The sudden acquisition of new attribute points did tempt me to invest in the Physical attributes, if only to stay ahead of any threats that would rear their heads, but I didn't have to do that at all when I knew everything approaching from hundreds of meters away. I didn't sleep, rest my body, or feel the need to gather food.

I did tend to mix things up between Satiation and eating physical foods, however. I didn't quite trust that Satiation could provide all the things that eating normal food could. Organ systems were a complex machine, and depriving them of even the action of processing food could have unforeseen consequences. I would pick one day to eat, and another day to use Satiation, and would primarily breastfeed Farhaan unless I was in a pinch.

The point was, if I sensed anything approaching, I would deviate my path and prepare to defend myself. The attribute points would stay unspent in case of an actual crisis. And so I walked unimpeded for two whole weeks. With Magic Manipulation and Rested Mind, casting took a mere moment, a blink of an eye. I used Regulate Nutrients mostly to keep from starving as I had enough adipose tissue to last me at least two weeks. Due to constant physical activity, it only took one, however.

After a particularly long time of not using Rested Body, something unexpected did pop up.

+1 Power

+1 Endurance

I felt my body tense up and overflow with potency, a sensation that lasted several seconds. I was stronger, more durable, and my stamina was at an all-time high. I was never the best at sports, especially not in a country where the women's sports program was treated as a joke, international school or not. When I used Rested Body, the difference was even more substantial. I was nowhere near supernatural, unfortunately, but I could keep a brisk pace almost indefinitely.

This time I did, pushing my body to its bleeding edge all the while making sure that there were no dangers around me. Unfortunately, no new rewards came.

I pushed past this perceived bleeding edge, but the more I walked, straying dangerously into the territory of physical exhaustion, nothing followed. I spent at least twenty four hours walking, more than any human was ever expected to, before using Rested Body and Regenerate Wound again before I collapsed.

Again, I received no attribute reward, only more information. Each unit of an attribute contained a substantial amount of that attribute itself, meaning I would have to maximize the power I had in my current level through sheer training before the system rewarded me with anything.

And if the power attribute was different across the sexes, I would be playing catch up as well. That said, it meant my capacity for growth would be equal to any man. That was good.

I continued my blatant self-flagellation for another week until I finally received the new attribute boosts in staggered intervals. With a Power of three and Endurance of four, Farhaan's weight was entirely negligible. I also felt like I was walking on the moon, with infinite energy to spare.

Was I alone, I would probably have done my best to jack up all my physical attributes, but I couldn't risk powerlifting rocks and climbing up trees with Farhaan in tow. As it stood, the last time I even put him down was when I devoured that not-boar.

I could try fashioning a harness and drag some heavy rocks from a rope, but it had been two weeks walking in a single direction. I was bound to encounter a settlement at some point. Fashioning training gear probably wasn't worth it.

It would be wishful thinking to assume that they would be familiar to me, so I had to exercise caution. That probably meant no magic. I didn't want to risk being burned at a stake by primitives.

A power of three seemed to be at the limit of a human's strength, yet I knew that with a few invested points into it, I would go completely beyond it. The temptation was there, but I feared madness much more than I did exhaustion. The pent-up points would do more for me if invested in Wisdom than anywhere else. Besides, my break from spellmaking did indeed settle me mentally. My thoughts and senses felt entirely coherent, with the scary efficiency and clarity that it always had, only translated over twenty entire points in mental attributes.

I walked for three more days, seeing more of the same vegetation that I had gotten used to before exiting a treeline, an expansive, inhabited meadow before me.

I was probably just fifty meters away from the nearest person and I could only do so much to quell my giddiness. There were fields of tilled soil and beasts of burden doing their part, along with a smattering of people working. This told me that the society was agrarian at the very least, and clever enough to offload the more strenuous aspects of farm labor to their animals.

I saw no oxen, only smaller, fatter versions of the baturjas I encountered in the forests. I found out their name when I killed one in my travels, an anti-climactic event that had a whole herd fleeing from me at full speed. Their floppy ears and distinctive faces informed my conclusion. They seemed to be the size of actual oxen now, and I could only assume that was a deliberate move by this rendition of humanity to make the animals more manageable.

There were pens scattered about, holding within it all sorts of animals. The not-boar had a more docile cousin, pale orange in color, of which the people had plenty.

