Christie was aching. Not because of the long excursion or the rough terrain they had to traverse, but because she wasn’t used to sleeping on anything that wasn’t as soft as clouds. She had honestly believed that those weeks in the carriage had made her able to sleep everywhere, but now she realized how foolish she had been. Adrien’s carriage was stable, big, and cushioned, allowing her to sleep even whilst on the move without any issues. Sleeping outdoors, on the other hand…

  “Can’t sleep?” It was Shayla who spoke. The dark-skinned girl threw a stick into the campfire to keep the flames roaring.

  Because having everyone sleeping at the same time knowing they were in monster territory would have been moronic, they had decided to take turns keeping watch. Though Christie was too drowsy to recall which turn was which at the moment.

  “Yeah…” she yawned. “Even through the grass and the sleeping bag, I can still feel the ground, and it is killing me.”

  “I have had worse at nighttime, though it was mostly about humidity, temperature, and climate hazards rather than the litter. That and mosquitoes, I hate those fu… bugs. Secto must be such a paradise…”

  “Secto is a massive desert,” Christie remarked.

  “And therefore is completely devoid of mosquitoes.”

  The redhead wasn’t completely sure of that claim. But at the same time, she didn’t have the presence of mind or energy to dispute it.

  “Will you take my turn then?” Shayla commented over the crackling fire.

  “I guess so,” Christie sighed. “Let us just hope that I do not fall asleep before I can wake up another sentry.”

  “Oh well, it would not be that problematic. Monsters are rather tame here,” the Intaksolfani covered her mouth and let out a mighty yawn. “Well, it is sleepy time for me.”

  “Wait, before you go to sleep, I have a question.”

  “Uh, sure. Shoot.”

  “When is your period?” Christie asked with a straight face. Shayla kept looking at her with a stoic face. The weight of the question now dawned on the girl and she softly blushed, but as the silence reigned, she prodded again. “I have asked that-“

  “I know what you have asked,” Shayla looked at her with disgust, but then promptly sighed. “Are you bleeding?”

  “No, but maybe I will be before we are done. Well, more likely on our way back.” That was one thing Christie didn’t want to think about. The way back. They would have to do this journey a second time.

  “I see,” the citrine-eyed girl poked the fire with a stick. “No, for your information, I am not bleeding. Nor will I be any time soon. But you could have had a bit more tact, girl.”

  “Er… sorry? I really do not know how to ask these things.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Shayla snorted before crawling her way into her sleeping bag, though she didn’t look angry, just grumpy. “Goodnight, Christie.”

  “Good night, Shayla,” and she was left alone in the darkness of the night.

  Christie didn’t fear the darkness, but she couldn’t help but find the silent and cold woods intimidating. They had found a nice clearing to make their camp, but she still wasn’t comfortable, no matter if a beautiful starry sky made her company.

  Wanting to be a little more protected, she slowly and carefully let her agates sprout out of her body. It pained her a bit, but she considered it worth it as it made her stand straighter and feel more awake. After a solid quarter of an hour of work, Christie made a structure similar to an earthwork at the limit of her recalling range, at a measly ten meters of radius. The outer wall was completely smooth thanks to the recalling range whilst the inner ones allowed people to easily climb atop them. The earthwork was only a meter in height, so it didn’t block her vision but still granted some defense.

  She mostly stopped out of exhaustion rather than pain, as keeping the sea of stone from spilling away was getting harder and harder. She switched the Shape command to Sleep, and suddenly all the pressure disappeared.

  “I wonder if I could walk in the sky like Agatha…” She softly mused to herself to pass the time. “Technically speaking, any agate under the Control command is self-sufficient and can lift itself with some room to spare, so if one were to accumulate enough agates…”

  As she had mentioned, it was technically feasible. She just didn’t have the guts to try it. Heights terrified her, and she preferred to stand on solid ground and not her quaky agates.

  “I mean, I call them a sea of stone, and I definitely would not like to stand on water,” she chuckled to herself defeatedly. “What are limitations but one’s own mind?”

