"Y-You're really not angry?"
Inside the iron pot, the broth bubbled away. The children sat around the campfire, watching He Yin tend the heat as she kept tossing mushrooms and fragrant herbs into it. An even more mouthwatering aroma filled the air.
Yu Ze and Hirohiko sat beside Chiba, who leaned against the wall and gazed at the iron pot from afar. Zong Mi wore an embarrassed look and could not help asking Chiba.
"Heh..."
Chiba, who had been about to pick up his pen again, sighed helplessly at those words. "Same answer as the previous one thousand one hundred and thirty-one times: I'm really not angry. If you went hunting because you thought you were capable of it, then I'd definitely be angry. But you went because of the difficult situation we're in right now and had no other choice, and you got good results. I have no reason to be angry."
"Really?"
Even after hearing Chiba's words, Zong Mi still responded doubtfully. He stared intently at Chiba's face, as if trying to find even the slightest trace of anger there.
Yu Ze, who was meditating nearby, cracked open one eye and glanced at them before quietly closing it again.
He chose to ignore Zong Mi.
This time, Chiba truly was not angry at all. In fact, he had not been angry from the start. Once he learned that the two of them had not gone hunting just to show off, he could not summon even the slightest anger. If anything, he felt relieved.
He understood that, under such circumstances, they had remained rational and acted only out of necessity. That meant they would not be blinded by a sudden increase in strength and do something reckless.
That was already extremely rare.
After all, unlike him, they were not