Earth’s Doom Starts with… Me? - Chapter 95

“Alright, enough talking. We’ll sleep for real.” I cleared my throat and closed my eyes to make it less embarrassing.

“Yup. Good night.” General Zhang replied with a little chuckle at the end of his sentence.

I waited and waited until a few minutes had passed, until I was sure that he wasn’t staring anymore. I mean, people usually lost interest and stopped staring in less than 10 minutes, right?

After around that time, and yeah, I counted each second because I couldn’t peacefully sleep, I opened my eyes a little bit to take a peek.

“…What are you doing?” I frowned as I saw his ever-smiling face, still staring at me.

“Staring. Respectfully.” He answered.

“Don’t stare. I can’t sleep.” I pouted and turned around so my back was now facing him.

“Well, you wouldn’t let me cross this gap, so I’ll just stare.” He chuckled and shifted his position, tugging at our blanket.

“Weren’t you the most eager one to sleep?” I raised an eyebrow while still closing my eyes.

“I found something more interesting now~”

Ack, this is getting nowhere. Let’s just focus on something else and get some sleep for real. Bread bread bread bread bread…

After focusing on bread and its variants, I was finally able to slowly get my mind off of him. Now, a buttered toast with honey and some chocolate rolls had taken over my thoughts.

Not long after, my consciousness started to fade away as I found comfort in the fluffy blanket and the bomber jacket. The stones underneath me didn’t hurt as much as before now.

As I started to take a step into the dreamland, I felt something tugging at my hair.

I opened my eyes a little bit and peeped over my shoulder to check, only to found a few strands of my hair in the palm of a certain slippery eel.

He didn’t pull on them or something, he just kept them in his hand, gripping them softly. This time, I found him with his eyes closed, no longer staring at me. Huh, I didn’t expect him to fully listen when I said no crossing or no staring… I respect his respectfulness, then.

Just as I was about to go back to sleep, I felt another tug on my hair, and checked it again. He had brought his hand that was holding my hair closer to his lips, and snuggling my few strands of hair.

My gosh!? What was that eel doing!?

I quickly shut my eyes and recited my bread spell again to keep my mind off of it as I felt my cheeks flush, and concentrated on getting some rest, instead.

…Ack, I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to rest well today.

——–

‘Chirp, chirp!’

Ah, yes. My morning alarm. I wasn’t even surprised by now.

“Hngggh–” I turned to my side and stretched out my stiff body to start my day, before suddenly hitting something firm.

“Huh?” As soon as I looked up, I saw a beautiful, chiseled sleeping face with his hair sprawled across the messy cloth underneath us. And to make things worse, I had his thumb tightly wrapped in my other hand.

Did I–

Did I roll over to his side in my sleep!?

“Oh gosh!”

I immediately threw his thumb away and rolled away from him, as far as I could. Ack! I hope he didn’t notice! And I hope nobody else noticed!

“Hngg… Little cub, you’re so energetic in the morning…” General Zhang groaned in his deep, sexy morning voice. No! My brain!

“You just woke up?” I asked him quickly, without any pause in-between words. Please, please don’t realize!

“Of course… I don’t like waking up early…” He groaned again while rubbing both of his eyes, before reluctantly sitting up, letting the blanket gracefully fall off his scarred shoulders, basking them in the early morning sunlight.

“Good, good. Don’t wake up. Stay like that.” I nodded profusely. Great, I was safe. Only I knew what happened… And let’s keep it that way.

“Ahh, I’m still so sleepy because of what you did to me last night~” He suddenly piped up and smirked, “I had trouble falling asleep because of you, you know~? Shouldn’t you say something to me?”

WHAT!?

What did I do except sleep last night!? And rolling over to his side, I guess…

“I-I didn’t do anything. Stop teasing me, we have work to do.” I cleared my throat before sitting up and tidying our blanket.

“So you don’t remember rolling over to my side and sticking to me like glue? Hmm, I guess you were sleeping, so that’s fair~” He giggled, a glint of mischievousness could be seen in his eyes.

“No no no! It’s not like that! I just have a really freaky sleeping habit, I promise!” I shook my hands in panic as I fumbled with my words, “I wasn’t trying to do anything weird, I swear!”

“Huh, I don’t mind if you do anything weird to me~” He inched closer and closer, until he was just about to cross the 30 centimeters gap that I had crossed myself, in my sleep.

“Can I end you then?” I flatly said as I felt my soul slowly leaving my body. Farewell, my non-existent dignity. You wouldn’t be missed. At least my dignity couldn’t fall lower than this when it was already at the very bottom.

