Sky who had been in thought was interrupted as Tervain gave him a bowl, seeing this gesture, Sky pushed his body to sit upright and grabbed the bowl taking a sip.
The soup in the bowl was fully green and very thick filling up a person's stomach quickly but it was a bit bitter and tasted dull in Sky's opinion.
'Don't know what I expected but at least it's not too disappointing' Sky thought as he slowly drank the soup.
[Well It's better than what an average person eats on a daily basis in this world you know,] the shadow took the silhouette of a man with a top hat as he spoke, [It's better to humble your expectations than to be disappointed by everything.]
'Good point' Sky thought as he drank another sip of the soup.
"Can we head out tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?" Verrith asked as he finished his bowl
"Tomorrow? I think we are too injured to move that quickly." Sky responded
"But I would like to move as quickly as possible" Verrith said as he gently put the bowl aside
"You recover from serious injuries quicker probably due to our interpretation so you might be able to move tomorrow but I won't be able to move properly." Sky said as he gulped down the remaining soup and put it aside, "but if you are really that insistent then we can move tomorrow if Tervain agrees to go with us."
"Well I'm willing to go but what changes your plan if I go or don't go? I mean, I doubt I can make that big of a difference if I go with you" Tervain asked Sky with a confused look.
"Well your rotten smell will ward off most things and plus it'll be nice for someone to support me while we walk or someone to help me while we set camp especially due to our- well mostly my injuries."
"Yeah people near the grasslands don't like rotten shit, well excluding the monsters found near the middle of the grasslands."
"Monsters near mid- No actually I would like to do a bit of stretching and sleep a bit early if you don't mind" Verrith said, stopping and changing his words mid-way.
"Yeah no problem, I turn off the lamp after you decide to sleep."
[I think it's best if you ask Kyle- I mean Verrith about the location of the base since it'll be easier for the future.] The shadow spoke, now taking the silhouette of a cat.
"Well Verrith, could you tell me where the base is located?" Sky asked, taking the advice of the shadow.
'Please stop changing your form so much, it's rather a bit annoying to keep track off'
[I'll try but I won't promise you.] The shadow said as he then sat on the shadow of the bed right next to Sky's own shadow.
"The base is located in the dark woods near a large waterfall, you can use the large tree as a reference since that tree is weirdly next to our base and much larger than most trees in the woods." Verrith replied as he stretched his body with some difficulty.
Hearing this response made Sky worry a bit since while the monsters near the edge of the grasslands avoided rotten stuff, most of the monsters in the dark woods didn't.
Sky wondered if they would be fine with these injuries
You. Worried. You. Weaker. than before. The voice behind him spoke suddenly, almost startling Sky.
[I agree with him on that one, you have grown much weaker than the last time you were here, resting and enjoying yourself up there for that long rusted your skills quite a lot, I mean you didn't even use any poisonous needles or use your strings or any or your other weapons with your fight against that pursuer, this is a clear implication of your degradation of your senses.]
'I understand that, you don't need to tell me, In fact I felt the difference in strength when I couldn't even handle the recoil of the wind burst I did.' Sky thought as he looked at his left hand.
"Well I'll be turning the lamp off, sleep easy, I'll keep watch in case of any sudden trouble." Tervain spoke, bringing Sky's attention back.
And soon the lamp was turned off and Tervain left the small worn building and was gone from Sky's sight.
[Now that he's gone, I advise you take your weapon out and put the threads that helped the sword seal back up as I think you don't want another weird voice flooding your mind.]
'In a minute, wait for a while.' Sky thought as he observed Verrith and his breath, listening carefully and soon enough, Sky let out a sigh of relief and sat up right, obviously with some difficulty.
He reached out to his hand and a sword appeared from his palm.
The odd looking sword was unsheathed and carefully observed by Sky.
[Seems like there is no problems with the seal on the sword itself, maybe some of your memorised were sealed by your string wrapping around the sword rather than the seal]
'I doubt that since I have already unwrapped my string a couple times and nothing happened then.'
