Liam sat in the back of the wagon and watched the landscapes roll by. It was a pleasant afternoon, the sun was warm on his skin and the noise of the others playing cards gently drifted towards him. At the same time he was dying of boredom.

Now that he had at least a rough estimate on how long he would actually be on the road for, he also found out the hard way that it really didn’t make matters any more pleasant for him.

Of course there had been some excitement yesterday. Trake’s tales about the rebellion, or resistance as they themselves called them, had stirred something in Liam. A faint sort of hope.

He wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have left the city in the hurry he did. Maybe he should’ve listened to that Nils guy and should have waited somewhere in hiding for them.

But Liam hadn’t survived as long as he had on the streets without developing a healthy dose of skepticism. Even if the story about the rebellion sounded nice, Liam knew better than to trust everything that he heard. Something about the fact that there was a resistance against the aristocratic rulership of the country just went against Liam’s instincts.

It even infuriated him a little, although he couldn’t put his finger on why that was exactly.

Well after a whole day of nothing but an endless sea of green, Liam’s began to get bored. The excitement dulled a little and his thoughts about the resistance faded into the background. Now there was just sitting idly.

He had read stories about people traveling the seas, of them spending entire months seeing nothing but water on their expeditions to faraway continents.

Of course Liam knew those were just stories. Silly tales from another time maybe. Nobody could traverse the seas that surrounded the continent of Euphoreia. Nor would anybody want to.

But still he felt a connection to those adventurers. In a way he felt like it was him passing the ocean, only that his consisted of endless green and vegetation, not water.

Liam was still surprised and shocked at the amount of downtime they had. In the evenings there were two to three hours during which Liam had to work. And work hard. With hitching, feeding and taking care of the donkeys, along with other menial tasks that came his way, Liam still managed to be sore every morning. Other than that though, Liam found himself with an amount of free time he wasn’t used to.

The worst part about that was, that he couldn’t practice his new skills. Even when they were sitting in the caravan, positively doing nothing but watching the scenery pass by, Liam couldn’t practice his skills for fear of being discovered.

Maybe he was a little paranoid, but he didn’t want people to know he was a cultivator. He knew that there should be one or two other cultivators traveling in the caravan. Most good caravans had some high class protection. But still he would stand out too much then.

And standing out would then lead to questions. Partly he was afraid they might somehow connect him to the happenings in Chairville. It might be far-fetched, after all they didn’t really know his identity. But a boy out of the city who suddenly had cultivation powers, after the mysterious noble killings? It wouldn’t be that hard to connect. Especially if there was a bounty on him, he didn’t doubt Bilby or some of the other mercenaries would gladly take that.

Also he was a little afraid people would start asking questions about the god that had blessed him. Liam still didn’t know what to think about having an unorthodox, long believed dead god as a patron, and he didn’t want to find out how others would react to it.

No. Keeping a low profile and hiding his abilities was his best bet for now. So Liam had to be careful where and who he showed his powers to.

There was little privacy in the caravans. Liam surely couldn’t start levitating papers in front of the others at the table. Nor could he do that while talking to Leopold.

He played with the thought of sneaking away at night when the rest of the people ate, but his tasks simply didn’t leave him that much free time. Not yet anyways, taking care of the donkey still took him a while, and he was lucky when he made it to dinner in time for the soup to be still warm.

He really spent almost all of his day around other people, and that didn’t leave him with many chances of working on his skills. He knew he needed to find a solution, and he needed to find it soon. Not only would he start going crazy otherwise, but he also needed to start getting stronger if he wanted to take on the nobility one day.

That’s why it frustrated him endless that all he could do was sit and stare at the landscape.

It was during the early afternoon on Liam’s third day in the caravan, that he was ripped out of his thoughts by Jerem approaching.

“Care to join for a round?”

“What?” Liam asked, not having understood the other man's accent properly.

“Care to join for a round?” Jerem repeated with a smile. “All the sitting alone and brooding can’t possibly be good for you.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

At first Liam wanted to say no out of reflex. The less he had to do with those people the better. Afterall, he didn’t want anyone asking questions. But the sound of laughter he had heard all afternoon had been much warmer than the sound of his boredom. So he agreed.

The others welcomed him somewhat grudgingly at the table, but that ill will didn’t hold for very long. Especially not with the quantities of ale that were flowing, and Liam’s excellent manners as a card game partner.

He had learned long ago that the best way to be liked by people, was to make them win at stuff. Liking was much easier if you felt superior.

At first Liam enjoyed it. It was a nice distraction to keep his mind off of things. And no matter how little he wanted to admit it, all the brooding really hadn’t been good for him. Despite his resolutions to keep these people at bay, he still couldn’t help but enjoy their company somewhat.

Still that distraction didn’t hold for too long.

