We’ve been walking for a couple hours, slowly progressing along the mountainous foothills. Well, Pheyis is walking while I’m following at something closer to a jog. I’m panting and sweating heavily and I’ve been fighting against a stitch for a while.

The burst of mana from earlier went a long way but I’m about done. The small blessing of the day is that the clouds are still holding off the sun. In fact they are slowly getting thicker.

It’s going to rain, isn’t it?

I’m really jealous of Pheyis speed walking trick, her body moves with perfect grace and never loses momentum. Each movement is perfectly controlled and swallows the uneven ground like it’s nothing.

The 1% hiker progress I got a little while ago really pales in comparison, and I need a break.

I call her way as I slow down to a more normal walking pace.

“Hey Pheyis!”

The look she gives me somehow conveys a deep disappointment. Like she expected that I would reach my limit quickly but it was still earlier than her worst anticipation.

I might be reading a bit too much into it though.

She sighs and her eyes flash purple again for a split second. It’s so fast I wonder for a second if it was my imagination.

“Go wait by that stream over there, I’ll find us some lunch.”

Damn, I don’t even get to answer? Harsh.

I can’t see any stream in the direction she pointed but at least I can go that way at a reasonable walking pace.

She’s moving down towards the forest at what seems to be an even faster pace than before.

She’s going to be wherever that stream is supposed to be before I make it there isn’t she?

Yep. Let’s try to make it there before lunch is ready!

Sure, I can try that.

By the way, I can feel mana much better now, having it infused inside us made it… I don’t know, it’s as if it was shining. It’s weird. Anyway, seems that our mana pool is just mana that kind of move around our whole body at random and doesn’t get out.

Cool! Actually, I’ve been wanting to ask, what are your actual senses Bob?

Well, generally, I can sort of catch what goes through your mind. The result is that if something really attracts your attention I know about it. And I can also focus on one sense at a time.

As he speaks, I see what my destination is, a couple hundred meters away, a small canyon opens up the mountain like a trench carved in the rocks.

Then there’s the mana sense, mana is like really tiny grains floating freely inside us, and what I’ve got so far is that I can somehow tell where they are, like the tiniest pull, flickers of warmth, I don’t know. I need to ignore everything else to notice that sense. Maybe it will be clearer when you can also feel mana.

It still feels weird to talk with Bob, his thoughts feel like another’s, yet mine, and it really shows when he shares a long train of thought.

It feels like I don’t really control my mind, but it also feels like it’s fine, because it’s Bob.

I’m about halfway to the crevice where the stream would be, when I spot a quickly moving lilac skinned women making a beeline for it. She’s carrying a small animal that I can’t really make out from here and some freshly cut branches.

I sigh and force my abused legs to push me forward a bit faster.

I reach the edge of the crevice, a chasm about as wide as a road. The stream running in its center is hardly impressive and I wonder for a second how many hundreds or thousands of years it took to dig through the stone. It’s just deep enough to make me hesitate to jump down for a second.

My superhero landing is definitely not on point. Probably shouldn’t have tried it as tired as I am.

Anyway, I dust myself off and make my way towards Pheyis.

I swear she smirked. That heartless monster.

She’s focusing on the branches she brought. As I get closer, I notice the life is visibly draining away from them, as the yellow wood seems to dry in her hands, then cracks on its own.

What the hell?

It takes a moment before she’s satisfied and she then break the branches with ease into a few pieces.

Soon enough, she’s arranged them in the form of a neat campfire.

A couple minutes later, she expertly skins the six limbed hare (it has two big legs and four shorter paws and I swear it looks perfectly normal), then she opens it to remove the entrails, and sticks it in-between three pieces of wood above the campfire.

Finally, she produces a small metallic token from one of her pouches, holds it towards the bottom of the campfire and it spews a thin stream of flames. She waits a few seconds for the fire to take and casually stores it.

“Wow, that’s awesome!” I blurt.

And she ignores me. Mean.

I did try to spark up a conversation a couple times while the hare was roasting, but she’s the one controlling whether the system translates our words or not and she chose not to. Why she’s not doing it again is actually one of the things I asked with no success.

I’m not sure if the translation has some kind of price she refuses to pay, if she just dislikes me as a matter of principle and would rather have me staying quiet or if she just has fun making me fail to initiate conversation.

When she started going through the moves of an impossible stretching routine, I knew better than to try and ask anything. Apparently, bending her body in ways that probably shouldn’t physically work is fine for her. She’s taking one torturous positions after another and holding them for over thirty seconds each.

No wonder she can move so damn gracefully if she spends her free time doing this.

Stretching does seem like a good way to pass the time as our meal roasts, so I start doing the same in my own far more modest way while trying not to feel too ashamed of my performance. I’m not particularly flexible even by human standards and I know it’s stupid to push further than I can go in a fit of misplaced pride. Still, after doing some normal stretches, I do try to replicate some of her insane stances just to see how it goes.

And surprisingly, I actually manage to move towards some of her positions, simply bending way less than she can before my limbs start trembling and hurting.

It’s hard to miss her sharp gaze on my struggle, an inscrutable window to her thoughts.

If it helps me hold on a little longer for the hike coming up this afternoon I’ll take it.

