession with people’s levels. I think she just likes the numbers, you know?”

“It’s alright,” Rowan replied. Still, he didn’t feel like it was the best idea to share his level, so he turned back to Eren, who’d asked a question he was actually willing to answer.

“I was lucky to survive,” He said. “There isn’t much to it, really. I ended up in the caves pretty far from here, where the enemies weren’t quite as strong. I had some lucky encounters, too. I almost died quite a few times, but I made it.”

After that, they sat in silence for a bit. As he rested, Rowan watched the group. So far, only four of them had spoken: Henry, Cynthia, Eren, and Lucas. The first three seemed friendly enough, while Lucas watched him…not with aggression, but not with friendliness, either.

The last two, however, hadn’t spoken at all. They’d introduced themselves as Jeremy and Emma, but that was about it. Looking at their appearances, Rowan thought they were certainly siblings, maybe even identical twins.

They both had jet black hair like Rowan’s, except somehow even darker. And, despite their opposite genders, they had almost the exact same facial structure. The two of them watched him with distrust, sitting apart even from the rest of their group.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

With a sigh, Rowan decided to check his status. He’d gained two levels from the fight with the bloodspawn earlier, one as the explosions went off, and the other as he cleaned up the survivors.

Name: Rowan Crowe

Race: Human

Class: Chained Lord (Inheritance)

Level: 12

Stats:

Strength: 17

Dexterity: 11

Toughness: 28

Vitality: 18

Mana: 17

Free Points: 2

Active Skills(2/10):