When I woke up, the first thing I remembered was that conversation I’d overheard the night before. The crisp morning air had my mind much less addled than it had been when I was dozing off. I wondered if this entire contract was some kind of trap. Apparently, Grant had either directly or indirectly sent those thieves after me. It was possible he would try to arrange for me to have an “accident” while we were fighting these spiders. Based on the hushed whispers, I figured it was safe to say there was only one other person in on it with him: Jay or Victoria. Both of them had been unaccounted for while I’d been taking care of the owl guts. I counted myself lucky that whoever it was hadn’t gone back to check that the bones were where I buried them, or I’d be at risk of discovery.

Victoria had been fairly aloof, so she seemed like she was capable of it. Jay had also told me the footprints I found were female. That Alloha had been sleeping during the whispered meeting with Grant told me she was no longer a suspect, but I couldn’t yet eliminate Jay. He had plenty of reason to dislike me, and it would be easy to just tell me the footprints I found were someone else’s. Either of them could have been the one whispering to Grant last night. All evidence considered, I thought Victoria was a better fit, but I needed to rule out Jay. I’d have to keep my eye on both of them in case they tried to “take care” of me. And… maybe it would be prudent to not present further opportunities for anyone to discover the true nature of my Skill. I just had to get through this one contract to get certified for wood tier, then I could finish ranking to stone on my own.

Torra was moving from bedroll to bedroll to make sure everyone was up. When he nudged me, I sat up right away. My body tried complaining about the lack of cushioning I’d subjected it to. I was glad I didn’t have to listen and could instead shove my various aches and pains to the side. My feet were blistered from yesterday’s walk, though. That would have to be dealt with at some point.

Next to me, Alloha stretched her arms out at crazy angles before getting up. I had to avert my eyes for modesty’s sake when I saw how little she was wearing under her blanket. She didn’t seem concerned as she got dressed. “What’s for breakfast?” she asked Torra in a cheery voice. Aside from him, she was the only one yet out of bed.

I fished a potato off the ground from those I’d summoned before falling asleep. There was an impression of an AK-47 in the dirt next to it, but the actual gun had evaporated. I had a somewhat fuzzy memory of manifesting a pathetic imitation of a real gun. I’d have to give my next manifest more careful consideration. “We could have potatoes for breakfast,” I offered to Alloha.

She wrinkled her brow at me. “Are those really a breakfast food?”

“They’re an every meal food,” I insisted as I gathered up the rest of them. “Hash browns are great. You just shred the potatoes and fry them in oil. You usually add salt, but I bet Torra could make them even better with his Skill.”

“I guess I could try them,” Alloha said. “You sure know a lot of ways to prepare potatoes.”

“I better, because otherwise I’m going to get sick of them.”

“Give it time,” Torra said. “I’ve never met someone with that Brand that actually wanted to eat them.”

It took a few minutes for the rest of the party to rouse. Victoria was the only one that refused to get up, but Grant told Torra to leave her alone and let her miss breakfast if she wanted to be lazy. Once I explained the concept of hash browns to Torra, he produced a compact metal grater from his bag. He told me it was sometimes useful in preparing certain roots he liked to forage. He made quick work of the six potatoes from the night before while Alloha stoked the fire. Jay came back from somewhere in the woods with the soup pot from the night before full of water and started warming it up to make what he called “simi-simi tea”. When I asked about oil to fry the potatoes in, Torra told me he didn’t need any, then squeezed out a stream of his glowing liquid into the pan. It popped like oil today, even though I was certain it had acted as a thickener in the soup from the night before. Strange. The hash browns were still glowing when I got them, but despite that, they were the best I’d ever had. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, with a savory kick of onion-garlic flavor.

“We might tire of potatoes eventually,” Torra said while everyone ate. “So we’ve got dry rations when that happens.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “This came out fantastically, and there’s a hundred more ways we can prepare potatoes. They almost have all the nutrition we need to survive, though I think at a certain point, scurvy might become a problem if we don’t find any fruit.”

“No!” Alloha objected. “No more crampies! I don’t care how sweet they are. The ones I ate yesterday caught up to me in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, it was during my turn at watch,” Grant said. “It sounded miserable.”

“Least it’ll keep the bandits away,” Torra jested.

Alloha punched him in the arm. “Go ahead, laugh it up! Hey, Vince. What’s scurvy?”

“Oh, now that I think about it, that might be a strictly human illness. Don’t worry about it.” Giving it more thought, I realized the berries I’d picked might actually not be poisonous to me. It would make sense if rissians never developed the eyesight necessary to identify ripe berries that they might not even have the same requirement for vitamin C humans had. If that was true, they probably wouldn’t have to worry about scurvy. Maybe I’d eat a few later if I found them on the trail and test that theory. I certainly couldn’t eat literally anything, like most ogres, but it was possible that I leaned more in that direction than rissians.

“We should reach the spider nest today if we keep a good pace,” Grant said, while packing up his bedding. “It’ll be gettin’ dark by the time we get there, so we can just scope out a spot to camp for the night. Hit them in the morning.”

“If it’s dark when we get there, I can scout them out,” Jay said. “The contract said there were only four, but you know how contracts can be. I’m invisible at night, so I can get in and out no problem.”

“Good point,” Grant agreed. “With how our dice rolls were going, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were six or seven. We can come up with a plan after you get back from scouting.”

“I rolled fine,” I said. “Maybe it’s not so bad.”

Grant flashed a glare at me for a second, but quickly washed it away with a shake of his head. “I know,” he said. “I still don’t know how that happened.”

I realized I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Trying to remind everyone that I was special wasn’t worth it if I just pissed off the guy I already suspected might be trying to decide if he needed to have me killed. “Maybe it’s just something silly, like the spiders don’t like the taste of humans,” I said. I offered Grant a disarming smile, but it didn’t seem to have any effect.

Breakfast done, Torra finally forced Victoria out of her bedroll, and the rest of us gathered up our things. There wasn’t much. We were back on the trail in less than five minutes. We kept to the same order as last time, with Grant and Jay up front, Victoria in the middle, and Torra and Alloha in the back. I squeezed in between them.

I distantly noticed the stabbing pain of blisters on my feet and the throbbing down my back from sleeping on the ground. My new muscles were holding up fine, but I thought I’d still be a pathetic mess without the Pain Taker. Just one more reason to be thankful to the church, even if they would gladly kill me if they found out about my Skill. It was nice that I could keep pace with the others, as they didn’t seem like they’d be patient about waiting up for me.