Playing cards with the others soon grew boring after a few hours. Their companionship felt good, better than brooding alone, but his underlying sense of unease started clawing its way upwards.

Liam became more and more skittish. Until he grew so restless, that he almost screamed at Jerem to stop his loud card shuffling. He excused himself afterwards, saying he felt sick and went upstairs to lay down.

Only now, out of sight of them, did he withdraw the card he had hidden in his sleeve.

He placed it onto the floor in front of him, and opened his status screen.

“Gravity Manipulation Level 4.”

“Alright let’s get to practice.”

A split second of concentration and Liam dived into the familiar rush of the energy again. The world around him became a little more sharp, he felt a little more energetic, but most of all, he felt in control.

A quick glance at the playing card in front of him showed him the translucent purple lines again. Liam took a deep breath.

He channeled the energy into the card laying in front of him, putting some energy into the potential threats drawing it upwards and pulling some away from the threats pulling it down.

As he had gotten used to, the card started drifting in the air. Liam left it to float all the way to the ceiling. Then he let it drop by stopping to funnel energy into the threads dragging the card upwards, and instead increased the energy that was pulling the card down.

During a split second change the card stopped floating, and instead dropped to the floor like a stone. It was a trick Liam had been working on.

He lifted the card again, this time stopping it precisely at the height of his eyes. A smile spread over his lips. He enjoyed the feeling of using the power again.

The next two days passed in a very similar way. Liam excused himself from the table once they traveled and went upstairs to practice.

Going upstairs to the beds during their travel days wasn’t really done. It wasn’t like it was forbidden, but Liam was afraid it would be seen as a little suspicious. People kept most of their personal belongings upstairs next to their private sleeping bags. And nobody liked to know a person being close to their stuff unsupervised.

At the same time, nobody also looked too closely when Liam told them he had wagon sickness. He was lucky that wagon sickness was a real thing, he had never heard about it before, but during his first evening of sickness, one of the older wagon mates told him about it.

It was the perfect alibi.

A small part of Liam felt bad for lying to all those people, for pretending to be sick. But at the same time, he knew he would go crazy were he forced to play another round of cards with Jerem. That boy had cursed luck.

Liam was deeply lost in his practice, when suddenly a rusty squeaking sound cut the air. A split second later, a sand haired head was poking out of it.

“Sorry to bother you Liam,” the boy's head peeked over the hatchet. “I just wanted to see if you felt like a biscuit or something?”

Liam tried to keep his voice a little shaky. His heartbeat was quickening. “No, thank you. I think my stomach won’t handle that right now.”

Luckily his body really felt a little overtaxed after his last few hours of practice. The slight headache that had set in made it easy for Liam to play sick. Problem was the headache was increasing by the second.

A drop of sweat ran down his forehead.

“Okay.” Jerem paused and gave Liam a closer look. “You should really take care Liam, you look utterly sick.”

“Yes I will.”

The boy turned around, and went back to the hatchet. Jerem was about halfway through the hatchet, and Liam was about to finally breathe out in relief. When the boy paused and turned his head back towards Liam.

“Also it will be hell if you stay like that. Imagine all the time on the road that’s still coming.” With those words the boy went down again.

Not a split second after he closed the hatchet, a soft thud was heart as a small white pillow fell to the floor. Liam fell back on his sleeping bag. Sweat pearls were all over his face, and he felt like his head was being pounded by a hammer.

It took him a few minutes to recover. Afterwards he rolled over, and scotted over to watch the scenery.

The only downside of his sick playing was that he missed the time sitting next to Leopold on the driver's seat. The view was just much more immersive there, and there was a certain air of freedom Liam felt there.

Luckily, he had found a temporal solution. There were two small plane flaps on the linen that made the caravans walls. One on the front, and one on the back of the wagon. They were intended to get in some air, and were usually closed while they were traveling. But Liam had opened the one at the front and had carried his bed linen closer to it.

That way he was able to still experience some of the landscapes they were passing by during the times he wasn’t practicing. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was good enough for now. His training was more important, and he was able to make some small sacrifices.

Because he already saw those sacrifices paying off. In the three days Liam had stayed in the wagon, he had managed to raise his Gravity Manipulations skill by three levels. He had essentially almost doubled it in levels. He was excited to see where it was going.

Liam knew it had only been a few days, and technically not that much time had passed since he had first gotten his abilities. But with all that had happened it felt like more than just a week. He had never had much time to practice since then, a fact that Liam was hell bent to remedy.

When finally, after almost two days of nothing but green, a town came into sight.

Liam would’ve almost missed it, if not for the chorus of shouts echoing along the wagons.

“TOWN.”

“TOWN.”

It was only an hour later that Liam saw the thin trails of smoke slowly rising through the hilltops.