[Maybe the string being unwrapped wasn't a big deal when it was for a short time but since you went unconscious for a minimum of 10 hours maybe that caused new memories to flow.]
'So you are proposing that the occurrence was due to the time?' Sky thought, asking the shadow, 'But even if that was true, why does it matter now?'
[Because you are much weaker right now and you need as much power as possible and if our theory is right and the seal is fine even if we don't use the strings, then we don't need to put a portion of our power in that, allowing us to have more power in our disposal]
'I guess I could give it a try, I mean if the seal is not fully in fact, I'll regain just a bit of my memory and I can put the seal back and worst case scenario, I am a bit slow and I get another persona like you and the voice behind me.' Sky thought as he sheathed the blade and put it back into the void, this time in his right palm.
[Well let's just sleep, It'll be nice to get some rest and recover.]
"Sure" Sky said, rather disappointed at the lack of progress he made after his descent.
Sky laid back down slowly trying to sleep however with the addition of him already struggling to sleep naturally with the added fact of the weird personas sometimes speaking to him made him unable to sleep.
'This is gonna be a rough night' Sky thought as he laid on his bed with his aching body trying to get rest.
[Yeah, You should deal with your insomnia] The shadow now, barely visible in the dark spoke to him
'If only it was as easy as that.' Sky thought as he put his hands behind his head, 'I been trying to sleep for like, 2 hours'
[Actually 1 hour, 5 mins and 29 secs] The shadow spoke correcting Sky
"…"
[So how do you plan on falling asleep, any techniques in your mind?]
'Yeah I got one, ignoring your dialogue and boring myself to sleep.'
[…You really are shit at this whole "sleep" thing aren't you?]
Sky turned to the side on his bed ignoring the shadow.
'1 sheep, 2 sheep....' Sky counted sheep as he tried to sleep
…
…
…
'871sheep, 872sheep….' However for Sky he just couldn't sleep even after counting for almost an hour.
[Yeah I think we both can see that this won't work] The shadow spoke to him pointing out the obvious.
'…So? You got any other bright ideas?' Sky thought as he judged the shadow for its remark.
[Hm…..]
'That's what I thought' Sky thought as he replied to the shadow's lack of words.
As Sky and the shadow were bickering quietly, some rustling sound came from his side.
This made Sky look over to the side and there he saw Verrith sitting upright with a few drops of sweat on his head as if he had just had a nightmare.
Verrith looked a bit stressed but his breathing was rather calm which was very odd for his situation.
He looked at his hands that were trembling and then let out a sigh of relief as he saw his hands, his shaking hand slowly calmed down and he took a deep breath.
"I…I need to stay calm" Verrith said in a quiet tone.
Seeing this, Sky who was laying down on his bed pondered if he should comfort Verrith who seemed to have had a nightmare but he quickly made up his mind and closed his eyes once again.
And the hours passed in silence.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
A While later, Tervain shook Sky awake.
"What?" Sky asked with a very lazy tone, his eyes barely open
"I thought it was time to head out now, so I woke you up."
"You know there's like still fifteenth-ish hours until the sun comes up right?" Sky asked, looking at Tervain with tired eyes.
"Yeah I know but Verrith asked me to make you up now since he wanted to head out now" Tervain said as he pointed to his back at Verrith who was already fully ready.
"Alright, give me a minute I'll get ready." Sky said as he reluctantly woke up, his body still aching in pain.
"Also where did you put my cloak and armor?" Sky asked Tervain
"Oh, don't worry about that, I brought it, here it is." Tervain replied, giving Sky his light armor and black cloak back.
"Thanks." Sky said as he grabbed it and took off his bandage to wear his armor.
There were a few wounds that hadn't healed and quite a lot of bruises and red marks on his body but he ignored them for now and wore the light armor along with his cloak, with some difficulty though.
