“It’s just like crab, you really should try it.” I tell Alix as I dig into the badly grilled flesh of a beast that would kill me in seconds if it wasn't conveniently dead. At the hands of my old pal captain laser.

Your extraordinary is just another… Uh, I have no idea what day of the week we're at anymore. That just means everyday is Friday I guess. Your extraordinary is just another Friday to me! And Friday is the best day, of course.

I sigh, my mouth still full of alien sooky crab-tasting thing.

I miss fries. I bet fries would be great with this stuff.

Two System notifications in quick succession derail my train of thought before it goes to unwanted places.

[Eating the mana infused flesh of a Strength focused otherworldly insectoid grants you a lesser boon. (One time bonus, +3% body-builder )]

New achievement: Fearless taster

Awarded for being the first sentient to consume the flesh of a monster never seen before, with no Trait related to poison detection or resistance.

Reward : Formation and 10% progress of [Pick one]

Poison Detection (-) | Poison Resistance (-)

I don’t need to think over this choice for a long time. While resistance is nice, I’d much rather not get poisoned in the first place. Furthermore, starting a poison resistance trait would mean volunteering to poison myself in order to grow it fully, which just sounds like a bad time all around. Nothing flashy happens as the new trait forms and instantly gains 10% progress. Quite disapointing really.

If I trust the silence of this new trait, it would seem that everything inside this thing is edible, including the suspicious digestive track. Not that I'm eating that, thankyou very much.

Meanwhile, Alix ignored my generous offer of sharing a meal, and seems to have accepted that the murder centipedes aren’t coming back for now. That apparently makes them smarter than everything that tried to kill him so far. Which is curious for beasts the system calls strength focused. Just a smart monster would be bad, but we now have two smart and strong ones running around.

I’m trying to cope but honestly I kind of just want to run and let him deal with his stupid monster-summoning curse.

Except that if they really are smart, then they’ll really stay clear out of the way of the guy that can fry them at the damn speed of light.

There's a big difference between knowing and seeing. I knew from the begining that Alix took down a massive space whale, yet, watching him swing around that magic is even more scary than monsters. The really impressive part is that there's none of that slow motion, movie-style, shining bolts. One second the target is fine while patches of pure darkness are floating around, and the next instant it's shining and burning under a mighty barrage of energy.

I know I should be able to trust Alix, even though he doesn’t really seem to be balanced, he’s been fairly decent with me. I was the first person he saw when he woke up after healing from being at death’s door and that has to count.

But that power is terrifying. It’s like he has an invisible gun ready to go at all times. But there’s no dodging the bullet.

Half the head of a hardy giant insect vaporized in a flash stantly.

And he was happy to move forward and meet the challenge, the shadow of amanic grin on his face.

“Hey Alix, what exactly happened to you before Pheyis found you by a dead monster whale?”

His eye twitches.

“Ehhh, you know.” he seems to search for words a moment. “I was being amazing, living out in the woods, hunting for food... I had to deal with the monsters too of course. That was always easy when they didn’t catch me by surprise!” His boast has an hollow ring to it.

I do not like this. I can tell he's putting up a facade and I don't think I want to see what's behind the cracks.

Better the devil you know than the lurking monsters?

I stand by my last statement Bob. I do not like this at all.

- - -

The night felt tense. Alix ended up somehow standing watch for almost eight hours before waking me up, but the most noteworthy event of my shift was finishing a trait formation for the first time and moving on straight to starting the road to bring it to the next tier of progress.

Congratulations! Mana Sense is now fully formed, its effect is more noticeable.

New effect : this Trait gives you an instinctive feeling for your own mana pool.

Mana Sense (minor)

The first step on the long road to magical prowess. You have started feeling the mana that infuses this world, both inside or outside of your body. This Trait helps you get a slightly improved sense of the mana around you and it also grants you an instinctive feeling of your mana pool.

This Trait has improved your mind and mana pool. (2 INT, 103 Mana)

This Trait resonates with your Mana Manipulation and Arcanic Self-Enhancer Traits.

This new addition was a strange experience. It once again went quite far to show how powerful this system really is, as it casually added a new feeling to my range of sensory self exploration.

One of the first thing I noted when I learned about mana, way back when I first experimented with it, was that while it is a pool like health and mental health, I didn’t have any self awareness of it.

Well, forget about that, now it’s here. It’s not extremely precise, but it’s now much more of a visceral feeling than a counter going up and down. I used identify a bunch of times in a row to spend mana and I felt myself being slowly drained, as I spent the arcane energy that has nothing to do with my stamina. I also felt it come back as me and Bob quickly manipulated mana back into me. A truly strange feeling, not quite like tiredness, not even really physical, yet there all the same.

Experimenting with that kept us busy for quite a while as dawn slowly inched towards noon.

Alix wakes up looking terrible after about six hours of fitful rest.

“No sign of the centipedes?”

“None.”

“Fucking weird, I hope they don’t start breeding. There’s not much to eat up here but a swarm of those would be hard to deal with.” He says in a bleak voice.

And with nothing to add to that, on we go to the south.

- - -

We passed the crest bordering the plateau we were on, only to see another, higher passage between the mountains, with stronger winds, colder air, and even less life.

Our supplies are still decent, and water is easily accessible as snow ever so slowly melts to the spring sun.

The real problem is the cold. It’s manageable while we walk, but I can already tell the night will have some real chill.

And not the cool kind.

...

Aww come on, it was a good one. Don’t be so frigid!

- - -

We walked with the same rhythm for three more days, and the centipedes never showed up again. I was impressed to see that Alix kept up. In fact, ever since we got him back to full mana he seems far more energetic. There were two monster attacks targeted at Alix during that time, both being swarms of dozens of small, decidedly maritime, creatures that even I could handle by stomping on them, provided I didn’t have to manage more than a few at a time.

Alix killed them by the hundreds, and got a title for his trouble, I know it, because I was told so by the system.

You stand in the presence of a new Butcher of Invaders.

This apparently happened because he passed the two thousand kill count on otherworldly creatures. He did not seem very happy with the title and didn’t want to share the description. That felt a lot like a kid saying something didn’t exist because he couldn’t see or hear it. But he did say it gives him a feeling of where nearby invader type monsters are, which seems pretty damn good to me. There’s something else too, I felt the difference immediately. His presence has some more weight, just being close to him feels like something is pressing down on me now. Not much, like a blanket. But it’s a constant feeling that just makes me want to inch away from him ifI have the chance.

Meanwhile I got 15% exp for my dozen solo kills, and 3% for double tapping about one hundred dying creatures partially killed by one of Alix’s blasts. I wanted to know what happens when multiple people participate in a kill, and it seems the system splits the experience gain according to some unseen rules depending on participation, making me give up on the grisly execution work.

That was about thirty minutes ago. Now we’re setting up camp in a small cave in order to be sheltered against the wind. We’re far enough that any surviving creepy crawler will probably die before it gets to us.

The place is dark but dry. We agreed after some earlier testing to trust his title, and we set up a sinmple camp, placing our mats in such a way we can huddle together to stay a bit warmer.

But still, with just a pair of bad blankets and a T-shirt, it’s cold.