Laina scrunched up her brows and thought of a better way to explain. "Okay. Ahm, when you are born, you are a baby. Small and weak. But slowly as you grow older and older, your body gets bigger and stronger. But obviously, you can't keep growing forever, and so after you grow for a while, you stop. This is when a person would be considered an adult." Laina explained. She took a deep breath and continued.

"After that, you just continue to get older and older, but your body doesn't age anymore because it is already grown to its limit. If you live long enough for your body to reach its limit, you start to grow again. This time it is the opposite of before, instead of growing stronger and bigger, you grow weaker. It's called the Second Growth. Your body declines faster and faster until it returns back to its origin."

Sam and Xander processed what they just heard from Laina. They were both having a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that they stop aging for a period of time. It wasn't quite the idea of immorality but it wasn't too far off.

"But, that is not how real people age. It's more like a constant thing and you definitely don't just stop after a while," said Xander.

Before Laina could say anything, Sam said something that forced both of them to be quiet. "It's because we aren't in the same world anymore. We aren't 'human' anymore. The past selves from Earth and our current selves are different." Sam paused there looking at the expression of both of them. Xander and Laina were looking at him as if he spoke a different language, which he did when he said human. Sam sighed and decided to make it simpler for Xander to understand. Laina wouldn't believe in anything that he said for now, so he would deal with that problem at another time.

"Human and 'human' are different. One is in whatever this language is and the other is in English. We consider them both to hold the same meaning, but they are not the same. The only reason that we think that they are the translated versions of each other is that we thought that they were the same when we got the second language." Sam said.

"But how come we are different? I mean, I don't notice a difference in myself or in Laina. If we were different, shouldn't we have like tentacles or be 'aliens' or something?" asked Xander. "And how do you know all of this?"

"I visited Origin while you were sleeping. As for your other questions, it's complicated, and I don't understand it that well either. From what I can understand, there's some sort of system that messes with the chances of survivability of animals, so the ones that are the most similar to the animals from our world have a higher chance of surviving. The book I read wasn't too specific on that part, so I could be very wrong."

"Oh... Okay I guess I get it," said Xander in an uncertain voice.

"Are you two ... okay?" Asked Laina. She was starting to get worried that she may have come on a journey with two people that were injured in their heads. When she was listening to Xander last night talking about a place called Earth, she had assumed that it was some faraway location. But from what she could tell from listening, was that it didn't exist, and Sam and Xander were making everything up.

"What is the easiest way?" mumbled Sam to himself. After looking around, he remembered Xander's sword. Sam stopped walking, and so did Laina and Xander, who were walking to his side. "Xander, go swing at a tree as hard as you can."

"Sorry what?" asked Xander, confused.

Sam reworded what he just said and said it to Xander. "Take the sword out of the sheath, pick and go to a random tree and pretend the sword was an ax and try to chop down the tree. Make sure to swing as hard as you can. Oh, and you can give me Stratus."

Xander understood Sam this time around and followed his instructions. Xander handed Stratus, who was still sleeping, to Sam. He, then, picked a tree that was to their left and approached it while taking out the sword. He was a little bit excited to use the sword as he had never used a sword before.

The sword was just over three feet long, and the blade was thin. The weight of the sword felt a bit unfamiliar to him, and so did the grip. Xander wasn't quite sure the correct way to grip the sword and so he was forced to guess. He stood within arms reach from the tree and moved his feet to shoulder length apart.

Xander then swung the sword with both of his hands. He put all of his power in that swing and he felt his arms start to speed up slightly when his arms were halfway to the tree. At the same time, Xander could feel an unfamiliar feeling in his arms. He had never noticed it before because the situation that he had been in before didn't allow him to be clear-minded.

This was different as he wasn't in any sort of danger or some sort of hurry. Xander could focus all of his attention on just his arms and the sword that he was holding.

The sword soon reached the tree, and there was a small tearing noise as it dug in. The tree's base had been about four feet in diameter, and the sword was able to go through in about an entire foot. The other end of the sword was still sticking out of the cut.

Xander and Sam weren't too surprised by the results. They had used the same power before so they had a general idea of it. Laina, on the other hand, was shocked. No normal person would have been able to do that. The tree was thick and it would have normally taken an ax multiple hits at the same spot for the same results.

