They settled themselves in front of the river. Azaroth used his sword to split open the wood monster. He was half expecting to see fleshy insides, but everything was dried and made of wood.

He cut the wood monster into pieces and asked Catena to give him three hardened earth balls shaped like irregular spheres. When Azaroth lined the monster in front of him, the others groaned as they understood his intention.

Azaroth ignored them. He split the cut wood monster into four different parts and asked Catena to make three more roasting pits. Then he set their monster in front of them and pointed. "Dinner."

They stared at him as if he had lost his mind, but he only shrugged and went to the lake. He got down to skinning the monster with the small knife that Kael Hound insisted they all carried.

He gutted and washed the meat. Then he went back and got to roasting after he lit the wood with fire.

"Seriously?" Alex asked, baffled. "We carried the monsters all the way here because this is the place you want to eat?"

Azaroth ignored him and kept turning his meat. He had put a skewer through the three monsters and was slowly turning it on the makeshift wood stand he made.

Stallus looked at him, and she finally understood. Each room was designed to help them with one thing that would make them survive.

From the skill they learned from Dawnbreakers to the green monsters they killed in the grassy room, to the rocky room with the wood monster—then here, water.

Stallus frowned. But isn’t that just a little too much just for them to eat? Or was that also part of their training? Her thought was that training hadn’t begun yet.

Alex shifted. "Well? Is that it?"

Azaroth focused on his roasting meat while Stallus explained what she understood. "From the time we killed the green monsters, Azaroth had predicted that what we are meant to do was secure food and water. All the next rooms did just that. Including this."

Alex stared blankly at her, as if he could not understand her, but then he frowned and thought about it too. The first room taught them how to kill the green monsters in the next room, the next one was about wood for fire, and now this.

Alex shook his head and looked at her with skepticism. "Do you really think so? Maybe it’s just a string of coincidences."

Stallus shrugged. She was too hungry to argue, and the smell from Azaroth’s meat was making her mouth water. She watched as Catena grunted and stood up. The tall boy went to the riverside and started skinning his meat.

Stallus exchanged looks with Alex, then looked at Azaroth’s roasting meat. She made her decision then. She stood up and went to take care of her own meat too.

Azaroth shook his head. They should have just listened to him in the first place. He concentrated his energy on the food in front of him and turned it slowly.

He made a sharpened stick and used it to test its tenderness.

By this time, everyone had their meat roasting, and they did so in silence. There was nothing to talk about as everyone was tired and hungry.

As soon as it became a little tender, Azaroth removed it and put another piece of meat on the fire. Then he started eating. He barely felt the taste or the heat. All he cared about was filling his stomach.

The others watched him. Hungry eyes turned to him, but he shrugged them off and cracked bones. It was a good meal, and he went to the river to take gulps of water.

Then he settled himself in front of the roasting pit and continued eating.

It was the same for the others. They could not wait until it was ready before they started eating. They hurriedly went for water and came back as if expecting something to happen to their other meat.

Alex was the one to break the silence. "Ahhh! Even if this is poisonous and will affect me, then I don’t mind! I don’t want to feel such hunger again! It’s not healthy!"

Stallus snorted. "I predict you’ll still feel it before this is over. Five years is a long time, you know."

Alex didn’t like to be reminded, and he glared.

Catena finished eating all his meat and leaned back. "I should have caught more of this. It’s good. Now all I want to do is sit back and sleep."

"When have you never wanted to sleep?" Stallus teased. Her own roasted meat remained half, and she meant to keep it that way just in case something happened next.

Catena grunted and smiled. It was a well-known fact that he liked to sleep. He stretched and started feeling sleep creeping on him, then he looked toward the lake and saw something.

He stood up abruptly and went there. He bent down and picked up the two halves. It was the monster’s heart that Azaroth had cut in two.

Catena took it to his fire pit and stared at it. It was a big fleshy thing, each half the size of a large watermelon. It was blue, with veins covering it. His stomach grumbled, and he smiled. He had something more to eat.

"Don’t tell me you are eating that," Stallus said.

Alex shifted a little away from Catena. "Of course he’s not. Are you? Because you ate one monster doesn’t mean you have to eat every monster you see! That’s just wrong!"

Catena agreed with him, but that would only apply if they were not trapped in a crypt with no other food for five years. From his simple perspective, what they would eat for that long was monsters—and they had already gotten a taste of it.

Why not go all out?

But before he put the skewers in, Azaroth stood and looked at him. "Wait."