She eventually makes a ‘Tssk’ sound, and in a smooth motion, her limbs are untangled and she’s next to me moving my limbs to a better form.

“Xid stnemetab.”

Lady, I don’t understand what that means…

And she’s back in her spot, purple eyes locked into mine. Under her stare, I feel as helpless as the rabbit must have when the end came for it.

“Nu… xued… siort...”

Oh, she’s counting.

It’s agonizingly slow, but I dare not move in spite of my tendons protesting harder and harder. Until finally,

“Xid.”

She smoothly transitions to an entirely different position, this time locking a leg almost straight up against her back, her arms somehow hugging it.

Well, fuck that, I’m back to normal stretches, thank you very much.

She makes an annoyed hissing sound but does not push me further.

Soon enough, the rabbit is ready. A quick slice of a dagger and we have a slightly steaming, roughly skewered, half hare each. Actual, cooked food.

I don’t give it a second thought and bite in straight away.

It’s really hot. And good. But mostly hot. I'm such an idiot. I try to awkwardly pant and blow the heat away while my eyes water slightly.

She watches my antics with raised eyebrows and an amused look, but doesn't comment.

Still beats eating raw pigeon by myself.

I wolf down my half of the meal much faster than I probably should. By Earth standards this would be a terrible, mostly bland meal, but barely eating over the last two days has really broadened my horizons.

She suddenly speaks up after her eyes lit up in one of those brief flashes of light, pointing in the same direction we’ve been heading during the morning, slowly going around one of the proud mountains that cover this land.

“Start moving that way, I’ll catch up.”

“Sure.” I nod.

I don’t think that was translated back to her, I didn't get a system notice. But the meaning is clear as I rise, feeling much better after the meal. I quickly find a good spot to climb up the side of the small crevice and I begin making my way roughly forward again, avoiding bushes and boulders on the mountain flank.

I try to find a good rhythm on the uneven ground, probably a bit faster than my usual walking speed, but obviously slower than what Pheyis apparently does naturally.

Shit, and I’m heading straight to a village full of people like her.

Don’t worry, didn’t she call them a bunch of weaklings?

Have you seen her? I’m pretty sure she’d count the average Olympic athletes as a weakling. For her we’re just the annoyingly slow person in those video game escort missions.

Damn… She’s going to hate us. How far do you think we’ve walked already?

Uh. I really don’t know. The mana gave me a good boost and we walked a couple hours, but with the uneven ground… Maybe twelve km? It all depends on how far the village really is I guess.

I don’t think I can keep up this pace for very long. It really depends if there are side effects to the mana infusing or if it really just brought back my legs to top conditions.

I bring up my status and check my three counters.

HEALTH

91/107

MANA

153/136

M. HEALTH

76/93

I was at 99 health and 130 mana before Pheyis infused my legs. Most of the excess mana is gone already and I somehow lost three health at some point after the initial loss of five the system mentioned.

What health really represents is still quite fuzzy for me, I feel better than this morning but apparently the system strongly disagrees. Does that mean that I’m somehow hurting myself? I guess if 107 is my body’s absolute peak condition, simply being tired would lower my health. Or maybe holding excessive mana is bad in ways that aren’t obvious.

Like a bag that is too full suffers from the strain.

Either way, it's getting harder and harder to match that number with the actual messages I'm getting from my body. I really hope nothing terrible is going to happen.

Pheyis suddenly speaks up next to me making me jump in surprise, as the familiar notice hits my mind. I did not see or hear her catching up to me at all. How did she do that?

“How long can you keep up that walking speed?”

“Uhh… maybe three hours? Four at best.”

“Hours?” She asks with some confusion.

Oh. We don’t have the same time references. Let’s see…

“Yes, one hour is sixty minutes, one minute is sixty seconds and one day is twenty four hours.”

Well I think a day is still twenty four hours on this planet, I actually haven’t seen midnight yet, maybe days are a little longer or shorter… I don’t doubt that the Study has plenty of worlds with different day durations.

She walks silently next to me for a few seconds with a small frown, probably trying to crunch the numbers into something that makes sense for her.

“That’s some curious timekeeping. And it’s not that far from matching ours if I understood it right.”

She pauses for a second before resuming.

“We use measures that are thirty-six of your seconds and divide those in ten beats. Then we split the daytime in quarters, each with lesser quarters of one hundred measures. So your hour match to a lesser quarter. Well then, hold this pace for about a quarter and I’ll see you later. Just keep following the mountain side as we’ve been doing.”

I'm speechless that she worked that out just with my indications and barely ten seconds of thought.

She’s already a few meters ahead of me when she turns on the spot with a small smile, and says:

“Oh, and if you don’t find my campfire quickly enough there might be no dinner left.”

Her tone is light and casual but a cold shiver runs through my spine. Fuck, I'm sure she really means it.

Why is she so mean to me.

She hates us for being slow, but in a playful way. It’s not that bad.

It is bad! I don’t need to be the target of some gratuitous cruelty on top of how terrible surviving here has been!

It’s only the third day and I’m already sick of all the walking around I’ve been doing. And I’ve apparently just signed up for another four hours of it.

Let’s face it, four hours is a best case scenario.

I know. Damn it.

Hiker progress: +1%

This is just the system’s way of saying it’s going to get worse, isn’t it?