“Wait,” Leon said, wondering about their testing methodology. He had tried to figure out stats before but didn’t have an accurate way to measure strength. “How did you figure that out? Did a gym get teleported into the forest?”
Since part of a house had been teleported in, Leon didn’t see why a gym couldn’t as well. It was the only way he could make sense of how they measured their strength so accurately.
Sophia shook her head. “No gym. All of the ruins here are really old and have weird stuff in them, like crystals and stone tablets.”
“So,” Leon said, ignoring his desire to ask about the mysterious crystals and tablets, “how did you figure out the real-world value for one stat point?”
“We fled into a cave when the monsters from the city showed up,” Claire said, waving her spoon about. “We were trapped until we stumbled into a big portal thing. It was like a crack in a mirror, sending us here when we ran into it. We quickly met up with a few random people before we bumped into a platoon of soldiers. Or is it called a squad? Anyway, there were ten soldiers and they were all aware of how much they could lift. When they unlocked their status sheets a few days later, we calculated that one point in Body was equal to about fifty kilograms on bench press.”
Leon frowned, noting the obvious fact that the girls were currently alone. Some ideas appeared in his mind as to why they had separated from the main group, and none of them were good. Numbers meant safety. Leaving a group would only happen if they were forcefully separated, kicked out, or everyone else died.
He wondered if he should even broach the question when Sophia huffed.
“Screw them. All of those bastards probably lied about how much they could lift anyway.”
Leon glanced at Claire. “What’s this about?”
“Well,” Claire muttered, scratching her cheek. “It’s a bit embarrassing.”
“I understand. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t-”
“I hope Tyler bled out and died.”
Leon looked at Claire with questions in his eyes, but she ignored him.
“I doubt it,” Claire said, looking at her sister. “They have military first aid kits and the injury wasn’t that bad in the first place.”
“That damn pervert,” Sophia huffed, crossing her arms. “I hope a goat bit his willy off.”
This time, Leon was the one to choke on his squirrel soup. “Okay, I need some context here.”
“Let me start from the beginning,” Claire said, letting out a weak sigh. “Tyler is the commander of the soldiers we met up with. They don’t call him by name, obviously, only ‘sergeant’. We all followed his orders.”
Bumping into a squad of soldiers must’ve felt like having their prayers answered. The safety and assurance of being with trained soldiers, especially trapped in a place full of colourful vegetation and hyper-aggressive fauna, would allow even the most anxious person to relax.
How bad was Tyler for two young girls to abandon the group?
“Based on Sophia’s cursing, he doesn’t sound like a good guy. Is that why you left the group?”
“He wasn’t a good guy,” Claire said, both of them shaking their heads. “The only way I can describe him is that he’s an arrogant, small-minded bully, and that’s me using child-friendly language. No one could argue with his choices or else he would threaten us with corporal punishment. We mainly hunted and ate this type of goat that had glowing golden fur. Sergeant Tyler would task the women with cooking since ‘the men did everything else’, at least according to him.”
“One afternoon,” Sophia growled, taking over for Claire, “we stopped to rest and eat dinner. The soldiers always dished before anyone else. They would also have seconds and polish off any leftovers, but one day we got unlucky and only found a scrawny old goat that couldn’t keep up with the herd. When the stew ran out before any of the soldiers could grab a second helping, one of them decided to confiscate a civilian’s food.”
“The man kicked up a big fuss about having his food stolen, of course, but Tyler said that keeping his men healthy was a higher priority than feeding a ‘freeloader like the rest of the women’. The man had a few choice words for Tyler until he got his nose broken by the butt of a rifle. No one complained after that.”
An image of the man appeared in Leon’s mind, the girl’s stories helping him to get an understanding of who Tyler was. He sounded like a regular asshole, but he could just as well be a narcissist who always needed to be the most important person in the room. Since he and his buddies were so great, there was no need for fairness.
They were entitled to more food by nature of existing.
“You must be joking? How can he get away with acting like a dictator in front of a bunch of people?”
