My Second Life Is An Absurdist Power Fantasy 54 54. Departure

In the daylight, it was easier to get a sense of the scope of the damage that the gnolls had inflicted on the town than it was at night. At least a third of the town had burnt down, with some others still smoldering and pouring steady streams of white smoke into the atmosphere. The majority of the town square, including most of the ground within it, was completely destroyed, pockmarked by giant tears and pockmark craters from the magic battle that had taken place there the night before.

As the three of them were walking towards the outskirts, Jack began to see a small but steady stream of people returning to the town from the areas outside of it. Now that the immediate threat was gone, they were likely coming to start the long process of putting everything back together.

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Jack didn't envy them the coming difficulties. a.s.suming they weren't all dead, most of the people who lived here were probably going to have to start their lives over from scratch.

On their way out, Jack saw the same man who'd told him to run the night before, though it didn't seem that the man recognized him. He was now carrying a young girl, perhaps two or three years old, on his shoulders, her face soot-stained and grimy. As they pa.s.sed each other, the girl looked down at him and smiled widely, waving at him. Jack smiled and waved back. He hoped beyond hope that that girl would grow up safe and happy, completely unaware of the kinds of evil that existed in this and every other world.

The three of them traveled in relative silence for several hours, until stopping for a lunch of pastries sometime around midday in a small stand of trees off to the side of the road. As they ate, Madeleine dropped the loot sack she'd been carrying in front of her, and began rummaging around in it again. After a moment, seemingly unable to find what she was looking for, she dumped the contents of the thing out onto the ground in front of her.

Several small knives, a half dozen leather pouches, a couple pieces of rolled parchment, a rolled up piece of leather Jack recognized, and a small wooden case he did not all tumbled out onto the gra.s.s in a heap. Once everything was out, Madeleine set out sorting everything into three piles, splitting the leather pouches equally between the three of them, putting the lockpick roll in the one closest to her. She then set the knives in the pile closest to Rose, and the wooden case in the pile closest to Jack. The rolled pieces of parchment she set to the side apart from the three other piles.

Once everything was sorted, Madeleine pointed to the two piles further from her.

"These are yours. I don't care who takes which pile." She said.

"I though you said it was YOUR loot." Jack said, raising an eyebrow.

"It is. But I'm tired of carrying all of it. So, now it's your loot too." She replied.

"Oh, well, thanks, I guess?" Jack said, unsure how else to reply. He turned to Rose.

"So, which one are you wanting?" He asked, then added, "I'm not picky."

Rose looked at each pile. Looking at the one with wooden case, she reached out and picked the case up. Flipping it around slowly in her hands for a moment, she finally seemed to find what she was looking for and pressed her thumb on part of the box, causing a small wooden panel to slide out from it. Looking inside, Rose furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, before reaching into the small container and pulling out a small carved figurine made of kind of lightly polished black material.