Chapter 103: Long Ride Home (Arc 4 – The Boundary)

In the night that felt like it was going forever, within a dark dense forest, a girl ran for her survival.

“Get off me!”

Small ravenous monkeys were leaping off the trees onto the poor girl.

“Nanananan!” 

Only about forty centimetres tall, these mini-monkeys had long arms with jagged, sharp teeth.

One after another tried jumping on the woman as she ran. The moment they latched on, their jaws dug into her skin and began nibbling away. 

“Arg-h!” 

She tried grabbing them off and throwing them to the ground. Flesh flung off as the monkey’s teeth dug in deeper once the pulling tension began.

The pain of chunks of flesh being torn messily for muscles was ignored. Her desire to live and anger for being forced to run through this forest 

If it wasn’t for the forest suddenly melting, she wouldn’t have been forced to run through this danger haven. The monkeys were a threat to her life, her mind was in overdrive, focusing on all the information being injected into her mind. She wished she was capable of stopping all the monkeys, but that wasn’t feasible, so she just had to make sure no monkey jumped on and mauled her neck or an important muscle… She knew they were all important, but any that allowed her to keep running were more important. She had to keep running before one of the more dangerous monsters revealed themselves.

A large jaguar-like creature jumped from the tree, and its maw devoured the monkey eating the girl’s shoulder.

“ARGHH!!” The girl screamed as she was slammed into the ground and the beast’s paw drug into her back. 

The remaining monkeys stopped chewing and ripped the remaining flesh off, then ran away with their prize.

Blood and saliva dripped onto her body as the monster finished its meal.

“[Starlight-Argharrow].” Using her skill to see the space around her, a dozen arrows appeared behind the monster that it wasn’t aware of.

“Crriiiiii!” 

Arrows penetrated the beast’s back, and with a push, the girl tried to escape with a burst of flames. 

“Grraaaaa!” In an attempt to stop its meal, the beast's claw drilled down the person’s back.

“BURN!” That only ignited her anger even more. Flames flooded around her, firing at everything in this highly flammable forest.

The jaguar-like creature retreated to heal as flames scorched its eyes, but the scent of the prey remained in its focus.

The women wobbled up and continued to run. The small wave of flames already began spreading to the trees. 

Everything in this damned forest grew within a matter of days—trees that challenged skyscrapers in height—but it also so easily fell apart like cotton in the wind with a simple match.

The girl ran as the fire speared and animals moved to their places of solitude and safety to survive the forest’s collapse.

While she ran, she needed to mend her wound.

Grabbing one of the vine straps she kept around her waist, she wrapped it around her back and pulled it tightly. She stumbled forward, still trying to keep moving. The vine stuck to her back and inflicted intense stabbing pain into her muscles as if needle-sized chopsticks poked into her flesh and played with food. The only good part was that some of her internal muscles were slowing healing because of it.

After a long, painful run.

Once she believed she was safe for a moment, she brought her disfigured hand onto her back wound and dragged it down as a small fire seared her skin.

“Argh~!” My eyes shot open, and a loud clap was heard as my head fell into my hand.

Now awake, I was still in the viewing room on Nina’s ship.

What… happened…

(“ [Sleepless Nights] while certainly still a part of your skillset, just was being repaired so for the first time in years you slept for a moment ”)

[Sleepless Nights] was a skill that removed my ability to sleep. It did offer me alternate modes of resting that allowed my consciousness to be at various levels of activity, but it was still always active. I had never slept or truly dreamed.

Will there be any more skills doing shit like that?

From what I remembered, out of my main non-magic skills, only [Disruptive Starlight] was truly a shell of its former self. I didn’t feel anything off, and neither did Espr say anything about [Sleepless Nights].

(“ [Sleepless Nights] was only really moments away from being repaired, but it was basically non-functioning as that part of your soul healed. [Disruptive Starlight] is undergoing a very slow repair process; honestly, you will need to level up for that one to truly begin working again ”)

What, is levelling up just jumpstarting the damn skill’s recovery process?

(“ Yes ”)

Sigh…

I rolled my eyes; even after properly sleeping for the first time in years, I was still fucking tired. Though, I guess I can’t call that properly sleeping since it was more of a nightmare. 

(“ If you are wondering why you had that vision, that is because it is a memory that is ingrained in your sou–”)

–Because moments that occur around when one levels up are ingrained into one's memory. It just so happens that most of mine was when I was in combat. Combat encounters, where in quite a few I didn’t escape with at least some bodily injuries. Let us not forget, I have just lost a lot of levels, which has made my head lighter, and some of those supposedly permanent memories are less ingrained, which means if I had to guess, only my earlier ones stand mostly unaffected.

What I said was mostly simple stuff, but with details about the memory loss, I believe I made a decent educated guess. 

(“ Congratulations! You are learning ”)

Argh, keep the celebration short, my brain is aching.

My condition hadn’t improved. It was likely at most only an hour since I fell asleep. I could still see the wreckage of the planet behind us as the ship waited for its turn to leave through the transport Tunnel. 

I moved around after being still for a rough hour. My body creaked and snapped as I moved, it was still in an absolute mess, but at least my vital organs were functioning after I used my skills to at least repair them.

