The clouds shift over us while I for at least a bit of my power to return to me, Sam constantly touching my hair and face while she’s waiting next to me. An arrangement I am very happy with, a fact my girlfriend surely knows, even if it weren’t reinforced by my purring in her lap.

After half an hour I feel recovered enough to sit upright, so I ask Sam to pull me up.

When she pulls me to my feet I am immediately faced with the immense crater in front of me. From where I was laying down it wasn’t visible at all, but there must be a hole the size of several football fields in front of us which is almost a football field or two deep as well.

“Holy shit.” There’s nothing else that comes to mind at that moment.

“I told you it was a huuuuuuge crater, didn’t I?” Gamma proudly stands next to me, her hands on her hip.

“I know, but I didn’t realize it was that big…” I look around the crater, still choking back my urge to flinch, and see that there are trees still burning here and there, but also quite a few people, mostly adventurers, who had come forth from the defensive line to take a gander. “Where is all the debris from the blast?”

Gamma shrugs. “I don’t know. A lot of it got vaporized by the massive column of energy that shot up from it when you hit your strike.”

Something in me stirs as I hear Gamma’s explanation. A feeling of dread. “How massive of a column are we speaking of?”

“Hmmm.” Gamma looks at Sam. “What would you say, Sam? That things was pretty high, wasn’t it?”

Sam nods. “Pretty much reached the clouds and then some, it even blew some clouds away.”

“Oh no.” My gut feeling is getting worse. “That means everyone saw, doesn’t it?”

“It would be hard not to.” Gamma giggles.

I open up my UI to look at my follower count for a second, but my fear is soon confirmed as I see it skyrocketing at this very moment, having cleared the million follower milestone a while ago. “Oh no.” I repeat myself.

“More followers is good, isn’t it?” Gamma asks, looking over my shoulder.

“Ami doesn’t really enjoy the attention that much.” Sam explains.

“Oh, yeah, in that case, no bueno indeed.” Gamma chuckles. “Oh well. You’ll live.”

I pout and close the user interface again and look behind me to see Veanya getting taken care of by Sid. It doesn’t look like she has any superficial wounds but she is not yet conscious.

“If you want to move out, I can carry her.” Sidolphus says as he sees us looking down on our Godly friends.

“And move where? Back to the settlement?” I ask.

“I think that might be best for now.” Sid nods. “Going towards the enemy’s base might be too risky with you two exhausted. Let’s hope we inflicted a heavy enough blow on the enemy’s power base and take the opportunity to rest.”

“And what if we haven’t?”

“Then we have much bigger problems and should rest up as much as possible before the problems come find us…”

“Sidolphus is right, Ami. Gamma, myself and Sid can keep going, but you can barely stand and Veanya is knocked out cold. We should at least wait untill she regained her power.”

I look to the opposite side of the crater in the direction of where the enemy camp would be, several kilometers ahead. “Yeah… you are right.” I nod and I look back at my comrades. “Let’s go back.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

When we reach our own lines, almost everyone who we encounter either starts cheering or bows down in respect, although no one really engages with us in conversation. It’s only when we get back inside of the settlement when one of the officers runs towards us. He immediately takes the knee in front of us. “We have received word you were coming and prepared one of the houses for you near the market square.” He then looks up at Veanya’s unconscious body. “I hope your comrade is okay?”

“She is fine.” I decide to take the word as the officer is mostly looking at me. “But we spent a lot of our power to repel the attack.”

“I heard it was quite the fierce foe.” The soldier nods. “I’m happy your party was present, otherwise… Well… I would prefer not to think about that.”

Sidolphus steps in, smiles at the man and puts a hand on his shoulder. He is pretty much carrying Veanya in his one arm now, but seemingly without issues. “Could you point us to the house please.”

“Of course! Follow me, Sir.” The officer immediately jumps up to his feet and jogs towards one of the houses on the opposite end of the square. We follow him closely and enter the house once he opens the door for us. “Would you like us to bring some food to you?” He asks.

“Not really. We have our own supplies with us.” Sid politely declines.

“Use the food to share it with your troops. They will need strength for the next couple of days.” I add to Sid’s refusal.

“Yes Ma’am.” The officer nods and swiftly closes the door behind him as he leaves us alone.

“Hmm.” Sam chuckles. “I was sure he was going to close that sentence with “Praise be to you, or something like that.”

“Please don’t.” I reply with a sigh. “Bending the knee was already just too much for me…”

Sam nods. “It’s not going to stop happening though.”

“I knooooooow…”

While Sam and I are talking, Sid takes Veanya with him and lays her down on one of the bearskin mattresses that were prepared in the room, near the roaring fireplace. While Gamma makes herself comfortable sitting on the chair close by.

“Do you think she is going to wake up any time soon?” I ask.

Gamma shrugs. “I don’t really know. It could take a couple more hours.”

“I’d say another hour or two.” Sidolphus nods, sitting down on the mattress of his own. It’s quite a bit too small for him if he were to lay down in it so I hope he has his own bedroll with him for his comfort’s sake. “But she’ll still be exhausted afterwards.”

“I can definitely understand why.” While my body has been gradually feeling better since the fight, I can still very much feel it in my body. My mana - if you can call it that - is critically low and that’s starting to affect my tummy. “We should probably prepare a meal so she can regain some strength with good food once she wakes up.”

“Great idea!” Gamma smiles. “I’m starting to get hungry too. Summoning all those explosives was hard work.”

“Please don’t let Gamma touch any of the food during the cooking process though.” Sid comments. “Trust me, it’s for the best.”

“I am an absolutely terrible cook.” Gamma gives us a cheery thumbs up.

“What do you eat then? You live by yourself, don’t you?” Sam asks, sitting down on the third mattress and pulling me down to sit on her lap.

“I have machines to do the cooking for me, duh.” Giving us a cheeky grin. “I don’t have time to cook or learn how to cook myself after all.”

“Surely you just don’t just throw ingredients in your robots, right?”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Sid sighs. “Gamma’s general diet would be very similar to what you call ‘micro-wave dinners’ in your world. Supplemented by very sugary drinks.”

“Gamma…” I look at the purple haired catgirl who doesn’t seem any less cheery than before.

“It’s not like I can get sick because of the food. Besides, if I want to eat healthier food, I just come over to your place to eat your sister’s meals.”

“Élise is not a good cook herself though.”

Gamma shrugs. “She makes plenty good breakfasts.”

“That’s fair.”

We keep discussing Gamma’s eating habits for around 10 minutes more before Sam and I use the provisions provided by Sid and Gamma to cook up a nice meat stew with bread and some veggies on the side with a basic vinaigrette, it’s about which takes us about two hours to finish cooking. One must not rush a stew apparently.

“This would taste so good with fries but sadly we don’t really have a friteuse with us.” Sam comments.

“I think it’ll taste great even without them.” Gamma replies, sitting very close to the pot, she’s pretty much eating the stew with her eyes alone at this point. Wiping her mouth for just a second. “The scent is making me drool already.”

“It smells really good.” Sid agrees. “And you managed this without any prep, impressive.”

“Well, if you know a similar recipe, it’s not hard to modify.” Sam replies. “Besides, you provided high quality ingredients. That helps a lot too.”

“Hmmmmm.” A moan from behind us makes us all turn around. Veanya lies there, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “That smells really good… Is it time for dinner already?”

“Just about.” Sid chuckles. “Did you have a good rest?”

“I feel like I got hit by a truck…”