  Daytime soon came. As luck would have it, her turn had been the last one; she and Shayla had been too drowsy to notice it before.

  The first from the coterie to wake up was Agatha, who jumped out of her sleeping bag with a lot of energy and stretched her perfectly rested body, even if the first rays of sunlight had just barely caressed the clearing.

  “I envy you,” Christie groaned at her roommate.

  “Problems sleeping?” The blonde mouthed between yawns.

  “You could say that, yes. The ground was killing me the whole time, and I had little to no sleep.”

  “Oh, I saw you sleeping at the beginning of the night, so you had some. It is just that… it was not a good sleep.”

  “Yeah…” The nouveau riche groaned again, though this time it was interrupted by a yawn. “Something tells me I am going to be yawning a lot today.”

  “We can free you of sentry duty if you want,” the villager offered.

  “Yeah, I would really appreciate it.” Normally, Christie would have declined out of humility and equality, but right now she couldn’t care less. She wanted her sleep. And she wanted it now, even if that wasn’t possible.

  “Nice work you have done with the camp,” Agatha chuckled as she looked around. “You could even make us a whole house!”

  “That would require a bit too much mental effort,” Christie murmured, though she did give it some thought. “Unfortunately, I am not used to actually performing lithorica, and it taxes me severely. And I doubt my Shape command can do something as complex as a house, I do not have as solid of a control as you do.”

  “It is all practice!” Her roommate encouraged her. “Nothing stops you from starting right now!”

  Yes, it does. And it is called a growing headache; Christie kept those words to herself as they were a tad bit too rude. And maybe that was fine for Shayla, but she didn’t want to be rude to Agatha. She didn’t want to tarnish that brightness.

  “I will think about it,” Christie smiled at her softly noncommittally.

  As for her roommate, Agatha made another campfire as the one that had been on during the night was in a sad state and she cooked breakfast. Still stew, but it was far more delicious than the military rations they had. Cooking, sewing, drawing, acrobatics… is there something this girl cannot do? Christie felt so inferior before Agatha. The blonde shone too brightly for her, yet at the same time, she was addicted to that glow. Like a plant needed to bask in sunlight, Christina Valasela needed to bask in Agatha’s glow.

  The smell of the food naturally woke up the rest of the coterie, and before long, they were marching again. The path forward was simple; they just had to get to the other side of the valley, but it was easier said than done, as it was massive and extended for kilometers without end. Much to Christie’s dismay, Agatha took off again into the skies to check their position, but she came back empty-handed when she returned to the ground.

  “Could you stop doing that?” The nouveau riche told the petite girl with a hand before her lips as she fought the gathering bile in her throat.

  “Oh, Christie, you have seen me do way worse. And I am not that high up when compared to the academy,” the villager responded.

  “Yes, but you are not constantly surrounded by death in the academy,” she felt so, so sick. “T-the…” She held the bile again. “The lift is far more protected than this.”

  “You know that you can just… not look?”

  “I wish it were as simple as that…” Christie groaned as she stepped over a rather big branch. “It is really hard to fight against one’s morbid curiosity.”

  “I cannot deny that,” Agatha shrugged. “Maybe I should levitate before you so you get used to seeing me fly.”

  “That is… a solid idea?” The redhead said in dubious bewilderment. “Why are you not doing so already? It certainly would beat navigating this infuriatingly uneven forest.”

  “Not really, I am afraid. I would be exchanging one type of exhaustion for another. It does not seem like it, but it takes a lot of effort to keep myself afloat. And I am far less resilient in the mind than the body. I prefer to keep my wits up and sharp rather than my body rested.”

  “Navigating this terrain already is taxing my mind enough,” Christie snorted.

  “Eh,” the blonde shrugged again. “Maybe it is because I am used to travelling in the forest, but I do not find it as exhausting. Now, now, we should stop talking and catch up to them. You have rested enough.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  If you can say walking through a forest is a rest, then yes, Christie mentally groaned, but kept the words to herself. It wasn’t Agatha’s fault that she was moody, and her roommate was doing enough by staying with her. The two accelerated their pace until they broke into something vaguely resembling a march. It still took them a quarter of an hour to meet with the other two members of the coterie, and only because they had stopped as they could no longer see the girls.

