When I woke up, I needed to stretch like I was a cat and that was a weird feeling. I felt completely recovered but I still wanted to sleep for some reason as the sun was warming me up perfectly. It took me a few seconds to realize that something was different. Then I got the need to move so I did and got up quickly.

I started to search my body to figure out what was happening. It didn't take me long to dig through all the information that was available to me. Seems that the new trait came with some side effects.

It seems that I have gotten another one of those temperamental traits. But why would kinetic absorption manifest itself in a cat-like behaviour I have no clue. Perhaps it’s something to do with the animal the trait came from but that's just speculation.

My internal clock was quite good especially nowadays so I’m quite certain that I didn’t sleep for too long about the normal time for a normal human. But that meant I needed to get everything ready for my trip down South.

The only thing that worried me was that I didn’t have a two-handed sword which would be quite good for defence, and I didn’t have a good shield as well. Hopefully, they can supply me with some equipment because there’s no way in hell, I was going to get them from here.

I wanted a bit of normalcy before I did anything else, so I did my regular morning chores. When I got to the barn, I found that George had slept with the calves. It was quite cute to see that. I woke him up and let him handle everything to do with the animals.

I feel like this trip is also good to get a lot of responsibilities off my hands and get everyone else to be a bit more independent. After all, I wasn’t doing this so I could have a nation to rule over I was doing this mainly because I wanted to be left alone and have a safe home. It would also be good to give a lot of other people back their freedom to dictate their lives as they want.

I finished up everything I could and for my last task, I water my newly planted trees and bushes. As I watched them an idea came to me. I should probably get some Birch and Maple saplings as well. They are not the most common trees in the forest and their sap would be quite a good delicacy.

But that would have to wait it was now time for a full day of meetings again. It was time for me to get back to the village. If I also wanted to put the new trait into my core and test out my other abilities, I might need to push my movement ability to its limits to make it to the raid dungeon in time but have I truly put myself to the test and pushed my movement ability to its limit.

The answer was not recently. So perhaps my timetable wasn’t as strict as I first thought. It's been a long time since I stretched before a run but this time I went through proper stretches before I started to run.

Slowly I started to push myself faster while my homesteaders mile was activated. I pushed more energy into it as I had reserves to spend and the surroundings started to blur even more than usual. I could feel my body hardening up and having less air resistance, but my feet also sank into the road. At that moment I stopped pushing myself and pulled the ability back a bit.

After a few minutes, I figured that I could keep going at this speed for quite a while. Then I saw the village gates approaching. Quickly I pulled all the energy out of my ability so I would slow down. I was suddenly back to my regular running speed, and I had to stop and look back.

What the fuck was my speed. I started to jog back a bit so I could investigate my footprints. I quickly did some calculations and figured out that I was going faster than 60 kilometres an hour. And that wasn’t even my top speed I could push myself even faster.

The problem seemed to be that the road couldn’t handle that speed. I looked on the road where normally footprints didn’t appear but now it was as if I was walking on mud as my footprints were centimetres deep.

The first thing that came to my mind was that we might need better roads and the other thing was what if an entire combat unit could travel at that speed? We could cover a large area of land with very few troops and still, I have complete security.

I think this ability will be a must-have for everyone. I will need to bring this up today so hopefully when the time comes at least some of us will remember. This time I did run through the gates as I was probably late for whatever meeting we were having today. As expected, I could already hear the voices from the meeting room. Taking a deep breath in I prepared myself as I push the doors open and walked inside.

When I got back home it was already past midnight even though it only took about 10 minutes to run here. My declaration did not go over well that I would be leaving for about two weeks but hopefully, it will be less time than that.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

But that wasn’t the real problem I had overlooked more specifically not realised the real problem. They were all worried about my safety. I think the main reason was that without me this entire thing would fall apart but I’d like to think that at least a little bit they cared about me as a person.

But in the end, they all came to the same conclusion as I did the benefits outweigh the dangers. At least I was glad that travelling about 1000 km will be simple at least with the speed part of it. The implications of a small kingdom being over 2000 km long will need to be left for a later date.

I promised everyone and myself that I would only focus on getting there and then returning. I could not afford to get distracted by anything else that I might find on my way there. Well perhaps if I see some fruit trees I might take some branches so we could have more.

