The Idle System (A LitRPG series Book 7): Family, Pegaz [learn to read books txt] 📗

As he turned around to pick up the bag, he heard Kelly say, “Amazing.”

John winked at her, slung the bag onto his back, and tied the bag’s handle around his neck again, but when he went to pick up Kelly, she dodged him.

Looking at her, he was about to ask what was wrong when she spoke first. “I want to walk the rest of the way on my own. It’ll be good for stamina training at the very least.”

John looked at Sarah to see if she had an opinion, but she only shrugged her shoulders. He agreed to let her walk the rest of the way.

Their pace slowed down considerably since then as Kelly needed to rest every thirty minutes. They could only walk a few miles a day at most, but nobody complained.

John pretended to go hunting again, but he would only go a few miles away and take out some meat from his Storage Space since he had an abundance of meat from the last few hunts—he had stocked up on food, just in case anything happened.

Over the course of a few days, Kelly got used to walking longer distances, and each day she could walk a little bit further than the day before.

It took a little over two weeks for them to reach the edge of the jungle. When they emerged from the vines, they were greeted by a large wheat field standing in front of a village with a small wooden fence surrounding it. John could tell that it wasn’t new or well maintained since the planks were hanging on to a few fragile posts which were rotting away in the ground.

At the inside corner of the fence, a tall watchtower cast an eerie shadow over the field. It, too, seemed heavily neglected. Its roof was riddled with holes, and it was leaning ten degrees to the left. John ruffled Kelly’s hair and cheerfully said, “This is where we’re going to be living from now on.”

Chapter 7: Meeting the Villagers

As the family of three took a step towards the town, a loud bell sounded from the watchtower.

From the edge of the jungle to where the first line of crops were growing, there were about two hundred metres of tall grass that reached up to the middle of John’s thighs.

John looked at Kelly while pointing at the grass. “This is here to delay any monster or beast getting to the crops and the townspeople. It’ll also allow the people on the watchtowers to spot them sooner, giving the people more time to group together before attacking whatever comes out of the jungle. It also grants vital time to those working in the fields to get to safety. Since they’ve spotted us and rang the alarm bell, let’s see how good their response time is.”

As they were waiting, Sarah lowered her head. John noticed it from the corner of his eye and looked at her, only to see that she was getting nervous. Knitting his brows, he couldn’t think of a reason why she would be acting that way.

A few seconds later, Sarah sighed. “You know what happened the last time a stranger saw my face?”

Both John and Kelly stood in silence. Kelly was confused as to what she was referring to. Her mother was quite beautiful, and to her, it would be insane for something bad to happen from someone seeing her face.

John, however, was perfectly aware of what happened. He was embarrassed that he had forgotten something so important and traumatising.

Kelly tugged at Sarah’s clothes. “What happened, Mom?”

Knowing that Sarah might not be in the mood for a lengthy explanation, John answered instead. “Remember the story we told you about our past? Well, there was one part we left out.

“After I helped your mother fake her death, we wore masks to hide our faces so that nobody could identify us. Your mother was with our friend’s family while I was off training, and there was a man in the family who accidently saw your mother’s face.

“He didn’t know who she was and even if he did, he wouldn’t have reported her to her family because he fell in love with her at first sight.

“Not long after, your mom went to give some maps to a friend. During the visit, the man who saw her face went crazy and killed her best friend.

“After she found out about her best friend's death, she began hunting for the killer. This was exactly what he wanted. He used this situation to lure her out so that he could see her again.

“That man wormed his way into becoming your mother’s apprentice in medicine, but he only wanted to get close and see her more often. When the two of them were out hunting monsters, he purposely lured more monsters towards them so he could act cool and save the damsel in distress, but she took out the leader of the monsters while he got beaten up badly.

“Your mother eventually found out who the killer was and then began investigating the man to figure out why. She found out that he was a spy for another family and she gave this information to the head of our friend’s family so that they could hunt him down.

“Eventually, the man declared his love for your mother and explained why he did everything. The idiot didn’t know that your mom and I were married. He didn’t know about me at all, actually. It was definitely the shock of his life… which ended soon after.

John cleared his throat. “Since then, no other stranger has seen your mother’s face. Isabel and the others were no exception, and only after they started working for us did your mother show her face to them.”

Kelly stood with her mouth agape as she stared at him. John was starting to think that was her natural state as it happened far too often.

Looking over at the people who