Waking up on a bed of dirt and grass was never a pleasant experience, even less so when a splitting stomach ache was involved.
Morgan awoke with a groan, his face slightly pale and his stomach aching similarly to when he had the flu. It was irritating, but it was still manageable, and as he was still being chased by the Baron's men, he couldn't afford a day of rest.
With a groan of discomfort, he slowly sat up and looked around. The sun was just starting to rise over the horizon, casting its golden rays through the dense canopy.
His throat was parched and his stomach growled constantly from hunger as he shambled over to the pot of boiled water. Embers glowed faintly from within the remains of the fire, a pile of spare wood set to the side.
By the fire, fast asleep on a log was Wren, seemingly having passed out before he could wake Morgan for his watch. Luckily, nothing had wanted to attack them last night.
He frowned while sipping from the water.
As much as he'd heard the animals, and miscellaneous creatures of this world, he hadn't seen them. Their calls had always come from deeper into the woods, along with their scent. Perhaps they merely avoided roads?
He'd had to duck off the road a few times to avoid passing caravans, each consisting of at minimum five wagons and twenty armed men, so it wasn't too outlandish to think the creatures preferred simpler prey.
Zoology wasn't his expertise though, so he'd save the animal analysis for someone else.
The bubbling of the nearby river called to him as he moseyed over to it, with his discarded bandages in hand. They, as well as he, were covered in dried blood, and needed cleaning.
Morgan sighed as he crouched by the shore and looked over his reflection. While his memory wasn't the most reliable measuring tool, it was all he had for the moment. So comparing the metallic veins along his neck to what he'd seen the previous night, he estimated they'd grown a further two centimetres.
His hand, however, was a different story. Whereas the previous night the metal had only covered up to the base of his palm, with small, hair-thin tendrils spreading up and around his fingers, now those tendrils had ballooned outwards, covering more of his hand than his skin.
It had even begun to spread into his fingernails, with the metal taking on a lighter colour, and harder texture.
"Interesting, it seems to have spread faster across my hand, than my neck. Perhaps there's a reason for it? It's quite an unusual property."
Not much had changed with the rest of his body, and the tendrils down his legs had grown only three centimetres further, while for his right arm they'd only grown a single centimetre.
He'd have to remember to make a marker of some kind after he'd washed, so as to better track its progress.
Without further ado, he double checked his companions were still asleep and slipped into the ice cold water. Refreshing was one word for it, so was freezing. He'd never understood the appeal of an ice bath, and that hadn't miraculously changed.
As quick as he could, he started scrubbing his body and the blood soaked bandages.
He was out in under five minutes, and slipped on his soggy burlap shorts as he retreated to the warmth of the fire to dry off. It was only early morning, so he figured it would be best to let his two companions rest some more, though, Wren's awkward posture would probably hurt later.
Iskandar on the other hand, looked perfectly content. They were sat on the ground in front of a rock he'd fished from the river last night and rolled over, their one good leg was fully extended, while their other leg – the one severed above the knee – simply ended.
They were looking a lot better than when he'd first met them, now with some actual meat on their bones, and some muscle to their name.
While still far behind the strength of a normal person, they were able to move themselves around very slowly, and lift light objects. Their new eyelids were also a big help in lessening the skeletal look they had going.
Still, he couldn't sit there forever.
Reluctantly, Morgan stood from the fire and stretched a few times, before wandering towards the woods. Even though his stomach ached currently, it was essential he and his party had something to eat, or they wouldn't make it to their destination.
His best bet would be to find some fruits in the forest, and then to bring them back.
With a goal in mind he pushed into the forest, his tongue flickering out constantly as he tried to pick up the scent of any fruit trees, to little effect.
Eventually, after a few minutes of stumbling around, he happened upon a cracked open tree, its bark peeling off. Thick claw marks were carved into the wood, slightly higher than his head, and scratches ran down the entire length of the exposed trunk, with sap already congealing over it.
The sap had a sweet smell to it, almost like honey in a way. It would have to do. He ripped a large leaf off one of the nearby plants and scraped the sap out with a stick before wrapping it up and continuing with his foraging.
After an hour of wandering the woods, he'd collected a large collection of nuts, herbs, and fruits that he carried back to the campsite.
By the time he arrived, Wren was already awake and busy stamping out the fire, while to the side, Iskandar had started to glow green again. He'd asked them about the glow in passing once, and they'd seemed confused, questioning how he could see it.
They'd eventually agreed to teach him the spell they were using, but only once he'd progressed his control of mana.
"Morning Wren, I found some stuff in the forest, can you tell me what's edible?"
"There you are! I was starting to worry for you, if Iskandar hadn't insisted you'd be back, I would have already gone looking for you."
"…You would have just gotten lost, it's better… this way…"
Wren fell silent as he struggled to refute their claim. Looking for an out, his gaze settled on the large stack of foodstuff Morgan had piled atop a leaf. Taking the food, he began to sort the poisonous stuff from the edible stuff.
With a handful of thorn-plums and stuck-nuts, Morgan headed over to Iskandar and sat by their side. Carefully, he plucked the spikes out of the soft plums, and handed them to his not so skeletal, companion.
He took the stuck-nuts, and after eating the fruit from the core, he used the skins to make a set of makeshift shoes.
"…It's strange, I've never seen your… affliction, in the daytime… apart from the silvery glint… it barely looks like metal. Don't… get me wrong, it's still very… obvious it's not skin, just the colour is… quite similar to your own, fleshy skin…"
"I noticed that too. Here, look at my nails. The metal there has changed shades slightly, and there's a difference in hardness, so whatever's going on with this metal, it's able to tell the difference between skin and keratin."