Dammit, I let myself go again. Perhaps I should get those things that horses use that don’t allow them to look sideways when they are pulling a carriage. I know it was a stupid idea but I kind of wish that I could do something like that.

The farmhouse was empty as Emma and Arthur were back at the village and George was still sleeping in the barn. The best course of action would be to go to bed and get an early start tomorrow.

But when I lay on the bed, I wasn’t feeling that tired, but I know that I need to sleep so I could travel without having to sleep. But I simply couldn’t fall asleep even my army experience failed me. So, I decided to test out one of my new abilities.

I once again entered my mind palace. This time I wasn’t just on top of a grass hill but there was an almost completed circle of rocks that encircled me. The rocks were only basketball sized and the circle itself wasn’t larger than about 10 meters.

I still didn’t understand how this would help defend me from mental attacks, but I guess I will have to wait until someone attacks me mentally. Hopefully, by then I will have a proper fort built. I messed around for a few hours and found out a few important things. First thing was that I won’t actually have to build anything. I will just have to imagine what I wanted to be built and then the ability will slowly make it so.

I kind of wanted to start with a huge wall but I know that that won’t be a good idea. I simply don’t know when the first attack will happen, and I am guessing having something half-built will not be a good thing. So my first course of action is to make a stone cottage and go from there.

Luckily for me, this ability didn't come without a cost, and I felt quite mentally drained after all of that. But I still couldn’t sleep so I went ahead and figured that it might be a good idea to put my new trait into my core as well. This was a lot faster than elemental seeds as it only took about 8 hours. Still, by this time the sun was already shining. After this, I was able to fall asleep quite easily.

The next 'morning', I quickly started to test my other abilities. Stubborn will was a passive so I didn’t need to test it and I didn’t want to meditate to find out what it actually did, at least not yet. I started out with extended claws.

At first, I tried it with my feet, and I don’t know if I was glad or disappointed that it didn’t work. The ability did work with my hands. Quite quickly I grew about 10 cm long claws from my nails.

They were longer than I expected but also sharper and stronger. They were only curved a bit. The best part was that I could use my abilities on them like they were weapons. They grew in just a few moments and I could pull them back just as quickly.

I was kind of getting wolverine vibes and I was liking it. These things could shred flesh quite easily. After a few more tests on stronger materials, I figured out that they are my strongest weapon and could penetrate steel armour easily and that’s without any abilities used.

Still, I think I will hold off on using them and keep them as a trump card. The only problem they had was that they were short weapons and I had to get really close if I wanted to use them. Overall, I was extremely happy with this ability. I retracted my claws and went on to the final ability that I wanted to test.

Tattoo storage turned out to be exactly what it said. I could choose to store things and they would appear on my skin as tattoos. It was a bit painful but nothing too bad. I could choose the placement of the tattoos which was quite convenient.

I could expel them from my skin, and they would appear from that point back into the world. While testing with my throwing knives that were tattooed close to my hands, I figured out it was actually faster to pull them from my tattoo storage than from the knife belt that I had.

There was an obvious limit to how much stuff I could carry and that was the surface area of my skin. No overlapping tattoos for me. The good thing was breaking the tattoo will not damage or expel the item at least a small scratch. I decided not to damage myself too badly.

Unfortunately, I still felt the weight of the objects. It seems that there wasn't any weight reduction or if there was it was minuscule. There were however some shortcuts that I could use. For example, a bag of coins took up less space than if I stored the coins individually and I did observe that the tattoo was ever so slightly smaller than the actual object.

I am guessing that if I levelled it up the tattoos will start to appear smaller than the actual objects. Honestly, this made my trip so much easier, and I kept playing with the ability all the time as I started to set up everything else that I needed for the trip. It took me about 30 minutes to get everything done and another 30 to get everything stored away and my armour equipped.

I said goodbye to George and all my animals and even left Goose behind. Then I started to run and found out that I was a bit slower while wearing everything which should have been quite obvious.

This however was quickly addressed as I lowered my weight and quickly gained speed. To my surprise, at the village, there was a small gathering as everyone sent me off. I was quite touched and hoped that I would be returning quickly.

I ran quickly and didn't look back. Today was a beautiful day but it was hard to appreciate it while moving so quickly. There was no car window to look out of as someone else was driving. It was going to be a gruelling marathon but I figured I will be getting quite a lot of skill levels after this.