The next day, Stas woke up feeling completely shattered. The awkward sleeping position had left his body stiff and in unbearable pain.
His stomach was producing sad trills, demanding food. Stas wasn't accustomed to going hungry, even for a relatively short period.
Thirst was even worse. It hit him particularly hard. If yesterday Ordyntsev had involuntarily tapped into hidden reserves and ignored these urges, now he simply could no longer bear it.
"I need food, water, and a place to sleep," the conversation with the elder's son always made his nerves literally quiver with tension. It was like diving with a hungry white shark that clearly didn't take a liking to you. To make matters even worse, there was no protective steel cage in sight.
The warmaster's scornful expression was his answer.
Stas exhaled heavily, praying to all the gods for patience.
"The prince's condition is grave. Severe intestinal damage, extensive bruising, and a broken leg. Even with his miraculous regeneration, he will take a long time to recover. Likely weeks, if not months, even in the best-case scenario. Someone will need to be with him constantly to check his condition..."
"And what's that got to do with you?" the local's lips curved into a nasty smirk. "You've done your part. As I see it, the prince is better. Why are you still needed here?"
"That's where you're wrong," Stas replied with an equally vile smile, noticing how the warmaster's hand twitched as if itching to punch. It turned out that playing with death was even starting to appeal to Stas. "I'm needed to devise and adjust the prince's diet. I put his intestines back together like a puzzle. Do you think he can eat whatever you put in front of him now? He wouldn't last a couple of days before he's gone, and guess who they'll hold responsible for this? Moreover, the diet plan will need to be adjusted as his condition improves or worsens, to ensure his body gets the necessary nutrients..."
"Enough!" Gokku cut Stas off, visibly displeased. "Spare me your nonsense. I understand why the prince of Sumada needs food, care, and water. But a bed, for you? Why?" he glanced at the bloodied and dirty floor. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a perfect place for a lowlife like you to sleep. Dirt should live in dirt, don't you think?"
"Perhaps," Stas nodded obediently, making his interlocutor wary with his suspicious agreement. "But what if I, purely accidentally, due to excessive fatigue, lack of sleep, and hunger, make a mistake in changing those bandages or in his diet? The prince of Sumada would die in agony..."
"And you'll envy the dead for your mistake!" Gokku hissed. "Don't count on a quick death. You'll be handed over to the best executioners of the Sansa clan, or no, they'll hire executioners from the Rangiku clan! Some of their prisoners are said to live for years. They have a saying that a subject losing their mind is no reason to stop the torture."
"But the prince will already be dead," Stas countered, not allowing himself to back down. It would be an understatement to say that he was terrified at that moment. He was in sheer horror, yet even so, he refused to lose to this self-absorbed savage. "I'm not asking for anything superfluous. Just normal human treatment while I heal the prince. Not payment or anything valuable, just normal treatment."
Towards the end, Ordyntsev tried to soften his tone to give the arrogant native some room to maneuver.
It was clear that the warmaster was struggling with himself. Upbringing and customs clashed with cold logic and the elder's order.
"Fine, what you requested will be brought soon. Do not disappoint us, Shiro, or you will deeply regret it." The man spat out Stas's new name like a curse, but it was another victory.
The warmaster considered him dangerous enough to use a name instead of an insult.
"Well, Levi," Stas pulled at the collar of his kimono and smiled at the little snake staring at him. "We've earned the right to live like humans. I'm sure not many in this world have that right."
About thirty minutes later, which was hard to track when you're stuck in a tent, several young women and men entered, who, without raising their eyes, began to clear away the particularly dirty tatami mats and lay down new, clean ones.
The women were dressed in silk variations of kimonos, called yukatas, if he remembered correctly. The young men were also dressed quite richly and cleanly.
Undoubtedly, they were all servants, and the opportunity to wear such expensive clothes clearly showed the wealth of the Sansa clan.
The women's faces were carefully whitened, making them resemble porcelain masks, on which makeup was then applied.
Shortly afterward, food and drinks were brought on wide trays, along with a couple of tables to set all this wealth upon. Of course, there was nothing remarkable about the food, but for hungry Stas, it was almost a royal feast. Or, more accurately, a daimyo's feast?
Besides the tables, a brand new clean futon just for him delighted the earthling's eyes.
'Who would have thought I'd be so happy about a damn thin mattress and pillow.'
However, something still required correction.
"Excuse me," Stas drew the attention of one of the maids, who seemed the most richly dressed. She bowed quickly and deeply, still not looking up.
"What would the esteemed healer like?" she squeaked. Stas felt that when he wasn't looking, the servants glanced at him surreptitiously. The address of "healer" was a clear indication of the power of rumors.
"I need to lift the esteemed prince and change the futon beneath him to a clean one at that moment."
"Oh, wait, but we can't touch the prince's body..."
