Chapter 3

Mhm, for some reason I feel like I didn’t sleep as well as I usually do. Though I am currently holding onto something that is nice and cold. A bit rough if I had to say, but it's a nice cooling sensation. I really don’t want to wake up right now and instead just go back to sleep for a while, but I know that I have to leave the village today and it would be better for me to start out earlier than later in the day. Actually not that I think about it Robin should be close to me also, wait, could this be her tail?

Opening my eyes I follow the object in my hands and leads me to a stoic faced lady. She was currently kneeling on top of the summer bag she used last night “Ah, sorry Robin, my body creates a lot of heat so the coldness from your tail was very welcoming.” Such a weak excuse was the only thing I could muster in the situation. I released her tail from my hold and it slowly moved back behind her. “It is not a problem if my tail could be of comfort to you then that is fine.” hah, still robotic, even after I finally got to see her smile. If only she could smile more, she would be so beautiful, I mean even now she is still pretty, but without any emotions it is too bland.

“Robin you said last night that If you got Reline’s permission to leave, you would. Is that still how you feel?” I thought about it a bit before I fell asleep last night, and I think I might be able to persuade Reline to let Robin leave. “Yes, I would like to leave, but as I said I would not survive out in the forest. Even while I am trash here, I can still live.” I don’t know if I would call this living she is almost a puppet at this point. “Then if I got Reline’s permission for you to come with me would you want to do that?” I can kill two birds with one stone if I can get Robin to come with me. I can get someone to travel with that knows the world better than I do, and I can also save her from this terrible place. “Yes, I believe that would work, as you are a traveller Casadi will probably stop anything that would outright kill you from coming near you. Reline should also tell you were the closest village is as you are leaving. Though I am not sure how you will persuade Reline.” A flash of hope appeared in Robin’s eyes for a second, but was quickly changed back at her own mentioning of Reline. “Do not worry about Reline I have an idea of how I can get her permission.” I say flashing Robin a smile and patting my bag.

Standing up, I get a nice full stretch in trying to loosen up all my tight muscles. Probably should get the day started as I feel like the next village is not anywhere near here. Peaking my head out of the doorway to get a better look at the sun, I can tell it's only been about an hour since it started rising. Hopefully Reline is available this early, it would be annoying to have to wait till later in the day just because she wants her beauty sleep, not that it will help much. “Hey Robin, do you know if Reline will be coming to get us or should we head to the cabin we were at yesterday?” I turned to look at Robin who was looking at the ground I believe thinking about something. She slowly lifts her head to look at me still dazed. “Hey Robin you there?” I wave my hand in front of her face trying to break her out of her thinking. Blinking a few times it seems that Robin has finally come back. “Reline should be coming to get you, I believe it should be very soon.” Right after answering my question Robin goes back to staring at the ground and dazing out. Peaking my head once again out of the doorway I peer down the path and see Reline coming with a guard on either side of her.

Reline and the guards stop in front of the shack, and stare at me and Robin for a couple of seconds. “Come, you are leaving the village now.” Right after saying that Reline turns around and starts walking away. I quickly grab my packed up stuff and notice that Robin is still in a daze. I grab her hand and pull her with me. We quickly reach the gates of the village with little trouble. “If you follow the mountain base you will reach a large lake, from there follow the direction of the rising sun and you should reach a human city.” Reline points along the mountain's base showing me the path. Standing there for a second I decide to put my plan into action now. “Reline, before I go I would like to make a trade, I have a few objects from my world that might interest you. For one of them I would like for you to give me Robin.” As tough sounding as I can I offered her this trade in hopes she finds stuff from ‘Earth’ more important than Robin. Reline looks at me then over towards Robin, who is still in a daze. “Hmmmm, trash does seem more out of it then before, you must have used her quite a bit last night. Let me see what you have to offer.” Yes! Reline took the bait and it seems like she mistook Robin’s current condition as me violating her. While the thought of using Robin like that is disgusting, I believe I can use this misunderstanding to my advantage.

