When I returned, I dug into my backpack for my blanket. It was rolled in an impossibly neat burrito, which I knew I’d never be able to replicate. Inside was even a small pillow. Score for me. Nobody else seemed to have brought one of those. When Alloha saw me getting ready for bed with my phone’s flashlight, she asked to borrow it, which I obliged. Then Torra asked to borrow it from her. I was just glad I could be helpful. I considered a few ideas for how I could use manifested Earth technology to make some basic flashlights out of material that would persist permanently. It wasn’t like I could go down to the local hardware store and pick up whatever I needed, but if I found my way back to Oxenraith, I thought there would probably be some scholars willing to help me out. There would obviously be demand in Earris for a cheap light source that didn’t require a Brand.

After I’d laid down, but before I fell asleep, I watched Alloha pick up a stick and float it in the air above her. She then floated it over to the bundle of sticks Jay had left by the fire and two more of those sticks lifted up. She gently deposited all three into the fire. “That’s neat,” I said.

“Yeah,” Alloha agreed. “I need to touch wood to manipulate it, but I found out a while ago that if wood touches wood I’m currently controlling, that’s enough.”

“What’s the limit?” I asked. “That was three pieces at once. Can you do ten? Twenty?”

“It’s just a weight limit,” Alloha explained. “But controlling multiple pieces at once takes concentration. That’s why I prefer my spear. It even has a metal tip, so it’s a lot more dangerous than some random stick.”

I was kind of jealous that I hadn’t gotten some kind of telekinesis Skill myself. Laying there, I remembered that I still had a bunch of MP to spend before I went to sleep. I conjured three potatoes while I considered what to manifest.

MP: 78 >>> MP: 66

I did some math and realized I was one point shy of being able to conjure another batch of three potatoes in addition to a manifestation. “Hey, Alloha?” I asked. “What happens if you try to spend more MP than you have?”

“When you spend everything, you just get tired,” Alloha said. “If you spend more than you have, you pass out. You can fight sleep for a bit, but if you keep going, you’ll get a hangover when you wake up. My mom told me you could kill yourself doing that when I was a kid, but I’m not sure if that’s actually true. It is dangerous, though.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s all I needed to know.” It sounded like the risk of spending one MP more than I had was pretty minimal. I waited a minute and conjured three more potatoes.

MP: 66 >>> MP: 54

If I conjured something with Manifest Inspiration with that much MP left, it would send me right to sleep. I wouldn’t really be able to get much use out of whatever I manifested, but it would be useful just to get some practice. I thought about the spiders we were planning to face. A gun would probably handle them reasonably quickly. I’d used guns in my video games, but never actually held one in real life. It seemed like something that would be worth practicing, considering the slight hiccups I’d had with my laptop. I wanted to keep it simple. Something reliable that could go full-auto if I needed it to. What came to mind was an AK-47. It was supposed to be a pretty rugged gun that wouldn’t jam easily, and I’d seen versions of it in so many movies and games, with that iconic ammunition mag that curved forward. I held an image of the gun in my mind and manifested it.

MP: 54 >>> MP: -1

A pop-up flashed over my vision.

Negative MP.

Debuff acquired. Mental Exhaustion.

Intelligence: -2

Forced Sleep in 47 seconds.

46 seconds…

45 seconds…

The warning wasn’t entirely unexpected, but appreciated. I took the little time I had left to study the gun that had appeared in my hand. It looked just like I expected it to. I wasn’t exactly sure how to operate it, but I assumed it would be as simple as sliding back the lever above the handle and squeezing the trigger. I just didn’t want to test that out when the others were trying to get to sleep. I wasn’t exactly sure of the finer details. I thought there was supposed to be a safety trigger somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find the release to pop out the mag either.

Maybe… my uncertainty was why those details were missing? There was only one lever to pull, so I pulled it. I’d seen characters in movies use it before. I looked in the dark slot that opened up and didn’t see any sign of bullets. It seemed like I might have made some kind of prop gun with all of the looks, but none of the functionality.

“What’s that?” Alloha asked. She was sat up in her blanket looking at the gun I’d manifested in the light of the fire.

I dropped the gun beside me. “Just a toy,” I said. “I’ll work on the design more tomorrow. Need to… sleep.” The fog of exhaustion was closing in. I dropped back on my pillow and closed my eyes. The countdown timer said I still had 16 seconds left, but I was ready to go under immediately.

As I laid there in the silence of the evening I heard Alloha’s blankets rustle as she pulled them back over herself. I also heard the crackling of the fire. Then… something else. A whispered conversation. I strained to hear what was being said, though I couldn’t identify the speakers.

“…not asleep yet,” one speaker whispered. “Wait another minute.”

Something told me whoever was whispering was waiting for me to fall asleep. I only had a few seconds left before I’d be forced into unconsciousness, but I realized I could change that. While laying as still as possible—so anyone watching me would assume I was falling asleep—I activated my Skill to drain off that extra point of HP I’d gained from eating Torra’s soup.

HP: 93/101 >>> HP: 92/101

MP: -1 >>> MP: 0

Though I didn’t feel noticeably less tired, the countdown timer on my exhaustion debuff updated with a new time that was measured in minutes instead of seconds. I waited and did my best to slow my breathing. Before too long, I heard the whispering continue.

“Okay, I think he’s out. Are you going to tell me what you saw?”

“There was nothing to see,” the other whisperer replied. “He might have spotted me, I’m not sure. There was a moment when he looked in my direction.”

“Well, what did he do?”

“Just what he said he was going to do. He buried the guts and came back. Why did you think he was going to do anything different?”

“I’m not sure. Those idiots I had tail him went missing. Maybe it’s nothing, but rolling all weals is strange for someone so small.”

“It is,” the other speaker agreed.

“Why did you recruit him if you had doubts? You should have run it by me first.” So… one of the speakers was probably Grant. He was the one that had “recruited” me.

“It wasn’t my fault,” the one I thought was Grant replied. “I just wanted to see what he’d roll, and we needed someone that could roll three weals anyway if we wanted this contract.”

“I’ll keep watching,” the other person whispered.

“And what if he turns out to be—”

“Then I’ll take care of it. Now, get to sleep.”

Carefully, I cracked open a single eyelid and looked across the fire to where Grant was sleeping. A dark shape was moving away from him, off towards the forest. Alloha and Torra were both sleeping soundly around the fire. That meant the person he’d been whispering his little conspiracy to was either Victoria—who hadn’t bedded down near the rest of us—or Jay—who was supposed to be out taking first watch. That didn’t really narrow it down. I felt like I should have been able to fit the pieces together, but my mind was too foggy. It’s not like they were planning to cut my throat in the night. It could wait until tomorrow.

I drifted off to a fitful nightmare of being trapped in my childhood bedroom. No matter how I banged on the door and pleaded to be let out, it wouldn’t open.