章節 281: Not as much
On the day of his departure, Zhao Wei woke up early. Even the sun had yet to let it's rays descend upon them through the gaps in the canopy that he himself had recently formed. Only Panda awaited him, the other two seemingly having disappeared the night before.
Well... as long as Thirteen is with Myra, even if she can't fight, at the very least they'd both be able to escape.
The apes had already returned to their routine of daily combat, though finding themselves lethargic and sluggish. It wasn't a mystery why they were in this state. What else did they expect to happen after having continued fighting with no food for so long, and yet stuffing themselves full day in and day out once they caught a break.
It was good for him as no one noticed when he slipped around the edges and left. Maybe one day, when he was finished with his trip, he might decide to come around again.
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They were all growing at an amazing pace. Not saying that they'd even be considered talent less from where Grendolyn came from, but in a place like this their speed far surpassed any that had come before them.
She understood it wasn't only from the methods she had taught them. Those things could only go so far, back in her place, they still needed to consume copious amounts of food, all of which contained high traces of energy themselves. According to the captains, even a grain which could exhibit those qualities would be considered a national treasure here.
Only by seeing how much they were able to achieve with so little did Grendolyn understand how wasteful her people were with their resources.
But maybe, that wasn't a fair analysis of them either. Under different circumstances they might act just as wastefully, but right now with the enemy knocking on their front door they didn't have the option of slacking off.
Even as their food supplies began to dwindle and each of their quotas grew increasingly smaller with each passing day, they pushed almost all of what little energy they gained from it to cultivate their strength.
Their enemy probably wanted to weaken them until such a point where they could attack this detached group like stray cats, not knowing that the moment those walls were breached they would end up facing ravenous lions that they themselves have starved.
Even if that was the case, Grendolyn still felt like something was up. Having a simple plan of attrition was one thing, but how long were they willing to wait. And even if they were waiting patiently, that didn't mean they or something else somewhere wasn't playing their own games.
This world was too cramp. Sure it's size increased exponentially, but their respective earth's resources weren't enough for all their egos, all their political games, all their greed. If it was, there wouldn't be any wars. And now all those messes that each world held was suddenly taken and shoved together into one giant cesspool of madness.
Right now, no one had any luxury to believe that their enemies were only those who stood in front of them, and that was only considering those who grew in civilizations or kingdoms, now the savages, beasts and even the undergrowth that those in power used to tame and cage for their own purposes and amusement now growing as well.
Luckily the one person who decided to stick with her from their group was the one who could enter and exit enemy ranks undetected.
"Hey I'm back." A voice whispered from beside her ear, it's breath brushing across the nape of her neck.
"The young ones might find that habit of yours amusing but I personally do not." Grendolyn spoke in a low voice.
"You're really taking this 'honorary captain thing way too seriously aren't you? And what's that about 'young ones'? You know when you get to my age, the lot of you look like babies to me, acting as if you suddenly matured... If you want to feel like such an adult your body usually complies and follows, see I can see some wrinkles begin to come out under those eyes." Jeff complained.
"Eh! Where!?" Grendolyn shrieked at the mention of wrinkles, scrambling for a cup of water to check her reflection on. "You know, I heard if you talk too much you'll quickly lose a lot of teeth."
"Eh, how's that going to work, girl if you want to lie at least make it..." He stopped when he saw Grendolyn respond by cracking her knuckles threateningly. "Ehehehe... right.."
Quickly the both of them entered her private quarters where finally Grendolyn plopped herself on a couch and let out a sigh of relief. "Haiyah! I'm not made for this!" She groaned as she buried her face into the cushions.
"Back to your normal self eh?" Jeff seeing her act and talk like usual relaxed as well.
"Sorry bout that, but I have to keep up appearances in front of the ones outside." Grendolyn answered as she rolled around on the chair.
"Why?"
"Eh what do you mean why!?" Grendolyn lifted her head, her eyes already becoming teary as she began to yawn. "Of course because I'm not a military person, I'm just a blacksmith. But if they find out that the methods they were taught was passed on by a blacksmith won't they become less motivated to actually learn it? So at least I have to keep the facade until this all blows over."