"Yeah, I'm basically ready, what about you?" Sky asked Tervain
"Yeah I'm good, just waiting for you. I have gotten everything here so no need to worry." Tervain replied pointing at the large, somewhat worn traveling bag made with animal or monster hide.
"I see," Sky said as he yawned, "Well let's go I guess""
[Moving this early and in the middle of the dark is dangerous especially since your body is still barely healed enough for you to walk so i would really recommend you just convince them to wait for at least a half more day]
'It's better to just agree then try and convince them to wait for another 18 hours'
[I still don't like the fact the days here are 36 hours long and that for some reason at least 28 or 30 hours are just nighttime, like how does that even make sense logically?]
[Go? Right now? Come on even you should know that's absurdly stupid especially at night, I would at least try and convince them to wait till sunrise.]
'It'll be fine, I think if we combine the white stone and the rotten smell, we can traverse through the grasslands'
[Are you sure you'll be able to manage the way through the dark woods though? Because I'm pretty sure the way we are supposed to go involves going through the dark woods mid path and they don't care about rotten flesh, So you'll have to rely on that white stone and are you certain that it'll be enough?]
"…"
'…'
Sky turned silent both in speech and thought as he stared at the shadow on the door talking to him.
[Look I understand that the days here is 36 hours long and only about 6-8 of them are actually in day time, so often not you'll have to go out in the nighttime but I think it'll won't hurt to at least go out in the day for the first day of travel.]
'I'm sorry but I already are up my mind and I don't wanna think too deeply about the consequences right now, so I'm just gonna ignore you.' Sky thought replying to the shadow on the door as he grabbed the handle and pushed it open.
[???] The shadow looked in confusion as multiple question marks could be visible floating around its head, [Are you kidding me, this is just- No I'll just stay quiet, it'll be illogical to try and convince you anymore.]
As the shadow admitted defeat, Sky began to walk his body aching in a bit of pain with every step.
"I'll lead the way, although the first day of the journey should be smooth sailing." Verrith said as he walked in front of them
"Sure, let's keep up the pace" Tervain said replying to Verrith with a bit of enthusiasm
'Well It's gonna be tough but I made sure to not carry anything heavy so I should be able to keep up' Sky thought but his hopes were soon shattered as within 4 hours, Sky began to fall behind, his breathing becoming more heavy and sweat visible on his face while Kyle was only stumbling a bit due to his leg injury and temporarily eye damage he received from taking those punches from the pursuer but other than that the 2 were fine.
And after another 2 hours, Sky couldn't keep up and had to swallow his pride and reached out to both of them, "Hey could you slow down a bit? I'm falling behind."
Hearing Sky's pleas, both of them turned to look at him and then looking at each other then back to Sky again.
"Aren't you a bit slow? I feel like we are walking at a pretty normal pace" Verrith said, confused at the problem Sky was facing right now.
"If you consider 17 Km/h a slow waking speed then I think you need to check your common sense and reflect on it until you re-learn it again but this time properly."
"Now that's a mouthful" Tervain spoke in between, commenting on Sky's choice in dialogue. "But I feel like you have to try your best to keep up at least, since from what I heard, I believe you are close to Verrith in physical capabilities."
"Hey I'm far from my prime also the reason why I could overpower Verrith was because he was not in a proper state of mind after the so called "trap" he fell into and I just had to knock him out to defeat him but I would have probably lost if I focused on injuring him rather than knocking him out with minimal injuries to prevent him from fully utilizing his soul's interpretation." Sky replied back almost instantly, trying to defend himself.
"I see but I feel like you don't need to make your dialogues so long and explain everything at once or give context to everything." Tervain said, his arms on his chin, "I'm telling you, if you do that then your dialogue would be too lengthy."
"I see, but My point still stand, you guys need to slow down a bit I can't catch up"
"Well…" Tervain said as he thought deeply, "Well what about this? We keep up the pace but in return we feast earlier?"
"Hmm…" Sky said, thinking about the offer for a bit, "Yeah I'm fine with it"
"Well then I guess that settles it."