Vaskir took Covens’ advice and got to thinking, the prevailing thought in his head was how something could quantify the human body and mind into such small figures.

‘It can’t be accurate,’ he thought, carefully using the knife to cut the bandages from his face. He gingerly stroked his forehead, remembering the pain. He shivered and got to work on his lower body. ‘Does the Consortium dictate your stats? In that case, surely there would be a bias,’ he shook his head. Covens’ last note had sent a spike of adrenaline directly into his spine. If she was telling the truth… after Vaskir reached the foundational level… ‘A 7 in intelligence. A 7 and a half,’ he muttered, finishing with the bandages. If 5 was the human limit… Vaskir didn’t understand, but Covens had made it sound like a good thing. He sat on a tree stump, toying with the knife. He realised that he had left her with Pravin’s unconscious body, something which he had never done before. Vaskir remembered how territorial he used to get after combat, especially when one of them was injured. The paranoia served them well and Pravin had adopted the habit after a few close battles and greedy comrades. Vaskir shifted uncomfortably, then looked out at the thick foliage; he couldn’t wait to get back to the dry climate of his continent. Dismal weather and errant rain were far more comfortable than endless humidity and bug bites.

He rose and made his way back to Covens. She was crouched down beside Pravin, and Vaskir had to stop his hand flinching towards his longsword. Instead, he stayed briefly in the tree line and watched as she slowly waved the back of her hand in front of his mouth, checking for breathing. Vaskir let out a long sigh and mentally chided himself.

‘They’ll be fine, right?’ Vaskir said, coming to stand beside Coven and handed her back her knife.

‘Yeah, Cradow was the worst off but they both should wake up sometime tomorrow. It’ll be a 1-week journey on foot for us. Hopefully, the two of you will be able to begin cultivation towards your breakthrough to Foundational. Once you hit the wall our pace should increase as you’ll have a surplus of energy to work with…’ she said, standing up and taking back her knife. ‘Huh,’ she muttered as she looked over at Vaskir.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I just realised that this is the first time I’ve gotten an actual look at your face. Last time you were either bloody or covered in bandages. Huh.’ she said, then reached out and patted his cheek. ‘Four charisma indeed.’ Vaskir laughed.

‘Pravin’s the handsome one,’ Vaskir said. ‘I still have no idea why he doesn’t visit the bathhouses with me, he’d get swamped.’ Covens snorted out a laugh.

‘All jokes aside,’ she said, ‘charisma isn’t a measure of physical beauty. All Ascendants, even the ones at Foundation, will notice their bodies become more appealing. Charisma is a measure of your force of personality. You could be the single ugliest man on Inglasia, but if you could surge an army’s morale The System would consider you charismatic.’ Vaskir nodded.

‘The System?’ he asked.

‘It’s what we call the rating system the Consortium uses to measure the powers and skills of Ascendants,’ she said. Vaskir was about to ask a minor question that had been bugging him before Covens handed him the rope to both sleds. He took them and started dragging Pravin and Cradow along.

‘I was wondering,’ Vaskir said. ‘How does “The System” handle odd numbers.’ Covens chuckled.

‘It took me a few years before I asked that,’ she said. ‘Turns out, low-rank manuals aren’t very accurate, they tend to round down to the nearest whole number. But that doesn’t mean that the 0.5 disappears. You’ll find that it’s a lot easier to increase whatever stat the 0.5 is in when you're cultivating. If you had bonded that 3rd rank manual…’ she frowned, ‘well, I’m not sure how much information it would show you. But I bet it would have been a lot more accurate.’ Vaskir strained as he pulled his allies along. Ten minutes of silence passed as he ingested this information.

‘What else does a manual do?’ he asked.

‘A 12th rank one? It’ll give you your stats and teach you how to cultivate. 11th rank is much the same except it teaches you more information about Foundational, and gives you a few suggestions on your next steps. You can buy both from the Consortium at a fair price. It’s 10th rank where things get exciting. Techniques, locations to Ascension fruits, some even hold a small amount of open aura, letting the person using the manual get a look at what they’re trying to reach. But I’ve heard some horror stories, too.’ Vaskir waited for her to continue but she didn’t, her eyes were distant, reliving a memory.

‘What kind of stories?’ he prompted, snapping her out of her daze.

‘An Ascendant's aura is like their story. I heard of a poor boy from a well-known clan receiving a 7th rank manual on his birthday. He immediately took it up into his room to cultivate. When I was told the story, I heard that he was no more than 8 years old. The aura inside the book had experienced torture, and the master who wrote it had based most of his teachings on that pain. So, once the young boy examined the aura to see what he would be able to achieve once he reached the same level…’

‘He died from the pain?’ Vaskir asked. Covens nodded.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

‘All that pain, all those experiences—forced into a child's mind…’ she said, then sighed. ‘Consider it a warning. That 3rd class manual might be a death trap.’ Vaskir continued pulling.

‘How can a stat go above 5 if that’s the human limit?’ he asked, getting to the crux of the matter. Covens frowned at him.

‘Because once you Ascend you’re no longer human,’ she answered simply and Vaskir grunted. Thinking back, all the Ascendants he had interacted with, even before the expedition, had looked down on him.

‘They might not even consider me to be the same species…’ he realised. ‘What does the limit increase to?’ he asked, mostly as a way to stop thinking about the last topic.

‘Ten,’ she answered. ‘And the hard limit is 100, nobody can go above that.’ Vaskir tried to imagine a person with 50 times his strength and simply couldn’t.’