"Believe me, it will only do him good. I'm sure with four or five hands, we can manage successfully. I think the noble warmasters wouldn't be too pleased if we bothered them with such trivial matters."
"O-okay," the head maid finally agreed after some hesitation.
Ten minutes later, a futon was found, and Stas and the servants very carefully extracted the old mattress and laid the prince on a new one beside it.
Ordyntsev breathed a sigh of relief when that bloody mess was carried outside. Over the past few days, it had started to smell unpleasantly.
"Thank you," Stas nodded in gratitude, receiving a series of deep bows. He didn't particularly like the sight of other people bowing to him, but there was no choice.
As soon as the maids left, Stas pounced on the food like a starving animal, and oh, how he savored it.
The slightly salted rice seemed like the treat of the gods, and a couple of slightly smoked fish could compete with dishes from the best Earth restaurants.
And the water, it was such a water! Sweet and cool. It rolled down his parched throat, seemingly healing it and soothing the pain.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Stas relished each sip, stretching it out as if it were divine ambrosia.
At that moment, he realized with startling clarity that he was living now, not just existing. Not when the days blend into an endless cycle and the years go by without notice, but when each day is a triumph of human intellect over life's hardships.
Having savored this feeling, Stas tossed it back where he'd pulled it from. Such a life, though quite vivid, promised to end too soon. Stas wasn't granted a second youth for that.
Ordyntsev found it hard to say how many years he'd shed, but a good ten, definitely.
He couldn't help but regret that the transition hadn't happened when he was closer to fifty; the gain would have been much greater.
There was no actual guard at the tent, but that didn't mean there were no observers around. Stas wasn't stopped when he decided to step out to relieve himself, but he had no doubt he was being closely watched.
He already possessed a vague understanding of the warmasters' skills in concealment.
Overall, Stas realized that their camp wasn't planning to move anywhere soon, even though Nobunoro's army had defeated the enemy.
Perhaps the commander-in-chief feared that an army that had pushed too far ahead would be surrounded and was waiting for victory on other fronts.
In any case, this was even good. Stas didn't want to think about what would have happened to his work if the prince had been carried off somewhere.
By the way, Stas still didn't know the young man's name. It wouldn't have been wise to ask the spiteful Gokku, right?
Later that day, after eating and coming to his senses, Stas set to work on the leg. Through palpation, he determined that the bone fragments' displacement was insignificant. Of course, the absence of X-ray equipment made it impossible to completely rule out bone splinters, but Stas still gave an eighty percent probability that there were none.
Once decided, Stas ordered ropes and sticks to be brought to him, with which he crafted an ersatz splint, then set the bone and encased the legs in his makeshift device.
Now, all that was needed was time for a viscous mass, called a clot, to form between the two parts of the fracture. Fibers forming from the clot would become the basis for new bone tissue growth.
Soon, cells that heal the bone - osteoclasts and osteoblasts - would fill the clot. After a few days, these cells would form a granular bridge connecting the ends of the bone.
Six to ten days after the fracture, the granular bridge of cells would become a bony mass called a callus. It would be fragile and could break with a sharp movement. That's why they put on a cast or, as in Stas's case, sticks that stabilize the bone. Later, the callus would turn into hard bone.
Finally, three to ten weeks after the fracture, new blood vessels would begin to supply calcium to the fracture site. They would strengthen the new bone tissue. This process, called ossification, would fuse the ends of the bone.
After that, the bone would be strong and considered healed. Although the cast could be removed, it would take about a year for the healed bone to become as strong as before the fracture.
But with the prince, as Ordyntcev believed, it would all take much less time.
So passed the second day. At the end, Stas again checked the lad's head for damage - the duration of his sleep was starting to be suspicious.
Ordyntsev doubted that the sight of the prince in a vegetative state would satisfy the Sumada emissaries. Knowing local customs, they would prefer to personally suffocate the incapacitated rather than spend resources to keep him alive.
There wasn't much entertainment inside the tent, but there was something.
Leviathan, who had awakened, was showing remarkable activity and metabolism. This meant she had become truly hungry ahead of time.
One should have seen Gokku's face when he came in for a routine check and saw the healer with a real snake coiled happily around his arm.
Levi, at that moment, decided to move to the other arm, and for that, she started wrapping around the neck of the man holding her.
It's hard to say what the warmaster was thinking when Stas politely requested that this time the ration include some small mice, but he didn't say anything, just looked strangely at the scene and left.
And on the next, the third day, Levi enthusiastically swallowed a live small field mouse.
Stas found it hard to answer how the servants managed to catch three whole mice, but now two more squeaked quietly in a cage lying nearby.
And Stas somehow didn't doubt that they would soon be needed, considering how oddly Levi was behaving.
When the situation normalized somewhat, Ordyntsev couldn't help but notice anomalies in his snake's behavior.