Iskandar looked at his offered hand with a glint of curiosity in their eyes, though their face remained emotionless.
Morgan was glad to have found someone who shared his curiosity, as it allowed him to share his thoughts and observations without ridicule. He'd had far too much of that back in the earlier days of his career…
Snapping himself back to reality before he could sink into his memories, his gaze was drawn to Wren who walked over with a considerably smaller collection of fruits and herbs.
"Well, if I've got to praise you for one thing, it's your ability to find poisonous plants and herbs. Some of the plants you brought back, were so toxic that if we'd eaten them, we would have been dead by evening. Anyway, these ones here are edible."
There wasn't even twenty percent of the plants he'd brought back left, and most of the ones Wren said were safe to eat, didn't smell as nice.
Still, food was food and he'd take anything. Picking up a piece of sap with the consistency of a gummy candy, he tossed it in his mouth and chewed. It was bitter, and sticky, somewhat like coffee taffy just without the added sweetness.
"Oh, that reminds me! I found this sap on a clawed up tree. The bark was completely split open, and there were these huge claw marks above my head height, any idea what caused them?"
Wren nearly choked on the berry he was eating, panic surging through him as he looked around frantically.
"How old were the scratches?!"
"I'm not sure? They looked pretty fresh, the wood around them was still moist."
"We're going. Now."
Morgan watched in confusion as Wren scrambled to clean up his pot, before shovelling their remaining berries into it, the whole thing taking under thirty seconds.
He didn't understand the haste, he hadn't smelt anything nearby, just a few small critters in the nearby trees. Yet before he could ask, a loud roar shook the trees, scattering birds in all directions. It was deeper, and far more powerful than the howls of the wolves he'd heard.
It lit a figurative fire under him as he scrambled to help Wren. The roar had been close by, and he dreaded meeting whatever made it.
"Quick, the road's this way!"
The trio of people rushed back through the forest, the distant roars getting closer each time it shook the trees. Bursting out onto the road, they wasted no time in sprinting east down the hard-packed dirt path.
By the time they came to a stop, Morgan was unsure how far they'd run, just that the roars had grown more distant.
"What… what was that?... it sounded big."
Wheezing between each word, he struggled to catch his breath as his stomach spun in circles and nausea lingered at the edge of his mind. A mad sprint through the woods certainly didn't help with a stomach ache.
"That… you lucky bastard… was a Dire bear. It's a tier 2 beast with a fierce addiction to the sap of the Rozum tree. How you escaped after stealing from it, I have no clue."
"Tier 2?"
"I forget, you're not from around here. Well, when members of the unenlightened races reach level 25 they undergo an automatic 'class up' ritual. Only, they don't have classes to level up, so instead their species undergoes an evolution."
"What about these enlightened races?"
"In the case of the enlightened races, they have access to classes of differing tiers. Tier 1 classes take 25 levels to max out, and you can take as many as you want before moving onto tier 2, but each is progressively harder to level.
Something you need to know though, is the difference between a tier 1 and a tier 2, in ANY situation, is like night and day. It's almost impossible for a tier 1 to ever injure a tier 2."
Morgan nodded, committing the explanation to memory as the party of three started to walk again, all while snacking on the miscellaneous fruits he'd collected.
Time flew by quickly, and after what must have been three hours of walking through the same endless forest, Morgan was starting to grow bored.
"Hey Issy, how far would you say it is to the Elven lands?"
"Hmm… You've been walking… nine days give or take a day… and considering the distance from Blackrock… keep to the border… I'd say another three to… four days of travel. Why'd you ask…?"
"Just a bit bored, there's not much to see here."
"…There's plenty to see… if you leave the road. But… that would be foolish at your… level, so why don't you… practice your mana manipulation?"
Nodding in acknowledgement, he trained his mana manipulation, focusing mainly on retaining control of as much of it as possible when it was out of his body.
Like that, the rest of the day passed uneventfully, with the trio only having to duck off the road twice as wandering merchants passed by.
The next day went mostly the same with a few exceptions. For one, Morgan's stomach ache got progressively worse throughout the day, till it reached a point he was stopping to vomit in the bushes every few hours.
There was, however, nothing any of them could do about it, as none of Iskandar's healing magic had any effect on it. Which meant whatever was causing his stomach ache wasn't poison, viral, or arcane in origin.
It was during this time that he noted a strange oddity. After hours of training his mana, his right hand was beginning to grow tired, so he switched to the left. By now no flesh remained on his left hand, and as he tried to channel his mana through it, an odd reaction happened.
The mana, normally a light blue similar to the system panel, came out tinted in a shade of purple, that eerily resembled the same purple he'd been seeing everywhere since his crash. No - it was the exact same purple. But what did that mean for him? Had it spread beyond the system? Was it ever in the system in the first place? Or had it always been in his mana?
At the time though, Morgan had been too sick to properly examine the change, and the day had passed by.
By the time the eleventh day of walking rolled around, Morgan was nearly too sick to stand. As he stumbled his way towards the border, pale faced, and leaning heavily on a neat stick he'd picked up, the trio encountered a new problem.
From the bushes emerged a group of armoured men, their swords drawn and levelled in the trio's direction.
"This is a robbery! Hand over all of your money if you want to live."
Morgan's stomach lurched as he leant further on the stick. The taste of bile mixed with an iron flavour rose in his throat, and his vision swam. Wren shifted slightly, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
It wouldn't do much, not against the amount of people Morgan could smell. This would be trouble.