Kibishi's POV

  We all had a moment of rest and felt comfortable enough to move around as freely as we wanted.

  And since we had enough strength to even do that, I wanted some answers.

  I was currently sitting in a circle with my friends. We all had agreed on doing this after resting ourselves and having a nice hot meal.

  The food that David prepared for us was something special. Some parts of the meal was a bit saltier than the others, but even then, it was worth the taste.

  Riley also assisted by making the drinks and setting up the ptes and bottles for us.

  She also made sure to pack them neatly.

  Kuma mentioned that they were both working hard to face the consequences of their actions. However, I could get their logic for those actions myself.

  That aside, this seemed like a good chance to pn our next move.

  "I'm sure you girls have a pn on what to do next, but I want to ask anyway. What do we do from here?" I pced my pte to the side of me.

  "Good point. We were both out for the count due to the cold. And while I have a clear idea of what the next step is, I also want to make sure from the ones who are veterans to this type of stuff." Tao pced her hand under her chin.

  "..." Yosei slowly closed her eyes and then put her pte away. She followed this by sitting up straight and sighing deeply.

  "To be frank, it seemed like this yer was a lot tougher than we originally thought."

  Yosei opened her eyes with a serious expression.

  "As the leader, I should be as truthful as I can. To be honest, having you two around was a huge mistake. If we hadn't had anyone to protect but ourselves, then we would've at least taken it on without a doubt."

  "..." Tao and I remained silent at what Yosei just mentioned.

  There was nothing for us to reject. What she said was right. Yosei wasn't trying to be mean or anything. What she said was the truth. We were newbies trying to complete a mission with loads of dangers, without any experience.

  "I'm not saying that I hated doing that. Protecting you two, I mean. It was part of the work to do that anyway."

  Yosei adjusted herself before continuing with her brows, lowering in a hint of regret and a bit of sorrow.

  Even Yosei hated how she worded it, even though it was truthful.

  "What I didn't like was having my mind wandering if I should protect you two or focus on the mission. While I am the leader of the group, I'm only one person. And one person can't be in two pces at the same time..."

  "I see..." I nodded in agreement, my heart sinking at Yosei's opinion on the matter.

  It hurt to hear it, but Yosei needed to say it right off the bat. Sugar coating it would cause more trouble than it should, especially ter down the line, if any of us ended up dead.

  "Yosei's right. It sounds cold or maybe a bit rude. But that's the truth of this whole thing." Kujira's voice had a hint of her coldness. Yet it showed a hint of concern. "It's no one's fault. The yers are unpredictable. And we didn't make a conscious effort to be prepared for the worst."

  Kujira folded her arms in shame.

  "It was a new type as well. We hugely miscalcuted on our part..." Kujira mumbled.

  A new type?

  "Wait a minute. A new type?" I widened my eyes.

  "Yeah, it was a new type of being we never faced before. Nothing in our backlogs had even seen that type before." Kuma commented.

  Kuma pced her index finger at the side of her cheek. "It was like... a mixed breed."

  "Wait. Do they... breed like normal animals?" Tao questioned, her voice hinting at fear and concern.

  "Huh?" Kuma's eyebrow raised. She seemed stunned by Tao's question. "Of course they do. Why else would they have so many of these things roaming around this hellhole?"

  "Oh...o-oh. Is that why they...." Tao whispered as she hugged herself.

  "Hmm? They what?" I looked at Tao in confusion.

  "A-ah!" Tao jolted in surprise. She then turned to me with a weak smile. "It's n-nothing!"

  That was what she said, but Tao was holding her stomach.

  "..."

  Tao did the same thing back at prison after her torture session.

  Static!

  A fsh of pain appeared in my mind. I really didn't like that answer—

  Static!

  Another fsh of pain appeared once more.

  But that cooled my head off. I wasn't sure what I was thinking just now, but I knew I should really keep my emotions in check. I always seemed hostile to topics reting to Tao.

  Now wasn't the time for that.

  "..." Yosei was staring at Tao for a brief moment. It seemed like she had a lot on her mind right now. She simply smiled with her eyes closed.

  "Tao seems to be a nice person!" Yosei added.

  "Huh?" Tao looked at Yosei.

  "Anyway, I think we should have done something about this sooner. Then again, this was the first time I had ever seen that type before." Yosei moved the conversation along without batting an eye.

  It seemed like Kuma and Kujira understood and then nodded in agreement.

  While I wanted to ask about the sudden change of topics personally, now wasn't the time for that.

  "Our best bet was to do this with the three of us. That way, we could make more progress." Kujira pyed with one of her pig tails. "We can do the routine after we make sure that this pce is safe."

  "Agreed, Jir. As much as I would like to finish up with the routine for the missions we go on, I was really in the tter and let Kibi and Tao get used to Middle City and do some trialing first."

  Kuma slowly scratched the back of her head.

  "So for now, we're going to head back. Well, once the force field increases, there are no interruptions. That, and we need to set a teleporter here and add an anti-beast bounded field." Yosei spoke out loud.

  That... sounded very complicated.

  But at least we had a game pn. Too bad we couldn't go out there and fight, but it was what it was.

  ...........

  .... No, I needed to stop lying to myself. It kinda bothered me not to help for what I had done to the guy back then—the one who was trying to do his job.

  But I supposed I could have other ways to help, I guessed.

  "I understand," I nodded, despite not being fully on board with this.

  As much as I had wanted to protest, I didn't have it in my heart to do so. After all, we would only be slowing them down.

  Besides, I've been wanting to check up on David and Riley for a while now.

  While we're training, we can all catch up.

  But I doubted that we could see each other so soon.

  And so, for the rest of the time in there, the group was chatting away. Nothing was worth noting.

  At the very least, we had this experience to go by in the meantime.

  I was sure we would use it to our advantage.

  As more questions kept piling up on the files of mysterious things and the unknown, I was not certain WHEN it would be the right time to ask them. The more I wanted to do that, the more questions I received than answers.

  This world was indeed a strange pce...

  It would not be long before we called it quits and headed back home for the night.