Chapter 10

Road Trip

With no bags to pack or toothbrush or even money to worry about, I simply left. Choosing my direction with the anime trope of tossing a stick and going the direction it points in after . . West-southwest it is.

I start flying over the canopy at subsonic speed again.

"WOOOOOOO!!!"

This time I'm going a little faster. Too much and the air-flow around and through my windshield Barrier becomes too wonky. And I can't really just block it off, because I'd run out of air and have to slow down again before that, or pass out and crash. Having had experience, and some time to puzzle it out, my windshield is probably best with a cigar shape and a 1-inch wide opening on either tip. But my fuel tank is a lot bigger now. I should be able to last a full hour, maybe two.

No reason to go that far, though. Just looking for something different enough to be interesting.

About 10 minutes in, I notice a single steep mountain just slightly to my left. I head for it, but it was farther than I thought, about 15 more minutes. Let's see, 25 minutes at around 4-5 hundred miles per hour is roughly 200 miles (320km).

Hmm, being able to see something like a mountain from around 120 miles away is . . On earth you can only see them from about 20 miles away. Must be a bigger world, with a shallower curve then. At least 6 times as big, and if the novels are to be believed, maybe much bigger. But then how does the math work out? How do the sun and moon go around in a timely fashion, while gravity doesn't squish me into a pancake even as strong as I've become? If gravity is weaker to balance with bigger worlds, the celestial bodies would slow their orbits too. While the bigger world means they'd have to orbit farther. There must be something I'm missing, but that's a problem for Future Me. ¹I already have a solution for this, but I need to do some expositioning first

Wonder If I'll be able to find my way back later? Did I leave the iron on? Not like I need to go back, I can just carve out a new tree-hole.

Anyways, since I'm at the mountain now, I start to bank around it while slowing down. Looking around for any nicer or interesting bits. Trees, valleys, waterfall, more valleys, a series of regularly-spaced caves, a few craters . . Uhh . . Well that sounds interesting, in a morbid way. Or do I check out the nice waterfall?

If I were to write down my musings, and later allow someone to read them, you might wonder why the caves and craters bit was morbid. Well, sects are usually in out-of-the-way places, often on a mountain peak, as there's more qi around and less people to share it with. Sometimes having caves dug out for either cultivation or crafting purposes.²"But why a cave instead of a workshop?" 'It's more private so you don't get interrupted while doing something complicated that can literally blow up in your face. Also more sturdy, see above.' And the craters are likely battle scars, not filled back because no one's around to do so. This may effectively be a graveyard.

Waterfall first, I'm thirsty. Needs before wants.

-Back in the tree-

In the middle of the single room, a stem of wood grows from the floor. About the size of a drinking straw. Then the tip begins to swell, reaching the size of a plum after the first minute. Swelling more to match an orange after another four minutes. And continuing until it reaches the size of an ostrich egg.

Then it splits from the top in 9 sections to peel open like a banana. Inside is a tiny figure, like a young woman, about 8 inches (20cm) tall.³B*rbie doll size She has pastel blue skin, dark green hair and 2 pairs of transparent/iridescent wings resembling a dragonfly. This is a tree spirit. Like the dryad of myths and legends.⁴ The reason she was born, is because I had gathered extremely dense amounts of Qi, in the same spot, the heart of an ironbark tree, exactly 999 times in about 9 months. 2, sorry, but for the sake of this story, she is a throwaway character, never to be mentioned again. Now, if anyone wants to do a spin-off with her, PM me.

-Mountain-

There's a pool right before the waterfall. It's obviously been artificially created, judging by the stonework blocks. I take a drink from the stream feeding the pool, then dive in for a swim. Specifically a fox-paddle.

There are fishes in the pond, a bit odd based on the size of the falls. There's no way a regular fishie would be capable of jumping that high to spawn at the water-source. So maybe they were artificially raised like a koi pond, with a net or something to keep them from going out the falls side.

. . .

Maybe they're delicious.

Stands to reason, people gotta eat. Why put all this work into something that's only a dollar a pound?⁵or a Euro per 500g or so

. . .

'I think I'm in heaven.'

Now there isn't any reason to go back.

Next, do I make a new home? Or continue exploring.

Home first, save something for tomorrow. There wasn't any major problem with the design of the first treehouse. And having the entrance 100 feet up (30meters) definately saved me a lot of trouble. So I decide to make another, just slightly different. Increasing the width of everything by half and the height of the usable area by double. I've been a growing boy. But it'll have to be easy for me to find. Mountain, then waterfall, then from here, that tall tree over . . there. Second one to the right, and straightjacket on till morning.

-that afternoon-

It was a lot faster this time. The only reason I got tired was from not resting first, after my fighter-jet imitation.

Now I go wander/forage around my new home. Partially to locate edible plants, also to see the types of animals in this area. It's still the same forest, but that doesn't really mean anything with the distances involved.

Besides, it's good to know the "neighbors".

There's a bunny. 'Hi bunny.' There goes bunny.

There's a deer. 'Hi deer.' Deer looks at me funny.

There's a bear. With stones in her fur. NOPE!

There's another bunny. With antlers. 'Hi jackalope.' There goes jackalope.

There's a tiger. NOPE!

With shiny dark stripes. Metal tiger? DOUBLE NOPE!

There's a bunch of monkees. 'Hi monkees.'

'No, I don't want your special chocolates, take them back.'

That's enough neighbors for now. Time to check out the maybe-was-once-a sect.