Dear Diary,

On the seventh day, just to prove I'm as not-God as it is possible to be not-God, I worked my ass off.

Okay, not really. I did exercise some in the Practice Yard though.

After I finished breakfast, I sidled out of my room, listening for any other students who might have returned. I thought I heard some movement from the room next to mine, but the door was shut, so I meandered down to the main building, then up to the Practice Yard. I checked out the storage sheds in the corners. One held a bunch of scarecrows, although I guessed they might be practice targets. Another was full of assorted padded weapons. A bunch of pugil sticks, rack upon rack of near identical wooden swords, and a single rack in the back with what even I could tell were the shittiest excuses for metal swords I'd ever seen. The third shed held medieval gymnastics horses and kiddie pools, of all things. The final shed had rope, nets, a bunch of lumber, a few boxes of nails, and some hammers.

I found the thinnest rope I could and used my handy new knife to cut a six foot section. I took it out in the yard and started doing some jump rope. I always enjoyed playing around with ropes like this, although I remembered pretty quickly that without handles, I needed to tie knots at the end of the rope to keep it in my hands when my grip loosened to let it turn. I went through Mary Mack, at least as much as I could remember, then shifted to Baby Bumblebee. After that I went through whatever bits I could remember, even a few of the jody calls from ROTC worked their way in. Finally, I just made stuff up as I jumped. At some point well past noon I realized I wasn't even winded. My new body might be six kinds of disturbing, but it had endurance. I coiled my jump rope up, looped it over my shoulder, and started sprinting around the perimeter of the Yard as fast as I could. The first thing I noticed was that I could run fast. Like, track team fast. NFL running back fast. Maybe even Olympic sprinter fast, but I wasn't sure about that. What I did know was that when I came to each corner, it just felt natural to jump and bounce my feet off the corner to launch myself along the next side of the Yard.

I had no stopwatch, but I timed myself as best I could via the old 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi' method. After about two solid minutes of that, my breathing hitched a little. Not a 'about to vomit my guts up', 'full on collapse' hitch, but more of a 'I need a breather' hitch. At that point I realized that whatever training I needed, cardio wasn't high on the list. I mean, I was going to keep up at least some jump rope every day, if only to make sure I didn't turn my new body into a potato like my old one. The running maybe not so much.

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I headed back to my room. I'd barely cracked 'People's of Midgard' last night before I got sleepy enough to conk out, wooden plank mattress or not. Today I decided to check out 'Principles of Heroic Magick'.

It wasn't a dry read, by any means, but it was absolutely the least organized textbook it had ever been my misfortune to read. After slogging through a 'historic example' of some guy named 'Lug' making himself stronger, faster, and tougher through the use of 'Heroic Magick Skills', I still had no idea what a 'Heroic Magick Skill' was. At the end it gave names to the Skills Lug used, as well as potential ways to train in order to learn those skills. Just in case you're interested, his skills were 'Strong Arm', 'Swift Foot', and 'Thick Skin', because Lug apparently had the imagination of a particularly dim eggplant. Pushing on despite myself, I read the next chapter. Like a particularly annoying recipe website, the book insisted on story time fluff before each and every bit of actual knowledge it imparted. The second story was about some guy named Brad, and apparently he had some musical 'Skills', namely 'Lullaby', 'Marathon', and 'Jig of Death'. I gave that last one an appropriate amount of side eye, then slammed the book closed when the second section ended without ever actually saying what a Skill was.

I tried again with 'Historie of Phileo City' and had a bit more luck. It started with the initial settlers of the area, who seemed to be a bunch of Dan and 'half-Dan' from Iceland or maybe Greenland, who brought along a bunch of Bag servants from Greece of all places, plus a 'Grand Militia' of what sounded like Celts, with maybe a few Welsh mixed in. The land hadn't been built up when they arrived, so they built themselves a tidy little fort on a tall hill overlooking the river, then expanded outward. There were some nomadic people living nearby when the city was founded, but according to the book the Mor, ancient enemies of the Dan, attacked the locals shortly after the city was founded, and they either died out or moved into the city.

Note to self - while the Dan sound more and more like exploiting colonizers by the day, the Mor are real dickheads, if they're gonna attack somebody who just happens to live in the neighborhood their enemy just moved to.

I tried to read further, but my eyes got heavier and heavier until I fell asleep right there at my desk.