Calvin didn’t remember when he had fallen unconscious. Nor did he remember what had exactly happened to him.

His mind felt fuzzy, as if he’d drank a whole flagon of cheap alcohol and then passed out on the streets.

His body felt sore, as if he’d been tilling the ground all day and then went to sleep on a pile of rocks.

When he had opened his eyes in a daze, they were unfocused as he tried to regain his bearings. Trying to wake up from the half-asleep state that he was currently in.

He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea rushed towards his head and left him reeling as bile started to rise in his throat. His body, which had almost no strength left, would probably not be able to endure much more.

Feeling dizzy and lightheaded, he temporarily gave up on moving and tried to remember what happened. Where he was, what was going on, what to do next. Controlling his breathing, he forced himself to calm down.

‘The village...right, I had gone back to the village to bring the herbs for treating the fevers.’

‘When I was close to the village, I had encountered a group of bandits.’

‘They chased me so I ran into the forest and ended up running out of food.’

‘Then I decided to take a break for a while, didn’t I?’

That was the last thing he could remember. Everything after was distorted and hazy. A blur of sounds and feelings was all that he could sort out from the events that had occurred.

It was just then that he noticed the smell of iron and turned his head sideways to see what it was from. Feeling his ear touching something wet, he tried to wipe it with his hand when a sharp pain rushed through his head and nearly caused him to faint again.

Gritting his teeth as he lay on the ground, the aching soon disappeared.

The pain faded away, leaving being a shocked feeling like he had been doused with water during the winter. It was cold and freezing, but also cleared his mind of lethargy.

‘Pain... yes, there was a lot of pain.’

‘A knife, he had two knives didn’t he?’

Fragments of thoughts started to come back, little pieces of images that he struggled to make meaning of.

‘Stabbed...I was stabbed in the shoulder, wasn’t I?’

As everything slowly became clearer as he pieced it all together, he began to realize that something was very wrong.

‘Why am I alive still?’

The pain from his shoulder, the pool of blood that he was lying in, all was proof that he was stabbed before falling unconscious.

So why?

Why didn’t the other man end his life?

He didn’t believe that the group that had chased him all the way into the forest for nearly a week would simply decide to spare him all of a sudden. Why would they leave him alive?

A sudden growl interrupted his thoughts as his body complained about being hungry. Mind straying, he wondered how long it had been since he last ate.

Looking up, he no longer saw the glow of the blue sun, but rather normal daylight from above, signifying that it was around noon.

At the very least, he guessed, half a day had passed since then. Adding it with the two days before that...

‘Almost three days huh?’

Almost three days since he last had a proper meal that wasn’t leaves and weeds.

‘Maybe the guy left me, thinking I was dead?’

It was slightly probable, considering his current state.

Anybody would bet that he wouldn’t survive for long in this place without food or water.

Well, he wasn’t dead just yet, and he didn’t want the man coming back around to check. He would have to move, find something to eat, and keep on going.

But how?

He found that although the left arm was useless right now, he could still move the right one. By rolling his body onto his right side, he managed to push himself up into a sitting position. To his great delight, he found a bit of remaining jerky in one of his bags and ate it, not saving anything.

‘If I have to move, I need the strength…especially with my arm like this…’

He could not see how bad his shoulder was, covered in filth and blood as it is, and he really didn’t want to touch it for fear of it getting worse. Silently, he added another reason to go to the lake. He would have to get it cleaned as quickly as possible, and he didn’t have the water to do so right now.

There was no more blood coming out, so it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

At the very least, he wouldn’t die from it.

Estimating about how far he would have to go, he should be able to get to the lake since he had already traveled a great deal of the way. If he was jogging normally, it would probably take him less than a day to get there, but he had no idea how fast he could travel with his current body.

Nevertheless, he had to leave as soon as possible. Not only was there the danger of the man and his companions coming back, the blood would draw predators towards his location. It was a miracle that he wasn’t attacked by a wolf or coyote yet.

How long would it take for something to notice him? Calvin didn’t want to stick around to find out.

Looking at the trail of blood that he left when he was running through the bushes, he figured out the general direction the lake was in. Assuming that was the way he and the man came from, the lake was probably in the other direction. Taking up a slow gait, he hobbled slowly while taking care not to make his wound worse.

“Where the hell’s Robert?”

“I don’t know, why don’t we wait a bit longer?”

“It’s almost been a whole day since he left, you just want to keep on waiting?”

“Maybe he got attacked by som’ beast Garrett, I heard there’s quite a few of them here.”

“Shut up Leon, we haven’t even seen a single wolf since we got in here.”

“...I hope you know that’s just because of how loud we all are boss…”

“Really now Brian?”

“Saw a few wolf trails back there, but they were pretty old so they were probably long gone.”

“......”

“We have twelve of us here anyways, a few wolves aren’t any threat.”

“......”

“Well, eleven now.”

“......”

“So what do we do now boss?”

“We should go look for him, I suppose. Let’s split up into groups of two and start searching.”

“We have eleven people though?”

“It’s fine, I’ll go by myself. We’ll all come back here by tomorrow evening, alright?”

“Oh, and make sure to bring back either of their heads if you find them and they’re dead.”

“Ehh, really? Seems like a lot of extra work to me.”

“If word gets to the Earl that someone escaped, we all might as well be dead already.”

“...I guess you’re right…”

“What do we do if we don’t find either of them?”

“We can figure it out when it comes to that.”

“Hope we find them soon so we can get out of this place.”

“Agreed, it’s too dark in here for my liking.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get going. The faster we go, the faster we leave.”

““””Right!””””