Joachim felt incredibly refreshed, but at the same time completely exhausted. He had been driving for 8 long hours, he expected to get an exhausting 'quest', but that was a bit extreme.

The sun was slowly setting, yet Joachim hadn't eaten all day. It almost was as if his stomach had turned into a black hole, able to swallow everything that came too close. Fortunately, water had been provided, otherwise, he would probably not only be exhausted and hungry.

"Take the side street there, we can spend the night there," once again he felt grateful to Aaron. So, despite his tiredness, he drove onto the side street with a smile. He trusted Aaron fully.

Until he found a suitable place and brought, as he had found out in the meantime, the bus to a sudden halt. A familiar 'bang' sounded again from the back of the bus.

Embarrassed, Joachim turned around, this was the first time he realized how many people he was actually driving.

Unfortunately, he also saw a single person on the ground, surrounded by probably other athletes, who showed distressed and frightened expressions on their faces.

Only one of them stepped out of line, Frank. Despite his intoxication, not he, but Kay had fallen to the floor. Now he laughed heartily at Kay's miserable figure while pointing at him with a swaying finger.

The other athletes tried to help Kay up, but that didn't work out so well in the narrow passage of the bus. During the maneuver, Kay hit his forehead once again, the athletes hastily apologized to their coach. The latter turned to look at Joachim when he was finally standing properly again. Even from his seat, Joachim could see the reddened spot on his forehead.

Joachim felt guilty. He wanted to apologize, but he did not dare, the angry eyes of Kay kept him from doing so.

"You should really practice braking," Aaron hesitantly admitted, Joachim blushed fiercely.

One by one, they left the bus. The solid ground under their feet immediately drove away some of their fatigue. With the help of Aaron, who had grabbed the bus key in the meanwhile, they unlocked the trunk of the vehicle. The athletes routinely pulled out various bags and carried them to a vacant spot around the bus.

They quickly set up something that Joachim could only interpret as pre-apocalyptic tents, while he just stood a little helplessly on the side.

Even Kay helped out, sitting on a white plastic chair, he chopped vegetables before throwing them into a huge pot. He then placed this pot on a kind of box, turned a switch, which in turn lit a flame.

Joachim watched the whole thing with fascination. He had never seen anything like it before!

He knew how to light a fire in the wilderness, but he was completely unfamiliar with such devices. He went through the checklist of important inventions of the pre-apocalyptic period in his head, for there was no doubt that behind such a device was a mechanism that was revolutionary for that time.

It had to be something that burned. Wood? The fire had started too suddenly for that. Coal? Too little smoke. Oil or petroleum? Not something that was usually used for cooking... Focused, he had furrowed his eyebrows, suddenly, he smelled a particular scent. Gas! They cooked with gas!

At that moment Joachim was a little bit proud of himself. The quality of the air at that time was simply bad, even in the forest there was a bad stench hanging around, which altered and concealed scents almost beyond all recognition. The fact that even in such conditions he could still detect and identify a subtle smell such as gas, even though he did not know which one, was actually not so bad.

Frederic would probably have thought of it immediately, whispered his inner voice quietly, and destroyed his good mood instantly. Why the high spirits? He was much worse than any other student in his class.

"What are you just standing there! Make yourself useful, come here!"

This sentence woke Joachim from his dark thoughts. He looked around, Kay stared at him angrily and pointed to the big pot.

The red spot on his forehead glowed just like the flames of the gas box. The guilty conscience reappeared in Joachim's mind and he hurried to the pot without complaint.

He grabbed a wooden spoon to carefully stir the food, his whole focus on the sliced vegetable pieces in the pot. Until Kay threw in more ingredients. He wanted to continue concentrating on his task, but he noticed the new raw pieces of meat in the pot, permeated with tendons and blood vessels.

He felt sick, not slight nausea, no, he was extremely disgusted, never had he felt something like this before. He felt spit accumulate in his mouth when he thought of the fact that they were practically pieces of corpses, coated in countless spices.

At that moment, the smell of the roasting meat entered his nose, coupled with the images in his head, his stomach contracted violently. Stomach acid rose to his throat. Hastily he let go of the wooden spoon in his hand and turned on his heel.

Kay Nowak observed this disapprovingly, "What's your problem now?"

He had soon caught up with Joachim and grabbed his arm. He forced Joachim to look at him.

The latter could no longer hold on, after he tried in vain to free his arm, he bent forward and vomited onto Kay Nowak's shoes.

""" …"""

Silence.

Only irregular retching echoed in the camp.

The athletes under Kay Nowak, and Frank, watched speechlessly as more and more stomach acid stained their trainer's white shoes yellow-greenish and splashed on the hem of his white pants. Kay was also dumbstruck, his lips twitching under his mustache, the rising disgust more and more distorting his face.

After a few minutes, Joachim finally calmed down, still gasping for air, but the retching had stopped. His mouth was filled with the taste of vomit and his throat felt cauterized. Unfortunately, this did not really help the nausea to subside...

He slowly lifted his upper body. Immediately, he faced the angry, distorted face of Kay Nowak. His stomach contracted once more, but this time he was able to control himself. He lowered his eyes to the ground, expecting to be scolded, maybe even beaten, considering the people here were not exactly squeamish about such things.

"If you're feeling bad, just let me know! How irresponsible can you be?!" The angry voice of the coach made Joachim flinch. Quietly he mumbled an apology.

"Aaron, keep cooking, I'm going to change my clothes," Kay Nowak's tone was filled with hatred as he said this and headed for one of the tents.

Aaron jogged toward Joachim, his expression worried.

"Are you okay? Here's some water to rinse the vomit taste out," Aaron handed Joachim a bottle printed with the same logo as the tracksuits, of which all athletes wore a variation.

Joachim gratefully accepted the water, Aaron was truly an angel! After a few tries, he managed to open the bottle and lift it to his lips.

"Come here!"

Again Kay Nowak's harsh voice echoed over and immediately made Joachim flinch hard. The result was that he missed his mouth with the water and instead poured it on himself.

Lost in thought, he now looked at his soaked uniform. Was this the beginning of the end? Had he now completely screwed up? It couldn't be too beneficial to puke on the shoes of an important person in a 'Quest'.

With such thoughts, Joachim approached the tent into which the trainer had disappeared.

A pair of eyes watched the whole thing closely, a strange sparkle in them.