‘Has anyone ever reached 100 in a stat?’ he asked, curious. Covens nodded.

‘Yes, reaching the peak of a stat is a necessary part of progressing past tier 2.’ Vaskir swore. Covens nodded knowingly.

‘Yeah, there aren’t many, but they’re all monsters. Every. Single. One,’ she said.

‘I get the sense I don’t want to meet them,’ Vaskir said. Covens laughed.

‘And you never will. We’re nothing to them. The only time you ever notice an ant, Vaskir, is when you step on it accidentally and the pop leaves a satisfying tingle in the back of your mind,’ she said. ‘Now let me take over.’ She took the rope from Vaskir, who had started wheezing after 15 minutes of pulling the sleds through the mud.

The campfire crackled; a stray ember landed on Vaskir’s leather boot and he dipped the shoe tip into the mud, quenching it. With the night came a heavy silence. No mosquitos buzzed in a hungry group around him. No endless croaks and distant growls. Just indistinct rustles from the treeline, so soft that they blended into the quiet instead of disturbing it. Cradow and Pravin were laying by the fire, still sleeping. Covens had taken out a thin blanket and wrapped herself up. Despite the heat from the campfire she shivered. Vaskir poked the fire with the end of his scabbard, causing it to flicker. He could hear Covens’ teeth chattering. He reached into his knapsack and withdrew a thick, folded cloth. It was no longer than an arm's length but he threw it over to her; it landed on her shoulder.

‘I wrap that around my head when the nights get cold,’ he said. Covens warily took the cloth from her shoulder, then wrapped it around her head. Only her eyes and the tip of her nose could be seen. Vaskir kept his expression neutral, despite the uncanny resemblance she suddenly had to the old woman selling flowers by the inn of his old village. The chattering stopped. Cradow’s fist flashed up and struck the air in front of him.

‘Fuck off with your shitty barrier,’ he said, bolting upright. His eyes were bloodshot and baggy and he stared out into the darkness like it owed him money. He looked over to Vaskir, then arched his back to get a look at Covens. ‘It work?’ he asked. Vaskir nodded, too comfortable to verbalise. ‘Sweet.’ He struggled to his feet and then sat down on the dry mud beside Vaskir. A few comfortable minutes passed.

Pravin groaned in pain and woke up. He tried to sit up but then flinched in pain, instead, he turned his head to see if anyone was around. He spotted Vaskir and relaxed. Pravin gave him a weak thumbs up and Vaskir smiled at him.

‘You’ve got the whole night ahead of you, buddy,’ Vaskir said. ‘Get some sleep.’ Pravin nodded and closed his eyes again. Vaskir turned to Covens. ‘I thought Cradow was supposed to be worse off?’ he asked.

‘He is,’ Covens answered from inside her blanket fortress. ‘He’s also a lot tougher.’

‘Massive constitution,’ Cradow said, nodding, his eyes still on the fire in front of him. More time passed. Cradow let out a small laugh. ‘Hey,’ he said, leaning towards Vaskir. ‘Want to hear something scary?’

‘Don’t,’ Covens said, sounding far more alert than before. Cradow ignored her.

‘There’s a Duskstalker maybe 15 metres directly behind you,’ Cradow said. Vaskir’s peace and comfort disappeared. ‘Don’t worry,’ Cradow continued. ‘I won’t let it eat you.’

‘It won’t be eating anyone,’ Covens said. ‘It won’t attack. Not as long as one of us stays awake.’ Vaskir slowly turned, and since Cradow and Covens didn’t stop him he guessed it was safe enough to take a look out into the darkness. The campfire had killed his night vision. There was nothing out there. Vaskir had heard a million stories about Duskstalkers, they came with the profession, but was lucky enough to never see one himself. Cradow noticed his worry.

‘Ah, don’t fret. We’re here and we’re pumping the air with our aura,’ Cradow said.

‘Don’t phrase it that way,’ Covens murmured.

‘We’re safe?’ Vaskir asked.

‘We are,’ Cradow said, turning to look into the darkness with Vaskir. ‘It’s right there.’ He pointed at a patch of darkness. Vaskir immediately started making out eyes, whether the eyes of the creature or the eyes of his mind he did not know. ‘Get some sleep,’ Cradow said, gripping Vaskir’s shoulder. Vaskir nodded, not daring to take his eyes off the darkness.

Sleep did not come, and in an hour he and Covens were the only two awake. She had decided to take the first watch, then swap with Cradow a few hours later. Vaskir stared up at the stars, there seemed to be more of them in this part of the world. Vaskir wondered how that might be, but then his mind turned to darker, and more pressing, topics. The Consortium’s greed. Monver hunting them as of tomorrow. The journey out of the jungle. His newfound allies, both of them he did not truly trust. The past he had left behind in Chilbrow, that he was now marching towards. And finally, the manual. After the first time Covens had taken it out of the box, Vaskir had felt a pull. It was a small thing, at first, Vaskir even mistook it for greed and pushed down the emotion with his usual force of will. But it had grown, especially with all this talk of manuals. Vaskir turned on his side to get a good look at the box. It was on one of the sleds, looking innocuous.

‘Saint Vinnow,’ Vaskir thought. Strangely, the name sounded familiar. He sighed and turned back around. Now he was facing the treeline and thoughts of the Duskstalker filled his mind. He sighed; otherworldly things, both artefact and creature alike, flanked him. ‘This is going to be a long night.’