Chapter Twenty-Two: A gentleman will walk but never run

“WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” The sound was deafening.

Marc awoke, and almost had a heart attack. A bear was screaming into his ear. No, that was not a bear, that was the big pro-wrestler-shaped man, Grenn. Why was he screaming? What was going on?

Marc had been living a fairly relaxed schedule since he had taken up residence in Rynan’s cabin. Rynan herself seemed to have no schedule at all. He honestly wasn’t sure if she slept at all. She would just wander in and out of the cabin, wander through the garden and the clearing, sometimes popping in and out of the forest. He didn’t actually know if she even did other things required by humans. There was an outhouse behind the cabin that was shockingly clean that Marc had been using, but he had never seen Rynan go there once, and he would never, ever ask about it.

He had become used to getting up in the mid-morning, and Rynan would show up sooner or later to talk and eat breakfast together. This screaming thing was new.

“How are you still sleeping? The sun is already up!” Grenn complained, then lifted Marc off the bed by the shoulders like he was a doll.

Marc desperately tried to blink the sleep from his eyes and gain his balance. Luckily, Grenn quickly dropped him onto his feet and propped him up while he regained his balance and caught his breath.

“I’m awake!” He protested dazedly while rubbing his ears from the assault they had received.

“I thought you had recovered. Rynan said you were fine now.” Grenn eyed the small, thin young man critically.

“I am… I mean, I’m fine now. I just… what time is it?” He asked, still trying to get his bearings.

“It’s already past 3Air. The sun is up. Time to get out and begin training!” Grenn explained cheerfully, then he walked out of the room. Probably to look for food Marc thought to himself.

3Air? Oh yeah. Kira had gone over some of the basics with him last night. The time system had seemed simple at first. The length of a day was basically the same as Earth. It was a parallel world after all. But the time and dates used were different. 36 hours to a day, broken into four quarters of nine hours each. 36 minutes each hour, each minute slightly shorter than a minute on Earth. Also, it seems that this world had no concept of time zones. Time was the same, everywhere on the planet. It seemed absurd at first, but after Kira had explained it, it had made some sense. He had no idea how people knew what time it was, however. He had never seen Rynan or Grenn look at anything that looked like a watch or a clock. Kira confirmed that the understanding of time was shared, but she had no access to anything regarding the technology of timekeeping yet.

He checked the clock that Kira had made for him as a status pop-up window. The virtual clock was a simple dial. There were four quadrants, the upper right was red for fire, the bottom right was blue for water, and the bottom left was green for Earth and the last was yellow for air. Indeed the floating clock showed three ticks into the yellow quarter. Kira had also added a shaded overlay to the clockface that showed night hours. This indicated that the sun had. Just risen.

Marc wasn’t a night owl, although he did enjoy sleeping in on the weekends. He actually preferred earlier shifts so he didn’t have to drive home in the dark. Last night however he was up late discussing things with Kira. She was even able to augment his vision so he didn’t feel like he was sitting in the dark after the lanterns had been extinguished.

“It looks like we are starting training now.” He thought to Kira. “Maybe we should set an alarm for sunrise.”

《That’s a wonderful idea! Done!》

Marc was immediately suspicious of the quick and cheerful response. He was about to ask her when Grenn came back in grabbed the trousers and threw them at Marc.

“Come on. Daylight is wasting! Let’s go!”

Marc sighed and started getting dressed. He picked up the socks, eyeing them suspiciously.

“Ah! Yeah, let me show you.”

His nightmare-given form, Grenn showed Marc how to attach the garters to some loops on the inside of the trouser legs. Humiliated, there was nothing Marc could do but take it.

Dressed and carrying the jacket, the pair entered the main room where Rynan was pouring some juice into two cups on the table.

“Here, drink this before you go out. I’ll have some breakfast ready for when you finish.” She chirped cheerfully.

Marc had wanted to mention what he had learned about unlocking his magic, but Grenn grabbed a cup of juice and shoved the other into his hands, pushing him towards the door.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Drink it quickly. We are starting late as it is.” He seemed to be enjoying this.

“First we will start with a light run to gauge your stamina. I hope you have fully recovered from your injuries. I want to see how strong you are at a baseline.”, He cocked his head while looking at Marc, pondering if he should mention the next part.

“After that, We can do some light sparring. We will check your overall body strength and reflexes. This should give me an idea of what we have to work with.”

Grenn quickly downed the cup of juice and handed it back to Rynan.

Marc was perhaps in the best shape he had been in years. That was not to say he was in good shape. He worked in an office every day after all. He didn’t jog or exercise regularly, or ever to be honest. There was also the fact that he pretty much ate garbage most of his life. Fast food, processed food, and the like. His teenage body had so far protected him from the worst of the effects of his lifestyle, but those days were nearing the end, and he certainly hadn’t earned any goodwill toward a healthy physique.

