After the concert ends, Sheia takes me back the way we came. She looks distressed as she walks away from the man calling out to her, ignoring his angry shouts. Eventually we get back to the inn, where she brings me to the room.

Magna is still sleeping in the bed, and at this point it seems that Itor has passed out in the chair he was sitting in. The older woman is still in the room, but is resting on a couch at the far wall. She looks physically exhausted lying in a reclined position and breathing heavily. I wonder what went on in the time I was gone?

Sheia waves to the older woman and speaks a short greeting. The woman responds with a question, which Sheia responds to casually. She pauses for a moment, and then starts speaking more in an irritated tone, giving off an air of confusion.

The woman responds and they start a conversation, with Sheia generally seeming exasperated in her explanation and the woman seeming confused, asking many questions. I sit down in a chair next to Itor during this conversation, observing quietly.

Eventually, the conversation ends. Sheia leaves the room, giving me a smile and a wave. I guess I’ll return it.

After she leaves and the older woman returns to her rest, I find myself with a lack of things to occupy myself with. It’s strange to finally be free from binds. Part of me wants to explore the town, but the other part thinks I’ll just get myself into trouble.

Specifically, I’m a bit wary of that jealous guy from the concert. It’s very troubling that I can’t easily get even a slight read on someone’s abilities in combat anymore, now that I know there are at least some people with Itor and Magna’s abilities.

I wish I could communicate more effectively. Or just that I had some ability to learn more quickly.

Well, at the end of the day, I can’t improve my situation by sitting around. It would probably be a good idea to go and get a bearing of the layout of this town. I exit the room and then the building, the lower tavern level still empty.

From here, I simply wander. I walk down the road to my right - opposite to the direction Sheia brought me - and walk through the town. I pass by houses and other buildings, walking by people out doing their daily tasks, until I arrive at a place of interest.

I see some people standing up at the top of the wall surrounding the village. It’s made of stone, which I always thought was strange. Normally, in small villages like these, the walls would be made of wood, since that’s so much easier to gather. But in this case, it’s constructed of solid stones the size of perfectly identical cinder blocks.

The wall looks unfinished, halfway through this length, it drops in height, which the people are building up to uniformity. There are about a dozen of them, which is weird, since the wall is only thick enough to fit two of them side-by-side, meaning while a couple of them are working on setting the bricks, the rest are sitting around doing nothing.

They’re all of solid build and stature, each being taller and bigger than your average person. They aren’t limited to any one sex, but the majority are men. And what’s strange is that, while they’re all bigger than your average person for sure, whether that weight is carried in muscle or fat seems to vary. It seems that only the muscular ones are actually currently working on the wall; the fat ones are the ones sitting on the sidelines.

It looks like they’re out of bricks, anyway, so I guess I won’t get to see them work. But as I turn to walk away, I see them all huddle as best they can on the wall, facing a single point. They seem to concentrate on something, closing their eyes and staying still for a moment.

Then, slowly, a brick begins to form in the place they’re all facing. It grows upward, like the molecules are being stacked upon one another. It builds in this way for about two seconds until it finishes. The men open their eyes, looking somewhat physically drained. Then, a couple of them pick up the stone and set it on the wall, like I watched before.

They repeat this process multiple times - about a dozen - and then climb down a ladder that reaches up to the top of the wall. They walk over to what seems to be a resting area filled with some other workers. The two teams of workers speak for a bit, and then the new one gets up and goes to climb up the ladder, doing the same thing the others had.

Hm. I want to test a theory, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk. I remember when Itor fought that bear thing with the scorpion tail, he didn’t actually get hit, but he sustained some sort of wound on his bicep. One which was so neat and uniform, it couldn’t have been made by the animal.

My theory is that these wounds are made as a ‘cost’ to using that creation power. So to see if it’s true, all I need to do is check the body of one of the workers here and see if they have a recently made wound similar to Itor’s. I think it would be smaller than expected, given the size of the cinder blocks made, since each of these people were collaboratively making them, but I’m not sure.

The only problem with the simple method to test my theory, is that I don’t really have any way to check the bodies of any of these people. Really, the only way to do that would be to walk up right now and just start ripping their clothes off. That would probably end badly.

So, if they were really all collaborating to create this, I guess they’d share the wounds. When Itor examined my body after he thought I had created the stone knife I used to dissect the spider-wasp monsters, he checked every part of my body, leaving no patch of skin alone. So I guess it’s possible for these wounds to appear anywhere.

In that case, in terms of probability, if I just check the already exposed skin of the people, there’s a pretty significant chance that I’ll find one of those wounds if there are any.

I walk up to the resting area that the workers are sitting in. Well, I say ‘resting area’, but in reality it’s just a few logs lying sideways on the ground that the people are sitting on. They make idle conversation as I approach.

One of them spots me as I stroll into the circle of speakers, and he says something. Obviously I can’t respond, or really even effectively communicate the fact that I don’t understand him, so I just ignore him and walk up to the nearest person, who’s wearing some pants and a tank-top style shirt, both made of rough green cloth.

She gives me a weird look and asks me something. I examine her arms and the bit of ankle that’s exposed, but don’t see any wounds. Her skin looks very red, though, like it’s been rubbed raw.

I walk up to the next person, a man in similar clothing. I examine his arms as he tries to talk to me. Still no wounds. Again, though, the skin on his body is pinkish.

As I walk to search the next person, the man I examined stands and grabs my arm. Oh well, I don’t think they’ll let me continue my suspicious behavior anymore. I look at him and he firmly asks a question.

I look at his skin as he maintains his tight grip on my arm. His skin is pinkish like the others, but he also has a shallow piece of skin taken out of his wrist, a neat, half-inch by half-inch square. Blood is just beginning to seep out. There’s my evidence.

I give no response to the words he is speaking to me, but instead yank my arm from his hand and walk away.

I’m not too worried about them feeling antagonized by me or anything; they probably just think I’m crazy, or possessed, or a fool, or whatever the term is for this culture. Sure enough, as I walk away, the discussion between the people slowly starts to begin again.

So, I think that the reason everyone had pinkish, raw skin is because that was a wound created as a cost of the creation. Instead of a small deep wound, they had body-wide, shallow ones.

Okay. If I take this to be perfect proof that the cost of using this creation ability is the skin from your body, what exactly does this mean? What other conclusions can I make from this? I’ve been absorbing so much information in the last couple days that it’s kind of hard to remember what’s even happened.

So, when else have I seen these wounds on people? Itor and Magna are covered in scars like these, meaning they probably use the creation ability constantly. That lines up with what I already know.

And also…

When I first woke up here, I was dropped on the floor from no apparatus in particular. I was surrounded by people with these types of wounds, as well as people who were missing limbs. Some of them were being actively bandaged, and there was wet blood on the floor, meaning they used it recently. There was no sign of created stone nearby.

If no stone was created, it’s possible that they have the ability to create materials other than stone. But I didn’t see any sort of loose material nearby. The only thing there was… me. Which means…

That raises some questions.