  Nothing changed once they regrouped and marched in a semi-equal rhythm. Even though Mateo still boasted a bit of that chubbiness from the start of the year, he still easily outperformed Christie, and the girl was pretty sure that it wasn’t because he was a boy. Yet another day that I am reminded of the awful state I was in. I guess it is an upgrade…

  As they marched with somewhat muted conversations – by virtue of their growing exhaustion – soon the midday came. Yet they only stopped when Agatha raised a palm at them. Suddenly, they all became silent and slowly encroached on the girl without making a sound as they understood the signal.

  “What is going on? Monsters?” Christie whispered because she was the last to arrive. They were all hiding behind a massive pine.

  “Technically yes,” Agatha giggled softly. “There.”

  The petite girl pointed at a rugged clearing of stone rather than grass. Christie couldn’t understand what her roommate was pointing at as she only saw pebbles, gravel, and a somewhat big stone cliff around five meters in height. It took her a solid minute before she noticed what the blonde was pointing at. And it was the sound that alerted her.

  Click-clack. It was a faint sound, but there were so many of them that the cacophony made the individual sounds far louder than they should. Then she saw the pebbles moving.

  “Which ones are those?” Christie asked as stoneshells were the only monsters she had seen personally.

  “Shalesnappers,” answered Mateo. “But they live near rivers. I am not aware of the presence of one here. Have you seen something similar, Agatha? A stream or whatnot?”

  “I cannot say I have, no,” Agatha swayed her head.

  “Then this bodes ill for us. Shalesnappers love water, and if there is a presence of them without a reservoir present, then it means that it is likely going to rain soon.”

  “Ugh…” Shayla groaned, and honestly, Christie understood her on a primal level.

  Agatha stood up from her squatting position and stopped hiding behind the tree. “So what you are saying is that we no longer need to save up water?”

  “I… how did you even reach that conclusion?” The scholarite’s face twisted in perplexity.

  “What are you going to do, Agatha?” Christie asked her as she had the feeling her roommate was entering mock sapphire mode.

  “Let us just say I have been craving shalesnapper for a long time.” The next moment, her sapphire was flying through the sky and bombarding the poor slate crabs.

  Agatha’s precision with lithorica never ceased to amaze Christie as the girl hastily and dexterously ended the life of the shalesnappers. It didn’t take much, just a swift hit on the right spot to paralyze or outright kill the lithic river crabs. The loud massacre alerted all the shalesnappers, and they started scuttling around, which proved to be the wrong decision as they went from virtually invisible to clear targets. The moment something moved, an agate weighting more than each individual shalesnapper descended upon them at the speed of death. A minute later, the clearing was devoid of more snaps.

  “I have got to admit, that was the most brutal thing I have seen in my entire life,” Shayla said under her breath, and Christie couldn’t agree more.

  “Oh, do not be a wuss. How do you think the meat gets to your plate?” Agatha scoffed and made her way to the massacre’s location. “I assure you it does not come from the earth, and in a way, shalesnappers come from the earth, so they are not that different from crops.”

  “Right,” the Intaksolfani elongated the sound of the ‘i’.

  “Can someone start a fire while I gather them? Today we are going to have a feast!”

  At first, Christie was apprehensive about eating the poor shalesnappers – perhaps thanks to her lithic bond with Fran?ois – but the moment the blond dropped them into the boiling pot, her thoughts changed. Then they completely disappeared when Agatha cracked one of the cooked crab’s pincers and slurped the meat out of them with much gusto. It looked so juicy and tender.

  “Come on, come on! Fresh shalesnappers one aluminum a piece!” Agatha chanted as she flayed the crab’s carcasses around.

  Sheepishly, Christie took an aluminum coin out of her purse. Her roommate squinted at her.

  “You realize that I was joking, right?”

  “Oh, I noticed. I just wanted to see what reaction you would show me,” Christie smiled at her and abandoned that faux timidness.

