The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully, there was a nagging feeling in Davin's mind that they were being followed, he couldn’t provide any evidence to back up this feeling, but the thought kept niggling at the corners of his mind, honestly, he wouldn't be surprised if he was just projecting to make the whole thing seem more interesting. Memories flowed in and out over the rest of the day, mostly of road trips, long drives where he was stuck in the car with little or nothing to do but stare out the window, although this time he couldn’t just nap and let the world pass around him and then he just show up at his destination. Hugh wouldn’t let him mainly, he was warned that if he tried the spell would pop and everything would drop to the ground like a bag of bricks. The urge to do just that was a constant for him, just to hop onto the floating chest and ride it like a magic carpet.

Davin was astounded by the odds and end that he'd picked up, there was a good amount of berries, nuts, and even some edible barks, the sheer number of insects was unsettling, not only did he find more of the beetles that Hugh seemed to be excited about, but he found several different other bugs that seemed to be edible, even after picking up their pace, he still gathered enough along the trails and paths that ran alongside the roads to feed the two of them for a few days, he was excited to try and set a few traps for the night to see if he could get some small game for them so they can have something more meaty. He hadn't seen much for small game on their way, so he was hoping to see what there was, he was sure that the lack of animals was due to the fact that they were still so close to the road.

Hugh on the other hand had been busy, measuring the ambient energy along the road, comparing it to notes that were in the large book he was working out of, most of it all seeming to be within acceptable limits for what has been tracked since the creation of the road. Hugh found the whole thing rather tedious, but it gave him something to focus on while Davin stumbled through the woods, that made him chuckle several times, but he had to admit that he was getting a good amount of food, even this close to the road. Which seemed strange to him since the roads should be fairly heavily traveled, this being one of the easiest routes to the West. Since they weren't sure what they were looking for, he was just trying to get a baseline on the area around them, the road was one of the few places other than some of the major settlements in the wilds that had regularly had these surveys done, once they were in woods they would only have projections to go off of, but that is assuming that the anomalies would interrupt the basic energies more than anything else.

As the sun started to dip into the horizon they decided to break for camp, pulling off of the main road and started to look for a clearing, there were several supposedly staged along the road, but based on how they hadn't seen anyone else on the road all day made Hugh concerned, it could just be an off day, but from what he'd read, the roads were used heavily, especially as the seasons began to change, while yes, they were still primarily in spring here, he couldn’t help but feel that it was too quiet. He tried to make sure that the spot they set up was clear enough so that he could set up an alarm for them so that they could sleep without too much interruption. Davin had said that he wanted to set up watches, and while when they had started their trip Hugh had felt it wasn't needed since they were so close to the road, but after the roads being so empty, he didn’t really trust that the night would be smooth… he hated the feeling, but Davin had mentioned it earlier in the day about him feeling like they were being followed, and he was beginning to agree. They started pulling out their gear, Hugh not having camped before felt clueless in the whole ordeal, but Davin seemed to have a pretty good handle on it.

"You're sure you have this?" Hugh asked while Davin unrolled the tent, opting to only set up the one since they'd be taking turns on who was on watch.

"Yup. I got this, not set up one like this since I was a kid, but I think I can figure it out if you can get started on a fire, or did you have some other gizmo in your kit for cooking on the road?" Davin started locking the sticks together.

"If I did, I'd have pulled it out earlier, you're our resident cook, I'm surprised you didn’t have one." Hugh started gathering some of the twigs and branches that were littered over their campsite.

"Figured I'd ask, Jes has actually told me about the adventuring stoves, she said that they were really expensive, and if I wanted one I'd have to buy it myself."

The tent quickly took shape as they chatted, Hugh had gathered a decent amount of wood, and Davin had it set before the first sparks were tossed into the wood to start a fire.

"That was far less awful than some of the tents I've had to put together, and it's weird to see one so small honestly."

Davin had started to pull out his cooking tools, looking over some of the odds and ends that they had gathered through the day, some he needed to process, others he wanted to use tonight, he started with prepping the herbs that he wanted to dry since he knew that many of them would be just as good dry as they were fresh. Then he started to prep the few things that he wanted to get going for tonight, some of the greens that he'd gotten would make for a good salad, and the berries and nuts would be good add-ins as well as make for a good trail mix. He wished he'd have planned for salad, he would have made sure that he had the parts for making a dressing, but he didn’t have enough cooking oil to sacrifice it to make some. Prepping the insects was a first for him, they just seemed to all be put into the pan with the lid on and then they were set near the fire, not on, just close enough to it so that the pan would get hot enough to make them dead… After that, they would be tossed in a little oil and then some herbs and spices, Davin had enough to make several batches so he figured that he would make a few different flavors just for variety.

Hugh worked on a spell, this would be his first time using it in the wild, he'd only had a basic use of it back with the mages, so this would be a stress test for a lot of his spells, he was glad that he could use as many rituals as he could, it would have been a trial if he had to true cast this many spells in a single day. Rituals were handy, take a little longer to cast than the ones he was used to, but the fact that he could do it all day long felt good. The spell that he was putting up, was a spell for warding the area against intruders, it should let them know if there is anyone that enters the area while they were either sleeping or on watch. He idly watched as Davin prepped the plants that he'd found, he was at a loss about most of them, but based on the mutterings that he heard, Davin had a good idea of what to do for most of them. After a while the smell of roasting veggies and herbs filled the area around them, it made his mouth water.

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"What are you cooking? It smells delicious." Hugh broke as the smells made his stomach grumble.

