"Are we lost?" Laura looked tired from trekking through the jungle and having to swat every single mosquito and leaf blocking her path.

"Officially speaking, no. But techinically.." Tenur trailed off as he didn't want to answer the question.

"Technically?" Laura looked like she was about to burst and go mad from this conversation, but Tenur was in front of her and he didn't have eyes on the back of his head, so he couldn't help but not notice the change in Laura.

"Technically speaking, we are lost..." Tenur continued moving through the dense growth of bushes.

It's been four or so hours after they left Laura's home. Before they left, they packed whatever was important into a sack which Laura was carrying. It contained a lot of food, some potions and equipments, a few tools and Tenur's grimoire. Most of the food has been depleted because of Laura's snacking habit during stressful times, leaving Tenur with not much food left. He had to struggle in holding back his urges to beat up Laura and use her as an immediate food source, even though she was several times stronger and heavier than he was. That fact was enough to make his logical side make a reason proper enough to suppress his primal instincts.

They've been making their way out after packing the stuff they needed from the north side of the town, or village perhaps. The main reason they chose to start journeying in this direction was because Denka previously brought Tenur in from this entrance, which gave enough reason to say that his home town is located in the same direction as well.

Even though I flew without direction into this place instead of navigating through properly, the direction should still be right.. Tenur reasoned with himself.

And here they were after his totally reasonable reasoning, lost, stuck and sticky in a jungle unexplored by most due to the sightings of Laura's kind. Laura was going to punch him after the response he gave, which he think was quite adequate if he were to say so himself, but a little more reluctancy made her calm down enough to prevent that from happening, starting by her hand returning to her side and her bitting her own tongue to contain her seemingly endless amounts of frustration and irritation.

Tenur, of course, was unaware as he continued to trek in the direction he thought was best. His guts told him he was lost, but his brain refused to accept it, leading to the continued energy-wasting activities, such as blabbering about how he felt about his home and how his, probably, open-minded parents would treat Laura after meeting her in person, or troll to be exact. Everything he said made Laura doubt even more whether another species's society would accept an alien, much less a human society and the alien being a potentially dangerous individual. All of what Tenur was saying sounded absurd, even outrageous to the Elders of her town-village, if they were even alive, that is.

The both of them walked on and on, before finally seeing an identifiable path which made Tenur scream in delight after his almost four-hours-straight of blabbering. The path seemed worn out by constant usage, which made them think it was still in use even after the fact of trolls still living nearby. But in a closer inspection, it turned out that the worn-out path was actually just a path made by wild animals constantly stampeding through the same spot, breaking their hearts while destroying all their hopes for making it into a civilized village.

"This dang path is made by wild animals!" Laura yelled out the obvious.

"Maybe if we just follow it that way, it'll lead us to a village soon enough?" Tenur pointed in the direction to his right along the path. Even he wasn't sure whether it's a good idea, since his voice wavered with uncertainty.

"A village? A goddamn village!? Tenur, bro, I don't know if you have noticed it or not, but this path is made by animals! And animals don't, create, villages!" She argued vehemently, she was at the end of her wits from trying to stay calm and find a solution out of the jungle.

"Yes they do. Humans and orcs are animals, and we create villages, don't we?" He tried protesting, but what he just said was borderlining the term 'crazy', even by his standards.

"Don't use nonsense to argue with me! It's a different case for sentient animals like us!"

"But we still are, in a technical sense, aren't we?" Tenur grinned slightly. The fact that he was using such an excuse to argue was just too ludicrous by the standard of even the most insane man of the world.

Laura, hearing such a bullshit being spat out by the one her father thought was going to succeed his work, felt the conflict within her rise to an unreachable height. On one hand, she thought, maybe he's just like that, and he'll reform someday to become a better person! while on the other, she thought, this person's personality is beyond saving already!

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, she started talking, having calmed down a lot after the internal conflict subsided, "Tenur, listen, why not we just camp here? We can hunt the animals that past through here and continue our journey tomorrow morning."

"Hm, but wouldn't it be dangerous to camp here? After all, this spot is commonly used by stampeding animals, you said so yourself."

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"Look, trolls naturally release a kind of pheromone that dissuades most instinct-driven animals, and most dangerous animals are driven purely by their urges. That's how we're able to prevent our downfall by stronger predators and build villages and towns." Laura said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Wow, never knew that. Looks like keeping you around does more good instead of looking mighty,' Tenur tried imagining a situation where he'd be able to use Laura's large and intimidating build, but decided against it when Laura gave him a glare. He responded with a "What" and a shrug of his shoulders, then started gathering dried wood from around the area. Seeing as he's already started, Laura decided to build a temporary shelter which would soon resemble a tent invented by humans, only several times larger to fit her large build within.

