We didn’t talk much after that. Ryuji seemed to fall into a state of deep thought and I was fine with letting him think about whatever he wanted, while I cooked something up for us. The firewood gathering had taken a little bit longer than I thought, so I wasn’t confident that I’d be able to make a proper meal for us.

Still, it was a fine enough meal consisting of roasted yams, fresh bread, and some of the barely frozen meat that my dad had given Ryuji for some reason. It wouldn’t keep well, so I roasted most of it over the fire. We could eat the leftovers for breakfast and leave whatever we couldn’t eat for the critters.

“It’s… pretty good,” Ryuji said after his first bite.

“It’s fine to think it’s bad,” I said, waving off the obvious lie. “I’m no cook, especially not on the road. Takes too much time to care about making it tasty when all you have is a fire and some pots. As long as it’s edible and doesn’t make you shit yourself, it’s good enough for me.”

Ryuji nodded, accepting the answer as he took another bite. Though he didn’t look offended by the food, he didn’t look happy about it either.

“That’s fair,” he said, sounding comically disappointed.

I let out a small laugh. “Not what you expected?”

Ryuji shrugged. “I guess,” he said. “I mean it makes sense when you think about it, but all the stories I’ve read just skipped over the boring parts of travelling.”

I nodded, understanding what he was talking about. “Makes sense,” I said. “Not much point in a story going into detail about a mundane part of life where nothing exciting happens. But it does happen.”

Ryuji nodded. I wasn’t sure whether he was agreeing with me or if he was just acknowledging that he’d heard me, but I didn’t think it mattered enough to ask.

The rest of the meal passed by quietly, and it was dark by the time we finished it, but the light of the fire was bright enough for me to clean up by it. Gathering all of the pots and pans, I placed my palms above them and started to summon my mana.

A slow and steady stream of mana leaked from my hands, turning into water as it escaped my body. I struggled to keep my eyes open from the strain of the spell, but managed to keep the flow steady until I felt like there was enough.

I let out a deep sigh when I finally closed off the mana inside my body, feeling the strain of it being drained.

“Why don’t you use more water?” Ryuji asked.

I wasn’t aware that he’d been watching. “I only need a little bit,” I replied. “And besides, I don’t have enough mana to make more.”

“You don’t?” he asked.

The amount of surprise in his voice made me laugh. “I hope you’re not comparing me to yourself. It’s frankly pretty crazy how strong your magic is, especially as a beginner.”

He stayed silent for a few seconds, before muttering something to himself. I couldn’t quite catch what he said, but didn’t ask him to clarify. Even in the dim light, I could tell that he wasn’t looking at me, even if he was faced in my direction. The panels again?

He raised his finger and poked at the air, confirming my suspicions.

“I guess I am pretty OP,” he said.

I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “OP? What’s that?”

“Oh. Right. It means I’m pretty strong,” he said with a smile, as if it weren’t the understatement of the century. “Do you want me to make more water for you? I’ve never tried it before but it should be simple enough.”

I hadn’t forgotten the last time he tried something for the first time. The image of the pillar of fire that he made flashed through my mind.

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” I said, possibly a little too quickly. “I’m used to this amount. I don’t need any more.”

Ryuji stared at me, and I wondered for a second whether he would try anyways. He certainly didn’t need my permission to do anything. Thankfully, he didn’t offer again, and simply watched as I cleaned the pots.

After I finished cleaning, I wrapped up all the utensils and leftover food in a small tarp and slung it over a high branch to keep the larger forest animals from trying to get at it.

“You’re really good at this,” Ryuji said, suddenly.

I was surprised by the compliment, but not enough to be startled by it. “Thank you,” I said. “I do spend a lot of time in the Forest though. It only makes sense I’d get better at it eventually.”

Ryuji nodded, but he seemed to be distracted by his thoughts. “You mentioned that. Why do you camp so much? Do you just enjoy nature?”

“I guess,” I said, with a shrug. “But that’s not the reason. I wanted to learn magic and nobody in the village knew enough to teach me.”

“You learned magic here? Like from the forest itself?”

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I almost laughed and told him the truth, that I’d had a mentor from the Goblin tribe that lived in the forest. The laughter died when I remembered how he reacted whenever he came face-to-face with the Goblin-shaped demons that had attacked the village and ambushed us in the forest.

I didn’t know how he would react if I told him that I’d learned my magic from Goblins.

“Kind of,” I said, finally answering his question in the vaguest way I could.

Thankfully, he seemed to accept the vague answer and started to get lost in his thoughts once more.

I let out a silent sigh of relief, but a wave of worry washed over me as I was reminded of something I hadn’t had the time nor the willpower to process back in the village.

I still wasn’t sure what to think of the demons. They were very clearly something that was related to Ryuji’s power, given the fact that only I could see them for what they really were, but I couldn’t figure out much else beyond that.

He and his power seemed to think that the demons were actually Goblins, and I assumed that was because his world famously only had one race of Otherworlders, a foreign concept to our own world. It was possible that he simply had a general idea of what a Goblin looked like, and he simply assumed that a Goblins were featureless with pitch black skin.