He took a large sip of the juice, then handed the mostly full cup back to Rynan, took a deep breath, and followed Grenn out the front door.

Training amounted to what Marc imagined boot camp for the Marines was like. He wondered if this was what children in this world did. What kind of muscle-brained society was this?

The clearing beside the cabin was easily over half a mile in circumference, making that around a kilometer. Kira had promised him that using metrics was going to be useful, but he wasn’t so sure she wasn’t just messing with him. Still, it was easier as Kira placed a conversion window up for him. All he had to do was think of some distance and the corresponding number in metrics popped up.

《Eventually, we can switch to all local measurements, but I currently don’t have enough basis to switch everything over cleanly,》

“Then why switch to metrics? If we are going to have to switch again later?” Marc thought to Kira.

《What I have determined is that nearly all numerical systems use base-10 progression. It only makes sense, you are all ape babies anyway. How someone in your history got it in their head that it was a good idea to base measurements on random objects is beyond perplexing.》

Grenn pulled Marc from his daydreaming and over to the edge of the clearing.

He started by having Marc run laps around the clearing. 10 to start. After the first lap, Marc’s stamina was already down by thirty percent. Halfway through the second lap, Marc was dying. Grenn eyed Marc worriedly and started running, well more like jogging behind Marc shouting encouragement.

“My youngest daughter can run faster than this and go three laps without breaking a sweat. She is SEVEN.”

After the second lap, Marc collapsed into a heap.

“Get up. Eight more.”

“Come on! I’m spent.” He protested.

Grenn knelt right in front of Marc’s face.

“Having seen you run, I can’t think of a single beast in this forest that wouldn’t be able to run you down in seconds. How long were you out on the hills before the rabbits found you?”

Marc wheezed and tried to marshal his thoughts and his strength. He tried to recall the encounter.

“I don’t know.” He took a few more forced breaths. “ Maybe five minutes?” He tried to focus on using the slightly shorter minutes of this world when he spoke.

“Yeah, that sounds about right. If you leave this clearing, I would give you about half that long before something makes a meal of you.” Grenn stood back up, then offered his hand.

“Let’s go. Eight more laps”

Marc honestly wanted to cry, but grabbed the giant hand and pulled himself up. Maybe it was futile, but he wanted to see this through.

It was nearly 5Air before he managed to clear the tenth loop. He had to stop many times to catch his breath, Over an hour by his old reckoning. Each time Grenn was there to push him to continue, harshly, but supportively. Around the middle of the ninth loop, he saw the pop-up.

ACHIEVEMENT: RUN MORE THAN 5 KILOMETERS

【SKILL ACQUIRED: MARATHONER [1] STR +1, CON +1, SR +0.5/MIN】

For the last lap, Marc noticed that not only was the run getting easier, but the speed at which his stamina was recharging nearly doubled. He was able to finish the last lap without even having to stop and take a break. That isn’t to say he was in great shape when he finished, however.

Falling down into a pile by the garden Marc was completely spent. He couldn’t remember ever pushing himself this hard. He was drenched in sweat and his lungs burned with the unfamiliar amount of effort. Surely his old smoker’s body would have never made it past the first lap. Still, He was happy to get the new skill.

Grenn, who had followed along behind Marc looked at the pile of a person in front of him with a skeptical expression. To be honest, there was not a lot to work with here.

Rynan had come out to observe the last bit and she and Grenn shared a look. Then she reached out and a fountain of cool water doused the collapsed figure on the ground.

Marc shot up.

“COLD!”

“Well, It looks like you survived! That’s good.”

Marc climbed to his feet, now shivering.

Rynan waved her hand again and the water evaporated into a blast of mist falling off of him as if he had walked through a smoke machine’s blast.

Then Grenn reached up and put his hand on his shoulder. The baseball glove-sized hand started to glow faintly with a reddish light. Instantly Marc felt a wave of warmth spread throughout his body.

After the cold bath, the warmth rejuvenated him. His muscles relaxed and the pain in his muscles slowly started to melt away.

“Thanks. That helps.” He looked at both of them. Then he yelled.

“MAGIC!”

They both looked at Marc after his surprise exclamation. Rynan was about to say something when an excited Marc cut her off.

“No, I mean, I know. I know how to unlock my Magic!” He yelled excitedly. He had forgotten the information Kira had shared. He had finally learned how to unlock his magic skills, but he needed Rynan and Grenn to help him.

The two mentors shared another look, the Rynan spoke. Then she turned to Marc with a gentle smile.

“That’s great. Let’s go inside and have some breakfast while you tell us what you have learned.”

Rejuvenated by the cold bath and warm blast from Grenn, Marc jumped to his feet. He was finally going to be able to use Magic.