Traveling through ancient and deadly forest was starting to become routine. Wake up in a relatively comfortable bed, have breakfast of dried meat, plus whatever fruit or vegetables we could get our hands on. Everyone got used to the trek and everything was going well.

“I don’t know how the rest of you keep up with this every day,” Ceira complained. “I’m always exhausted!”

Except for that. But she was actually at a faster pace than before- it was just that she was the slowest one of us, and remained that way as we set the pace to what she could manage.

“If we run into any more thorn patches I’m going to start having to wear random furs…” Izzy sighed. “It’s not fair that you guys have tear-resistant outfits.”

And that.

Then there were Midnight’s stomach issues. Fruit and vegetables weren’t high on the diet priority for Celmothians, and his stores of tuna had run dry. Eating random meat was fine for most of us, but he was more sensitive to the changes.

Senan caught me staring at him. “What?”

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“... Nothing?” He tilted his head.

“Oh. Everyone else was having problems,” I said.

“What about you?” he asked. “What are your problems?”

I went through the checklist. Mentally… I was doing fine. Perhaps I was supposed to be stressed out by being surrounded by danger, but I could watch my experience go up regularly and we were going to get back home, eventually. “Nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t even hurt to use mana anymore.”

“That sounds like a serious problem.”

I shrugged, “Not much I could do about it. I needed as much mana as I could get, and I can only process so many crystals per day. And yes, it was necessary,” I said, tilting my head towards Ceira.

“I understand,” he said.

“Are you sure you’re fine?” I asked.

“If we get back to Earth without anyone sustaining permanent injuries or death? I will be quite satisfied,” Senan replied. “Plus we might be able to do something about Doctor Doomsday, while also being far away from him. If we can get people here to deal with his portals.”

“I don’t know how many of them are going here specifically,” I said. “But there’s probably a few. And more on the material plane.”

“Do you desire to find these portals?” Ailen suddenly turned towards us and asked. I suppose we hadn’t really been trying to be secretive, and an elven scout or whatever had to be pretty good at hearing.

“I would think that would be relevant to your people,” Senan said. “Since this is your forest.”

“Some part of the forest, yes,” Ailen nodded. “And we are not fond of intruders. We may yet devote ourselves to removing them from our territory, but they have only appeared recently.”

I frowned, “I thought they might have begun popping up about a year ago. Is that not the case?”

“One year is quite recent.”

“Oh,” I nodded. “I see. Speaking of which, you said it would take us about a month to arrive at this Comhghall fellow? How much longer?”

“Approximately one month.”

“That’s…”

“I had estimated our travel speed for those unused to the terrain, but I overestimated some individuals. Depending on the rate of improvement, we may regain some lost time. The two of you will be relevant factors as well.”

“Pretty sure we’re both going to remain faster than Ceira,” I said.

“She is a druid, is she not? Along with physical fitness, I expect she will acquire the ability to travel adverse terrain easily enough.”

“Oh. I should have thought of that,” I admitted. “She could spend points too, I suppose.”

“That seems unnecessary,” Ailen said. “Points are limited. Training abilities is much more efficient. But perhaps the time is a significant factor. Humans live… two centuries?”

“One on the top end,” I replied.

“I see. I have not met one before.”

Those thoughts stuck with me until evening. “Ceira,” I said. “You are the least trained of us-”

“I know!” she grumbled. “I’ve been trying.”

“-and I think it would be better to intentionally train you instead of just dragging you around with us,” I finished.

‘I’ve been learning things all day,” she said. “And I’m tired.”

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I nodded seriously. “That may be so, but we must make use of our time. There are only twenty-four hours in a day-” I caught myself, then looked towards Ailen. “Are the lengths of the days here the same as on the material plane?”

“The same sun shines on both.”

“How?” I asked, leaning forward. “I thought the planes were separate from the system.”

“This plane co-locates with the current material plane, sharing certain features.”

“It’s coterminous?”

“No.” Ailen denied. “Co-location is different. But I am afraid that is the limit of my knowledge on the subject. Perhaps Comhghall could explain better, or the wise ones.”

“As tempting as it is to suddenly turn around… I think we should hope that this Comhghall guy knows more,” I said. “Anyway,” I turned back to Ceira. “Twenty-four hours in a day. We can travel what, eight or ten? Let’s say we travel ten, sleep ten, and eat for two hours. We don’t have to spend time setting up or taking down tents or anything. We’ve been spending a few hours lazing around before we go to sleep. So we should make use of that time.”

“... It’s no fair that I’m the only one who has to do extra work,” she sighed. “But I guess I am the worst one…”

“A good point,” Senan said. “The rest of us should devote some effort specifically to training as well.”

I was going to do it anyway, especially now that I could cast things without it hurting. “What do we need the most?” I asked. “Enhancements? Offense?”