I reach into my bag and pull out what i believe should satisfy Reline. “Yes, while barely responsive she was virgin which made it all the sweeter. I may have broken her though. Also this is a mirror it will reflect the image of whatever it is pointed at.” Hopefully Reline is womanly enough to want something like a mirror. “Yes I know what a mirror is, usually disgusting nobles have them. Hmmm, fine, trash has barely been responding to her beatings and now it just makes me more annoyed. You can have her, one less mouth to feed in the village anyways.” YES, I quickly give the mirror over to Reline. She immediately takes it and start to look at herself in it. I guess females even in a different world enjoy this kind of stuff. “Hey Trash, you are now this humans property. Leave and never come back, same to you human because next time you will not be protected as a traveller.”

Robin shakes out of her dazed status, and starts trying to comprehend what had just happened. “Robin, Reline has given you permission to come with me. Unfortunately I have made it so you can never come back to the village though, for that I am sorry.” Robin shakes her head, “No, the fact that I would not be allowed back in the village is reasonable. I have been questioning myself whether I could survive outside this village, even if I did make it to another village. I don't think I could do it alone. So thank you John, for letting me come with you.” Robin ends her statement with a big smile. Man that smile is unfair, hopefully now that she can get out of this village there will be more of it. “Trash doesn’t look as broken as I thought she was, well a trades a trade. Now get out.” Reline motions towards the guards. Who in turn start to push us outside of the village walls. “Well Robin let's head off then.” Turning towards the direction Reline pointed to earlier. I hear a quite reply from Robin behind me, “Yes let's.”

We have already been walking for about two hours and there is already a problem. It's too quiet, usually I am by myself so I am used to it being quiet, but the problem is that Robin is with me also. I have been practicing my earth control the whole time, but I just have this weird feeling like I need to say something. I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t feel right not saying anything for two straight hours. “Hey Robin is there any information I should know about the forest? Besides that this is a Forest Dryad named Casadi.” Spewing out the only thing I can think of at the moment, it might actually help to know more about where we are right now. “I am sorry but I know very little about the forest as I was never allowed to leave the village. The only information I know is that this forest contains a large variety of monsters. From extremely weak to extremely strong, ones on the level of Dragons even.” Well hopefully we don’t run into a dragon, but maybe luck will be on my side and we can see one of the extremely weak ones. “Gotcha thanks for the info, also I remember you mentioning something about absorbing an element, how is that different than what I am doing right now?” I show here the ball of dirt that I have formed on my hand while we were walking. Robin looks at the ball of dirt for a second, “What you are doing right now is elemental control. Absorption is when you take the elemental powers into your body, it improves everything about your yourself, and depending on the element a certain aspect too. For example your earth element when absorbed strengthens the body's defenses.” Wow that's pretty awesome it's like a power up! “How do I absorb the element?” At this point I am a little bit giddy to start trying to absorb the earth element. “Simple put by taking the sensation your element gives you and pulling it into your body, and when you are done you just need to cut yourself off from the sensation. Absorbing is hard to do while on the move as your elemental sensation is cut off whenever you are not in contact with your element.” So I need to suck in the sensation? Well no sense thinking too hard about let's give it a try.

Focusing on the dirt ball in my hand I locate the sensation it is giving off. I then try to pull that sensation into my palms, the dirt ball starts to press into my hand as I pull on the sensation. After a couple of seconds the sensation began to move into my hands, but only a very tiny amount. After about a minute of focusing I can’t press it anymore and I mental disconnect myself from the sensation. When I do, almost all of the elemental power that I pushing into my palms escapes, and only a fraction of it remains within me. The dirt ball that is in my hands crumbles and falls to the ground. Wow, that was exhausting, I wipe the sweat that started to form on my forehead. “I did not expect you to succeed in absorbing any elemental power, you must be truly loved by the earth. Even for me, with my witch blood, took ten tries to absorb any earth elemental power.” Hehehe, you here that I am special. Though I think while we are moving I will stick to control training, I might pass out if I try to absorb more elemental power.

We continue to walk in silence, but the idea of better magic control pushed me to strive for more complicated movements. This time I was aiming for a wall of sorts, unfortunately I found this required a certain amount of time to form, and while walking my connection with the ground only lasts for a short time. After a while I turned to Robin and decided to ask something that has been on my mind since the talk about elemental power. “Hey Robin, why don’t you practice your elemental control?”

