It cost way too much Mana, yet John knew exactly how valuable it could be. Even a single piece of information he could give to one of his teammates without anyone else knowing could be invaluable. In much the same way he managed to convince Ember when he was still in school, it could save his life.
It took him some time to get to their usual class. John’s steps were just a bit slower than usual. When he did get there, however, he found Bass and Yan sharing a conversation as they sat in two of the front seats. Both chatting about something he couldn’t quite hear, and they paused for a second as he entered.
“Hey John, I was expecting you to be last,” Yan mentioned cheerfully.
“Guess not. Where are the rest, any ideas?” John asked the two.
“Nope, probably in class, Boss.”
“Makes sense, what have you two been up to?”
Bass and Yan started talking about each of their classes. Bass first told him she managed to improve her chakram’s Mana efficiency a little. John was happy for her, but she seemed far more excited about it than he expected for a small improvement. Yan went next, speaking excitedly about the many parts of her owl form she had shifted into wolf form in the last two lessons.
“Sounds like you two are definitely gonna be ready for our expedition,” John laughed a bit.
“What were you up to Boss, learned anything new from her?” Bass didn’t even bother mentioning Ingrid’s name.
“Actually, yeah, I learned how to make some basic Mindscape protections. And also, telepathy!”
“You did both of those in a single lesson?” Yan sounded shocked.
“Is that weird? I thought it’s just because I’m only starting to learn Psychic magic. Compared to video games that’s always how it is, at the start you get a bunch of skills really fast then it slows down,” the Gamer thought it made complete sense.
“John, real life is nothing like that,” Bass laughed, “but I guess that’s another one of your stupid perks.”
Yan looked almost pissed, “I’m just glad you’re our leader John, but you really should read some books about the Abyss or something.”
“Probably,” John rubbed his neck, “anyways, yeah. Well, I guess that’s useful at least. Hope I stay in the quick skill range for a while longer, since I still don’t have much for real combat,” he felt embarrassed. These were more advantages Gaia gave him, he realized. It bothered him that he didn’t know why.
“What are you talking about, those bolts of yours are badass!” Bass jumped in.
Before either Yan or John could respond, Ember entered the room in silence, disrupting the conversation. With no one speaking up, they sat in silence until a bit later when Matthew and Charlotte joined them. After they sat down as well, Ember spoke up.
“I got us permission to use parts of the eastern forest for our dry run. Should be good practice, even if we won’t need the rebreathers,” she showed six small devices that looked like just the mouthpiece of the huge diving backpacks John had seen before, “thought it would be good to pick up the rest of the supplies from Strong while you guys were busy,” Ember explained, and the rest nodded. Bass even thanked her.
“Great, everything else should still be in here, right?” John didn’t know where Bass ended up storing their supplies.
“We ended up putting everything in here when you rushed away, boss,” the sound mage laughed as she opened a cabinet at the far edge of the classroom. In it were the stored tents, neatly packed, as well as the various packets of dried food, frozen water, and all the other essentials. The only thing missing was the gun John knew Ember still had on her, and the generator, “to predict your question, the generator is in my pocket dimension, thought it was safer that way. It is a fusion reactor, after all.”
John shook his head, trying to process what she said again, then he remembered what the thing ran on, helium 3, he had always heard that material in the context of fusion, “right, so let’s go,” he took as many of the supplies in his inventory as he could. Which was about half of all of it, surprisingly. Two of the tents even stacked, though the others had to be taken by the others. Everybody put on backpacks, and Ember spoke again before they headed out.
“I suggest we forage instead of using the supplies we got for the XR2 expedition, it will be good training and foraging here is far easier,” she said coldly.
“Agreed,” John responded, knowing she was right.
It was about an hour of walking before they reached a spot that was suitable to camp. Most of the area was far too forested, with the sun blocked and tree roots on every piece of ground. Instead they found a small clearing that only had two trees in the center. Despite the lack of animals, the wind made a noise very distinctive of the woods, and John smelled dirt that was fresh from the rain, and just a slight hint of flowers blooming.
“This looks clear enough, good cover from the trees too,” Yan looked over the clearing.
“I believe there is a river a bit to the east,” Ember scanned the two trees before beginning to set up her tent in between them, “good find, Yennifer,” she said, her tone slightly complementary. The two exchanged looks, and John wasn’t sure what was happening for a bit, before Bass interrupted.
“Alright, let’s get ourselves settled, guys,” she suggested and they all followed suit, making a small ring of tents around the two trees. John had carried Charlotte’s tent, so hers went next to his.
About an hour later the sun was around the middle of the sky, and they were all finally finished with their tents. Bass and Yan even had the time to make a small sitting place between the trees.
“We should probably forage for lunch. Has anybody had anything to eat since the morning?” John asked, he hadn’t eaten since the evening. And with all the walking they had done, even he felt a bit hungry.
The others agreed, and they split into a few groups. Ember and Bass would go to the river to get some water. John and Yan would forage for some food, and Charlotte and Matthew decided to stay back and build a campfire.