No metal, though. Or any technology overtly modern. Their houses were a composite of wood and straw, and there were eighty of them, give or take a few. It was a small settlement, but the thick dirt roads leading away from it probably meant that they were suppliers of food first and foremost, and I was bound to find a larger town.

I inhaled deeply and focused. Language was likely going to be a big problem, so I had to seem as non-threatening as possible. Unfortunately, I had no idea how I looked. My spells made me completely disregard the need to clean myself.

Looking at my hands, I felt confident that I looked exactly as my situation described: a woman stuck in an impossibly huge forest for weeks.

My mind veered towards magic as a solution, and though I didn't want to needlessly risk my sanity on self-grooming, I was confident in my prowess so far. A spell to banish impurities attached to my skin would be no harder to create and cast than something that could, say, remove the chlorophyll from plants. It was a cantrip at best, a cheap trick that undersold my true power, vastly inferior even to the first few spells I created when I first arrived on Allmother.

A minute later, I had a new spell on my hands, but no attribute reward. Fair. The system seemed to prioritize difficult new spells. I couldn't hide my disappointment, however. The spree of boosted mental attributes was intoxicating, and subconsciously I had found myself wanting more. I needed more, if I wanted to stay sane. It wasn’t a question of greed or power hunger, but self-preservation.

A spell for my dirty clothes, I had none. As it stood, cleaning myself already skirted the edge of the arbitrary limits set by biomagic. Cleaning my clothes would require I invest my spell points in the relevant cluster, supposing the spell even existed in the first place.

I wanted to make the best first impression that I could, but magic could only take me so far. Now, I only needed to sell my character, a harmless damsel in distress.

000

The farms were at a deficit again. Headman Croft sighed as he eyed the bottle of strong spirit on his desk, wondering if he should take the edge off the mounting stress. Propriety won over as he ignored the impulsive idea. Winter was going to be difficult. The wild baturja would don thick, nigh impenetrable hides this time of year, and the village no longer had someone with the necessary power to fell one in that state. They could trap it, but no one had much know-how in that area, either. They were farmers, not warriors. The kingdom was supposed to provide them with a garrison of high Power soldiers exactly for this reason.

Apparently, the crown deemed that an inefficient use of human resources on account of the village's proximity to the Harrow Woods. A military strike could never come out of it, being the most inhospitable, miserable place on Allmother. The Golden Cities would never create a new warfront with Aellia in the Harrow Woods.

And because matters of war was the only thing the crown cared about, their little village were left completely to their own devices, for better or worse. That said, the village was pure-blooded Aellians down to over a dozen generations. Though the trials would test them, they would come out on top. Croft himself felt that he was near to breaching into a power of four. At that point, he could easily cut a tree in a handful of chops, let alone penetrate the tenacious hide of a wild baturja.

"Headman!" Someone barged through his door and into his room. It was Seree, the local smith's apprentice. "We've got a visitor, and it's riling everyone up."

"Why?" He asked as he stood up and made a beeline for his sword. With a Coordination level of two, he was only barely passable with it, and would have been better off with a spear, but the sword was a more popular and awe inducing weapon and half the battle was always image.

"She's different," Seree reported. "Dot-eyed. She seems to be clutching a child, but…" Croft nodded. They could never be too careful.

Quickly sheathing his blade, he stepped out of his hall and towards the commotion. A crowd of villagers formed a tight circle around the newcomer. She was thirty feet away from the boundary, letting Croft make out her features with moderate accuracy. Different was the right word, Croft mused. Her skintone was burnished, bronze, and the irises in her eyes, bright hazel, had deep, dark orbs embedded in the middle. It was strange, but not exactly outlandish.

It only meant she was a mainline human. A beautiful one at that, Croft observed. There was no way her charm could be below three. It put him on high alert. Though it could mean that she was a performer or prostitute by trade, it could also imply something more insidious. The Golden Cities were mainline realms, and they, too, had this particular skintone. She was tall for a woman, taller than the shorter men of the village, too, and wore a most curious set of clothes. Her boots seemed to be made from a strange, elastic material and was one whole entity entirely; no laces or anything of that sort. Her breeches were torn in places, though not enough to compromise her modesty, and so was the… jacket she wore, with strange metallic objects in the center, running down her torso vertically. She was foreign, that was for certain.

