It was an unfortunate event. Don’t get me wrong - I never doubted her capabilities to handle the situation. After all, she tried to kill me several times and would have succeeded all of them if not for my curse. My gaze wandered around all the stuff she left at our improvised camp: her hoodie jacket, a bag full of unknown things, receipt firestone, even her boots; apparently, she jumped barefoot, and that was impressive. Either way, as I was saying, my gaze wandered around all her stuff, but one: a gigantic sniper rifle. I really doubted my capability to handle this gun.

When everything else was packed, I stood near the rifle, building up a nerve to pick it up. Or at least try to do it.

Fear has big eyes, as they say. The rifle appeared to be not as heavy as I expected - only about twenty-five - thirty kilograms. It even had some kind of strapping system, unfortunately, of unknown usability. It turned out to be handly, though, when I tied a knot from that pile of straps forming a rude semi-backpack of the anti-tank rifle.

An almost vertical wall waited for me under the edge of the plateau. There was no suitable for people path downward whatsoever. I noticed the trail of Paige a soon as I looked down - the leftovers of a mutant toad carcass were evenly dispersed over the swamp, and, happy with such a situation, fish consumed those pieces with enviable appetite. The direction of here movement was marked with a similar approach to the local fauna. At least it will be easy to find here. I hope.

I’ve decided to go with freefall. Too lazy to find an actual path downward, I’ve decided to lean on the Book mechanics. If I am immune to any significant damage, so why not?

I assigned the landing site rank to a big plain patch of ground with sparse grass and other herbs on it. Not to break Paiges stuff, I: created a small airbag out of our clothing; took out the rope she once tied me with; found a boulder with a similar to the package’s weight, and placed one end of a rope under it; put the rock on the fringe of the plateau; tied the other end of the rope to the package; felt myself very stupid; drank water.

The idea was to create a parachute-like experience for the package and a crashing-plane-like experience for me.

Not to overthink and, possibly, get cold feet, as soon as I have finished the preparations, I have jumped my back forward, holding our wrapped belongings. When the rope stretched, I let go of the package.

Now, before you judge me, call me names and doubt my credibility, sanity, and even existence, I have something to tell you - I had a plan, and it was based on solid evidence. Paige also said about newbies being stupid for the first several months, and apparently, she was right, but I won’t comment on it. Nevertheless, my calculation was based mainly on the fact that I am in a book, and its rules must prevail over physics and other possible sets of laws. And if I am doing something in a book, that means someone is writing about it, and here we have two possibilities - either Author wants to kill me, and I will die no matter what, or he wants me alive, which means my plan, no matter how stupid it is, will work.

Long story short, my plan almost worked. The weight of the boulder, I pressed the rope with, was too big, and now the package with all our belongings dangled about forty meters above.

I, myself, was completely intact, though. There was even no blacking out this time; I just had to lie for a little while, waiting for my lungs to be able to breathe in some air again. Small price to pay for such a cool power.

As it turned out, I have used all of my brain’s power for today constructing the plan, so I just stood there and hibernated instead of trying to come up with the solution to the dangling package problem.

As the suns were crawling above the plateau, I notice something weird. The shadow from the problematic boulder started to become more avid and massive much faster than the suns velocity. It looked like it was enlarging. In several moments I noticed that it was not the boulder that was getting bigger - it was something behind it. Surprisingly I recognized the guest - the head-shaped rock slowly crawled and pushed my problem from the plateau. Only at the last moment have I figured that if the package falls on me, its content may not even get damaged too much. I was correct this time also; dude, I was on fire!

After several more minutes of breathless laying down, I got up, waved to the Headdy, as I named that rock, and thanked it.

When I was entering the forest, I turned back to watch at my savior, and I can swear I noticed perplexity mixed with stupor in his stone eyes. If these emotions could be applied to stones off course.