Bethany was glad to see she had been right about the time she returned as it was midmorning as she found herself once more on Earth. Seeing the path was clear she set off once more towards the capital. She still had roughly 4 days travel left before she reached her destination. Fortunately getting to level 2 in walking had taken relatively little time. She hoped that meant she was now catching up on the wagon that would have her mother in. Given there would be more than one person in said party the chances that at least one of them was stuck for a while in a Trial was luckily fairly high. Higher if her mother had managed to end up somewhere with food and water.

As she walked Bethany pulled up the information on her recent skill levels curious about the effect it had going forward.

Walking (common): Level 2 (10 Trials Credits)

Walking is something you do with understanding and confidence. You are even beginning to feel confident about planning or organising walks rather than just going with the flow.

At this level you are able to walk 10% faster than normal and walking takes considerably less energy allowing you to walk for much longer.

This information surprised Bethany as she hadn't particularly noticed a change in her walking speed. She increased her pace going from a more casual but purposeful walk to the pace you might take when rushing to the shops. This increase came easy to Bethany. She expected the pace to cause the front of her legs to ache as they normally did when she was rushing but instead, she found it was easy and caused no pain. Nor did it affect her breathing, she found she could speed walk with as much ease as a casual stroll. If she pushed further the familiar ache did return but the speed that resulted in almost matched her running speed.

The natural downside of setting such a pace was it made it harder to enjoy her surroundings as she was used to taking life slower. This wasn't a downside for the current moment, but Bethany didn't think she would be implementing this level of speed into her day-to-day life. Her walking also seemed to have a decreased effect on her feet as even several hours later she found she had had to take less stops on route than she had previously. Ironically her new pace meant that a lot of the walks she planned with in the Trial would be easier than the level she had them set up to be. This was a natural consequence of processing 10 Trials in a row. If she had approached them more slowly her level 1 skill would have been taken into account for the second half of the Trials.

As she walked, she wondered if that would make them easier or harder. It wasn't yet fully clear how the Trials were set. Were they set based on the abilities each individual held, after all, in the Trials so far Bethany had been in a position to understand all the technology she came across so far. Or were they rigid rules that were based on average ability across all species. After in the case of a swimming Trial a Grodiac, such as Stilwart or Harri would naturally have an easier time of it than Bethany due to their very nature. Did this mean they had harder Trials or were they just more likely to have higher skill levels. Bethany didn't exactly have any answers to these questions, though she hoped getting higher levels in Trial Taking might someday provide some answers. But it was an interesting topic for her to consider and keep herself distracted from the repetitive nature of her walking.

Over the course of the next two days Bethany's walks were generally more of the same. Even though it was winter the weather seemed to be holding off and it had yet to rain on her expedition. Similarly, the nights weren't too cold, and Bethany didn't struggle to find wood to make a fire. Because of her time spent in the prison cell she was actually fairly use to sleeping in the cold without proper bedding and didn't struggle to sleep in a pile of clothes each evening. Even if it did result in her being fairly dew covered the following mornings. During these days she'd passed a couple of forks in the road and had other paths join her own. For better or worse though she had yet to see anybody else on the road.

With her newfound skill at walking her she had covered much more ground than she expected. As such she was probably only a day or so out of the capital. As such she was confident her mother had already arrived and been processed in the capital. In the evenings when she was fairly tired and had spent a long time alone with her thoughts, she would occasionally have intrusive thoughts about the not inconsiderable possibility that her mother had already passed away, either from work or from the Trials she would have faced on the road, but Bethany refused to let to thoughts reach their natural conclusion. She knew her mother was okay because she had to be. Bethany didn't know what she would do otherwise. She couldn't return to Barrowmede it wasn't safe for her there. Nor did she know anybody else on the planet. Factually she knew she had an uncle out there somewhere but since her dad died, they hadn't kept in touch.

When she was having one such moment of spiralling into less than positive thoughts about the wellbeing of her mother. She looked up to notice another traveller on the road ahead. She sped up pushing up her speed to catch up. She may not have been extroverted but 2 days of walking without conversation had got her eager for a chat, even if it was with a stranger in the road. Rushing to catch up she eventually got into the range from which she could see the man's nameplate [Peter Sanna, 4] . This almost caused her to stumble, this random guy was a higher level than anybody had been back home. Then again, another Trial had passed since she was home. Perhaps most of the leadership team were now level 4 or even higher. Logically there had been four sets of Trials over the last month so a person could feasibly have reached level 8 by this time. Bethany doubled anybody would have but the possibility was logically there, it was a big world, and it contained all sorts. Certainly, nights or the like might well have reached the higher levels, let alone people who potentially lived further away.

Even more eager to meet the man now, Bethany shouting a greeting causing Peter to slow down his pace so she could catch up. He was an unassuming figure. He had extremely short hair that was a dirty blond and stood tall at just over 6 foot. He couldn't have been all that old being perhaps 22 or there abouts. He was dressed for travel with only a bulging messenger bag over his shoulder for luggage. As she got more details of his face, she couldn't help but notice he had large nose that took up a lot of his facial real estate. He also had a lack of facial hair. As Bethany approached, he clearly was getting a read on her and her level. This would normally have made her feel a little uncomfortable but given the fact she had just done the same thing to him she didn't feel she had a leg to stand on to feel uncomfortable or to call her out. As she got within arm’s reach the man reached out his hand for her to shake.

"Hey cool title, how did you get it? By the way I'm Pete, lovely to meet you."

Bethany was obviously taken aback by such a forward greeting, let alone the reminder of her title. It wasn't that she had forgotten it per se, more that she hadn't actively thought about it in a while. But this guy didn't have any animosity in his voice it was generally just curiosity, as such she shook it and introduced herself.

"Oh, it was a shitty nickname from back home that resulted in a title because so many people used it. I'm Bethany by the way."

"Oh, that sucks, does it do anything cool though? I had a Sponsored Trial and met a couple of people with a title, but I think you had to reach level 10 for that. Have you done a Sponsored Trial? They are very different, but you get to meet so many people. I was the first from our town to get one and got to lead a town meeting about it." Pete puffed his chest out a little at that last bit clearly very pleased with himself about getting granted such a responsibility.

Suffice to say Bethany was at a bit of a loss with this concept. This person was so much more open than anybody else she had met, especially about the Trials. Seemingly his whole town was much more on board with the idea than Barrowmede had been.

Realising Pete was waiting for an answer Bethany quickly told him about her mana type, feeling disarmed by his openness and matching it.

"Very cool, do you know what mana type is about? I have a sand type which is uncommon apparently, but nobody from back home knows anything about it. We all have our own theories though. That's part of why I'm visiting the capital I want to see if they have any more information. I want to know all I can about it."

Pete didn't seem to need to breath between sentences and Bethany honestly wouldn't have been surprised if he had a skill that allowed him to speak so fast. Perhaps it was the effect of the communication skill that would allow her to chat to Harri. Bethany admitted that no she didn't know anything about mana type but made suitably interested sounds about his uncommon mana type. The was enough for Pete and before Bethany could regret her decision, she was hearing about his whole life story Trials and all.