"But...how?" asked Laina, still stunned. Her brain tried hard to come up with an explanation and it was unable to come up with anything sane. Whenever Sam or Xander had been talking about anything Laina couldn't quite understand, she had assumed that they would eventually give her a simple explanation for it. But this wasn't so simple and clear as she had imagined it to be.

Xander tried to pull the sword out of the tree but it was lodged in there pretty good. No matter how hard he tried to pull it, the sword wouldn't get free. Xander stopped pulling forcefully and instead started to wiggle the sword left and right. This way was much better as the sword was free after a few seconds.

"Don't worry about it, for now, Laina. If you want to join us in the future, we can give you a better explanation. Right now, neither I or Xander know much so we wouldn't do a great job at explaining," said Sam as he watched Xander pulling out the sword.

Laina decided to listen to Sam. She didn't have another choice but to. After that, they continued their journey. Several questions had been answered, but a few more had been raised as well. They made fast progress, taking a few breaks here and there to rest and eat. By the time the sun had set, the group had reached the next village.

"I guess we're sleeping outside again?" asked Xander in a dejected voice. He had only slept in a bed two days ago and Xander was already missing it.

"I don't know. We don't stand out that much since we aren't dragging behind a horse and this village is fairly large. We are also basically rich so money is not a problem. But what about Stratus? He stands out too much," said Sam after thinking about it for a bit. He too didn't get good sleep when he was forced to sleep outside. There were no blanks, so even the slightest wind would send him shivering.

"I have a solution for that," said Xander. He took the still sleeping Stratus and put him under his shirt. He used his left hand to hold him up, so it looked like Xander was holding up a big belly.

"I think it could work. There's probably a tavern around here somewhere. All we need to do is find it," said Laina.

They were all tired from a long day of walking, and they all just wanted to get a good night's rest.

They were all in agreement, and so they went into the village. It took them a few minutes, but after asking around the villagers, they found that this village did indeed have a tavern. It took them a bit longer to figure where it was.

"Is this it?" asked Xander. In front of them was a large building. The outside looked to be in okay condition but there were several holes in the walls here and there. There wasn't much traffic around the building, and the building looked like it was completely empty.

"I think so," replied Laina. "The idea of having to sleep outside doesn't seem too bad, now that I think about it."

"Nope, we did all this work to find this place. I am not going to just quit and go back and sleep on the ground. We made the decision to sleep on a proper bed today, and I'm not stopping until we sleep in a bed tonight." Said Sam.

Sam went in first, and then the other two followed behind him. He opened the door and stepped in. There was a small room with a table and a person sitting behind it. To his side were a few chairs for others to sit on. To the far right of the room, there was a hallway leading to several other rooms. The room had a lot of dust and other trash littered in a few places. The smell was as if someone had left a rat to rot without opening any of the doors.

The man had been sleeping with his eyes closed and with the noise of the door being opened, he jumped awake. He rubbed his eyes as if trying to make sure this wasn't a dream. He quickly got out of his chair and walked towards the group.

"Visitors! You must be tired from walking for so long. Are you perhaps looking for a room to stay for tonight, or maybe even longer?" Asked the man, sounding a little desperate. "If you want I'll even offer a discount on the price."

"Sure, three rooms just for tonight, please," said Sam as he looked around the room.

"That would have been 30 copper, but because of the discount, I'll only take 15 copper just this time," said the man, standing a few feet from Sam.

Sam grabbed the pouch hanging to his side. While they were walking, he had put his and Xander's silver coins in the pouch that Ruko had given them. He put this bag in the bag that he was carrying over this shoulder. This way, the silver coins had a much smaller chance of being stolen, and he didn't have to worry about showing too much when he was taking out money. Sam counted up all of the coins and handed them over to the man.

Originally, he had 30 copper coins, but after buying his clothes from the man from the village, it was down to 25. Now it was down to ten. He still had the 3 silver that he came with and whatever his share of the 14 silver was for the horse.

Now that he got his money, the man happily led the three to their rooms. In total it looked like there were 7 rooms in total and all of them had a sign up saying "Empty." He picked three rooms closest to the entrance and gave it to each member of the group. He never noticed the fact that Xander's stomach moved or that Xander was holding his belly the entire time.