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By the time everything was ready except for food enough for one troll and one human's meal, the previously dimly lit jungle began to darken even more. At some point before starting a fire, everything around them was pitch black, even the moon barely lit their surroundings at all. The only thing that provided vision was the occasional sparks created by Laura mashing two rough-looking stone above the gathered dried wood, which would be lit several hundred trials and errors later.

After a fire was started, the two of them began heating up what food was left in the sack Laura carried. The result of overturning the entire bag's contents were two salted fish, a few pieces of dried vegetables and a can of beans, which Tenur doubted was created just like how Laura described, in her town-village.

A wooden stand was created with nine considerably wet sticks. Four sticks were used to uphold the other five sticks which formed the grill, allowing the salted fishes to be placed upon it and get heated up. The vegetables were then placed above the salted fishes to allow the salt content in the fish to somehow saltify the already dried vegetables. Laura had questioned Tenur why she had to place the dried vegetables onto the fish for the entire duration of the heating process, and Tenur had simply replied with, "Because it'll make the vegetables taste better!", which made Laura ask him about how he knew it, and he didn't give an answer to the question for the entire night.

A wooden tent covered with leaves was built by Laura's own rough hands. She had tried making it classier, but that attempt had somehow made the tent look worse, which at the sight of it, made Tenur chuckled in delight. Laura was then embarassed until they finished their dinner, where Tenur accidentally dropped his fair share of the salted fish into the fire. He had cursed his own luck and carelessness while Laura laughed at him, clearly taking pleasure in an unprecedented revenge she didn't even plan.

The both of them started exchanging stories after their stomach was filled with whatever food they found. Laura went first. She told the story of how her father, Denka had made a vow to restore fertility into everything that lost it. Quoting what she said, "My father had tried restoring the land's fertility using fertility magic, but it ended up impregnating almost every single female in town, but the embryos weren't able to fully develop since my father's magic was sucked dry almost instantly, thus almost all victims faced miscarriages," she said in a somewhat solemn tone, "but there was one left who survived."

"Who?" Tenur was already able to guess who it was, but he just wanted to her to make sure of it.

"My mother. She didn't lose me because she had some latent mana stored within her, which I was able to tap into during the growth phase. In the end, my father was able to provide me with enough mana to survive the birth, and that's how I'm still here," Laura sighed while thinking of her father's sacrifice. It had been a huge one, and he told her at some point before her birth, he had to go through intense pain as his body struggled to manufacture enough fertility magic to uphold her ultra rapid growth. He even described the pain as "even more painful than the process of giving birth", which her mother had chuckled and admitted that it was probably true after hearing that declaration.

"Who's providing you with the fertility magic now, then?" Tenur was truly intrigued on how she was able to survive even without fertility magic. It was, without saying, an important life sustaining factor for any organisms that grew through absorbing its power. The backlash was too great for any organism to survive for more than an hour if it was to even lose a moment's worth of the magic, but Tenur didn't know this fact, so he couldn't really understand why fertility magic had to be constantly supplied. He just thought it was a periodical kind of thing.

"Well, you, I think. Your drive is so strong that excess of fertile magic are overflowing and leaking out every minute you're not dead," Laura said after considering for a while. She thought he would've known, since she was sucking him even at this moment.

"Wait, what!? Holy shit! Total mind fuckery.." Tenur just held his head in his hand as he thought about what that meant. There was a slightly lewd perception he could take on, but there was also the other more serious one. Both would basically remold his current personality into a different one.

"Well, that's all, then. The night's still young, so I guess your story would help us procrastinate enough till sleep comes," Laura gestured for Tenur to begin, in which he did.

The story began when he was a few years younger. The discovery of his unknown power was completely unprecedented, which led him to a pointless chase for mentors who could teach him properly. He left out the part where almost all the village girls got pregnant, and he was relieved when Laura didn't prod him to describe, with detail, the parts that had connections to the unwanted prenancy cases. He continued on and on about how he lived his life, until he accidentally flew into the jungle-forest where he was found by Denka. It ended when he met Laura.

"...until I met you. And that's what happened," He said with a confident voice.

"You sure you didn't leave out any unwanted parts?" Laura raised her brow as she stared at him.

"Oh, haha, look at the time now. We should get to bed," Tenur went into the makeshift tent and laid down while he tried his best to ignore Laura's question. Laura just shurgged as if nothing happened and went to lay down just beside Tenur. The tent was a little cramp for two, so the two of them had to improvise on the position they're going to sleep in.

"How 'bout I sleep on you while you lay on the base of the tent?" Tenur suggested after looking at the sloping top of the tent.

"Geez, did it really have to come to that?" She didn't straight out refuse even though the idea sounded annoying.

"Well, if we can't sleep parallel, why not stack it up?"

"God.. ok ok, just get on," Laura laid on the base and allowed Tenur to climb onto her top side. The both of them fell asleep before they even knew it, with Laura snore's echoing through the tent and Tenur's head using Laura's chest as pillow.