An Old Friend Wasn't Doing Too Well

Tommy took a deep breath, suppressing the excitement and a touch of sadness in his heart, and quickly followed. A few steps behind, he tentatively and uncertainly called out softly, "Lex? Is it... Lex?"

The figure suddenly stopped, turning around quickly like a startled rabbit, its face filled with wariness and doubt.

When his gaze fell on Tommy's face, he was first bewildered, then looked at him carefully. In those eyes, which were red and swollen from years of exposure to wind and snow, yet still sharp, an expression of disbelief gradually appeared.

He opened his mouth, his chapped lips moved, and he made a hoarse sound, "Tom... Tommy? Is it really you?!"

"It's me! Lex, long time no see!" Tommy stepped forward with a sincere and heartfelt smile.

Upon closer inspection, Lex's transformation was even more alarming.

That once round face, tanned a healthy reddish-black by the mountain winds, is now gaunt and bony, with prominent cheekbones, rough and cracked skin, and an unhealthy bluish-yellow tinge.

His eyes were sunken, and the corners of his mouth were habitually pursed down, revealing a numbness and resilience that came from being worn down by life for a long time.

Only in those eyes, after the initial surprise, could one still vaguely see a trace of his youth.

Lex looked Tommy up and down, his gaze lingering for a moment on Tommy's old but thick and well-maintained cotton coat with its fine stitches, then sweeping over the heavy-looking backpack on his back. His expression of surprise deepened.

"My God... Tommy, I... I almost didn't recognize you! You... you've gotten so much stronger! And... you look so much more energetic!" He paused, as if recalling something, "I think I heard people in the village say that the year before last... or the year before that? You went with that Count's conscript officer who was passing by, and they said you went to... a very far place beyond the Great Wall?"

"Yes, it was the autumn before last." Tommy nodded, a hint of pride unconsciously creeping into his voice. "I went to the Northern Territory, to a place called Carnford, the territory of Lord Karl von Schmidt."

"Carnford?" Lex repeated the name, his eyes somewhat bewildered. For him, a young hunter who had only ever been to a small town a few dozen miles away, the Northern Territory and beyond the Great Wall were distant and vague concepts.

But he caught a hint of something different in Tommy's tone and asked curiously, "How's it over there...? I heard there's been a lot of fighting outside, it's very chaotic."

Tommy puffed out his chest slightly, and raised his voice a little, filled with the pride of having personally participated in and won a great victory. "It's more than just chaos! We just experienced an earth-shattering battle! The Sauron, you know? Those northern barbarians, they amassed an army of 100,000, wanting to swallow Carnford whole!"

"An army of 100,000?" Lex gasped, his eyes widening instantly. This number far exceeded his wildest imagination; he couldn't fathom what 100,000 men meant. "My God... then... then you..."

"We held on!" Tommy said resolutely, his eyes burning with determination. "Lord Karl, with only a few thousand men, managed to withstand the Sauron's relentless attacks day and night! Their corpses piled up beneath the walls! In the end, we not only defended the city, but we also drove them away!"

He told his childhood friends the final result of that fierce battle to defend the city in the most direct and impactful way.

Lex stared in disbelief, his mouth agape. After a long pause, he murmured, "My God... a few thousand against a hundred thousand... This... this is simply a miracle... Tommy, you... you joined the war too?"

His eyes were filled with disbelief and a strange sense of awe.

"Of course!" Tommy answered without hesitation. He needed to make Lex understand that he was no longer the naive boy who left. "I was on the city walls, fighting alongside my brothers, with spears and swords, desperately battling those Sauron beasts!"

He lowered his voice slightly, his tone a mixture of cruelty and calm, the kind only someone who had experienced life-or-death battles could muster. "I personally killed three of them."

"Three Sauron soldier?" Lex's voice trembled with shock. He instinctively took a half-step back, as if to re-examine his childhood friend whom he hadn't seen for several years.

To ordinary villagers, killing even one fierce Sauron soldier is already considered an extraordinary feat, let alone three!

He looked at Tommy, and his eyes changed completely. The original unfamiliarity and distance in them were replaced by a strong sense of shock, curiosity, and even a hint of admiration.

"Tommy... you... you're really... amazing!" He racked his brains, but could only find such simple words to express the turmoil in his heart.

Faced with Lex's sincere praise, Tommy simply smiled and then naturally steered the conversation back to Lex: "Don't talk about me, Lex, how about you? How have you been these past few years? How are your parents doing?"

He noticed that while asking the question, Lex's gaze unconsciously glanced at his thick cotton-padded coat, then he quickly lowered his head and awkwardly tugged at his own tattered cotton-padded coat, riddled with holes, the cotton stuffing all clumped together, and utterly useless in the cold wind, as if trying to hide his embarrassment.

Upon hearing Tommy's question, the light that had appeared on Lex's face after hearing the astonishing story quickly faded, replaced by a deep sense of helplessness and bitterness.

He forced a smile, a smile more like a grimace, and his voice deepened. "It's... it's alright... just getting by."

He paused, his tone growing heavier. "My father... last winter, he went up the mountain to chase an injured wild boar, accidentally slipped, and tumbled down a cliff, breaking his left leg... sigh, the little money we had saved up was enough to hire a doctor and buy some herbs, barely enough to set it. Now he walks with a limp and can no longer go into the mountains."

He sighed, his breath dissipating quickly in the cold air. "There's no other way. I'm the only man left in the family, so I had to take over his hunting bow and machete. I guess you could say I've... succeeded him."

When he said the words "successor," there was not a trace of pride in his tone, only a heavy sense of resignation.

"Life is tough, and there's less and less game in the mountains, but Master John's rent can't be reduced by a penny... But at least... at least every now and then, we can still eat some meat, so we won't starve." His last words seemed to be comforting Tommy, but even more so, they were comforting himself.

But given his thin frame, his red nose and ears from the cold, and his tattered clothes that offered little protection from the cold, the phrase "won't starve" seemed utterly pale and powerless.