"Huh? Yeah, that's fine, but these wounds…." Nellie looked at the two human children in front of her and frowned.
"They will be fine. Just talk with the older one and ask about everything that happened." Blake said as he waved his hand, causing a green light to envelope both children.
"No problem," Nellie replied with a smile seeing how Blake was willing to heal the children. Once the kids were healed he went to look around the floor. He meant to go alone, but Noa seemed to want to follow him.
"Noa, you could have stayed there," Blake said as he turned to the elf girl who was not wanting to look at him with her hands behind her back. She had a white set of short sleeve leather armor that had some metal plating on her shoulders, knees, chest, and elbows. She also had a pair of black and white fingerless gloves. She was slim, and her chest was about the same as Tina's, but she did look beautiful with her apple green hair and green eyes that glimmered like gems.
"I just wanted to see what you were doing," Noa replied. In fact, she was afraid of the human leaving her alone in this monster infested area where just a single spell could cause the world to come down with monsters.
Blake shook his head as he said: "Do as you please. But I can say we were lucky. The monsters you trained took most of the monsters out of the area, allowing us to avoid another swarm after those bastards shot at us…. Hold on…."
Blake's nose wrinkled as he reached one of the rooms in the hall. So did Noa's as she stepped back a few steps. "Stay here, don't look inside," Blake said as he pushed the door open. What he saw was not a pretty sight. He had checked for living things but not dead things. He found a room filled with skeletons with bits of rotting flesh hanging from the bones. A table covered in blood and many knives and saws. "Cannibals…."
"Cannibals? What is that?" Noa asked from a distance away. She did not even want to look in the room.
Blake closed the door and let out a breath as he had been holding his while he looked in the room. "They are humans who eat other humans. It would be like one of the elves eating another elf if it helps you understand the meaning."
"I see…." Noa now wished she had never asked.
"This explains why the kids looked quite chunky. Those bastards were actually trying to fatten them up." He wished he did not let them off so easily by just turning them to ash, so he was quite disappointed in his quick reaction.
"Urk!" Noa gagged at the thought. She quickly turned and held her hand over her mouth. But what she did not expect was a warm flow of mana entering her body as Blake rubbed her back. She froze on the spot, not sure how to react to such a gesture, but she did notice that Blake's mana was very gentle.
"Don't think about it. Let's go back and see if Nellie found anything out." Blake said as he stopped rubbing Noa's back. Noa nodded and regained her composure. She watched as Blake walked away with a bit of complex feelings in her heart. She was not used to people treating her like a normal girl, which Blake did without any hesitation. Even when he knew she was a princess, he still did not seem to care.
Blake had no idea that his normal actions had caused a stir in Noa's heart. He walked back to the room to find Nellie with the young boy sitting in her lap and the girl leaning against her, sleeping. Her eyes were dark from many sleepless nights. Blake walked over and sat next to Nellie and whispered: "So, get anything?"
"Mmm…. From what the girl said was that there were many of them locked in this room. But as the months passed by, the people here would slowly disappear. But they still fed them meat soup every day, they were the only ones left before she felt great pain in her body. The two men who were their captors began to beat her and her brother, saying they were just toughing them up for what was to come." Nellie replied. But this made Blake's brow wrinkle even more.
"More like they were trying to tenderize them," Blake growled as he reached out and gently patted the young boy's head. "At least they survived. Noa, never mention what they were eating to these two kids. Everything we saw will be erased from this moment on, got it?"
"Ye-Yes…." Noa nodded her head as she held her stomach. She did her best to push the disgusting thoughts out of her mind.
"So what will we do now?" Noa asked after recomposing herself.
"Well… I will go clean up the messes and then use this building as a base. But we need to be prepared to defend this place at any time, so we will need to take routine rotations on keeping watch. I will take three shifts while You take one. Nellie will be watching the kids." Blake had not planned for this, but in a way, he was glad he was able to save two human kids. And he was glad he ran into Nellie, who could take care of them with her years of knowledge. As for Noa…. Well, he will need to see how useful she will be. "Noa, you help me set up a small fire pit on the roof so I can cook some food for us all."
"Food?" Noa's eyes lit up. She had not eaten anything since coming to this world, so she was very hungry.
"Mm… It will strengthen the kids. I have some drake meat which we can roast and simmer with some vegetables. It should offset anything that they have eaten so far." Blake hoped to clean the kids' systems out of anything nasty that they had eaten, so he planned to use a bit more oil than normal to make them go.
Blake burnt the human remains in the room he had found and washed it out by opening a window and using water magic. He wanted no trace of what went on here left for the kids to see. Only then did he go to the room and clear out some of the plant life to make room for a fire pit. Using the rubble from downstairs, he and Noa built a decent place to cook and began to roast a leg of meat on the open fire. But one thing he noticed was Noa's intense stare.
"You're drooling." Blake suddenly said, causing Noa, who was indeed drooling over the meat in front of her, to blush from ear to ear as she wiped her mouth.
"I haven't eaten all day!" Noa replied with a huff.
"Then you should eat some when it's done." Blake chuckled as he took out some sauces to glaze over the drake meat.
"Hey, Blake…." Noa suddenly spoke up as she sat next to him, close enough that their shoulders were almost touching. "You said you were reborn, so you know a lot about this current age?"
"Mmm…. But during that time us new age humans, as you like to call us, were still fighting for our planet back. We did not know that everything we grew up knowing about the human race was actually false and that the fantasy novels and movies we watched were actually true. I didn't even know until I was reborn. And to be honest, I am glad I was reborn. It has allowed me to meet many people I can trust and love. And once I evolve a second time, I will become something even stronger and, hopefully, one day make the dragonic bow to me." Blake's words may sound like a fantasy, but his eyes were firm. His resolve was strong. He wanted to make it so Lillia could live a life free of worry and not be hunted down. He wanted to keep those close to him safe.
"Hmmm…." Noa was quiet as she looked at Blake's side profile. At this moment, she thought for a human, he was not bad looking at all.
