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Energy Eater - Chapter 113 - Bartering
🕑 Added 2025-05-06 01:41:18 +0000 UTCWe returned to the Village guided by our escort. At the very least, they were all very nice. Their leader was the only one who was a prick about everything. They were asking about the types of traps we used and how we were able to find the coyotes, which Michael was more than happy to answer. Astrid was also having some time in the spotlight as they kept asking about her training regiment. And once she answered with a simple phrase, 'cutting wood,' all the men behaved differently.
Some couldn't believe that she gained that physique just by gathering lumber, while others felt that the more impossible aspect of it was the fact that she spent time doing such a boring task. But the Frosted Lumberjack enjoyed that type of work. As a matter of fact, it seemed to be somewhat therapeutic for her. During our journey, she had stopped on more than one occasion to cut some wood just because she wanted to relax. And she did so without disrupting the environment. She knew exactly which trees she could cut without causing any problems for the forest itself.
There were a few of the men who also tried to talk to me, but I shut any attempt down. Making it clear that while we were following them, I wasn't enjoying the treatment we'd been having. And most of them seemed to be understanding of my reaction. There were one or two who even approached and said their apologies before being called by Conrad, who was demanding one task or another from the men. Eventually we reached the village and Pamela was already there waiting for us with a satisfying expression. Before we even got close, she shouted.
"Did they give you their magic powers?"
Michael just shook his head in frustration. "I told you, she's delusional. Unfortunately, she's really not taking the thing that happened to her sister well."
His answer was a bit surprising to me. I wasn't expecting him to be so willing to blame everything on Pamela.
Conrad nodded his head and told us to follow him as we passed by. She tried to speak with the hunter but he ignored her and so did we. If I were going to say anything to her, I wouldn't end up with just words.
We were taken to the same gymnasium where the hunters were gathered and someone had already come ahead to bring the person responsible for their supplies. Once the woman saw the amount of coyotes we were dragging behind us, she gasped with a smile. Without missing a beat, she quickly started to make a tally of all the meat and fur that they could acquire.
It took about an hour for all the 19 coyotes to be counted and checked. After all, they were not in a particularly good state. There was one specific that Astrid had not only cut one off its front legs but also its lower jaw and ripped a hole in the middle of its stomach. The poor bastard was too disfigured to be counted as a full one and that would affect the amount of fur and all the materials they could get from it.
The meat wasn't that much of an issue since most of our skills didn't really cause any damage beyond killing. The only ones that did were Astrid's ice based attacks and that layer of frost had already thawed out during our travels. As a matter of fact, the woman in charge of supplies was impressed on how well kept some pieces of meat were. The same pieces that Astrid had frozen using her attack. Once all that was done, Conrad was called since he had already left after we started having our supplies checked and asked how much would they gain from this? The woman blinked at Conrad for a moment, not really understanding what he was saying before realization dawned on her face.
"Oh, this is coming from us?"
I shook my head. "We are the ones that got them. But we only need some supplies. Whatever is left is going to stay with you. We don't intend to stay in the village," I replied, gaining a nod from Astrid and Michael. Both were also clearly upset at our situation.
"I'm sure we would be more than happy to accommodate the three of you. Our hunters could always use some help, and I'm sure they would agree that having three capable hands would be very good for us," the woman said with a smile, ignoring the annoyed grunt coming from the leader of the hunters.
I glanced at Conrad. "I'm not sure all of them would agree to that. But no. We're not staying. Thank you, but we have a destination already."
"Can I ask where?" the woman pressed.
I shrugged and said, "Sure, I'm just not going to answer." I made a point of staring at Conrad when I replied to her just so everybody was clear about the reason we were leaving.
Although the real reason was nowhere to be seen. Likely causing trouble somewhere else. The woman nodded and said it was a shame before starting to work out how much all the coyotes were going to be worth. The fact of the matter was that fur was extremely valuable to them. They wouldn't have only food and clothes. Both things that could be solved with the coyotes. And the cost of the bigger ones could be used to create weapons for the refugees to join the hunters, allowing them to solve the food issue even quicker.
The woman also understood that they were at fault for not having us stay close and did her best to at least give us some extra supplies as an apology. But we didn't need all that much. Just some pieces of dried meat. More soap since we used some to trade for our stay for the night and a couple of herbs that could be used for medicine.
We said that we had enough bandages even though we didn't need them, thanks to our {Body Regeneration} skill. But I had yet to see how the System would interact with diseases. Which is why we focused more on plants that would help fight off a fever or something like that.
Once we had all the supplies that we wanted, we headed out of the gymnasium. There was another hunter already by our side saying that the village chief wanted to talk to us. I let out a long sigh, telling them that it's fine but we were going to leave by morning since it was already getting late. A statement that both Michael and Astrid agreed to. None of them was really excited about the idea of staying here for longer than we had to. Especially after everything that we saw. The frog, then the ants, the giant body of the Eater, and we had no idea if another predator would step in to take the place of the coyotes. The man nodded and said that their chief just wanted to thank us. There would be no pressure for us to stay.
