Symon stretched, letting out a big yawn halfway through. His conversation with Keelgrave regarding his visions of the spirit's past life had already woken him up, but it still felt good to do.
Shit. This was not good. He'd already guessed that the memory transfer might have gone both ways, and unfortunately, his prediction seemed correct. He'd wanted to keep his status as a reincarnator a secret, at least until he could confirm it wouldn't be something that had him hunted down by wizards who wanted to experiment on him. He needed to stall for time while he worked out what he could do.
"Uh, it's to make sure the traffic doesn't get in our way when we're taking a patient to the... hospital," Symon responded, hesitating slightly at the end as he considered what was a good idea to reveal. He wasn't even confident this was the type of thing he'd be able to lie his way out of, not when Keelgrave must already know that Symon hadn't been truthful with his story about having amnesia.
If Keelgrave was asking about ambulances, then one relevant memory jumped out to Symon as the most likely one that Keelgrave had seen — the last memory he'd had before he died. If that were true, there would be no way he could simply explain all the advanced Earth technology such as cars as simply from some distant continent, not if the cat was out of the bag that he'd died and ended up here.
He'd wanted to keep this hidden indefinitely, but it seemed like he didn't have a choice now. He didn't have any real evidence that being known as a reincarnator would be bad for him, it had been more of a gut feeling. Although, what was the downside to Keelgrave knowing? Even if Keelgrave would have seen Symon as an invader of his planet that needed to be killed or had some equally violent reaction — which he didn't believe was the case — it's not like the ghost could really do anything beyond saying some mean words. Besides, being separated from Keelgrave didn't seem like something he'd be able to do anytime soon, so chances were high the spirit would eventually figure things out even if he did somehow manage to lie his way out of this.
Ultimately, the risks of Keelgrave knowing the truth didn't seem very high, so he decided to stop fighting the inevitable.
With a sigh, reluctantly continued. "Okay, just tell me what you saw and I'll explain everything after that, so I'm not repeating things you already know."
Symon rolled his eyes in response.
In answer, Symon rolled to the side and manifested his Ledger simply by mentally requesting it. For the first time since encountering Keelgrave, he didn't focus on having the 'Titles' section not show up. In fact, he requested for only that section to appear, considering he'd just checked the rest of it before he slept.
[ Titles:
Blessed by Order
Blessed by Chaos
World Traveller ]
Before the dead grass next to his bedroll finished twisting into the words on his Ledger, Keelgrave had already let out a soft sigh.
"Yeah, that probably clears things up. I died, and then two beings brought me here. It doesn't take a genius to figure out they were probably Order and Chaos, but I don't know anything else about this world except for what you've told me and what I've been able to guess just from surviving here."
"Uh, kind of but not really. I wasn't planning on spreading it around, but what's so dangerous about it? The different nations here are going to want to experiment on me or something?"
Keelgrave took a long moment to finally reply.
This immediately brightened Symon's mood. Other World Travellers? It wasn't guaranteed they were also from Earth, but he still took it as a good sign. If others have been transported here, maybe they already figured out a way back, or at least have some ideas.
"I still don't get what's so dangerous about it," he continued.
"That seems strange. So they just fight each other all the time?"
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"So if the fact I have the World Traveller title became commonly known, a bunch of really strong people will just come kill for a reason neither of us knows?"
Obviously, he wasn't planning on it, and he was pretty confident that Keelgrave wouldn't either. He couldn't communicate with anyone other than Symon in the first place, but even if he could he'd have good reason to keep Symon's secret — namely, he'd have nothing anchoring him to this world if Symon died, meaning he'd pass on to wherever dead people's souls went.
"You're the only other person who knows, so let's keep it this way. The adventurers seem pretty trustworthy, but there's no benefit to revealing it, right?"
"Now that you know my secret, I guess I can be more open about things. Where I'm from, we had no Ledger and no mana. Monsters were just in stories, and most dangerous beasts were only found rarely and in specific countries. Most regular people don't know how to fight because they just don't need to. Even the soldiers fought in ways that you would barely recognise, not with swords, magic, and raw strength but with technology."
"What? No, we just evolved past constantly fighting each other. Well, sort of. Ugh, it's not important anyway, everyone's waking up."