“I’d prefer a different kind of weird, but sure,” he chuckled as he took my hand and placed it around his muscular neck, “kill me.”

“Then perish.” I smiled.

“Hey, kid– Oh gosh have you infected others with your suicidal tendencies, you little rat?” Luke suddenly appeared behind general Zhang and freaked out.

Ah, I guess from his point of view, it looked as if I was aggressively strangling general Zhang, while this sly eel looked like he was trying to get out of my grasp. Great, another weird rumor. Guess me and my dignity were falling to the depth of abyss.

“No, big brother, I swear this isn’t what it looks like–”

“Don’t fight among yourselves. Geez. We got a full schedule today,” Luke cut me off as he grabbed my hands away from general Zhang’s neck, and helped me up, “here, use this to clean your face.”

He dropped a clean wet towel on my hands and straightened my jacket wrinkles, before tidying up my bangs and hair.

“There you go. After that, go get cleaned up over there. That friend of yours already told the orc to fetch some water.” Luke said as he pointed outwards.

As my eyes followed the direction he pointed at, I saw general Emilio sitting near the tied-up orc, sharpening his spear. Beside them were a few buckets of water that looked very inviting.

“Ooh~ Public bathing? Kinky~” General Zhang hummed as he stood up.

“I swear, eel. One more word from your lips and I’ll make sure you will never talk again.”

——–

After I very safely and privately changed my burnt clothes into some bandages over my chest and the bomber jacket general Zhang gave me, I took the time to check my stats to see how much I’ve gained from yesterday.

“Stats.”

[Stat points: (Yoo Chaerin)]

[Strength: 38]

[Intelligence: 97 (+5)]

[Agility: 29]

[Physique: 38 (+5)]

[Stat points available: 0]

Huh, not bad for a one-day progress. As expected, my agility didn’t raise as much because I didn’t run a lot. Instead, my intelligence and physique stat both rose by 4 points, which was nice.

I really needed to start getting better at mana allocation, though. Probably some mana potion would be nice to keep.

“Shop.”

‘Ding!’

“…Gah, I’m dirt poor.” I grimaced when I saw that I only had 200 coins left to spare. Hopefully, a little mana potion wouldn’t cost much.

[Would you like to purchase the item ‘Low Mana Potion’ for 100 gold?]

“Yeah. Two, please.” I muttered as I saw the newly-bought items materialized into my inventory. These might be helpful. I should save them for emergencies, although I doubted that they would add much mana.

With one last sigh, I fixed my brooch armor on my jacket and tapped it, “be nice to me, okay? I’m practically half-naked now so you gotta protect me. Don’t suck up too much of my mana or we’ll both die.”

Satisfied with my talk with the inanimate object, I smiled and approached the others who were already discussing how to enter the orc’s hideout.

“Why bother doing all this hard work when we can just smash our way in?” General Zhang shrugged.

“Because you never know when carelessness might end you.” General Emilio answered with a frown.

“That’s the case for weaklings. I’m not a weakling~” The other, white-haired man, replied smugly.

“Uh, big brother, what did I just walk into?” I raised an eyebrow as I walked closer to the three of them and tugged at Luke’s sleeve.

“They’re still arguing on how to start entering the hideout,” Luke answered with a bored face, “anyway, have some pizza.”

“You made pizza!?” I exclaimed in surprise. Wait, but how?

“Nah, it’s frozen. I just reheated it with whatever I could and added some extra toppings and stuff.” He shrugged as he handed me a slice, which I happily accepted.

“Thank you!” I giggled, “you should enlist yourself as the Vanguard’s cafeteria’s chef, you know.”

“What even is that?” He questioned with a frown. Oh, right. I hadn’t taken him to the cafeteria yet. Man, once he tasted the food, he would understand why I said that.

“Anyway, generals. Are you two done arguing?” I asked while munching on my new, half-cold pizza. Hey, it tasted great despite it being a frozen, long-overdue pizza.

“…Yes. We decided to compromise and not storm the armory right away,” general Emilio sighed while stressing the word ‘not’, “instead, we will come in through their back door, and then ‘smash’ our way into the armory. Chances are they have some traps in case an intruder comes blasting right through the armory.”

“That’s a good point. But that means we will face more orcs.” I said in-between my munches.

“True. That’s why we might need to do some… Forceful persuasion, if needed.” General Emilio replied. Ah, blackmail, just like what those elves did to the orcs, except this time it was us. I see.

“Well, that sounds pretty good to me~” General Zhang grinned.

“Alrighty. Let’s go?”