  “Stop toying around and eat, you need the energy,” she shoved a boiled crab into her hands. It was surprisingly cool. “Also, why in the depths are you carrying around your purse on an excursion to the wilderness?”

  “Some would say that it is exactly because we are in the wilderness that money can be useful. Who knows if we get lost and we need to resupply in a hamlet?”

  “Barter is more than valid at that point, but I get it. Now shut up and eat, otherwise these gluttons will hoard all the food,” Agatha pointed at Shayla and Mateo, both had already eaten two shalesnappers each.

  “Really?” Christie squinted at them.

  “What?” Shayla protested. “They are a common meal in Intak Solfan, if you need to yell at someone, yell at this guy. He is the one who did not want to eat them.”

  “I nevah saith that!” Mateo said with a mouthful of shalesnapper meat in her mouth.

  “I get it, I get it,” the redhead sighed. “Just leave something for me.”

  This was the first time Christie had eaten shalesnapper, and she couldn’t understand how she had spent all her life without doing so. Well, she knew. Dearest father considered it a poor man’s food – because it nominally was – and decided himself that his dearest daughter should only eat top-class food all the time. I really need to set some things straight when I see him.

  Once they had transformed the place of a massacre into the aftermath of a barbecue, the coterie got marching again. And to no one’s surprise and yet everyone’s dismay, it started raining. At first it was a soft drizzle, but as time went by and it didn’t stop, the rain kept mounting and mounting up.

  The ground became muddy and visibility dwindled, making the tedious exercise into a harsh one. The members of the coterie used their agates to protect themselves from the rain, or at least everyone did besides Christie. It was trivial for most people to protect themselves with agates, as it was as simple as summoning flat agates and moving them on top of their heads. That was something Christie couldn’t do. Yes, she could summon a platform out of her body, but the moment she gave it Control, the rest of her inner sea would follow in kind.

  As raincoats weren’t apparently part of the paraphernalia they were forced to carry, Christie had to ask her roommate for assistance. Or rather, Agatha gladly offered it. Now that she wielded a massive Third Stratum agate, it was trivial for her to manage two umbrella agates.

  “Where has she gotten that second agate from?” Mateo asked.

  “Not the right moment, Mateo,” Agatha dismissed him. The petite girl was a bit sour that her big reveal had been spoiled again, and she was obviously trying to avoid talking about it as she pouted.

  “Why? We are not doing anything right now.” It was incredible how the scholarite went from scholar to oblivious with the cadence of a metronome.

  “Stop talking, our visibility is low, and the only way we have to detect anything is through sound.” Surprisingly, it was Shayla who was the voice of reason.

  “She is right,” Christie added. “We have found shalesnappers, so who is to say we do not find something that is not as inoffensive?”

  The boy sighed but fell silent, and the rest of the coterie answered in kind. Either this rain stops soon or we will be forced to search for refuge, Christie mused as she was limited to her thoughts. And even then, that was hard as the rain became louder and louder.

  “Can I light an agate?” Mateo shouted from the front as Agatha had to stay behind Christie to keep the lithic umbrella up. “I cannot see anything!”

  “Sure!” Agatha said behind her.

  The scholarite’s light wasn’t as potent as her roommate's, but that was good considering that the blonde’s Light command was as potent as a newborn sun. Mateo’s leading agate was actually a contraption of a Control agate shaped like a cone and then a Light agate as the boy didn’t have access to the Second Stratum just yet. Christie had become so used to Agatha’s not-so-little sapphire that she had forgotten that people had to make ingenious contraptions to perform complex command combinations.

  The cone illuminated only a handful of meters forward, but that was more than enough for the coterie as they were moving close to each other. It had become even more cloudy, and now it wasn’t that different from moving during nighttime. A few minutes later, Mateo stopped dead on his tracks.

  “There is a big stream here! I do not think we can pass.”

  The stream in question was less than three meters wide, but Christie understood his worry. It flowed with a lot of violence, and they had no way of knowing how deep it was. A wrong step and they might get swallowed by the raging water.

