Harem System In A fantasy World

Chapter 269: Maybe I can bathe

Aeron stopped for a brief moment, turning his head back toward Elion, his expression showing clear shock as if he hadn’t expected that kind of answer at all.

Then he laughed. “Hahahahaha!”

It wasn’t restrained or polite; it was a full laugh, the kind that made his shoulders shake slightly, his eyes tearing up a little as he tried to catch his breath.

“Well, aren’t you quite the narcissist? And here I thought you were going to wish me all the best and maybe say you were not going to hold back or something.”

Elion shrugged with a light smile on his face, his eyes closing lightly as he walked, completely at ease.

“What can I say, I’m just that overpowered, I don’t think you stand a chance.”

Aeron’s laughter slowly faded, though the amusement didn’t fully leave his face. His eyes sharpened slightly as he gave Elion a look.

“Right.”

He didn’t say anything more than that, only holding that look for a brief moment before turning back toward the front.

After that, they didn’t speak again. The quiet of the outer camp settled around them as they continued walking, side by side, while the last light of day slowly faded.

They eventually made it to an area that was noticeably more sparse, the tents spread far apart with large gaps of open ground and scattered trees between them, the sounds of the main camp now distant and faint, and Aeron suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“Well, here we are,” he said, gesturing toward a small one-man tent.

Elion raised a brow as he looked at it, his expression shifting slightly.

“Isn’t this supposed to be bigger?”

He had really thought that his tent would be something a bit more… respectable, but what stood in front of him was no different from the tiny ones he had been seeing all throughout the camp.

For a brief moment, he even wondered if Aeron was messing with him.

Aeron laughed at that.

“Well, this is as big as it gets,” he said casually, “the others, the lower-ranked ones, sleep in threes or fours in this exact same tent, so yes, this is already better than what the general populace gets.”

“Oh.”

Elion nodded slowly, taking that in.

“Oh well… I think I would rather sleep outside or something, maybe even up in a tree; it must be really stuffy in there,” he added with a small shrug.

Aeron laughed again, taking his statement as nothing more than a joke. What kind of person would willingly sleep outside?

“You do you, I guess. Do you want me to show you the other basic spots?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Elion waved it off lightly, “I’ll find my way around. I’ll just take a piss somewhere out in the woods if I feel like going.”

Aeron snorted slightly at that.

“Well, suit yourself. Anyway, let me get back to my post. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

He gave a small wave before turning around, his figure quickly blending into the dim light as he disappeared into the darkening woods.

Elion stood there for a moment, then let out a quiet sigh before turning toward his supposed tent.

He stepped forward and opened the flap, which didn’t even have a proper fastening, just a small hook holding it in place, and peeked inside.

There was a single sleeping bag and nothing else inside. No padding, no sheets, or well… whatever people used when they camped out.

“Well… I didn’t really expect comfort, but isn’t this a bit too much?” he muttered out loud. He sighed again, rubbing the back of his neck slightly.

“Maybe the system will have something useful…”

For the moment, he closed the tent again, letting the flap fall back into place.

It was still too early for him to be sleeping anyway, at least for his liking. The others would probably collapse the moment they got the chance. They did look visibly exhausted after everything they probably went through during the day.

But him?

Despite everything he had done in the battle earlier, he wasn’t even a little bit winded, not the slightest hint of fatigue lingering in his body.

“Let me go for a little stroll…”

With that, he looked up toward the trees, then in a single smooth motion, he dashed upward, landing on a thick branch with enough force to make the entire tree shake slightly.

He paused there for a moment, his gaze sweeping across the dimly lit forest, taking in the scattered lights of distant campfires and the faint movements below.

Then, without hesitation, he pushed off again, one tree to the next. Then another, and another.

He moved quickly, almost silently, his figure weaving through the branches with practiced ease, not heading toward any particular destination, but just moving anyway.

Further and further away from the central camp.

At some point, he might have been spotted once or twice, a shadow flickering through the trees, enough to make a few groups near their campfires tense up slightly. A few hands drifted toward their weapons as they glanced into the darkness.

But just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone again, already moving deeper into the forest.

Eventually, he made his way to an area where there were no people camping out at all; the presence of the mage army was completely absent, leaving only the quiet of the forest behind.

The pale light of the moon was just starting to pierce through the thick canopy of trees above, casting long, low shadows that stretched across the branches and forest floor.

Elion finally stopped on a thick branch, his feet planting firmly into it as he killed all his momentum in one motion. The impact sent a slight tremor through the tree as it shook faintly.

“Huuuuuu…”

He breathed out deeply as he gave a brief look around.

“This will do,” he said quietly.

He lowered himself onto the branch, sitting comfortably despite the height. His feet dangled freely below as he leaned back slightly, letting his body relax.

He hadn’t really planned anything when he started running around like that; it just… happened, like he needed to move, to get away for a bit.

Someone might argue that he could have done the same back in his tent, but there were always people around, the constant presence, the noise, the subtle feeling of having people around you never really left.

Here, there was none of that. Just silence and lots of space.

He tilted his head up slightly, his gaze finding a small opening in the canopy above, where the bright full moon hung in the sky, looking down at him.

A faint smile formed on his lips.

The pale light washed over his face, soft and cool, the breeze brushing gently against his skin, carrying with it the distant scent of smoke from somewhere far off in the camp.

He let out a quiet sigh.

“It really is too real…”

He stayed like that for a long while, not moving, and not thinking about anything in particular, just sitting there, letting his mind empty itself.

Time passed, though he couldn’t tell how much.

He didn’t really care.

When enough time had passed, and he couldn’t keep his thoughts completely void, his mind began to wander toward this world. He began to think of another possibility.

What if they had not been sent back in time… but instead to another world entirely, one that was just similar to theirs?

He scoffed lightly at the thought, shaking his head.

“Nah… that’s even more impossible than the possibility of this being some kind of illusion.”

His gaze remained fixed on the moon above as his thoughts continued to wander. What kind of power would it even take to do something like that?

To transport people across worlds… across entirely separate realities or a parallel world of some sort.

That wasn’t just strong. That was something else entirely. Something on a scale he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

He exhaled slowly.

“Yeah… no way.”

Even with everything he had seen so far, everything he had experienced in this place, that idea still felt too far-fetched, too absurd to seriously consider.

And yet…

He didn’t dismiss it completely.

The world was simply too vast, and the uncharted mysteries within it ran even deeper, stretching far beyond what he could see or understand, endless and almost suffocating in their scale.

Wooooo…

The wind whistled past his ears, brushing against him as it slipped through the branches, and along with it, he caught a faint sound.

He stilled slightly, his focus sharpening as he tilted his head just a fraction. The distant sound of flowing water caught his hearing.

“…Is that a river?”

He narrowed his eyes, honing in on it, letting everything else fade into the background as he concentrated, and sure enough, the distant trickle became clearer and more defined. He heard the steady rhythm of water moving over stone, reaching him even from this distance.

Even for someone with his enhanced senses, it was impressive.

He pushed himself up onto his feet in one smooth motion.

“How lucky… maybe I can bathe.”