Around a week after resting at the barracks, Lyrus got released from the medical wards. He asked himself why his friends didn't go visit him during that time. Cawton was injured so he probably was receiving treatment and couldn't come, but he knew that Vanessa didn't suffer any critical injuries so she had no reason to not visit him, he felt kind of sad since he was overlooked like that.

'Oh well. Since they can't come looking for me, I guess I should go look for them.' Lyrus then decided to visit their homes, on the way he reminisced about the rising of his party a few years back, about his first party member, Cawton.

As a noble, he learned to shoot with the bow at his house, taught by experienced archers and practicing the art of the hunt. He came to Austen in order to acquire experience in the field. After all, killing mindless monsters was much safer than trying his luck on the battlefield against veterans and the uncertainty of war.

During his time with Lyrus, Cawton took lessons from his reliable teammate about swordsmanship but he ended disappointed because Lyrus was so skilled that no monster ever managed to get close upon him when out there, leaving his now improved sword skills unused in the field. And in the invasion of the kobolds, the newbie who initially thought that he could finally put these skills to the test and use them against his enemies was met with throwing spears that completely denied this possibility, forcing him to stick to the bow for the whole battle.

As for Vanessa, her common birth meant that her parents had to save money for years to pay her tuition fee to become a magician, a work that paid off well considering that her talent for casting magic and controlling the flow of battle through said magic was top-grade. Unfortunately, she didn't feel that much comfortable around the strange nobles that were Lyrus and Cawton, their status seemed to build a barrier against humble people like her. Lyrus initially hid his name in order to avoid problems with it, but in the middle of a hunt Cawton unintentionally called his real name and the situation ended a little awkward between Lyrus and Vanessa. They got over it with time and kept hunting together as it could be seen in the invasion last week.

Arriving at Vanessa's house, Lyrus identified the humble, one-story house with walls made out of wood, the door had some simple handmade carvings that drew some random lines through its upper part. Knocking a few times in the door, Lyrus waited there for some time, but there was no response.

He swept his sight to the houses around him, they would all look the same were it not for the wooden windows - or lack of thereof - chipped on the sides that let some of the sunlight shine inside, a pity that most of the folk would already be awake before said sun gave any shade of yellow to the day.

The road was simply a path of earth that lost all plant-life due to hand-pulled carriages and early morning steps of the residents, a slight slope led all the way to Vanessa's home, giving the girl a beautiful sight of the two tallest buildings of the village, the Guilds' building and the city's garrison.

This view, however, was not Lyrus goal at the moment.

Giving up after waiting for a few minutes, he decided to head towards the improvised medical wards close to the soldier quarters.

A simple tent blocked the strong sunlight from burning the receptionist that calmly stood to the side of the entrance to the 'infirmary' of the village. Clarisse's eyes run multiple times through the names of the patients, a short report of them briefs about their life in this village.

In a week's time, only two people have left this hastily made barracks, a hot-headed officer that didn't listen to the medics when they asked him to stay for at least a month, and a noble hunter that got peacefully released without any trouble whatsoever. 'A noble as a hunter? I heard these people are weirder than they seem, and a Lavridge at that! I didn't believe that family gave this much freedom to their children. Money and freedom... I'm envious now!'

She Put these idle thoughts to the back of her head by shaking it after spotting a handsome blond man that looked to be on his early-thirties approaching her and looking like he had questions to make. He looked kind of injured, his left leg was somewhat stiff and his left arm was resting on his belly, a white cloth covering it from the shoulder to the wrist, but it doesn't seem to be anything to stress over for. His tall size and wide shoulder gave him an aura of a knight from romances that - in fact - kind of made him look even more handsome when injured.

As Clarisse started having some doubts about her fetishes, the man came close enough for a proper conversation, she beamed a pure smile at him to cause a good impression on the guy. 'People say that a girl can have some dreams, right?'

He stops in front of her with a thoughtful face while scratching his chin, eyes wandering to the beyond, it's impossible to know where his mind is right now, in fact, even he didn't seem to know. After a second, he looked from the ground to Clarisse's face and asked without changing his stance.

"I'm looking for some of my friends that survived the invasion to the fort last week, could you tell me about them?"

"Sure! Just give me your ID and tell me their names." She eagerly answers while picking some papers from the table in front of her.

"They are Cawton Steward Vallis and Vanessa Altimus. Here is my hunter ID." Lyrus gives a rectangular shaped crystal, just small enough to fit into a random pocket, and have it later pickpocketed by a random stranger.

