Ayden dropped down onto a rock with heavy breaths, gasping for air as if he nearly just drowned.

“You good, dude?” Noah asked a bit worried, “You need some water or something?”

“No, I’m... I’m good... I just need to... take a bit of a break...” Ayden replied, placing his face into his hands. Noah was really worried, since his friend seemed to be in quite a bit of pain, “Come on, man. Raise your arms up, take deep breaths, and just take it slow.”

Ayden slowly nodded his head as he followed Noah’s instructions and looked ahead of himself. As he thought about his ‘stamina’, his status window appeared in front of him.

---

[Health – 10/10][Mana – 21/21][Stamina – 1/8]

---

“Urgh... Noah, I’m actually... Out of stamina...”

“Yeah, I kind of realized.”

“No, I mean... my stamina value... is on 1...” Ayden explained, and Noah raised his brows, “Well, then we should really be careful. Don’t overdo yourself, I don’t want you to fall unconscious or something.”

Staying silent for a while, Ayden nodded his head, while Noah turned around and walked up to the edge of the platform that himself, Ayden, Mari and Ness were currently on.

“Is he going to be alright?” Mari asked concerned, and Ness climbed up onto a rock next to Noah and looked over at Ayden, “Ness thinks the boy is a bit of a wimp.”

“He’s not a wimp, and he’s going to be alright.” Noah sighed, “Ayden’s just not that physically fit. Out of the two of us... He’s the brain, and I’m-“

“Pinky?” Ayden finished for Noah, who glared at his friend for a few seconds, “Oi, shut it and breathe.”

Mari and Ness were both rather confused, obviously not getting that reference, so Noah continued what he wanted to say initially, “Ayden’s the brain, and I’m the brawn.”

“Huh, kind of like with us.” Mari admitted, looking over at Ness, “I obviously usually do the physical work like hunting, and Ness takes care of other things. Starting fires, setting up traps for animals, that kind of thing.”

“Huh, you can do that?” Noah asked surprised, and Ness smugly nodded his head, “Ness’ first class is Tinkerer!”

“That’s actually so cool! Like, what kind of stuff do you tinker with?”

Ness thought about it for a moment, crossing his arms in thought, “Ness could show you if he had his backpack. It had all of Ness’ tools in it.”

“Ness used to do a lot of work as a scout-for-hire, so he used to spend his days just analyzing and disarming traps. And now, he likes to tinker around with anything mechanical when he gets the chance. Back at where I used to live, he took apart all the clocks and turned them into small trinkets.” Mari explained with a wry smile, while Ness kept his eyes closed with an ever-smug grin on his face.

“That’s actually pretty neat. Ayden’s always been kinda into that, reading up on how different machinery works. He would probably love to talk to you about this stuff sometime.”

“The human thinks he is smart enough to keep up with this great lord Ness?” The kobold chuckled, as if this idea was ridiculous, and Noah looked back with a wry smile. He turned back and looked at his best friend. He wanted to tell these two how Ayden was a prodigy at anything science-related. The only issue was that the science that Ayden excelled at didn’t seem to exist in this world yet. And since Noah and Ayden agreed on keeping the fact they came from another world a secret until they knew the people of this world more, he couldn’t particularly say anything like that.

“Trust me, Ayden’s the smartest guy I know. And I know a lot of people.” Noah ended up replying and then tried to change the topic, “Wait, where did you lose your backpack in the first place?”

“Hmph, that pesky thing fell off Ness when he was trying to climb that invisible wall!”

“So while you were trying to get through that barrier?” Noah asked, turning toward Mari, “You said you can see ‘trajectories’, right? Did you see where it fell down to?”

“Well, yeah, I don’t think it’s that far away from here. But it fell onto some kind of ledge we couldn’t get to...”

“Huh.” Noah crossed his arms, “A ledge, huh?”

“Don’t you dare think about it, Noah.” Ayden came up behind his friend, having overheard the conversation, “We’re on a mountain you’ve never been on before, you don’t have your gear, and-“

“Oh come on! That’s exactly why I wanna do it!” Noah exclaimed, “Come on, like, please? Seriously... And it has all of their money as well! Do you want them to just lose all that?”

Ayden locked eyes with Noah and thought about it for a while, before looking past him at Mari, “You can see the trajectory of people as well, right?”

Mari was a bit confused, but she nodded her head, “Yes?”

“And a trajectory changes with your interference, right?”

“Also yes. But what’s this about?” Mari asked, and Ayden let out a deep sigh as he looked at Noah, who was grinning like a mad-man.

“No tricks, no messing around. If the place looks too dangerous, you just don’t do it. The moment Mari tells you to stop what you’re doing, you will stop. Got that?” Ayden asked, leaning in toward Noah and whispering so that only he could hear, “There aren’t any proper hospitals here, so if you break your leg or arm doing this again...”

“I get it, I get it, I’m gonna be fine. Don’t worry about it.” Noah said with a grin on his face, turning around to look at Mari and Ness, “Now show us where the backpack is.”