  “Should we set camp?” He asked once everyone had clustered together.

  “No,” Agatha swayed her head. “The stream might flood, so we cannot stay near it. We should get over it.”

  “How, smartass?” Shayla arched a brow.

  Christie threw a nasty gaze at the Intaksolfani; that wasn’t a way to talk to a comrade.

  “Oh, it is really simple, though,” her roommate – on the other hand – didn’t seem to be affected by the insult. “We have her,” Agatha pointed at Christie with her palms.

  “M-me?” Christie pointed at herself in bewilderment.

  “I think this is a good exercise for what we talked about this morning, Christie. It should be trivial for you to make a bridge, should it not?”

  “Y-yes, I guess?” She wasn’t sure about it.

  “Then try! If you are not able to do so then we will try to weather the rain.” Somehow, Christie clearly heard that unsaid word.

  The redhead wasn’t sure of her skills. She was sure of her imagination. She was sure of her academic scores. She was sure of her physical limitations. But she wasn’t sure of her skill with lithorica.

  “I guess we do not lose anything if I try…” Christie sighed and took a step forward, the umbrella following her pace.

  The Shape command is a no-go. The soil is unstable here, so I must use the Control command so the agates do not weigh down on the ground. …I guess I will have to replicate the wall technique. That… ‘Grow’ command. Christie squatted and focused on her hands. As she needed to walk on the bridge, summoning her sea of stones from her legs would have been counterproductive.

  The moment she switched to the Control command, she could no longer hold her inner sea, and it burst out like the violent stream before her. Grow. Grow! She told herself and to the agate amalgam, even if it wasn’t really a command. Her agates pressed against the ground like pouring water, but the next moment a spring of stone branched from the spot and arched over the stream. A couple of seconds later, the bridge was done.

  “A-Agatha!” Christie mouthed as she gritted her teeth in pain. “Check the sta-stability of the bridge. I cannot hold it for long.”

  “On it!” Without any hesitation, the blond radiantly jumped onto the lithic platform. Because her agates were of so poor quality, the surface was porous and not that slippery even with all the rain, though it hadn’t had the chance to get wet just yet. It took only another handful of seconds for the petite girl to cross the short bridge. “It is safe! Shayla, Mateo, make your way here fast!”

  Agatha spoke with urgency, and Christie couldn’t help but smile at that. She knew her too well; she knew how much it was hurting her to keep her sea of stones at bay as she was forced to use the Control command. Not being able to use the Sleep command was downright torture. The seconds passed by, and Christie noticed how this was the first time that she had held her agates without the Sleep command without allowing them to sprout further.

  But she was slipping.

  She was already tired from the march, and the rain had drained her a lot too, so she felt her strength dwindle as each second passed. It hadn’t even been a minute when Mateo and Shayla had made their way to the other side, yet Christie already felt herself one step away from the grave. It was so hard to think…

  “Everything fine there?” Agatha shouted at her.

  “Y-yes!” No. It was not. She was slipping. Her consciousness was fading. “I am m-making my way through!”

  With a lot of difficulty, Christie separated her hands from the base of the bridge and climbed atop it, then as she was midway through it there was a flash of light. The sound came instantly behind, so its nature was quickly revealed to be lightning and thunder, yet because it was so close, Christie couldn’t help but look at the source.

  And she saw it.

  Not the lighting. Not the nearby tree that had burst into flames. No. What she saw were eyes. Massive, glinting eyes chalked in red and black.

  Ah, Christie slipped, both in mind and body.

  The next seconds happened very fast. First, her agates disappeared as her dearest father had drilled into her that if she ever were to lose consciousness, she should recall them and reapply the Sleep command. It was second nature by now, a reflex rather than a conscious action. There was nothing she could do against it. Second, Agatha rushed at her, soaring through the skies at great speed. Third, she was plummeting into the stream. And finally, she heard Mateo shout through the last vestiges of her consciousness.

  “Behemoth!” Never before had she heard so much distress in someone’s voice.

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