Indeed, the others had already begun their own morning routines, performing stretches akin to yoga in Aslan's case, while Safiya started the fire back up after snapping off one the the smaller branches of the tree that Symon had drained to death yesterday.
Even Atabek began stirring, grunting as he slowly pushed himself to a sitting position. Symon would rather the man kept still until he'd checked out his injuries, but he didn't speak any Dumosan. As it turns out, he still ended up getting his wish.
As soon as the still recovering man finished pushing himself upwards, he spotted Symon. Immediately, his eyes widened as he began scrabbling for his massive axe. Right, the last thing he'd seen before being picked up and almost cut in half by the razor stalker had been Symon running straight at him. He'd been trying to warn the man of the danger, but Atabek had been unconscious since that incident and would have no way of knowing what had actually happened.
Thankfully, Aslan came to his rescue quickly before he had to engage in what would have been an incredibly awkward battle with a dangerously muscular yet still very wounded man. He said something in a reassuring tone to his travelling companion in Dumosan, and eventually the man calmed down. He had a deep, rough voice, and according to Aslan didn't speak a lick of Common. This meant Aslan would have to translate Dumosan into Common, then Keelgrave had to translate that into English for Symon.
Symon had no talent for foreign languages, and had already decided he needed to learn Common himself, but it was looking like he'd also need to learn Dumosan, especially if he was sticking with his plan of travelling with these people back to their homeland. He wasn't looking forward to that challenge at all, but hopefully, the benefits of a magically improved Intelligence would make things easier for him. Thinking back to how poorly he'd done in foreign language classes back in high school, he shuddered. He'd much rather fight a thousand centipedes than have to repeat that process, but it was looking like he wouldn't have much of a choice.
While he'd been distracted thinking about the horrors of needing to return to studying, Aslan had finished explaining what had happened to Atabek. He'd described Symon as a wandering healer who had saved his life, and then been instrumental in defeating the monster that had attacked them — he supposed this was all technically true, even if it left out a lot. He'd also explained how Serik had achieved a proper warrior's death, resulting in a giant smile from the equally large man.
Symon still wasn't used to these people's casual relationship with death, but he supposed that if the world was as dangerous as he'd been led to believe then it made sense to always expect it.
After carefully explaining how Symon's draining magic worked to him — after he tried to hug Symon as thanks for both saving his life and helping his comrade to achieve a good death — he was finally ready to actually check over his patient. The fact that the man was so lively was a positive sign, but he still wanted to at least give him a once-over. It was possible the man wasn't healing right, but he also needed to determine if he'd be able to travel today or if he'd need more time and vitality to recover.
After getting the man to lift up his shirt, he squatted a few metres away as he inspected his wounds. He felt the man might have had a bear as an ancestor, considering he was both as massive and almost as hairy as one. Regardless, he was still able to get a look at the man's wounds. He'd healed incredibly fast, mostly because of the vitality Symon had given him but also because of his impressive Constitution. The blades of the stalker had gone all the way through the man just yesterday, although all the open holes in him had healed over with thick red and raw scabs. He'd probably make a full recovery on his own given enough time, but Symon felt he wasn't yet in travelling condition.
Even with the benefits of a superhuman Constitution, he would still need some time for it to work its magic. Healing multiple times faster than a normal person was great, but that only meant that the recovery period for such a severe injury was measured in days and weeks instead of months. Of course, that wasn't the case once factoring in Symon's healing — recovery could be sped up essentially as much as you wanted, as long as you could afford the vitality cost. In this case, they couldn't. Symon only had three points of vitality saved up, and he'd prefer to save them for an emergency. Really, he'd rather he had a lot more than that, but they had something of a scarcity.
There was much work to be done to refill his vessel and get Atabek into travelling and fighting condition, but they had an important task first.
The group sat around — or in Atabek's case, laid around — the campfire while consuming their breakfast. It consisted of a dense, hard bread slathered in some type of jam. The bread left much to be desired, but the jam had a delicious sweet and tart taste. It was also a slightly offputting green colour, but when Symon closed his eyes, it almost felt like he was back on Earth eating some stale toast.