“Dude,” Claire said, laughing in his face, “they all had military rifles and body armour. We had about thirty people with us in total and the second biggest group after the soldiers was a family of five, three of whom were children. It was safe with them, we were fed, and they were leading us out of this weird dimension. Some of us whispered about leaving the group in private but we decided it was best to wait until we escaped back to Earth first, giving us a chance to flee to a larger military outpost or something.”
“That could be a good way to deal with him,” Leon said, nodding at their plan. “When you all escape, you can let him take you to his commanding officer then get him demoted and punished.”
“No, we were just going to run away.”
“What? Why would you do that? In times like these, bad people need to be punished. And who better to do the punishing than a good old military court?”
Claire gave him a pitying smile, reminding him of a doting parent. “Since we’re technically at a war, everyone is subject to martial law and, as the highest ranking officer, Tyler was the one in charge. By law, he has the authority to do anything within reason.”
“But military law doesn’t allow him to assault people, surely?”
“According to them, martial law means that the highest ranking officer has complete and total authority to do whatever they want. Breaking that guy’s nose was ‘a necessary measure to maintain group stability and keep people safe’, according to Tyler. You get the rest. As long as he doesn’t go overboard, he has free reign to do whatever he wants. Just as he has been the last two months. I’m sure he’s still a tyrant to the others, but maybe some of them parted ways as well.”
“Wait,” Leon muttered, turning to Claire. “Two months?”
“Yeah, give or take a few days.”
“You mean two weeks, right? It’s been about twelve or so days since the bombs dropped on New Year’s Eve.”
Sophia tilted her head. “No, we’ve been here for two months.”
“I don’t understand,” Leon said, rubbing his head. Had he been asleep for several weeks after getting teleported? No, that couldn’t be right. He would’ve definitely starved to death. Qi helped stave off hunger and sleep, but at the end of a long day, Leon needed to eat far more than his friends ever could in a single sitting. “Can you go back to the beginning? I think I’ve missed something in your story.”
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“We were trapped in our uncle’s cabin for about a week. Monsters started appearing from the direction of the city that was nuked, so Uncle Jonas held them off while we ran and hid in the caves nearby. A monster ran around him and chased after us, we ran into a dead end in the caves, and then a portal appeared beside us and we jumped in. We ended up here and walked around for two days until we bumped into the soldiers. After that, we explored a bunch of different places until we found the Central Plane. At least that’s what we call it.”
“The central what?”
“The pocket world we’re in now is around a few hundred metres across, same as most of the others. The Central Plane easily spans a few hundred kilometres. In the middle of all the smaller ones, it’s more or less flat and that’s about it. Well, a flat forest with two huge mountains in the middle. Anyway, back to my story. Tyler decided that the mountain was the best way to find a way out since it was high enough to scout our surroundings, so we made our way over there.”
Leon felt his hand twitch at the idea of exploring more of these strange forests. While he desperately wanted to get back to his friends and family, he also needed to get stronger. This was an opportunity, not only to grow in power but to also find other spiritual ingredients and explore more of the ruins. And if time wasn’t functioning normally, he would rather get strong in here so that he could track his friends down even faster once he escaped.
But first, he needed to confirm that time really was faster here than on Earth.
“And all of this took about two months?”
“Yeah, we spent a month and a half walking around aimlessly before we stopped bumping into people, and from there, we hiked for about two weeks before we had to separate from the others.”
Leon frowned. “…Had to?”
“Well, I was one of the first to awaken my spirit. It took me a while but I figured out how to cultivate before anyone else, allowing me a head start of an entire stage. Didn’t help much but I quickly invigorated my brain and nerves in the coming month, giving me a lot of information that the others didn’t know. I would guide the few who had awakened. Most of them were under thirty and above sixteen, including all of the soldiers after the first month. They were all young except for the sergeant, who was in his mid-thirties. He awakened his spirit after two months, but…”
“But?” Leon said, feeling his stomach sink at how Claire shifted on her sleeping bag. She was clearly uncomfortable.
