Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 251: Little Puppet [I]

After dealing with Kang, I wandered for a few more minutes. By the time I returned, the camp was already set up.

And it looked… surprisingly good.

They’d dug a shallow pit in the center and connected it to a smaller hole beside it. A campfire was burning quietly inside that pit.

If I remembered correctly, this design was called a Dakota fire hole.

Since the fire was built below ground level, it was harder to spot from a distance. It also gave off far less smoke than a normal campfire, further minimizing visibility.

Someone here clearly knew what they were doing.

It was probably Ray.

As for the tents… they weren’t really tents at all. Not in the proper sense.

The heroes had strung up tarps and cord to create two quick lean-tos, but the rest was improvised.

Giant leaves had been layered together like shingles, woven into branches and lashed together with vines until they formed crude shelters that looked more like oversized bird nests than anything made by humans.

It was messy and uneven, but functional.

The ground was covered in moss here, like everywhere else in this jungle — springy to walk on, but damp enough to chill your bones if you tried to sleep on it.

To counter that, they’d cut down smaller branches, lay them in cross-patterns, and pile broad leaves overtop until they had something resembling dry bedding.

Crude mattresses, basically.

Again, someone definitely knew their survival tricks.

Probably Ray.

And speaking of Ray, he was sitting by the fire pit, boiling water in a canteen cup propped over the flames.

From the looks of it, he was brewing herbal tea out of whatever weeds he’d foraged earlier. Because of course he was.

What reason was there to not treat this nightmarish jungle like a weekend picnic? It’s not like our lives were in danger or anything.

The faint hiss of steam rose as the water bubbled, while Ray excitedly chatted with Vince about some nonsense with a stupid grin on his face.

Vince, on the other hand, appeared somewhere between bored and mildly amused, like a cat forced to watch someone dangle yarn.

A little farther off, right at the edge of camp, Juliana was slouched lazily on a fallen log that served as a makeshift bench.

She wore my re-tailored leather pants and tank top, my jacket draped loosely across her shoulders.

…And I was annoyed.

“Damn it,” I muttered.

Here I was, exhausted and dirty from running around and fighting monsters all day, while she looked like she had just stepped out of a fashion magazine for feral supermodels.

No, really! How dare she look better than me in my own clothes? Where was her humility as a loyal Shadow?

She was even polishing her nails with a kunai. A kunai! Who the fuck does that?

Anyhow, while she was still in the middle of her manicure session, Lily strolled over and held out two tiny vials that, to me, looked like healing potions.

Right. Juliana still had that gash in her calf, which was why she couldn’t run earlier.

But instead of accepting them with a “thanks” like a normal person, Juliana raised an eyebrow and tilted her head.

A few seconds passed in utter silence.

Lily shifted uncomfortably.

Juliana just kept staring. She wasn’t even blinking anymore!

Even I was starting to get creeped out.

At last, Lily cautiously inched forward like she was approaching some wild animal, gently placed the vials down beside Juliana… and then bolted.

Juliana, meanwhile, now started staring at the healing potions with no intention of picking them up — when Ray came up to her next.

He offered her a steaming cup of his tea.

Juliana waited a beat, grabbed the cup… then promptly dumped the tea out at his feet and held the empty cup between her palms to warm her hands.

Wow. She could really be a jerk sometimes.

But Ray wasn’t deterred. With that same idiot grin plastered on his face, he walked off and began handing tea to the others.

I gazed around and saw Alexia still asleep inside one of the lean-tos. Kang sat beside her, glaring daggers at me.

He seemed like he was one provocation away from triggering his partial werewolf transformation and tearing into me if I so much as breathed too close to Alexia.

I rolled my eyes.

Honestly, he was so dramatic.

Shaking my head, I decided against sleeping in those lean-tos. No way I’d get any decent rest with Kang practically stalking my every movement.

So I turned away and headed toward the far edge of the camp.

That’s when Michael bumped into me.

He was returning from somewhere deeper in the woods, nonchalantly dragging behind him the grotesque carcass of a tentacled millipede as if he’d just gone grocery shopping.

I’m not exaggerating.

It was an actual millipede — only with slimy tentacles sprouting out of its large segmented body.

Did he hunt that thing for dinner?

My stomach gave a violent twist.

Oh, hell no! I’d sooner starve to death than eat something that repulsive.

“Hey, Samael,” Michael greeted casually. “You’re just in time. We were about to talk strategy—”

I waved him off. “I’m sleepy.”

Michael blinked as I brushed past him, then pointed at the tentacled millipede. “But what about dinner?”

I scowled. “I’m not eating that.”

He frowned. “Okay… but the tents are over there.”

I glanced back at him over my shoulder. “What do you take me for, a peasant? I’ll sleep in a proper bed. Wake me when it’s time to move.”

Without another word, I activated my Origin Card. Four earthen walls with slanted roofs surged up from the ground, closing me in.

A solid mud bed rose before me, cushioned with soft moss.

I pulled a few clothes from my robe’s dimensional storage pocket and laid them across the moss as bedsheets, so I wouldn’t soil myself on it directly.

Then I sank onto the bed with a satisfied sigh.

There. Cozy, clean, and dignified.

The rest of them could roll around on damp leaves like woodland vermin for all I cared — I was going to sleep like a king.

From outside, I heard Ray’s exasperated groan. “If he could do all that in the blink of an eye, then why did I set up camp all by myself?!”

Michael only sighed and went to prepare dinner.