"Okay! They're... oh?" After checking the ID, Clarissa notices something strange when searching for the names, she skips through some papers and later checks them again, after some seconds with a blank stare at the files that she had just double checked, her expression suddenly changes and she takes some more papers from a drawer in the counter, after a quick look at it she finds their names and then faces Lyrus, doing her part of the job.

"Sorry for the wait." She says, calm and tranquil now, handing the ID back to Lyrus. "Please, head inside and ask for the medical chief, David Blackwall Tarvis. He should be inside the quarters but you can ask for a guide anyways."

"Thanks for the help." Lyrus then heads inside, oblivious to the girl's almost imperceptible change of mood.

Seeing the noble hunter head inside the wards and later towards the garrison, Clarrise sighs, her maiden mood completely gone.

Lyrus also thought that someone should have spoken to him about his companions during the time he spent healing from his wounds, but didn't pay much attention. He also had no intention of wasting his time causing trouble for people that should be saving the lives of the other hunters and soldiers.

Inside of what used to be a soldier barracks, Lyrus noticed the incredible number of both injured soldiers and hunters in the beds, this strange swarm turned out to be much more dangerous than ever before.

Because the humans weren't prepared for a swarm of this level, just in the first week the body count reached a hundred and the injured in the fifties or so, forcing the Guilds to send an extra medical unit to treat Austen village. What's more, apparently the swarm on the cities on the west also got more dangerous, the death count in the thousands and increasing.

But right now, nothing about that mattered to Lyrus, who asked one of the nurses at the medical ward to guide him to the medical chief's location.

Arriving in front of a simple wooden door without any kind of decoration, the nurse leaves him to talk with the medical chief alone. Lyrus simply knocks on the door, conscious that the nurse is currently busy with other patients and just waits for the almost immediate answer from inside the door.

"Come in." The voice of an old man sounds behind the door.

When entering, the first thing Lyrus notices are the three bookshelves which should've been full of books about battle tactics and maps of the nearby regions and is now filled with reports of recent massive attacks, species that managed to create a small army during the swarm and other kinds of information from scouts. In the room, two men were discussing with each other about the problems they were facing.

"Our resources are almost depleted! We can't afford any more than we already have, this is a village, not a city!" Says a muscular man that seemed to be around his forties, he was using a simple iron-mail that had a gambeson underneath it, with hair that was a bright-brown with some white on the sides, his face contorted in annoyance at the impossible requests of the medical chief, a helmet that was probably his was resting on the table in front of him.

Lyrus also didn't fail to notice the plate armor laid on the corner of the room, the set might look strange to a villager who never saw anything of the kind before, but any knowledgeable person would know of its might, something that only nobles and their trusted knights could have something this expensive.

"But we need another medical unit to meet the demand of medical attention! If it keeps this way the death count will needlessly go up and the hunters will head west to earn more money and leave us alone here!" An old man's voice - the same who authorized his entrance - brought the hunter back from his own world.

The middle-aged man sighed and turned to look towards Lyrus, who is standing still facing their discussion without changing his expression.

"Then, what do you want?" Asks the man to Lyrus.

"I was said to speak to David Blackwall about some of my friends. I'm Lyrus Lavridge and my friends are Vanessa Altimus and Cawton Steward Vallis."

David frowns with irritation at first thinking that the attendants were lazing out in their works, but when he listens to the other half of his explanation, his eyes show only confusion. He then heads to one of the bookshelves and takes some sheets of paper and starts to read them, after some seconds he finishes his reading and turns to face Lyrus.

David could feel sweat forming on his back, he almost couldn't keep his face from looking at the ground. Completely nervous, he speaks to Lyrus.

"Apologies for not speaking with you when we should've. I'm also sorry to inform you that your teammates, members of the Guilds, Vanessa Altimus and Cawton Steward Vallis, Mage Apprentice and Archer respectively... part of the supposedly incapacitated group of both hunters and soldiers which escaped through the dungeon sewers from Fort Baxter, have been ambushed by monster on their way to one of the checkpoints on the forest."

Lyrus's eyes go wide with shock. After reality hit him for the second time in his life, Lyrus's mind entered a state of chaos, trying to realize just what happened while he was healing, and when he realized the truth the instant before David's hit in the nail, his legs felt so weak that he almost fell to his knees, hands trembling and throat stuck with air, he felt hot tears forming in his eyes.

Lyrus didn't know what was worse about this, the sadness that overcame him from this fact...

"There were no survivors."

Or the frustration of having all you fought for with your life on the line simply getting thrown in the trash like that.