Osborn noticed it first in the silence.
Not in the noise of hunger — that was already familiar — but in the absence of strength where it should have been. The group was eating every day now. There was no longer that brutal urgency of an empty stomach. And still, something didn't add up.
Bill stumbled while carrying a small bundle of coconuts. He didn't fall. He just lost his balance for a second longer than normal.
Kerr stopped training early, sat down on the ground with his hands braced on his knees, breathing hard as if he had run far more than he actually had.
Osborn watched everything.
He looked at arms that were too thin. Shoulders that didn't gain volume. Ribs still outlined, even after weeks without outright hunger. The body wasn't collapsing — but it wasn't rebuilding either.
It was minimal maintenance.
And that was dangerous.
He realized it when he tried to increase the pace of training with the staves. Simple movements, repeated. Nothing extreme. Even so, after a few minutes, arms grew too heavy. Coordination began to fail.
It wasn't a lack of discipline.
It was a lack of material.
That night, while the others slept, Osborn stayed awake, sitting near the entrance of the shack, slowly chewing a piece of coconut flesh. The taste no longer meant anything. Neither pleasure nor aversion. It simply filled his mouth.
He ran numbers in his head.
Coconut had fat, had some calories, had water. It kept you alive. But it lacked almost everything that made a body grow, heal, react. Protein. Iron. Salt. Variety.
"This doesn't build anything…" he murmured.
At best, it prevented the fall.
And preventing the fall wasn't enough for what he was planning.
In the following days, he began to pay attention in a more clinical way. Not as a leader. As someone evaluating a problem.
Small wounds took longer to close. Scratches stayed red for too long. Fatigue came too quickly. Moods fluctuated.
Clear signs.
Functional malnutrition.
They weren't dying — but they were too weak to grow.
And Osborn knew exactly where that led.
Weakness became mistakes.Mistakes became loss.Loss became hunger again.
Then came the inevitable conclusion.
They needed meat.
Not as a luxury.As structure.
Protein for muscle. Fat for energy. Salt for retention. Something warm in the stomach, not just raw.
But the next thought came quickly, almost automatically:
"How?"
He had no pot. No oil. No animal fat. No controlled fire beyond small, improvised campfires. Raw meat wasn't an option. Disease out there would be a sentence.
So the problem wasn't just buying meat.
It was the entire system around it.
On the day he decided to observe the market with that focus, Osborn took no one with him. It wasn't a mission. He went like any other boy looking at things he couldn't afford.
The smell arrived before the stalls.
Salted fish hanging in rows. Strips of dried pork, hard and dark. A few pieces of fresh meat — small, expensive, protected by thick cloths.
He didn't ask anything at first.
He just listened.
"Fifty coppers," said one vendor, tapping a finger against a slab of salted pork. "Good protein. Lasts days."
Another laughed.
"Dried chicken's forty today. Sold out early yesterday."
Osborn fixed the numbers in his mind.
Salted pork: 50 copper coinsDried chicken: 40 copper coinsFresh fish: cheap, but wouldn't lastSalted fish: still expensive, but reachableEggs: rare, sold fast, unstable price
He did silent math.
Even if he managed a single piece of meat per week, it would already be more protein than they had in entire days of coconut.
But money didn't sprout from the ground.
Until now, the group survived on the margins. Small trades. Occasional services. Nothing regular. Nothing accumulative.
And meat demanded regularity.
Osborn returned to the shack with his head full — not of hope, but of chained problems.
He sat down, grabbed a stick, and began drawing in the dirt.
First: money.Second: preparation.Third: preservation.
Without solving all three, meat became waste.
"No point stealing a piece and ruining everything afterward," he thought.
He started with what he did best: organizing numbers.
If salted pork cost 50 coppers, how much would they need per week? One piece wouldn't feed everyone. Maybe two. One hundred coppers.
Dried chicken? Two pieces as well. Eighty coppers.
Even alternating, it was still far beyond their current standard.
Then came the shift in mindset.
They didn't need to buy for everyone.
They needed to buy to rebuild the most active first.
Himself, Bill, and Kerr.
The ones who trained. The ones who carried weight. The ones who would get hurt first if something went wrong.
Three stronger bodies would lift the rest later.
A cold thought. A necessary one.
The second problem: preparation.
Without a pot, fresh meat was almost useless. But dried or salted meat could be eaten cold, rehydrated in the mouth, without immediate risk.
Fat? Not yet.
But he already knew: fat came after meat. The first step was protein.
The third point was the most delicate.
Preservation.
He needed to store food without drawing attention. Without strong smell. Without insects. Without theft.
That meant containers. Cloth. More expense.
The conclusion hit hard.
"We've entered the money game."
There was no pretending anymore that survival was just collecting and hiding. Now it was market. Price. Supply. Risk.
That night, Osborn gathered Bill and Kerr.
He didn't speak in numbers yet. He spoke about the body.
"You're getting tired too fast," he said. "It's not training. It's food."
Bill nodded. Kerr stayed silent.
"Coconut keeps us alive," he continued. "But it doesn't build anything. If we want to get stronger, we're going to need real food."
"Meat…" Bill said, almost as a question.
"Meat. Eggs. Dried fish." Osborn took a deep breath. "And that costs money."
The silence was heavy, but different from the others. It wasn't fear. It was understanding.
"So now we work to eat," Kerr said.
Osborn nodded.
"Now we work to grow."
He didn't have the plan fully formed yet.
But the problem was finally whole in front of him.
And for someone like Osborn, that was already halfway there.
Advance chapters: https://www.patreon.com/cw/pararaio