“But that was also when the trouble started. Tyler didn’t think much of cultivation, labelling it nonsense like that ‘astronomy crap that women like’.”
“Isn’t it called astrology?”
“Yes, it is. I already established he’s an idiot, didn’t I? Anyway, because no one had figured out how to do anything with their Qi for the first month, cultivating largely existed as a way to fill up our resting time. Nothing changed until one of the nicer soldiers figured out how to create a skill. It’s called Empower, and it boosts all physical abilities by ten percent. That includes things like healing and brain function. The individual effects are not that noticeable, but in a fight, they stack up quite a bit.”
“That big?” Leon asked, his heart racing.
“Well,” Sophia interjected, “there’s a reason why the power of a movement is defined as a person’s strength multiplied by their speed. A ten percent increase in both will result in a much larger boost in power, and that allowed Cillian - the soldier who invented the skill - to dominate every one of his peers in friendly sparring matches.”
“That set Tyler off,” Claire continued, “which was why I wasn’t surprised when he called me to his tent to help him learn the skill.”
Claire covered her mouth and looked almost sick. “I explained some stuff to him, but he didn’t understand how to cycle the Qi around his body even after I taught him a few times. Or maybe he did, the asshole choosing to feign ignorance. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter now. When I tried to explain it again, the creep tried to put his hand on my stomach so he could ‘feel the Qi’, but when I smacked his hand away, he threatened me and…”
“You don’t have to keep going, Claire. I can figure out the rest.”
Leon felt sick just hearing about her trauma. He couldn’t image what it would’ve been like for Claire herself, especially now when she was forced to recall the event in question. Sadly, that kind of story would be the standard in the coming years. Wars had always been hotbeds for terrible crimes of every nature, women and children being the most common victims.
“Why can’t I keep going? This is my favourite part!” Claire said, uncovering her face. Her lips were curled into a manic grin to the point where she was about to burst into laughter.
“That prick thought he was so slick flirting with a teenager. The nerve, a thirty-six-year-old creep hitting on a sixteen-year-old. After he threatened me, he tried to pull my shirt up so I took a cue from his book and pulled out something of my own. Then I stabbed him in the liver with the pocket knife I pulled out. He freaked out so badly that he ran out of the tent and got caught up in some ropes, trapping himself as he cried for help like a baby.”
Leon swallowed, realising his mouth was hanging open.
“Everyone gathered around us but even after I explained, Tyler ordered the soldiers to capture me. I ran away with Sophie and accidentally stepped on the tail of a panther. We thought we were goners since it was the size of a small car, but just like a startled house cat, it freaked out and ran up a tree before realising that we weren’t attacking it. We ran away as the soldiers caught up, leaving them to deal with the big cat. They didn’t catch up after the fight, but things weren’t so easy either. We continued to the outskirts of the pocket world and hoped to find an exit until we came across you.”
“Wait, two months wasn’t the total duration of your stay? How long have you been here?”
Sophie, who had laid down beside the fire, quickly sat up and jumped back into the conversation. “About two months with the group and three weeks on our own!”
“Well, in the outside world, it’s been about twelve days. If my math is correct, one day in our world is anywhere from a few weeks to a month in this place.”
No wonder Claire was so close behind him. In three months, she had advanced as much as he did in two weeks. Of course, the first month had been spent awakening her spirit while the next was spent figuring out how to cultivate. After that, she’d made the same progress in about a month that Leon did in two weeks, which made him feel quite good since she was the first cultivator he had met. Without reference points it was impossible to know if he was fast or slow, but as it turned out he was almost twice as fast.
Maybe it was easier to cultivate on earth?
Sophia beamed. “We’ve only been here for a few days? That means we still have time to save Uncle Jonas, right? I’ve been so worried about him.”
“I hope so,” Claire said, patting Sophia’s back. She sounded confident while her expression, which Sophia couldn’t see, was anything but. “I really do.”