“Utility, I think,” Senan said. “Storage specifically, as when we find food we come across a lot at once. We can only manage a handful of days, even with dried food being more weight efficient. I don’t like betting on finding food regularly.”

“If it bothers you,” Ailen said. “I can find food more regularly.”

“I have no doubt you will be able to keep us supplied,” Senan said. “But if you were to be incapacitated for any reason, we would be back to where we were. With a bit more knowledge about the area, I suppose.”

“That makes sense,” I replied. “Plus, we had to leave behind basically a whole dragon…” I sighed. “I kind of wanted to see what Francois or Vilhelmiina could do with dragon parts.”

“I can help with the training as well,” Midnight said. “Except… if it increases more it will surpass Familiar Bond again.”

“Maybe that’s what you should train,” I suggested. “There are several things at the limit still.”

“I’m not really sure how we train that,” Midnight admitted.

“I guess we hang out on purpose. And see if we can do anything more with the bond?” Sensing emotions, casting spells. There might not really be more features, but we might improve those. “There are range limits, perhaps you can try to stretch the range at which we cast spells on the both of us?” That might come only with improvements, but he would still be working with magic and he might get us a natural upgrade with something else.

Izzy planned to train her offense, working on her weapon stances. Her mobility- and legs- were being used all day. She seemed concerned about how she wasn’t much use fighting plants, but I think it was really more of a matter of her equipment not aligning. Maybe I should get a spell for enhancing her weapons as well… or at least repairing them. We were running into trouble with that. Unfortunately, all of the more powerful repairing options I knew about were out of the domain of a mage.

Captain Senan only had limited options for what he could do without damaging the forest for no good reason. Mainly that involved ice walls, or coating himself or the Shelter in ice. Adding it, removing it, and occasionally moving ice around- though the last part seemed the most troublesome, once he’d made something solid.

Ceira decided to focus on her plant-based abilities. Which was to say, that was most of what she had and Speak With Animals wasn’t much good without animals around. Obviously one could find animals here, but wandering about alone at night was a good way to get eaten before she gained any improvements. And being able to speak with it hadn’t stopped the giant panther from trying to eat us.

She had already finished straightening my staff, which was now as it should have been. Maybe with the grain distorted and twisted a bit, but that didn’t seem like a practical issue. Thus, she focused on Entangle and Sprout. Plants and trees bent and grabbed under her will, before returning to their natural positions when the mana faded.

I didn’t know how to make Storage better. Practice, obviously- but was there something specific I could try? Taking things in and out was easy enough, and what I wanted was to expand the space. So what if I shoved more things in there? Or tried to move more at once? That seemed like a good method. And also a good way to horribly break stuff. “Can I have your empty cans, Midnight?”

“Sure, what do you need them for?”

“Well, I’m just worried about exploding things or permanently banishing them to a demiplane. So I’d rather start with trash.”

I carefully removed everything I was worried about destroying somehow and supplemented with random fallen sticks and leaves. Though strangely some of them didn’t work. After some effort, I determined that they were too ‘alive’, though it was odd because I was able to store fresh fruit well enough. Was it some kind of mental barrier that I had to bypass? And did that mean I could store living things?

I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. But maybe it was an arbitrary or skill based limitation. Obviously I wasn’t going to try with any of us- based purely on weight requirements Midnight would fit into Storage and Izzy almost would without her equipment. But I wasn’t going to risk danger or even discomfort for them.

“I need bugs,” I said to Ailen, who was shooting at a tree chosen as a target. Actually, if I recalled correctly they always stayed out to do this even before we were officially training at this time.

“What do you mean?” Ailen asked without losing focus.

“I want them for magic testing. Preferably not too small or too large, and not dangerous. If that’s even possible.”

“How about an earthworm?” Ailen asked.

“That seems reasonable,” I said.

“I will find one.”

And so they did. The elf wandered off into the darkened forest and came back ten or twenty minutes later covered in dirt and carrying a small snake. I guess that worked, but it wasn’t an earthworm. No wait. It was. It was just a little over a foot long and something like an inch in diameter at its thickest point.

It wriggled a lot.

“Here you go,” Ailen said.

“Thanks,” I replied. Some clean spells quickly cleaned up the dirt on the elf, though we could have probably brushed off most of it. Then it was time for me to wrestle with the earthworm.

It was too big. It was several pounds, not too far from the limit of what I could put into Storage at once. Well, maybe half of it… but it was at least twice as hard to transport. It wrestled with me physically and magically. I felt like I might have been able to put it in Storage. It was like I was pressing up against some sort of thick membrane, but it seemed like it should give out. But using mana a bit faster than it recovered for the next hour or so wasn’t enough. There was probably technique too. Maybe I should start with what I knew worked, and see if the overstuffing idea had merit.