Chapter 297: Approaching the Bear
Elmo had his reservations about leting Stanley's group join theirs, but he couldn't think of anything to argue aginst it. Though, he doubted that his voice would carry much weight anyway. He couldn't be sure, but there was something about the way Stanley spoke that made Elmo want to dig his heels in with whatever he said.
However, he'd long let Jonas and Kim make the more important decisions, so whenever he wanted to scream his disapproval about anything suggested by Stanley or about something he'd said, he held it in and waited for Jonas or Kim to say something or remain silent.
When they didn't, he just swallowed his complaints and resolved to follow their lead at this time. He recalled how he'd been considering leaving the group, but couldn't say why he'd stopped thinking about that. Almost like adding more people into the group made it less of a problem for him to be there. He didn't really understand it, but didn't plan on thinking too much about it. Especially when he had people like Stanley around.
Plus, since they had agreed to have all groups travel together on their way to deal with the stellar bear, Elmo did his best to keep his distance from them. Such as volunteering as often as he could to locate water to refill water skins and collecting firewood. While he got the sense that Stanley's group, Frank especially, didn't think much of him, they at least didn't complain when he was engaging in so much of what they referred to as 'grunt work.'
Days passed and started to merge into one for Elmo. He wasn't getting worn out more than usual, but he was starting to have trouble differentiating the days from each other. He wasn't sure how long it had been since Stanley's group had joined theirs anymore. Though, he did recall when he had the count at four days.
However, he couldn't remember how long ago that was. As far as he knew, it was merely yesterday or even a few days since then. He doubted it had been a week, but he wouldn't be surprised if someone told him that it had been. All he knew was that Stanley and his group hardly did anything to help support the rest of their efforts to make it to the bear.
As they travelled, the bear kept getting bigger. Although it still always seemed like it was just a little farther away, given how large it each day and how much bigger it kept getting. While Elmo knew what he'd seen when he and Jonas had first seen the bear, he was starting to doubt his own estimation of how big the bear was to begin with. He wasn't sure if the bear might have somehow grown since it woke up, but it felt like it might be twice as big, at least, from when he'd seen it still asleep.
While there had been a little talk about what to do when they fought the bear, no one had really gotten a discussion going about the a strategy for fighting the bear. Although, Elmo wasn't sure how much anyone in the combined group did that sort of thing anyway. As it wasn't like they'd doing this kind of collaboration before. Or at least not like this where they were all approaching it before the fight started, with the exception of the troll in the first dungeon.
Although, at that time, they didn't have a clue as to what they were going to face, so it wasn't like they could have done any strategy talk before the fight. Especially since they didn't know anything about the traps and other mechanisms that made that fight a true challenge.