“So, what do you think the most important tool is for seasoned adventurers to have on their travels?” I asked as I hopped from one small stone to the next.

“Eh? I guess… tenacity?”

“Bzzt! It’s obviously supplies!” I corrected him, “Supplies make the adventurer! That’s why we prepared so much food for our travels and kept it safely in the hideout!”

I seriously wonder what goes on in that head of his… I mean, we’re literally walking to the hideout as we speak! How could he have not logically pieced it together that food was the answer I was looking for? Geez, and people say he’s the smarter one out of the two of us…

“Well, yeah, but the food we have is all of the perishable kind. It’s not gonna last more than a week or so at best, after that the most we can do with it is feed it to the birds.”

“Phah! Perishable foods…!” I slapped my knee from the absurdity of his claims, “Do you even hear yourself? Bread isn’t perishable, silly!”

At this, Ed stopped walking with me before giving me a terrified look, “Uhh, yeah, it is? Grim, don’t tell me you were eating stale bread this whole time?!”

B-But bread isn’t perishable… is it? Wait, but bread isn’t a meat nor is it a fruit slash vegetable, so it can’t go stale, right? But then again, what even is bread? Argh, I asked mom this very question a long time ago, but I can’t seem to remember the term for the life of me!

“…Let’s just move on to the next topic, shall we?”

“Y-Yeah…” I said with my cheeks looking a bit flushed, “I asked you this because Schnell had prepared as much for his very journey. Think about it, he became this legendary man about whom many stories sprouted from, a man who had changed the world as we know it. All this, just from a piece of bread and some meat. Incredible isn’t it?”

“Oh, so that’s what you were thinking about. I guess that is incredible if you look at it like that, but he was pretty sociable, unlike us. Didn’t he say he used his charisma to get free food from the people he met at his travels in Volume 2 or something to that effect?”

“It was at the end of Volume 1,” I pointed out, ”But yeah, we should probably try to be a lot more outgoing if we’re to survive out there. Then from now on I’ll be as kind and extroverted as I possibly can, at least until we get financially situated.”

“Deal! Then that means you’ll do all the talking, Grim!” Ed said with a smirk.

“Hey! You help out as well! But never mind that, you think we’ll ever be like Schnell one day? I mean, we’re following in his footsteps pretty closely.”

“Hmm…” He stopped to think before coming up with a sound answer, “Y’know, with your crazy ideas, we just might. Now that I think about it, wasn’t it your idea to turn the abandoned house into our hideout?”

“Well yeah!” I proudly smirked, “But it was only after your intuition brought us to it. See why I need you on this journey? We’re like two sides of the same coin! We can’t function without one another! Oh, speaking of the hideout, we’re here!”

‘Here’, in this case, is referring to our hideout we found about a year and a half ago. It’s this two story abandoned house that looks like it was never inhabited to begin with. You’ll see a lot of these types of unfinished houses in Secundis. Basically what happens is some guy wants to build a house, but then he either runs out of money, or the company that’s building it bankrupts, or the person requesting the house gets into some legal issues… It’s all just too much of a shame for them, but for us kids who stumble upon an almost completed base framework for a house that we can take ownership of for free, it’s a godsend!

The house is simple in structure. It’s got two stories, with a large window looking out onto a nearby tree, and the whole place is made out of bricks, which is easily recognizable when you take into account that the builders never got to the façade part of the process. The roof is kind of unstable, probably because of all the storms that had been slowly chipping away at it for who knows how long, but it’s more than enough to give us shelter from nature’s wrath if we were ever to be caught in a hailstorm in the middle of playing. It was always our goal to refurbish this place, but with so little materials and funds to do so, we never really could do more than install a kind of dirty cushion we found whilst out and about that we used as an impromptu couch.

The insides are very plain, to say the least. It’s got what I can only describe as a hollow feel to it, but at least the wooden flooring is in place, which makes it a pretty homely place to be in, all things considered. I bet if we really put our minds to it, we could probably make this the best house in all of Whitehood! Oh, but that really doesn’t align with our intentions right now… No matter, we’ll find a better abandoned house to refurbish after we leave this damned place!

“Alright, let’s grab the stuff and head-!”

Out, is what I wanted to say, before Ed quickly stopped me by hitting my chest with his open palm. Indeed, he was signaling for me to stop dead in my tracks. Something was amiss, and I could immediately tell by following where his eyes were pointed what exactly it was that was making him so uneasy.

“Hiss…”

A snair had gotten into our house and is currently rummaging through our food supplies as we speak.

***

“Grim,” Ed whispered, “Step back, slowly…”

“Ah, good idea! We can take it by surprise that way!”

“What?!” He tried to keep his voice down as much as he could, “Are you crazy? We can’t take down a snair! It’s literally the same size as the both of us combined!”