Yan was eager for them to find a deer, but John wasn’t sure he was fond of the idea. Even eating those weird bats left a bad feeling in his stomach, and killing a deer wouldn’t sit right with him. He doubted they would have a choice on XR2 or any other expeditions. Limited supplies and the difficulty of foraging plants on XR2 specifically would make anything but hunting impossible.
’Just thinking about hunting those things I saw in the sand is worse,’ John sighed and shook the thought out of his head, ’one thing at a time.’
“John, you good?” Yan asked him, seeing him space out.
“Yeah, how should we do this Yan? I’ve never really hunted before.”
“Leave the hunting to me. I’ll find us a target using my owl form. Then after I run it towards here, you’re gonna use your magic to take them out, ok?”
“Alright,” he shifted uncomfortably where he stood.
A dead deer-like creature sat before him. It was far bigger than a normal deer, with antlers that reached over a meter in length. It was fierce too, only multiple rounds of Arcane Bolts having taken it down while John had to avoid its nasty charge. He especially didn’t want to think about the noise it made as it died. While trying to deal with what he had actually done, Yan came back, landing near the corpse of the animal.
“Good job John, seems like we got a great catch together!” she put her hand up as if waiting for a high five. John didn’t even notice.
“Right,” he tried to snap out of it, but when he returned to look at the corpse he felt the need to heave. Barely suppressing it, the smell got to him, already a dreadful stench appeared. Coughed up fluids flew from his throat to the ground.
“Jesus, John. It’s just a dead animal,” she seemed surprised.
“That’s exactly why, how exactly are you so used to this?” he snapped back, not intending to be so harsh.
“Long story,” Yan’s grin turned to a frown, “anyways I can’t carry this without you. Can you survive getting it back to camp?”
“I have a better idea,” avoiding touching anything more than necessary, he picked up a leg of the animal and focused on putting it in his inventory. About half of it was filled, but the corpse was gone.
The meat stew flavored with wild onions and potatoes was good, it even smelt just a bit like home. But the feeling it gave John wasn’t.
“Everyone, we did a good job, it won’t be this easy on XR2 since we won’t know the environment. But we have supplies that’ll let us make it till we figure everything out,” Bass seemed cheerful, having wolfed down the same stew. John tried snapping out of his own head, Bass shouldn’t need to take responsibility for what he should be doing.
“Absolutely guys, now let’s just make sure we can figure out the generator and the pads and we can head home for the night,” he continued, trying to put a smile on his face. Then he noticed what word he used, home. It bothered him.
The generator was simple enough to set up, Matthew had talked to Strong about how exactly to run it. Doing it simply out of curiosity, as he assured the rest. Once the tablets were hooked up to it, John saw them booting up. Their charge must have dissipated sitting for a few days.
’Good to know,’ John figured. Looking over them again, he saw they had a power estimate, and each had around a thousand amp hours. About a hundred times more than normal phones, but it seemed like charging all six tablets with the generator was not close to its max capacity. As they booted up he handed each of them to one of the others. Immediately Bass started figuring out how to change the picture on the lock screen from the generic blue and purple design that the Council had picked. Yan and Charlotte spent some time getting familiarized with the various apps and interface, while both Matthew and Ember looked almost confused at the technology.
Wondering what the actual capabilities of these ManaPads were, John decided to ask Bass, who seemed most familiar with whatever specific configuration this was, “so, Bass, how common exactly are these ManaPads, and what can we do with them?”
“Obviously we can do pretty much everything a normal computer can do, but also a bunch of cool things. These generate what are essentially Mana hotspots, allowing anyone to access a local connection that’s shared between them as long as you’re about a kilometer from it. Also it can build a height map as we walk, along with calculating how much energy we’re consuming by measuring our Mana output, which should help with rationing food. They’re also equipped with a couple of training programs designed to help us work on our skills while we’re in the field, and some entertainment for leisure. A couple good games even, I think!” she seemed far more excited than John expected, but he was glad to learn what she knew regardless. Though Yan had sent her an odd look, “this tech is cool,” Bass shot back, “I guess the Council has some nice shit,” she laughed.
Afterwards they sat in relative silence, once Yan and Charlotte had figured out the differences they tried helping Matthew and Ember, both were difficult but eventually everyone learned how to connect the earpieces and once everyone had a grasp of the rest of the apps they decided to give it a short test. Yan was their fastest member, so she flew all the way out of the forest, while the rest of them headed deeper into it.
The woods only became denser as they delved inside, the large oaks that didn’t let them camp replaced by pines packed to the brim, barely leaving room for the group to walk around without bumping into roots or tree trunks. The consistent sound of birds earlier was replaced with lower noises of mammals and what John recognized as the same wolf howls he had heard with Orianna and in the cave, and there was an earthy smell that seemed to engulf them as they walked. Yet it wasn’t long before they got a message back from Yan.
“I… I found something,” she said and her voice had an element of panic.
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