“I am” Robin then holds up her hand and shows me a small blob of water in her palm. As I am looking at the blob I notice a drop of sweat roll roll down her wrist into the blob. “Are you controlling your sweat in this blob?” Robin nods her head. Well that's an interesting way to practice water control. “Isn’t that really hard to do?” I mean I can control a handfull of dirt, but I don't think I could even get close to controlling a bunch of different clumps of dirt all at the same time. “Water, or more specifically ice is my specialty. I am what people call a variant, which is when someone's affinity is really high with an element that goes against their race. For lizardmen we usually have a good affinity with fire or earth, but I am different I am a variant with ice and lesser so with water.” As she says that the puddle of water in her hand stops moving and slowly starts to form into ice. Holy shit thats so cool! When they said elemental power I thought that only included the basic forms of each element, but I guess I was completely wrong. So it’s possible to control the state of the water, I wonder how far that extends to other elements. “Robin do you know if every element can be changed like with water?” She shakes her head, “No I am sorry my knowledge past what I have already told you is very little. You can hit--” Robin started to bend over, but it looks like she remembered what I said and stops herself from doing so. Good it looks like the fact that she is free is setting in a bit. “Again, it is fine if you do not know something, and good job remember what I told you before.” I place my hand on her shoulder hoping to pass a bit of my happiness to her, but instead you jumps a bit. Just as I was about to pull my hand back Robin stops me by holding my hand there with her’s. “I was startled, I am fine now, thank you.” Hot Damn that smile is just cheating. I guess she isn’t used to physical contact that doesn’t have brutal force behind it. Standing there for a minute I look up and notice that the sun has already started dipping. “Robin we should get going I would like to try and reach the lake before it gets dark.” With a nod from Robin we are off again.

About three hours later we reached the lake. So far pretty uneventful besides the stuff with Robin. From the looks of it we still have about 3 hours til the sun goes down, I would rather stay here and head off tomorrow when there is lots of light. “Hey Robin we are going to set up camp her for today, also I am going to try absorbing more elemental power once we are done.” With a head nod, I start pulling out the tarp and sleeping bags from my backpack. “Hey Robin could you go grab some wood so I can start a fire.” She immediately heads off towards the woods. After the sleeping gear is set up I get my pots out and some camp food. Seems like I will have to get more food as soon as I can. A couple minutes later Robin comes back with a arm’s load of wood. “Great job getting all this wood.” I try to take the wood from Robin, but instead she moves it away from my grasp. “Let me.” I look at her kind of dumbfounded and wondering what she is going to do. She makes a neat little pile of all the wood and she proceeds to rub her hands together. After a couple of seconds of some intense hand rubbing she spreads them and I can see a flame floating in between her hands. The flame moves towards the wood stack and lights in on fire. “That’s awesome you can create fire?”

“No I am not creating the fire, but instead using the heat from rubbing my hands and just heating it up more till it becomes a flame.” For some reason I feel like that defise a ton of laws of physics back in my world, but I don’t know enough about fire to dispute what Robin said. Anyways with the fire going strong now I get the food going.

The meal was just some rice with dried meat, but it wasn’t that bad. “Hey Robin I am gonna try and absorb some more elemental power so you're good to do whatever you want also.” I feel like Robin would have just sat there doing nothing if I didn’t tell her specifically that she can do what she wants. I lay down on the ground hoping that the more contact with the ground will help me absorb more. Trying to block out other sensations and feel only the earth's. As I am getting pretty deep into my meditation I hear some movement towards the lake. Looking up from my prone position I see a shirtless Robin on the edge of the lake. “What are you doing!” Confirmed Robin has some decently sized breast I would put them around D cup if I had to guess. Robin looks at me with a tilt of her head like she doesn’t understand. “I am going to absorb the water’s elemental power and I didn’t want to get my clothes wet.” Huh I guess that makes sense, considering that I have literally done the same thing before when I bathed in rivers in the mountains. “Ok, well try to be a bit more discreet about it. I am a male and you are quite beautiful.” I might have to teach her some more common sense before we reach a town. With a nod of the head Robin heads to a more covered area,and I get back to my meditation, though I think I did see her face become a bit more red as she was leaving. For about the next three hours I try to absorb elemental power with a lot of breaks in between. While it was tough I believe I have gained quite a bit of elemental power during the three hours which is nice. Just as I was finishing up Robin comes back, we decided to head to bed and get an early start tomorrow in hopes that we can reach the city in a day.