"Yeah... that's not your job." Jeff spoke, his tone becoming stern as if he was teaching one of his underlings. Her head sprung up when she heard him speak that way, waiting for a reason for his words. "You've already given them more than you need to, if they can't use that for themselves and need somebody to keep pushing them then that's their problem. Besides they're not 'our' people."
"Isn't tha.."
"Sounds harsh kid, sure. They're from our world, but when did their lives become our responsibility?" Looking out the window, Jeff continued. "Out there, thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of people from our world are dying at this very moment... are you going to save all of them? even these guys, are you going to stay here forever to make sure they did their part?"
At those words Grendolyn no longer tried to respond as she looked at the ground trying to contemplate the issue. "Besides I've seen powerful people, maybe as strong as you, maybe not. Quite young and naive, believing that their strength meant that the rest of us needed their help. Finding only later that they were thanked when there were benefits, but the moment something went wrong people switched from calling them saints to calling them a calamity faster you could blink."
"Those that kept their titles, worked themselves to death trying to satisfy demands that grew the more that they were provided. Stop being arrogant thinking we can't live without your guidance, we've survived this long despite scraping around at the...." Jeff stopped after seeing Grendolyn sulk.
"Sorry..." He whispered. The world changed according to how one saw it, and Jeff had seen it from the deepest darkest corner and that stayed, but to him it was his to bear and not something he should've imposed on others. He wasn't sure where it came from, for as long as he remembered he hadn't had an out burst of any kind especially his opinions. Maybe actually interacting with people for so long had made him soft... That or he was finally going senile.
"Let's forget about it..." Grendolyn spoke, it wasn't as if she agreed with him, but right now she didn't have an answer that was suitable for this either. "By the way, what did you find down there?"
The past few days, Grendolyn had continuously sent Jeff to the enemy camp since he could turn invisible and walk right in, asking him to figure out what was on the other side. "Well the past few days were the same, they just stayed around and had a few people keep watch of the wall, but today they seemed a little more busy and a large new tent popped up in the center of camp in less than a day that I haven't seen them, at least as big as the whole camp before, and judging by the sound of movement inside, I don't think they're showing hospitality to only one person."
"Oh?" Grendolyn's eyes went wide with curiosity.
"Though I'm pretty sure there were a lot of people inside, only one guy exited and entered to talk to Bartram. If we ever thought there was somebody behind them, this is probably the guy," Jeff said, though his eyes were distant, reanalyzing his memories of the man he saw.
"Why do you say so?" Grendolyn asked, drawing closer. "Does he look important?"
"He's strong. At the very least, with his abilities I doubt he'd bow to Bartram. And I only hope that he's the leader, if someone at his level was just a lackey then besides you, me and some of the captains, the rest of them are probably going to die in an all out war." Jeff concluded. "I couldn't enter the tent, once I saw him he also suddenly locked onto my presence. I ended up collecting some of the new things that Bartrams camp received." With that Jeff pulled up a sack and dropped several items which cluttered onto the table.
"Are those the 'guns' like last time?" Grendolyn asked as she picked up an assault rifle from the table, trying to compare it to the ones the previous assassins dropped. Even if she had yet to understand the intricacies of how the technology worked, even she understood that these were a whole lot different than those she had seen previously.
If nothing else, she spotted several mechanism problems with those old machine guns which would've probably affected it's performance should her conjecture prove to be true, much more so with the way Bartram's men did their maintenance. The sleek bodies and intricate design was definitely several generations above in terms of technology alone.
Though the prospects of what such a thing might do in battle was horrifying. As a creator of weapons herself, she had to admit that she found herself intrigued. Compared to the sword or spear which required a powerful cultivation and a lot of skill to use proficiently, even a child could pick up any of these things and slaughter scores of men as it pleased.
That was of course only in the case of those at the lower realms, against those of a cultivation above the general populace of 2nd tier kingdoms, the projectiles these things shot out would barely be able to graze the skin. And with a forceful enough swing, any of these would break apart like crumbling earth.
But what if she could apply her skills in forging of swords and spears in the formation of their parts? Or those projectiles, apply some mana on them? Replace the material? or even, change the need for them altogether?
Jeff could already see that her mind had wandered off somewhere else. She had yet to understand how fast the situation had changed. Or maybe, with her abilities, the fate of this place did not matter as much to her as she thought it did...
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