𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚕 - 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚍

08

𝚒𝚍𝚒𝚘𝚝𝚜 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚃𝙿𝙽, 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢'𝚍 𝚋𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗 𝚜𝚒𝚡: 𝚘𝚑 𝚗𝚘

𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝'𝚜 𝚖𝚎, 𝙸 𝚊𝚖 𝚒𝚍𝚒𝚘𝚝𝚜.

━━━━━━◇x◇━━━━━━

THE OLD GROUCH HAD taken upon himself to name Ro, sweet-and-salty. And if he thinks it's too long, he calls her spices. Rosemary had an idea as to why he had called her that. The number of times she called him "old man" and immediately switch up to a sweet kid taking care of their little sibling. . she thought it was fitting.

Rosemary was in the library along with the others, they discussed their plans and the stranger. Rosemary, as she's still an eleven-year-old, had a novel in her hand. She looks up from time to time, but she mostly has her nose under the book.

Since Rosemary isn't that spectacular in reading situations, she decided to keep her mouth shut while the others discussed. "We've got three days to read and prepare," Rosemary tells the group as she placed her book at the table.

"On the fourth day, we aim for AO8-63"

↫↫↫↫↫

Rosemary and Ray were in the archives, reading different books as they memorize its contents. Ray was leaning on his seat with his feet propped up on the table, whilst Rosemary was sitting at the table across Ray.

"Ray, have you thought about it?"

"About what?"

Rosemary closed the book and placed it at her lap. "What the human world would look like?" She asked. Ray remained quiet, still reading off the book he had in hand.

Ro took that as an answer and looked at the shelves of books in front of her. "Well, if, uh, you ask me, I had." She hesitated. "I believe that the information; books, newspapers, in Grace Field were old. I mean, maybe that date in those books were the last few, peaceful years before humans came here. Not gonna lie, I'm still confused. Where we are, how did we get here, or when did it all started. . ." Rosemary trailed off, noticing she didn't answer the question.

Ray looked up from his book, looking at her with a solemn expression. "Ro--"

"--Guys! The man said to follow him!" Emma called. Ro looked at Ray with a questioning look. "It's nothing." He uttered. Ro knew it wasn't nothing, but decided not to press further.

The three of them followed the man in the dining room, seeing some of the children playing. The old grouch walked towards the piano with an umbrella in hand and started to stick it in the piano.

Ro looked over to her right to see Nat horrified, his face screaming 'how could you?!!'. Rosemary bit her lip, anxious to what the man was doing.

Suddenly, the piano moved. Opening and leading to some kind of path. Ro watched as the man walked in first, him falling(?). Well, he didn't actually fall, he was just using a ladder going down.

"Time to go find Minerva in hell, eh?" The man said.

- × - × - × -

"A-- an armoury!" Ro exclaims, impressed of the underground bunker.

"It was by chance that we found the piano mechanism. When we first tried playing it, the tuning was just a bit off. No way I could've noticed that but. . ." The man glared at Ro who snickered.

"Anyway, the point is, if you suck, you'll never even realize this room exists."

"What was Minerva's plan?" Emma asked, more to herself than to the man. However, he still replied despite the obvious answer. "Beats me."

"Pick whatever you like." The man urged, "I don't give a crap about Minerva's goals. These are weapons. This room was made for someone to use, right? We'll be getting into enemy territory now. Well, we're already in enemy territory, but, you get it. . . the wasteland is at a whole other level compared to what you've seen. The plantation forest doesn't come close."

"This is a land where they live. If they come for you, weapons won't really save you but. . . it's better than putting your ass out there bare-handed. I'm not helping you with this. Choose something that'll help you survive."

The man handed Emma one of the guns. As soon as she held it, her hands weighed, as the gun was heavy, she frowned.

"Well. . . what do you think?" Rosemary asked.
She looked at Emma anxiously. "Something lighter would probably be better. . Sung-Joo and Mujika taught us that right?"

Ray nodded. Emma spoke, "I want to avoid anything that could make it hard to run away. Even if that doesn't happen, I think it's better to travel right, at any rate. . ."

"Right".                                        " Yeah,"

Rosemary looked ahead, seeing the stranger gathering his preferred weapons. "And how 'bout you, stranger? What are you bringing?"

"Don't wanna explain. Watch and learn."

"You--" Rosemary was gonna charge at him but Ray stopped her before she could do anything. "Ro," he warned. Ro rolled her eyes but listened nonetheless.

The man did just as he said and didn't explain anything. 'He expects us to understand what he's doing??' Ro thought. 'To be fair, you eleven-year-olds (plus 12 since we got Ray) are from the best plantation' argued her brain.

The man left as soon as he got what he needed, leaving the kids to their own. They discussed what they would bring and what would be useful in their travel.

"How about you, Ro? You experienced using a gun for a month, what would you choose?"

Rosemary turned to look at Ray, pursing her lips. "I'm no military genius, but as Emma said, I think using the bow would be handy. It isn't loud, nor do we run out of ammo, since we don't really need it. . . but I'm going to bring this."

Ro raised a pistol she has at her hand. "And that is. . ?"

Ro smiled, "I read it at one of the books they gave me while I was still at Grace Field. I'm not sure what its called, but I'm certain this is a silenced
.22 pistol. 'Sept I don't know much ammunition I can bring. . ."[1]

"We have to bring knives too. Although we're not made for close combat, we can use it for escape and for the arrows. And. . . it's not like we only have demons as enemies, do we?" Rosemary spun the knife in her hand, her eyes blurry.

"Yeah, but those probably won't be enough to deal with demons." Ray took a pistol with four barrels. Emma and Rosemary leaned in, looking at what's in his hand.

Ray showed the two the usefulness of the gun and reassured the two.

"We will survive and come back to our family. We definitely will."

Emma and Rosemary looked to each other, a smile on both of their faces. "Yeah!" They both exclaimed.

Manga Chapter: 59

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[1] no I have no idea what the hell is this gun, let's just roll with it

Happy New Years guys!!!
Nah jk, let's not jinx it 🤸‍♂️🚆

Q: So, 2021's getting a little too calm to my liking, do you think something's off with this year?

MA: Well for me, nothing different but odd. It still doesn't help the fact that 2021 is read as, 2020 won. Like, win.

Q: do any of you read manhwas? If not, you guys should read some. It doesn't matter if you like shounen, historical, reincarnation. They're all good, well, most of them anyway 🛢🚶🏻‍♀️