After another short rest, Kain was barely able to stand on his own two feet once more. Being able to stand did not mean that he was able to walk though, so he spent some more time resting while standing. After he was able to walk again, Kain hobbled over to the riverbank and retrieved Mouse, but Kain hesitated before putting the holster back on his waist.

‘My clothes are all covered in blood, huh? I’ll be on the safe side and wash up before putting it back. Though I wish I had some other water.’

While he was not terrified of the water like before, Kain was still wary of it, as he had no idea whether or not it would do something weird if he touched it again or he put anything in it. Having a silent debate with himself, Kain weighed the pros and cons: pros, he already drank the water once, so he shouldn’t be affected, right? As well as that, even if it did do something to him, the last one made him look pretty good, so if it did something again, wouldn’t it be just as potent? And for cons, he did not want to experience the pain he felt earlier for even a second. Beyond that, it might make his clothes blue or something weird like that.

‘... Screw it, going naked should be fine if I say that they were torn to shreds in bushes or something. I’ll be fine as well, even if it gives me the worst growing pains in the world.”

He decided to just get on with it and stepped into the river. He waited. And waited. After confirming that nothing weird was happening, he began to wash his clothes, dying the originally blue river red, which mixed together into swirls following the river. He washed his jeans, shirt, and even underwear because he imagined that it would be unsanitary to walk around with blood hanging out below the waist.

He climbed up on the bank of the river when he finished washing himself and took a look at his clothes and his body. In general, other than getting drenched in blue water, there was on change. His shirt was still grey and his jeans were still blue, not that his jeans would change much if it became more blue. Kain put Mouse’s holster on his waist and looked towards Grand, which was still stuck in the tree. Before he could go and get it, he noticed something.

‘Wait, why do I feel so much better? It happened in the river, so does that mean that after whatever happened to me, the river gives some healing effect?’

Kain was too tired to wonder about it though and he retrieved Grand from the tree. He slung Grand over his shoulder and checked his belongings. He still had most of his ammunition, but lost one of his five 8-round clips for Grand, but still kept his two 10-round clips for Mouse. Of course, Dea had no need for ammunition so he did not need to check it. Now that he had taken count of his ammunition, he could continue on his way.

Part of the way down the mountain, he ran into a bit of the path which was blocked by branches that protruded from the trees beside the path. Kain casually pushed the branches away as he would whenever he was hiking before he got sent to this place. As he pushed, the branch offered a small amount of resistance, then snapped at the base of another larger branch. He jumped back while on alert and looked towards the branch with confusion and concern. He was only able to snap the branch from when he left the cave because it was dead and looked dried. However, this branch came straight from a full grown tree! It was about 2 inches in diameter at its thickest, and he managed to snap that thick branch to its base, not to mention the fact that these branches were just a little while ago almost unbreakable to Kain.

‘What in the… What did that stupid water do to me that made me able to do that?’

Kain looked at the broken branch, then to his own hands, then to the branch again. He tried to flex his muscles, but felt a tingling feeling on his arm instead. His eyes darted to his arm and he saw the muscles he was trying to flex become bulged and a more vivid blue. When he felt his arm fully flex, it had become incredibly muscular and it looked like someone coated his arm in a thick layer of blue paint. He poked it and it was tough. Too tough. It felt like it didn’t belong to a human being, but to some other animal. It felt rubbery, but also strong. It yielded a bit under his prodding, but didn’t give beyond that. He tried to flex his other muscles, and the odd blue look came to those muscles too. He could even do it to his chest, stomach, back, and even his face and neck. Kain looked at the areas he had flexed and sighed.

‘So not only am I mildly blue everywhere, I can become very blue wherever I choose. This day is getting stranger and stranger. Can’t I just catch a break?’

He decided to find a place to rest to play around with his strengthening ability a bit more, so he continued on. After walking for a few more hours and almost reaching the bottom of the hill, Kain finally saw a good place to rest. It was a clearing with a few small boulders perfect to sit on and surrounded by trees, as he was in the thick of the forest at this point. He sat on a boulder and looked up to the island that hung over him. It seemed so far away and so close at the same time. It was a few dozen miles up, so he had no way of knowing what sat atop its massive size. Looking up at the massive rock above him, he realized that there has been no change in light since he started hiking, so he had no clue how long the day was here.

‘They could be long days, or even short days with little light change. Too bad my phone is gone.’

He wanted to know how long he had been there, because it felt like he had been there for weeks and he wanted to know if he was going to be fired for being late to work by a day, week, or however long he had been there. He chose to just forget about it and focused on something that he had wanted to do for a while: play with his new strengthening ability. He tried to flex his muscles while sitting on the boulder and, when he did, they became that odd paint-like blue. He still felt that tingling sensation in his muscles every time he used the ability, which started to feel like a missing piece. He wanted to perform an experiment now that he had a clue or something that resembled such. He focused on a part of his body, his hands in this case, and tried to recreate the tingling feeling in his hand without flexing his muscles. As a result Kain felt like he was trying to bend his arm backwards or twist it too far, but his hand did change. Through the awkward feeling, Kain was able to force his hand to become blue and strong.

‘So I don’t have to flex my muscles when I use this. Neat!’

After smiling in satisfaction, he tried to strengthen his other muscles without flexing them, and was able to do so for every muscle in his body. He was feeling pretty good about himself now. He was able to use this cool new strengthening ability and he was armed well enough to defend himself. Although he had no idea what he might need to fight, Kain was ready for anything.

‘Well now I don’t have to worry about my own safety. I can walk in peace and find my way out of… wherever this is. Wait. I just raised a flag, didn’t I?’

He immediately became nervous because of his strange beliefs on jinxing and flags. Despite his worrying, the forest around him was silent and calm. When he finally relaxed his vigilance, he noticed a small blue furry ball with odd dark blue markings staring at him through the brush. The thing stared at him with light blue eyes that seemed to be so light that they looked like they were simply part of a calm spring sky. Kain stood up and prepared himself, glaring at the odd furball before remembering something.

‘Ah... It’s the rabbit from earlier. But what could it be doing here? It isn’t trying to eat me, is it? Don’t tell me I need to fight it…’