"Well we have some potatoes roasting, have some herbs drying over there, I have a bit of dried meat rehydrating with some water and some rosemary and a few onions that I found." Davin's voice trailed off as he tried to remember what all he had going on.

"You found onions, potatoes, rosemary?" Hugh sounded surprised.

"Wild ones, not as nice as the ones that are farm raised, but they'll do, oh, I found some garlic too and I have that roasting too."

"How the hell are there so many edible plants this close to the road?" Hugh asked with a bit of disbelief in his voice.

"Oh, that’s easy. Anything that has ever fallen off of the other vehicles would have seeded and set up, so there were lots of common veggies." Davin pointed over to the small pile that he'd been cleaning.

"Wow, that should set us up for a bit, too bad we don’t have a bag of preservation to make them last longer." Hugh sighed but smiled as he enjoyed the smells in the air.

"I looked into some different bags, and they were all really expensive. They are definitely on the wish list." Davin said the last part longingly.

"Wishlist? Is that another one of those things that I wouldn't understand?"

"Likely, think of it as things that I want to get someday."

Hugh shrugged, swaying his head in agreement. "Sounds pretty straightforward."

"Okay, now that the spell is up I can go set some game traps?"

"Yup, I'll keep an eye on things, is there anything special that I need to do?" Hugh pointed at everything that Davin had going on.

"Oh, just keep the fire, dinner should be ready in about an hour, I should be back before then." Davin stood, grabbed his pack, and started walking into the woods.

"Have fun." Hugh chuckled as Davin walked.

Davin stepped passed the threshold of their camp and kept walking, he wanted to get far enough away that he couldn’t smell the smoke from the fire, he kept his eyes open for any fresh signs of game while he walked. This was still new to him, he knew some of the basics, scat, prints, and broken branches. While still new to the whole thing, he didn't feel helpless, but the fact that there were so many wild plants and yet they saw almost no wildlife for the later part of the day had Davin on his toes, there was something out here, there had to be, there wasn't really any reason for it to be as empty as it was. Setting the few snares that he did, didn't take too long, he was glad he'd gotten the extra supplies, knowing how to do this was weird. He had memories of watching several survival shows when he was growing up, but he never put any of the knowledge into practice, getting used to his body going into autopilot was a work in progress. He found a few more odds and ends as he walked back to camp, feeling as though the area was still far too quiet.

Back at camp, Hugh was looking through the notes that he'd been given by the scribes, comparing the maps to what they had seen on the way in. He was really hoping that the anomalies were going to stand out so that they would have an easier way of tracking them. Hugh was still feeling anxious, he was doing it, while yes they were still only less than a day out of Edges Rest, he was on the road and looking to explore the afterlife on his own terms. The rustling in the brush just outside of camp made his heart drop, fearing the worst and then he heard the footsteps.

Hugh let out the breath he didn’t realize that he had been holding. "What the hell Davin, you just about made me jump out of my skin."

"The place does seem to have that vibe doesn’t it?" Davin added the new acquisitions to his processing pile. "Anything exciting happen while I was gone?"

"It does have a vibe, and other than leaf basking by the fire, nope nothing too exciting."

"Wait… Your book likes to bask by the fire?"

"Something about their ink drying, which is funny since all the ink should be well and dried."

"Yeah, seems so, never had a chance to back at the tower, but I guess that makes them far more cat-like than I ever really expected."

"Good to know, would hate to have that come up later and panic when the book made of paper curls up near the fire."

"Less paper and more a magical construct that looks like paper."

"Means that they shouldn’t be worried about rain?"

"Nah, Leaf hates water, says it makes their ink run."

"Speaking of weather, it's supposed to be spring right now?" Davin asked.

"Yeah, it's around mid-spring, so should be about forty more days of this then it starts to get really hot, hotter if we go further south, but with how close we are to the mountains, it will be pretty mild."

"Just makes me glad I don’t seem to have allergies anymore."

"All er gees?"

"Uh… Hay fever? Um, basically random things that exist like pollen and dust my old body would see it as if it was a poison."

Hugh just started and blinked at Davin. "What in the… What's wrong with your world? Seriously?"

"Yup, I'm just glad I didn’t have some of the more serious ones."

"More serious? Like what?"

"Nut allergies, for some people just being in the room with nuts was enough to cause a severe reaction and death."

"Death? From a nut?"

"Yes, and the funniest part, was that the most common one was basically a household staple like butter."

"That is insane, your world was nuts… next you're going to tell me someone could die from a bee sting!"

"Wow, um... Yeah, I think around fifty or sixty deaths a year."

"Six…sixty? That was basically the entire population of my village back home."

"Really? Damn, that is a small town, I worked with more people than that."

Hugh sat and stared at Davin, seemingly struggling with the information. "I… I don't know what to say to that… I can't even imagine what your world was like…"

"Eh, it wasn't all bad, there were lots of great things that I enjoyed, but at the same time, I missed out on magic, monsters, and numerous other dangers."

"Huh, that alone makes up for it. While not super common to my area, there were a few monster attacks each year." Hugh trailed off as he thought about some of the horrors of his own world.

"Eh, no point in dwelling on it, we're both in a new world, and we can explore it to our heart's content."

Hugh nodded solemnly. "When do you think we'll come across our first monster?"

"You know, now that you've brought it up when we come across our first one, I'm blaming it on you."

"Hey, wait! How is that the least bit fair?"

"Eh, no point in lingering on it, now eat your dinner." Davin dished up a bowl of veggies, pulling out some of the stewing meat and dropping it on top.

They chatted and ate, both of them talking about some of the other weird things about their worlds. The two bonded as they camped in the too-quiet woods…