But just as we started to approach his house, Pamela walked towards us, stomping her feet. "What the hell did you do? How are you lying to everybody?"
"We are lying? Listen here you b-," before I could continue speaking, Michael cut me off and stepped between the two of us.
"Pamela, listen, I know you're upset and you're dealing with a lot of stuff right now, please, but you got to stop being delusional. There's no such thing as magic. I don't know what you think you saw, but that wasn't it. And the sooner you accept that the better is for everyone."
"You're saying that I'm a liar?" Pamela sounded extremely shocked at that notion. "I saw you using magic. I saw you making your staff grow and you," she turned to Astrid, "you can make ice out of nowhere. Don't talk to me like I'm crazy. The three of you are witches. And if you don't share your power with other people, then everybody's going to die. Or you're just holding it to yourself so you can control everybody."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, because if I had a superpower, I would waste my time traveling and hunting monsters instead of just finding a cushy place to control everybody. Please stop being crazy."
"I am not crazy," Pamela gasped. "I'm going to show everyone how I'm right," she shouted and rushed at me while holding a knife.
I didn't need {Mind Of Possibility} to think about the results of this. If I fought back, she would just continue to be annoying and people might start to believe her someday. If I was too rough with her and ended up using a skill, everybody would know that she was telling the truth and that's a whole slew of problems I didn't want to deal with. The best option was to prove once and for all that this woman was just crazy.
I shifted my body just enough so that her attack, if you could call it that, cut my right forearm. It wasn't a deep cut or a large one, but just enough to make me bleed. Without knowing if it would work, I also talked to the System.
'Sis, make sure that the area she's aiming at is not well protected by the particles. I don't want the knife to bounce off my skin.'
I received a single response, [Acknowledged], just before Pamela made contact and her next reaction was even better than what I was expecting, she grabbed my wrist and raised it up to the sky.
"Look, look," she gasped while waving my own hand. "She doesn't bleed. Even though I just cut her, she's not bleeding."
Pamela stopped when she looked to the side and saw that my arm was indeed bleeding. As the cut she gave was enough to pierce my skin. I pulled my arm back and gave her a good punch across the face.
"What the fuck do you mean, I'm not bleeding? What do you think happens when you get stabbed?" I pulled back and tried to look at my injured arm. "Fuck, I managed to kill off all the coyotes without getting hurt and now you do this crap? What is the matter with you?"
"What?" The woman stared at me. "No. I saw you. You don't bleed when you get hit. And even when something cuts you it stops bleeding look." She grabbed my wrist again and started rubbing my bleeding wound. But instead of the fixed arm that she was expecting, her movement only made my arm bleed more. It was starting to stink so I pulled back again while giving her another punch, which this time caused her to fall to the ground. It was very tricky to control my strength enough not to knock her out in one blow.
She stared at me again and asked, "How?"
I snapped, "Bitch, how what? I'm not a superhero. I don't have magic powers or any kind of that bullshit. I'm just a damn good hunter. But silly me, when I'm in a village I don't stay on edge all the time. I guess I should expect everybody to start stabbing me now."
"No but," she tried to protest again, but I just turned around and started walking as a couple of hunters quickly moved to her side to make sure she couldn't hurt me again.
"Now get the fuck away from me. If you get close to me again, I swear I'm going to kill you." I stomped our way towards the Chief's house. But I couldn't help but add one more demand after she hurt me. "And find somewhere else to sleep tonight. You're not sleeping in the same place that we are."
By the time we reached the Chief's house, he was already aware of what happened and didn't even try to make us stay. He just thanked everyone for our effort and promised that no one would bother us during the night. Even offered to throw a party in our name, but we refused. We said that we wanted to just have a nice meal, sleep and be out of here by morning. The man sighed and nodded, understanding that at this point, too much harm had been done. Especially considering that Pamela made Conrad come after us. He did ask if we had any intentions of taking the woman along, but at once, all three of us replied with a definite no.
And just like we promised, that's what we did. We got some food from the kitchen, thanked them for making our meal, went back to the house that they had assigned us and slept through the night. Making sure that all the doors were properly locked and that the windows barricaded. This time we even slept all together in the same room just in case anything were to happen. Pamela really didn't show up and honestly, I didn't care about where she could have gone to. By morning just minutes after sunrise the three of us had gathered our stuff and started making our way out of the village leaving behind a few coyote corpses some uncomfortable memories, a very strange vision and one human size piece of baggage that hopefully we would never have to deal with again.
Comments
DrDankness
Jesus this pamela is the polar opposite of Blue. Sad they share the same name
