“Right, on that note, how long has it been since you found me? And what time was it back when you did?”

Leo stared right at the woman, not baring a single emotion in his soul from appearing on his face.

He allowed his doubt, anticipation, anxiety, uncertainty, determination, and all the others to paint themselves all over his expression as he stared into the girl’s deep eyes.

The girl didn’t reply right away. She took a long look at all of the things Leo allowed to show on his face before pulling her eyebrows together and squinting her eyes.

‘It was such a simple question… so why is she wary?’

The concern grew in Leo’s soul for a few moments longer, before the girl finally released a long sigh and allowed her shoulders to slump down.

“One of my men found you unconscious by the river, a total of five and a half days ago,” the girl revealed only for the look in her eyes to sharpen as she stared hard into Leo’s face.

‘Five and a half…’ Leo leaned back as he thought, taking his time for his weary brain to process the news.

“And it was…”

“They were at the river to gather the water for an evening bath, so an hour shy of sunset,” the girl replied before Leo could even fully form and voice his question.

‘I guess that follow-up question was obvious.’ Leo slightly gritted his teeth before taking a deep breath to calm himself down.

‘Five and a half of a day. Adding how much time has passed between my fall and them finding me…’ In a moment of rest, Leo recalled as many details of where his team landed as he could.

The beautiful sight that greeted them in this dimension was pretty easy to recall. And while figuring out the precise position of the sun on it was a step beyond Leo’s ability to recall, the air back then felt like the very middle of the day.

‘I guess if I were to match the time of the day on earth with the time of the day here…’

Dropping down the well of probability meant abandoning all expectations for the other world to follow the same laws of physics, logic, or causality. People flying on their swords in this world was an exaggerated, yet still a great example of it.

Yet, the time was always the same. A week spent down the well would mean a week passing back on earth.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

‘From what I’ve heard, some people speculated that with the discovery of the multiverse, the time was proved to be the one, cosmic ultimate force that transcends all dimensions…’ Leo recalled a random article debating how the ability to traverse dimensions affected human understanding of the world around them.

He had no interest in the nitty-gritty details of it, those he opted to leave to the eggheads qualified to tackle them. What was important for him, though, was that he still retained the ability to loosely track time.

‘That leaves me with a day before the next tick comes,’ Leo concluded the one thing that he really wanted to find out with his simple question. And with this conclusion, he took one more deep breath before raising his eyes to the girl’s face.

Yet, as he opened his mouth…

No sound came from it. His words were stuck in his throat as he suddenly hesitated whether or not she should continue being open and honest, or if maybe, just maybe, the time wasn’t ripe for him to start keeping his cards close to his chest.

“I assume this time is of some sort… importance, isn’t it?” the girl asked, breaking the silence that followed her answer from before.

“It is,” Leo nodded his head, forcing himself to pick the option that his guts advised him to. “This technique of mine is still crude, working only thanks to a thousand crutches back home. In a sense,” Leo shook his head to indicate silent exasperation, “it’s a miracle it even worked!”

‘Keep downplaying it,’ Leo repeated in his mind, perfectly focused on the inside while playing clumsy and distressed on the outside.

“Still, the instrumentation back home only has enough juice to keep going for a week. And that leaves me with just a day if I want to return.”

This time, Leo did his absolute best to twist his expression and position his body in the most miserable pose he could imagine accompanied by the most helpless expression he could invoke on his face.

“…”

This time, the girl didn’t try to press the discussion to keep going, allowing Leo some time to actually process all the bits and tidbits of information he could harvest from their conversation thus far.

‘They are fetching water from a river. That means, either there’s no well around, they have no magic spell for it… or the river is just so close it's the most convenient option.’ Leo massively expanded on just one of the small hints the girl unknowingly dropped on him.

“One day, huh?” the girl muttered before shaking her head and suddenly standing up.

The sloppy, clumsy persona she acted out ever since returning from the outside has vanished all at once right as the girl stood up straight while resting her hands on her hips.

“Taking into account the time you spent half-dead by the river’s shore, you should still have one day to return, right?” the girl brought up the half-truth Leo served her just a moment before. “It would be best for you to go to sleep and try to regain as much strength as you can. For a while, I’m sure my sister is too paranoid to ever let you return…”

The girl stopped for a second, lowering her head while she raised her hand to support her chin.

“I might be able to pull her away, to give you the room to return. But I can’t guarantee her men will leave the hill where you left all of your tools.”

“Thank you,” Leo whispered, allowing his immense relief to sound in his voice. “I’m really, really grateful for your help,” he then added while lowering his head.

“It’s fine,” the girl smiled. “How would we be different from wild beasts and monsters if not by helping each other in need?” she then asked before shaking her head and turning on her heel, only to reach for the door’s handle. “And it’s not you,” the girl said, taking a quick peek over her shoulder and flashing a small, cheeky smile at the young man.

“It’s Anlay.”