At this, the large serpent hissed before continuing to partake in our hard earned food. A snair, for those of you who are uninitiated, is a human-sized serpent that most resembles your run of the mill snake, except, y’know, bigger. It’s very territorial, so when one finds a place to lay its eggs in, you have no choice but to keep away from there. Thankfully it didn’t yet notice us, but it’s only a matter of time before it does. I need to think of a way to kill it, ASAP!

“Ed, the snair just ate all of our supplies. If we kill it and sell its hide, we might just be able to buy back the food it stole from us.”

“But Grim!” He tried to protest, but I shushed him and commenced operation “Snairskin”!

Stealthily making my way around the hideout, I weaved from bush to bush. Every time I made a bit too much noise and alerted the snair, Ed would throw a couple of rocks around to provide an adequate distraction. The snair was thankfully dumb enough to not remember where I was after that.

I made it to the tree closest to the second story window, in the hopes that I could climb it and jump from it into the house. After that, the plan was for Ed to jump out and surprise the snair, and whilst the snair was distracted – BAM! I’d whack it on the head with Ed’s wooden training sword I had borrowed!

“Hiss!!!” The snair suddenly faced me head on as it hissed a most terrifying scream. Thankfully though, it turned back around. Looks like it wasn’t hissing at me, but at its babies that are standing right… behind me.

“Crap! Crap crap crappity crap!” I booked it to the tree as fast as I could whilst avoiding the baby snairs’ munches.

Jumping to the tree, I had made an incredible leap, and in the very next moment I had (just barely) made it to the windowsill. Note to self: NEVER do that again! Well, I made it, and that’s all that’s important! Traversing the hallways to make it to the other side of the house, I had looked out of the other side’s window and reaffirmed the mother snair’s location to be right under me. After that, I gave Ed the signal to jump out.

“Graaaawr!” He gave his best scary scream.

The snair didn’t at all flinch at his bone-chilling performance, but the issue is that I had already jumped from the balcony. While I was falling, the snair had immediately noticed me and opened its jaws wide, ready to swallow me whole. I had little time to prepare, so I took out Ed’s training sword from my backpack and used it as a stopgap which served to stop it from closing its mouth.

I was now in its mouth, but at least I had given myself a bit of time to find a way out. Ed had immediately ran up to the (now choking) snair and called out to me.

“Grim! Are you alright!?”

“Y-Yeah! It sure is smelly in here, though! Throw me something I can choke it with!”

Without a moment of hesitation, he threw me something rectangular, and without even checking to see what it is, I put it in my place before jumping out right as the snair had snapped Ed’s sword in half. Talk about lucky! The snair had struggled a bit more before finally giving up and dying on the spot. We did it, we slayed the beast!

“Sorry about your sword, Ed. By the way, what was is that you threw me back there?”

“Oh, that?” He chuckled, “I didn’t really have anything else at hand, so I just tossed you Schnell’s Handbook.”

***

“I-I’m sorry! I had nothing else to throw!” Ed kept apologizing profusely as I kept flicking him in the back of the head, “O-Ow! Stop that! I said I was sorry!”

“Sorry doesn’t begin to cut it. Just help me carry this damned thing so we can sell it and buy a replacement copy.”

“Huh?? What ever happened to buying replacement supplies?!”

“Schnell is more important.”

And with that, the battle had ended. We made sure to hurry it up before the snair’s babies showed up. I’m not sure if snairs can feel emotions, but I sure wouldn’t like it if I saw my mom’s corpse being carried off by two idiot kids. In any case, this thing is heavy! Like, we can barely carry it with the two of us, and that’s after my dad’s strength training!

“Heh, to think it’d be that easy to defeat this big ol’ thing!” Ed made a snide remark.

“Shut up, you. That scream of yours was pathetic, it almost got me killed!”

“And who said you could jump prematurely!? Geez, no wonder your nickname is Grim. You’re always so pessimistic after everything’s said and done!”

As I mentioned previously, my father’s nickname is Grim, since he would always have this stoic and gloomy expression on him. Dunno why Ed’s calling me that though, I’m not at all like my pops in that regard! I’m more blindly optimistic than a fish in the desert!

“By the way,” I asked with a jokey tone, “Why is it that you always call me Grim? Do you not know my name or something?”

“Yeah, no.” He didn’t hesitate to reply honestly, “I always used to call you that because everyone calls your father Grim, so I kind of forgot your actual name.”

Wait, seriously?! This guy’s gotta be kidding! We’ve been friends for like seven years now! Ugh, I can see why people like to bully him now, he’s definitely taking the piss out of me or something!

“Sigh, you’re hopeless.” I commented, “Lune Grimheart. Don’t forget it this time.”

“Whaaat? Such a cool name for such a big idiot, I’ll just stick to Grim then! Let’s just say it’s because of your last name, haha!”

Grr…! This damned piece of subhuman trash is saying something to me? Eh, I won’t get mad. I’m better than that. I’ll just flick him on the head one more time.

“Ow!”