Haaa, well, time to ask Nina for a proper job.

I knew it was because she had been looking for me for over a year, but having her around was a miracle I wasn’t going to miss out on. I only ignored the question initially because I needed time to rest mentally first. I knew I was alive and I would be staying that way, so a quick mental unwinding was priority one. Which I believed I had done enough. The second reason was that I was a little worried about my body being a little too worn out to receive external healing. Healing skills and magics came in all ranges of flavours, and while it was likely that Nina’s healing wouldn’t tax my body anyway, I decided to let reason one decide my earlier decision.

Now, do I just walk out of the room and call her? Or are there cameras here or some shit?

(“ No cameras, they have left you to your privacy ”)

That… is a security flaw.

Anyway, I walked to the exit of the room and looked around the hallway. I wanted to get Nina to return and some food.

I spotted someone, and I said hello. “Howdy, can you help me real quick?”

It was one of the staff of the ship, a seemingly young woman. “Yes, do you need anything?”

“Yes please, can you get some food, and tell Nina it is alright to come back?" I’m happy to get patched up now.” I gave the staff a wave and leaned back into the room.

The staff paused for a moment and shrugged and began talking to Nina over the communications first, and then requested some food from someone else onboard. 

I stumbled back into the lounge and plopped myself on a chair.

“Comfy.” 

(“ Indulging yourself? ”)

Only you would call someone finding a chair comfortable, bloody indulging.

(“ Agree to disagree ”)

Eventually, the food had arrived. It was a different person than the staff I saw earlier, and they were a little shocked when they saw me missing an arm–I saw their eyes dart to and away from it. I was kind of surprised, considering this was Nina’s crew. 

Though to be fair. I was a person in heavily damaged and partially melted armour. Where my missing arm was, it had liquefied and hardened to a spike. 

“Thanks for the food.” I waved the person off. 

It was a simple dish, some hard bricks of food, some soft mush, and a large bottle of water.

The mouth hatch on my helmet stopped functioning, so I had to rip the lower half off. 

Ding.

It dropped to the floor, making quite the audible sound.

“Argh, my lips feel sandy.” The breathable air hitting my face was a welcomed experience, but licking my lips wasn’t. I hadn’t healed them yet.

The flavours were nice; they tasted like grilled ribs, and the mush was like potato mixed with some sort of sauce. No idea what, but it tasted good.

Eventually, the door opened, and Nina walked in. “Sorry for being late.”

“Nah, everything is good, you are not late.” I continued to eat my food. “Come, sit down.”

Nina sat down on the chair next to me, on my left side near my missing arm.

“You got some good food on this ship.”

Nina smiled. “Had too many instances working on medical shifts with flavourless food, that once I owned my own, I had to ensure everyone onboard had something good to eat.” 

I scoffed down the remainder of the food. “I feel that. The stock stuff they bring on some ships tastes awful without a cook.” 

I cleaned my face with a towel brought with the food. “So, how’s your mana looking? Because with everything wrong with my body at the moment, you might get sick if you have to drink any more mana recovery potions.”

Nina confidently said. “I will be fine.”

“Are you sure, because you are looking a bit green, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you vomited later today.”

“You… are quite blunt indeed.”

“...You talked to my family a fair bit, I see.” She mentioned my family before, so I figured she had spoken with them more than I originally guessed. It would’ve been smart. The more you know about your target, the easier it usually is to find them.

“Yes, I got on well with your mother.”

“Well, it is good she has another female friend. Good to know she has less of a chance to be lonely in the future. She is pretty bad at making friends.”

“Are you sure you aren’t just projecting?”

“...You got closer than I thought.”

My mum, Tella, being friends with someone famous sounded weird in my head. I mean, she was just a person who liked to sell and grow flowers and talk to people in the neighbourhood.

“Yes, we have gone for lunch on a few occasions.”

“Sounds nice, anywhere I’ve been… Well, I don’t remember too many of the restaurants where we lived.”

“I doubt it, we went to a slightly expensive place.”

“Oh, I hope you didn’t make her pay then.” I chuckled.

“Of course not, I owned the place.”

“...Not going to lie, I should’ve expected that.”
(“ You are being very friendly today? ”)

I got stuck in space for over a year because I had no friends… So yeah, I want to fix that. And what's wrong with getting familiar with one of the best healers in the universe?

“Well, if you have finished eating, do you have any preference on where I heal you first, or would you rather I do everything at once?”

“Eh, let’s start with the missing arm.”

Bobple

And we are back! Took a longer break than I originally planned but it was definitely worth it. I'm feeling a lot better now.

Anyway, new arc time!

Spoiler

And latter half of the story! I only planned to do 5~6 arcs, and currently that plan hasn't changed.

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I'm excited. 

There is a few things I want to try, and hopefully continue to write an intresting~ish story.

Upload schedule wise. I will be flip flopping between 4 and 3 chapters a week. That could change to permanently 4 or 3, but that is too be decided later. 

Also fun fact, these chapters were supposed be uploaded earlier this week, but I decided because it was the start of the new arc. I could upload them near the end of the week, so closer time to next week chapters! Probably stupid logic, but eh, that is what happened.