"So, how are we supposed to get down from here?" Sam asks as she looks over the ledge that we are now at the top of.

"Ah, I had a plan to use the safety barrier I'd created there. We can break off chunks of it and use it like a dagger or hand-hold, then weaken the rock wall here, then use the cutting force to slow us down as we get down to the next more level surface," I tell her.

Sam looks over the ledge to the near-vertical drop, using the safety barrier I'd created as a hand-hold. It was hard to judge distances properly at this scale and in this light, but it had to be at least a 50 foot drop.

"That's crazy," Sam concluded.

"Yeah. I didn't quite think it would be that far a drop when I thought of this," I said.

"So, what now?" Sam asked.

"Wait," I said. I felt some mana moving through the stone, and it didn't belong to either one of us. It was spreading very quick and smoothly. Whoever was moving their mana through the stone was way more powerful than me and Sam combined.

"Quick! Resist it!" I said and began pushing my mana into the stone below me in order to contest the attempted claim. Sam immediately realized the potential danger of having the stone below us claimed by someone else, especially because I had a strong suspicion right now that the individual responsible for this might very well be the old man that had been just threatening to throw us down the cliff.

The two of us worked to resist the mana. It didn't matter that our mana would clash with one another, the only thing that mattered was us pushing in mana that could oppose this other claim.

The other mana pressed up against ours, pushed against us with a disturbing ease that stopped just short of overwhelming us. No, it was intentionally holding back, making it clear it could easily crush us if it so wanted, but it was choosing not to.

After a few seconds of pressing up against us in this way, the energy retreated.

[That was just me letting you know, just because you have gone a little way down does not mean you are out of my reach. Get moving if you do not want me to make you move!] The old man's voice yelled down at us from the overlook.

"Yeah, fuck you too old man!" Sam muttered under her breath. "Well, shit!" She glanced over the edge again. "So, how exactly did you say you were going to make that knife and soft earth thing work?

"Well, if we take the stones from the short little guard rail I put up to catch us, they should be close enough to the right shape. Then, we just push them into the stone that we soften and let it carve through them. A similar technique for stone softening was used in the Agarath for immutable stone crafting. Gravity didn't really apply the same there, but I think it should be enough to get us down there."

"Hmmm... I..." Sam stammered. "I don't think my gnome side was very old in the Agarath. I don't know that technique."

"Alright. How about you let me take care of this one and you'll take care of the more slanted surfaces the same way we just did to get down here? We'll trade off tracks like that to conserve energy on the way down."

Sam gave a sullen nod in response and clutched her hand to her chest, looking very concerned.

"I'll relinquish my claim to half the stone lip here. Just pull it out and form it into something like a knife. Or rather, like a spike of some sort." After instructing her as such, I moved to perform those actions myself, pulling up the bit of stone and shaping it. It was really more of a large bulky icepick. It needed to have the right structural support after all.

After this, I forced my mana into the ground through my knees, this one was going to take a lot more mana than the last trick I pulled. The stone would need to be affected a lot deeper than before, and the softening would need to give it a clay-like consistency instead of the sand-like treatment I'd given it before.

At the same time, I reached out over the ledge and then rammed the spike I'd created into the front of the cliff face.

"Ok, so, just do that and give me a sec to harden the stone around it again. We'll go down at the same time, since I don't want to spend more time manipulating the stone like this than I have to."

"Yeah," Sam said in something of a far-off voice. Despite her apparent distracted state though, she still did everything exactly as I'd told her.

"Right, now here comes the scary part. We gotta use this as a hand-hold and climb down over the side, and then you gotta hold on tight while I start making the wall softer so we can start cutting it."

"Ok," Sam responded and turned her eyes to watch me. So, I guess she's just following my cues now, huh? A real scary situation like this seems to have gotten rid of all that anger and viciousness she had before. I hadn't know her long, but this sudden transformation from the vicious reincarnated girl who swears like a sailor and is angry at the world into this scared little kid was outright unnerving to me in an already terrifying situation.

Well, it seemed like she would just follow my lead if I'm reading this right, so I decided to lead by example. I took a firm hold of the spike I'd driven into the side of the wall, and lowered myself to lay face-down on the edge of the cliff. I dangled one leg off the edge, then brought my other hand over to hold the spike as well.

This was fucked up. This was fucked up! This was really really fucked up!!!

I'm a god-damn three year old in this second life! Who the hell forces a three year old to do shit like this!

These people are completely fucking fucked up!

That old man is especially fucked up! I don't know if he really means it when he says he'll actually throw us down this cliff, but I have to believe he does, and that means I gotta go.

I make sure my hold on the spike is secure, and then I let my center of gravity slip off the side, allowing my lower body to fall while my arms hold tight to the spike in order to support me.

"Ahh! Houuu!!!" I yelp as I manage to secure myself. But, it's strange. This position really doesn't feel nearly as insecure as I thought it would. I notice after a bit that, despite the fact I'm only holding on by my little three year old arms, they are supporting my weight as effortlessly as my legs would while I'm standing. It really feels like I could probably hang out like this all day if it weren't for the old man threatening to chuck us down the cliff side.

"Hahh... hey, Sam! This really isn't all that bad. I think our gnome bodies have some kind of super strength or something. Or at least we are way way stronger than a human our age would be. Actually, this feels like I'm actually more secure than I was when I was up there!"

"Really?" She asks.

"Yeah! Come on! Check it out! It's really not scary once you realize your arms have a solid hold here. I'll help you. I can help hold you as you're getting down."

After saying this, I pull myself up a little with only one hand, now enjoying the ease of the motion as I move my entire body weight against gravity using only one arm like it's nothing, and then reach up a re-assuring hand to help guide her down. She accepts my help and manages to bring herself down over the ledge with my guidance.

"Wow! You're right!" She says as soon as she realizes just how easy it is to hold herself up.

"Man!" I said. "They were saying something before about how we could probably actually survive a fall all the way down there. Maybe our bodies are not quite as fragile as we thought, we might have some kind of super durability to go with the strength our bodies have here."

"I don't care how strong our bodies are, I am NOT jumping down the side of this cliff!" Sam says.

"Uhh... yeah, I wasn't suggesting we should," I told her. "Anyway, let's get going before the old guy makes that decision for us."

With that said, I push my mana into the stone again, softening it. Something I hadn't mentioned to Sam before was that there was a pretty high chance due to the shape of our spikes that they would slip out and drop us all the way down if I made even the slightest mistake in the way the stone softened. I did not plan to let this happen though, and I did not think it would be very appealing to have to fight and justify myself over it, so I decided to keep this to myself.

I turned the wall into a sort of soft clay, and it was ripped apart by the spikes and our body weight, giving us a nice and smooth descent to the next shelf. While I was not in danger of becoming physically exhausted by the act of supporting my body weight in this way, the strain on my mana and my mind as I had to maintain a complex technique while under the strain of all the excessive amounts of mana necessary to work with immutable stone was most certainly causing me a great deal of fatigue, and that fatigue made me feel the danger of what it might mean if I were to fail.

Well, I suppose that would ultimately mean I'd be forced to test my earlier theory about how tough our bodies likely were. We very well might survive such an experience, but I have no idea how injured we would be. Even if we were completely uninjured though, Sam would definitely be quite pissed off at me. She was the first true ally I had since I was reborn in this new life, and I had not made a good first impression with those tactics I took during the competition we were forced into. Dumping her down the canyon would be a very bad follow-up.