The alternative that Ryuji saw them as real Goblins too, was even more terrifying than the idea that he could create or manipulate demons to his will. The amount of childlike joy he seemed to take in killing them would be terrifying if he truly thought he was murdering flesh and blood creatures. Though he had been civil enough for now, I was reminded that his mind was entirely alien to mine.

I shivered, despite the warmth of the fire.

“I’ve decided,” Ryuji said suddenly. “I’m going for a Dex build.”

Not knowing what he was talking about, I was tempted to ignore him. Unfortunately, after seeing the Mayor trying to use it and failing miserably, I had become less convinced that it was a viable strategy.

“What was that?” I said instead.

“A Dex build,” he replied proudly. “You remember? We were talking about what I should put my stat points into before we started making food.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to remember what he was talking about. The words he was using were familiar, but I hadn’t quite grasped the Otherworlder terms well enough to instantly recall their meaning. “I don’t think you ever explained what a dex was though,” I said hesitantly.

Ryuji looked at me for a few seconds before slapping a hand against his head. “Right,” he said. I couldn’t tell what he looked like in the dim light of the campfire, but I could guess from his voice that he was embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “You can explain it to me now.”

Ryuji paused for a moment before slowly lowering his hand off his face.

“Dex is short for Dexterity. The more Dexterity I have, the faster I am,” he said.

“Okay, makes sense,” I lied. Though I supposed you could do things faster the more dexterous you were, speed wasn’t the first thing to come to mind. I also couldn’t quite fathom why Ryuji wanted to be faster. I’d seen him move at speeds that made him seem like he was teleporting. I couldn’t imagine anything faster than that.

“What about Int?” I asked, instead of trying to wrap my head around his reasoning. “Does that stand for something too?”

He nodded. “Int stands for intelligence. The more I have, the better I am at magic.”

Intelligence didn’t really have much correlation with magical talent. In fact, it was quite the opposite in my personal experience. I nodded anyways.

Ryuji sighed. “You think I’ll regret not choosing Int?” he asked. “I always did like using flashy spells in most games.”

“Why aren’t you choosing it then?” I asked, trying not to imagine what could possibly be flashier than what he’d already shown off. “It seems like you’re not entirely sure.”

“Well…” He trailed off while looking at me. “I thought it might throw off our party balance if there were two mages in a team. Besides, Dex builds are really fun.”

I didn’t know what a party balance was, but was he implying that I was a mage? The thought was ridiculous, but before I could say anything, Ryuji threw up his hands and let out a groan.

“Augh. Screw this. I’m doing it,” he shouted, causing a few of the bushes around us to rustle as their residents retreated in a panic. “[Status]!”

He poked his finger in the air multiple times and in his frenzy, I noticed that his finger was bending back slightly every time it reached a certain spot. I’d assumed up until this point that him touching the panels could only cause them to dissipate, but it seemed like they were corporeal to him. I was surprised by the revelation, even though I was sure it was an ultimately useless piece of information.

After about half a minute of poking, Ryuji left his finger hovering in the air before swinging it down with an air of finality. He had his eyes closed and his face tensed like the act would physically hurt him, but a few seconds passed and he lowered his finger, passing through where the invisible panel had been a few seconds before.

He let out a sigh as he slid down the log he was seated on, until he was sitting on the floor.

“Welp, no turning back now,” he said, with an arm draped over his eyes.

I considered asking him to clarify why he thought I was a mage, but it didn’t seem to be the right time to bring it up. I glanced at the dying campfire instead.

“Seems like it’s getting late,” I said. “We should get some sleep.”

Ryuji stayed motionless for a few more seconds before removing his arm from over his face. I didn’t know if he acknowledged what I said at all, especially since his eyes were still closed, but he nodded.

I walked over to the small bucket of water that I’d saved from cleaning the pots and threw it over the campfire. The flames dies down with a quiet hiss, but when I looked over to Ryuji, he was still sitting down on the floor with his head on a log, tilted up to the sky.

Once again, I wondered if I was misunderstanding Otherworlder physiology. Was this how Otherworlder’s slept? Had we packed a second tent for no reason?

When I saw the light of the night sky reflected in Ryuji’s eyes, I wondered if Otherworlders slept with their eyes open too.

“Wow,” he said, disproving my theory for now.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The stars,” he said, pointing upwards.

“What about them?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“I’ve never seen the night sky like this,” he said, wonder in his voice. “It’s awesome.”

The sentiment confused me. I looked up, trying to see if there was any strange Otherworlder magic interfering with the view, but I saw nothing other than the usual sea of stars in the night sky. The awe in Ryuji’s voice confused me, but I didn’t see any reason to call him out on it.

“Hey Lena?” Ryuji said.

“Yeah?”

“Remember when I said all the stories I’ve read about adventurers always skipped describing the travelling part of their adventures? Because it would be boring?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is the most fun I’ve had in my life.”

I looked up, trying to find out why he was so enamoured with the stars. I supposed they were beautiful like always, but nothing special. I looked back down at Ryuji to see him staring at me.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m glad we didn’t skip this part of our story. I don't want to skip anything ever.”

I didn't know what he was talking about, but I did know that he was thanking me and I wasn’t about to refuse his gratitude.

“No problem,” I said. Giving him a thumbs up.

We went to our beds soon after, and after eight more days of travelling, seven in the forest and one on the road, we finally made it to the city.