---

Noah placed his bag onto the ground and took off his jacket as he started to explain, “The way down is steep, sure, but the wall itself is perfect for climbing down. As if it was made for that. There are a few ridges wide enough to press my feet into without issue, the ledge down there is large enough to just stand on, and most importantly... This view is just fuckin’ amazing! You need to climb somewhere with this kind of view, it’s like a law of physics!”

“Do you want to know what also is a law of physics? Gravity. You know, the thing that will pull you to your death if you slip.” Ayden looked at Noah and crossed his arms, obviously nervous.

“Exactly. ‘If’ I slip.” Noah said with a smirk, “But also, we have Mari. She’s gonna make sure I don’t fall. Ain’t that right, Mari?”

“You want to fucking climb down there, are you goddamn insane?” Mari asked bluntly, “You know, Kobolds are pretty good at climbing, and not even Ness tried to go down there.”

Noah let out a deep sigh, “Obviously. Ness is a dragon, not a kobold.” He winked.

Ness’ head perked up, “Ness likes this human...”

“Listen, I’ve done this a hundred times before, I’m gonna be fine. You just need to let me know if I’m about to slip.” Noah said, so casually as if he was talking about just taking a regular walk, as he stepped up to the edge. Nervously, Mari agreed and stood at the edge as well. She closed her eyes for a moment, before their blue color faded and started glowing a vibrant orange instead.

“Alright, go slow though... I need to be able to react...” She explained, as a glowing white line appeared connected to Noah’s body. Right now, it was just leading down to the ledge where the backpack was, so there really shouldn’t be an issue now. But this trajectory was object to change due to a lot of outside forces since Noah knew about its existence and was probably thinking about it.

“Just keep going like you are, it seems like you’ll be fine.” Mari explained, and Noah smirked as he pressed his foot into the first ridge, “Perfect.”

And just like that, he started to climb down at a pretty quick pace, on that seemed rather surprising to Mari, “W-Wait, I thought I told you to go slow!”

“What do you mean? This is slow!” Noah yelled from halfway down this part of the wall, and Mari turned her head to the side to look at Ayden, “It is kind of slow for him. But don’t look at me, look at him.”

“Wait, you’re not looking at me?” Noah yelled, as Mari turned back down toward him carefully, “I am, don’t w- Wait, stop!”

All of a sudden, the trajectory had changed. Maybe because Noah hesitated due to hearing Mari looked away, but instead of leading to the ledge, it went straight past it now, “Careful, just... Try putting your foot somewhere else than you were about to.”

“Urgh... Sure...” Noah muttered as he slid the tip of his foot along the rock-wall, until Mari yelled down to him, “Perfect! Use that spot!”

With a sigh of relief after being made nervous by Mari, he pressed his foot into the thin ridge, and lifted his other foot to keep going. But when he did that and the weight placed onto that exact part of the wall changed, the rock broke off. Noah slid down the wall, cutting his hands open in the process, as his feet hit the ledge. The impact shook his whole body, but at least he didn’t fall.

“Fucking... shit.” Noah groaned loudly, looking at his hands, covered in blood. The moment he thought about how much health he might have lost, the information appeared in front of him.

---

[Health – 14/15]

---

The small window only displayed this particular information. And luckily Noah didn’t lose a lot of health... Neither him nor Ayden really wanted to try and figure this out all too much, so they just avoided dealing with this statistic at all. The worst part was that there was a bunch of dirt in his hands.

“Noah! Are you alright?!” Ayden yelled out immediately, leaning over the edge, and Noah looked up at him, “Yeah, I’m fine. Just bleeding a bit, but it’s nothing too ba-“

“Good, you complete dumbass! This is why I told you not to do this!” Ayden screamed out angrily. Noah was pretty happy that he was down here right now. Otherwise he would have to deal with Ayden’s absolute wrath right about now.

So while Ayden was giving himself a sore throat, Noah looked around, and quickly found the backpack. Or what he thought to be the backpack. It didn’t look like one, it just looked like some kind of wooden barrel, one of those small one-gallon ones.

He picked it up with the tips of his fingers to avoid touching it with his wounds and held it up by the straps nailed onto the wood, “Yo, is this it?”

Ness looked down and quickly spotted the small barrel, nodding his head furiously, “That is Ness’ treasure! Bring it up here, human! Quickly!”

“Right, right, I’m on it. Do you have any bandages in here or something, though?” Quickly, Noah opened up the lid of the small barrel and looked inside, seeing quite a bit of clutter in there. Plenty of coins, metallic parts, some clothes, a bit of rope, and seemingly some stuff from a first-aid kit as well.

But there was just one issue. Noah pressed his arm into the small barrel. And even once he pressed his arm in there up to his shoulder, he wasn’t able to reach the bandages.

“Yo... What the fuck is happening?” Noah asked, his arm having disappeared in this barrel that was larger on the inside than the outside.