Croft stepped forwards and gauged her closely. Her head darted from side to side, her breaths a little too shallow as she caressed her bundled child protectively. The bundle and her clothes were utterly filthy, yet both their skin seemed flawless. Had they recently washed before arriving?

"Where are you from, mainliner?" He asked. She took half a step back as confusion filled her features. "Your land, where is it?"

A poem of gibberish spewed out of her mouth. Another language, Croft hastily amended. It was guttural and harsh in some parts, yet soft and airy in others, creating a most curious contrast. Croft had heard Goldmen converse among each other, and it tracked, albeit roughly. She was from the Golden Cities.

She was also filthy beyond belief, clutching a no-doubt hungering child. She didn't look to be a spy, and even if she was, there was nothing in this village for him to reveal to her that would somehow jeopardize a war between two nations.

Still, Croft's gut churned uncomfortably. There was no way she crossed Harrow Woods to get here. The bokora tribes were fierce enough to attack anything, and with home field advantage, that usually meant even a hundred could kill a thousand people. She would have to be on par with the most powerful soldiers in the world to have done that.

His guess would be that she came from the south and skirted the edges of the great forest all the way up to their village. Slavers would take this route to bypass the Aellia-Golden Coalition war front and cut down days of transport. There was a good chance that she could be stolen goods.

Kindness warred with pragmatism. Slavers weren't to be trifled with, one way or another, and they barely had enough to feed themselves, let alone an unknown stray that didn't even speak their language.

"Throw her out!"

"Only evil hails from Harrow!"

"Golden scum!"

The writing in the wall, too, was abundantly obvious. Very well. With a sigh, Croft made his decision. "I ask that you leave," he said, pointing at the road leading out of the village. "I am sorry."

She rattled off more words, uncomprehendingly. Nothing dawned in those peculiar eyes.

"I said leave," he said more emphatically, stepping to the side to give her the path and make the point more obvious.

She only uttered one word now, and from her crestfallen expression, Croft knew what it was. "Why?"

"I'm losing my patience," he growled, glaring at her. Her sudden backtracking told him he had made his point. Expressions transcended language.

She raised one finger, repeating words he couldn't parse. Then she pointed at the sun, tracking its descent towards the horizon. Then she pointed at the opposite horizon, where it would rise again.

She wanted to stay the night.

The crowd was already getting more and more vitriolic. Though none in the village ever had the opportunity to encounter a Goldman, their national identity was enough to make them hate those they viewed as invaders, especially when these invaders would likely enslave them if they ended up winning.

Still, the display touched Croft, so it hurt him even more when he remained steadfast in his denial.

"Prepare her a sack of rations and a change of clothes," he yelled tiredly to his people. They were quiet, and he couldn't see any treachery in any of them, though a few were understandably angered, chief among them being the red-eyed Arlo whose father was killed in a skirmish against the woman's people. "She will leave, but we shall not starve a mother on the road. That is not our way." He looked back at her confused expression and motioned for her to follow him into his hall.

Excitedly she followed. Croft didn't mind the small expenditure of resources. They would have to hunt to prevent starvation anyway. Were it up to him, he would set a few men through rigorous Power training while feeding them half the village's food stockpile in order to promote the attribute's growth, but they were frightened and shortsighted people. Chaos would ensue.

The surplus had to come from the forest. While Croft imagined the logistical barriers of mobilizing an impromptu hunting expedition, the woman behind him kept prattling at him ineffectually, but it was easy to ignore. He didn't understand her intentions in the first place. Suppose he responded, would she even understand?

He didn't think too hard about it. Women tended to be simple creatures at best.

It was nearing sundown when everything was seen to, and he had led the woman to the road leading out of the village. A few of the local grannies who hadn't hurled expletives at their unexpected guest took care of cleaning her, and outfitted her with better clothes, though they let her keep her… boots. The rations were… they were sustenance and that was enough. Croft didn’t like the malicious compliance, but he wasn’t going to bust people’s balls for failing to be hospitable towards someone from an enemy nation. He could pick his fights.

Though the young woman knew what was happening, she still felt grateful enough for their hospitality to smile warmly as she took his hand.

Croft looked down to hide his growing blush. "Get out of here," he growled.

"Get out of here," was her heavily accented response. The absurdity of it offset his anger and made him realize that she thought he was saying his farewells.

Something about that sentiment tipped him over. He turned around and left for his hall, trying not to think too hard about how she would make it through the night. There was a bottle of spirit with his name on it.