Chapter 150: Making Friends Isn’t That Hard After All

[New substance detected... Meat stew..]

[Energy particles detected...]

[Converting nutrients into energy...]

While Magna wolfed down the still-steaming stew, he started getting system messages, along with a feeling of the energy inside him rising.

He even stopped eating halfway through, since it was genuinely strange to feel his energy climbing this much.

So far, the ordinary meals he ate hadn’t been giving him much energy at all. He only noticed visible gains from his daily regeneration and from the mana-rich food Celeste gifted him from time to time.

But gaining energy from this food was indeed strange, as if he were eating a meal made from mana-rich ingredients.

Looking oddly at the food in his bowl, there was no golden light in the soup, the meat, or the vegetables at all, meaning none of it actually contained mana.

’Is it just that they have a high nutrient value?’ He considered the possibility, since neither the taste of the meat nor the vegetables in the stew was anything like what he had tasted at the Winterborne Mansion.

He called up his stat panel to check his current mana.

Mana 96.3%

When he arrived here, his mana had already been at 96.2%, so he had really gained 0.1 from just two spoonfuls of this food.

It wasn’t much compared to actual mana-rich food, of course, but it was still significant, since one spoonful was almost equal to half a meal’s worth back home.

Besides giving him energy, the taste was also quite good. He kept eating quickly until he finished the whole bowl, his mana finally settling at 97.6%.

There was still about one more bowl’s worth left in the pot on the fireplace, but he didn’t reach for it right away, for two reasons.

The first was that his mana would reach 100% soon anyway from natural regeneration by morning.

The second was that he wasn’t sure how hard it was to find food in this area.

It looked like the kids here somehow found and cooked their own food, so he had to think about how long he might need to stay here, and how difficult finding food during that time would actually be.

Figuring these things mattered a lot for planning how to survive, he decided he needed more information. He got up from where he was sitting, set his bowl aside, and walked outside his hut.

The tall guy was still lying on the ground, holding his leg, his face pale with pain.

Finding his condition rather strange, Magna asked casually. "Don’t you have any pills or potions to heal your broken bone?"

Even back at the Winterborne estate, there were ways to heal a broken bone within a day, so given that these boys came from more prestigious families, he figured they’d have better resources on hand.

The tall boy slowly lifted his head to look at Magna.

Interestingly, there was still no anger or resentment on his face, only a smile. "Do you think this is a place where we’re allowed to bring things like that?"

Magna nodded, finding that reasonable enough.

He then stepped forward and held out his hand. "Get up, let’s go inside. We need to set that broken bone somehow, or it’ll heal crooked."

The tall guy didn’t even hesitate, reaching out and letting Magna pull him up off the ground.

Magna’s muscles strained a little pulling up that heavy body, but he managed to get the boy standing on his feet.

"You can lean on my shoulder to walk." He said, helping him toward the inside of the hut.

"Sorry for laughing at you when you said you were strong." The tall guy chuckled while grimacing from the pain in his broken leg.

It was the first time he had seen someone this strong at his age, able to handle his heavy weight.

Even with most of his weight resting on his shoulder while walking, Magna barely budged under it.

"It’s okay, things like that happen among kids." Magna replied, sounding nothing like a kid himself.

After entering inside, he had the boy sit on the ground, since there was nothing else to sit on.

"Stretch your leg out." He rolled up the boy’s pant to look at the break.

The boy’s leg was insanely thin, almost like there was no flesh on it at all, just bone with skin stretched over it, making Magna wonder where all that weight was actually coming from.

But thanks to that, finding the break wasn’t hard at all. He could easily feel the fracture in the shin bone with his hand.

There was no visible bruising or wound, which was good. The bone had simply snapped clean.

He got up, found a worn scrap of cloth somewhere in the hut, and crouched back down with two solid short pieces of wood as well.

"It’ll hurt a little." The moment he said that, he pulled the foot to set the bone back into place, making the boy scream in pain.

Then, placing the piece of wood on either side of the leg to hold it steady, he wrapped it tightly with the cloth.

"It’s done. Now the rest depends on how fast you heal." He looked over his work with satisfaction.

He was quite experienced with this, since he had broken his own legs twice before, and Titus had treated him this way each time, which was how he’d learned to do it himself.

Of course, Titus had his freezing skill, which let him set the bone and then freeze it in place, helping it heal faster and straighter. Magna figured he could manage without it, thinking his regeneration ability was probably just as good, since the boy seemed to have a fairly strong build to begin with.

"Thank you. If I’d waited for it to heal on its own, it would’ve been a big problem later." The boy looked tired, though he also looked relieved.

Had the bone healed crooked, he would have had to find someone to break it again later just to set it properly.

"By the way, I ate half your meal, I figure you don’t mind." Magna said casually, walking over to the pot to spoon the rest of the food into a bowl.

He filled the bowl and came back, handing it to the boy, figuring he had been cooking it for his own dinner.

"Yeah, it’s fine. Thanks." He took the food and blew on it, waiting for it to cool, clearly not as resistant to heat as Magna.

While Magna settled down onto the ground to sit and watch him eat, he finally started asking the questions on his mind.

"Where’s the toilet?"