God of Systems: Maker of Heroes and Villains

The next morning, Keith slowly opened his eyes and immediately jumped up. His chest felt a stinging pain on the inside thanks to the sudden shock he felt. He looked down at Clara who looked apologetic and sighed.

"I'm sorry, I'm just used to sleeping alone and I just... did not expect to open up eyes and see two large eyeballs staring at me." he said. He knew that he would have been fine if he saw someone sleeping beside him, but a pair of eyes staring at him, just caught him off guard and almost gave him a heart attack.

"I'll need some time to get used to this, but what were you trying to do though?" he asked as he sat back down on the thick layer made of wool blankets.

Clara's face turned slightly red, "You look very cute when you're asleep... so I don't know why but I just watched you sleep after waking up."

"Oh. So it's like that." he said and chuckled before shaking his head, "Alright got it, let's go and eat as much as we can. Although we salted all the fish last night, it won't stay too fresh if we leave it for too long."

Keith took his sweet time to fill up about 80% of the water filter with various natural filters. From the bottom to the top most layer, he put in some cloth, a layer of cotton, charcoal powder, crushed and dried weeds, chunks of charcoal, and lastly, the top most layer was just a bunch of stones and pebbles that were washed in the river.

Once done, he grabbed a medium sized copper pot and used it to bring some water from the river. He slowly poured it all into the filter and put the copper pot under the holes, the area that had a thick cloth stitched onto it.

He head to wait for a few seconds to get a glimpse of the first drop of water but as time passed, the flow increased to a thin line of water falling straight into the pot. Satisfied with the outcome, he wished to move on to the other things, but food came first.

Luckily, the fish hadn't spoiled yet so everyone ate it without having any intention of hunting as they didn't want to waste any food. Unlike last night, every single person in the team stuffed themselves thanks to Keith's rants about not wanting to waste food while they were in the forest.

Once they were all done, they decided to rest but Keith couldn't help but notice Laura limping around even though she tried her best not to. And then there was Brandon who had clear scratch marks on his arms.

'Wow, these wild bastards. Just how hardcore did they get last night?' he mused, and Amelia who was right beside him, noticed it and leaned towards him.

"When he gets too excited, his awakened ability activates. That should answer your unasked questions." she whispered as she kept her gaze on Laura, feeling pity for the girl.

Keith, for the first time in his life, felt like he had been hit with something extremely huge. His imagination instantly ran wild, but that was also when he noticed how Laura kept giving Brandon hateful looks.

"Looks like it didn't go well last night."

"Mhm, I did tell him not to take any risk but that horny bastard thought it'll get me jealous. Anyways, the team is in your hands now so this matter is yours to deal with. From the moment Seraphelle unofficially made you the team leader, Brandon decided to let loose and act like his normal self. So yeah, good luck." she said and patted his back before heading over to Clara.

Keith stood in place and sighed, "Oh well, let's just go make a smoker. Or maybe even just a grill like thing should work."

He put Brandon's case at the back of his mind as food was the first priority.

Caleb was silently sitting beside the fire, so Keith headed towards him, "Hey Caleb, do you want to go with Brandon to find some animals? Oh yeah, tell him that we don't need any more fish."

"Yes!" he exclaimed and ran off before Keith could change his mind.

'Well, at least he's enthusiastic I guess.' Keith thought as he walked over to Laura.

She was silently sitting on a tree stump as she took in the beautiful sounds of nature, but frowned slightly when she heard sensed someone getting close.

She opened her eyes and turned to look at Keith who had gotten pretty close to her by now.

"What? I'll go hunt something after a while, so you don't have to worry about it." she said, sounding annoyed even though Keith didn't really do anything.

Hearing her words, he sighed, "Nah I'm here to change your task. Just stay at camp until you recover from whatever happened last night. If possible, your help will be appreciated in crafting something that can preserve the meat."

Laura's gaze softened when she heard his words and she silently nodded, "Oh, okay. But I'll help out. What do you want me to do?"

Keith raised his eyebrow, but didn't say no to assistance. He had given her an option and she made her choice.

"It's pretty simple. Just grab a knife and make U shaped grooves on the sticks that I give you. I'll mark the places where it should be done with some charcoal." he said and patted her shoulder before he headed out to find some nice sticks.

He gathered a lot more sticks than he originally intended to, but thanks to that, he could now make two smoker platforms. Laura made some really accurate grooves on every single stick and Keith took all the sticks with him and sat down beside Seraphelle.

As he tied up the sticks, he asked her the question to one answer that he was extremely curious about.

"Lady Seraphelle, if you don't mind, can you tell me about your awakened ability? Like, does it increase the volume or your muscles or something like that?"