To start with, despite the mystical aura that surrounds snakes as incredibly cunning and vile creatures, they are, in fact, outrageously stupid.
But as stupid as they are, they are just as deadly and refined in terms of reflexes.
A snake may have the worst memory and intellect, but the instincts it's born with more than compensate, allowing it to survive and occupy its niche in almost any corner of the world.
Have you ever seen newborn snakes? As soon as the little heads emerge from their eggs, they are fully ready for adult life.
They may not have venomous fangs, but they already see enemies and immediately attack them, for example, accurately poking their toothless faces into the fingers of a charmed snake breeder.
These same instincts give snakes an understanding of what is dangerous and what is not, guiding them throughout their lives, in no way diminishing their lethality.
However, sometimes, these same instincts play a cruel joke on snakes.
For example, reptiles rely much more on their sense of smell than on their vision. That's why it's better for owners not to handle the same mice they feed their pets, as the smell of food will overpower their own scent, and the snake may attack.
Worse still is when a snake inadvertently gets smeared with the scent of its own prey.
Snake instincts are a terrible thing. Rigidly following the program set by nature, a snake begins to kill and eat its own body, gradually swallowing it.
This sight is nauseatingly mesmerizing.
No wonder this symbol can be found in many cultures, from the Aztecs to Eastern and Western civilizations.
Ouroboros - a snake or dragon coiled into a circle, biting its own tail.
That's why the sight of Levi, who instantly understood that it was Stas in front of her, made the man wary.
To confirm his suspicions, Stas deliberately took one of the mice and rubbed it on one of his hands, then tried to pet Leviathan.
The man was surprised when she didn't even think about it, quickly coiling around his hand and trustingly laying her head on top.
Next, Stas decided to test Leviathan's growth rate. He took his own hand as a reference, marking a spot with blood from the used bandages.
By the end of the third day, Ordyntsev was certain that his snake was growing and doing it frighteningly fast. An increase of a centimeter in half a day was definitely something extraordinary.
The man even worried that the youth given by this world was actually fleeting, and that he was also aging rapidly. However, no changes in his state were noticed.
Though on the edge of Ordyntsev's consciousness lurked the nasty thought that snakes, after all, live much less than humans.
All of this made the earthling's brain buzz intensely, brightening the slowly dragging time.
Leviathan, however, distracted her master from thinking, curiously wandering around the tent. Once, Stas even had to run outside around the tent under the puzzled gazes of the surrounding warmasters and servants and comb through the grass.
The most unpleasant thing was that after a full half hour of searching, he still didn't find her.
Returning back in the worst possible mood, Stas was very annoyed when he saw the returned Levi sitting like a good girl right on his own bed.
Leviathan's honest eyes sincerely asked, "Why are you, master, so flustered and nervous?"
By the morning of the fourth day, when Stas was already planning to sound the full alarm - imagine, a person was staying four days without food and almost without water - the prince awoke.
"Kha-a-a... Drink..." Stas froze, then quickly rushed to the table and poured a little water into the cup.
The prince looked quite bad; the miracle regeneration, while trying not to deplete the user's body too much, still did, making the lad's face sharply gaunt.
However, the young warmaster's eyes were clear, and he was undoubtedly fully conscious.
Carefully tilting the lad's head, Stas began to slowly pour the life-giving liquid into him. The process was difficult at first due to inexperience, but gradually, the prince got used to it, blowing through a whole cup. Stas had to refill the water twice.
"Don't worry, I need to take care of something," Stas quickly left the tent and caught the attention of a passing servant. "Urgently prepare warm chicken broth for Prince Sumada; his stomach can't handle anything else right now."
The servant nodded uncertainly, but Stas had no doubt that he would report to the right person.
The tent greeted Stas with his patient trying his best to get up. Judging by his mood, he was full of determination to ruin all of Ordyntsev's efforts.
"Stop!" Stas bellowed, rushing forward and leaning on the warmaster's chest, laying him back down. "Your intestinal stitches are barely holding together; at this rate, your guts will spill out again! Lie down and don't move."
"Where am I? Who are you?" The prince froze in shock, then his eyes flashed, and he stared demandingly at Stas. "The last thing I remember is that the warmasters of the Sansa clan somehow broke through my guard. After that, it's all very vague. There was a fight..."
"I have bad news for you... Prince," Stas decided to rip the "band-aid" off straight away. "Your army was defeated. Your warmasters were pushed back along with them. You were captured by the Sansa clan. Your body was badly wounded, so they had to resort to my services."
"No," the lad's face froze, then contorted into a grimace of rage. "I, as a member of the ruling family, will never surrender to the despicable Sansa!"
Veins bulged on the wounded warmaster's forehead, but worse was the suddenly rippling earth around Stas, making him sway and the tent creaking in protest.
'Thought so, this kid would be trouble!'
Author's note: let birds that resemble chickens be called chickens. Let's not create unnecessary entities.