Bab 14: In the Presence of Others, Part 1
The first day of travel passed without incident. Few words were spoken among the group, for which Lucas was thankful. Five years of solitude had left him surprisingly low on socializing endurance. Instead, he fell back into his habit of walking meditation that he had perfected during his time in his chattel in the Primordial Mountains.
Many years ago, back on Earth, Lucas had read about people who were able to enter a zen state while performing repetitive or menial tasks, allowing them to split their unconscious and conscious minds between two tasks while maintaining effectiveness in both. He hadn't given it much thought until recently. In the past few months Lucas would often find his days blending together with no discernable beginning or end as he lived a waking dream. His chores around his home would be completed and his house tidy, but the entire time his mind would be so absorbed in thought or memory that he wouldn't remember actually doing any of it. Yesterday had been much of the same as he reminisced his first time traversing the Northern Gerelda Road. How similar he and his friends had been to Joten and Bree, so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and brimming with possibilities.
Setting up camp had been similarly monotonous. Lucas's silent routine was punctuated only by the occasional bickering from Joten and Bree as they shared cooking responsibilities, or a quiet lesson from Lucas on setting up a secure bivouac. They had reached the edge of the unnamed road leading away from Hillsborough and found a copse of trees near the more established Northern Gerelda Road to establish camp for the night. The climate this close to the desert rarely included rain, so they camped outside in their bedrolls. Biomes and climates changed rapidly and abruptly in Alstyn, as game regions are wont to do. As such, they were able to sleep comfortably at the meeting point of the forest and desert biomes, enjoying both the dry air of the desert and the cool temperatures of the forest at once. It was a trick he and Cara and Ben had mastered during their months of sleeping rough in this region.
Lucas also showed the two how to use [Tripwire Ward] to create a safety perimeter around their sleeping area. [Tripwire Ward] created a small, nearly invisible string of magic that extended up to seventy feet and lasted for four hours. If the line was tripped by an animal, demon, or person, the caster would receive a notification and wake up. Someone would need to refresh the spell in the middle of the night, but it was an effective and easy to set up security measure in lieu of an actual tripwire system. Also, it was a spell of Common status, so anyone with a Magic level of 1 or higher could learn it, given they had the tome. Luckily it was one of the basic tomes Lucas had with him. Stored deep in his inventory, it had become a relic of his past adventuring days. Bree astounded him by reading the tome and learning the skill within twenty minutes. Her usually skeptical eyes had changed drastically while she read, becoming a pair of glittering blue microscopes that tore through the pages and absorbed the information in meticulous detail. Joten was still working on it two hours after Lucas had finished setting up the perimeter.
Their first meal together was a potato, carrot, and mutton stew. Joten and Bree had "miscommunicated" over who was to watch the boiling pot, and it ended up closer to a vegetable mush rather than a proper stew, but Joten still somehow gained a Cooking level from the endeavor. Usually when food is ruined you receive a miniscule amount of Experience Points - if any at all - so Lucas reasoned he must have been just on the cusp of leveling.
After forcing themselves to eat the ruined food, and after a second check of the tripwire perimeter, the three retired for the night in their bedroll. The whole experience called to Lucas like an old friend, comforting him in the embrace of his bedroll and digging a friendly jab into his side when he rolled over onto a rock. With a campfire warming his feet and two friends lying around the fire with him, he could almost pretend - after squinting hard enough - that the past five years had only been a bad dream, and that come morning he would wake to find Ben preparing breakfast while Cara slept in, her obnoxious snore echoing throughout the meadow.
He continued to imagine until sleep lifted him onto its shoulders and stuffed him into its thick black sack, smothering his pleasant reverie like a smoke-filled room.
The next morning was similarly uneventful. No roving animals or errant demons tripped their perimeter, no curious NPCs or nefarious players had interrupted their sleep. Lucas awoke with the sun, its tendrils of light creeping over the horizon to the east as if climbing out of the sea. Likewise, Lucas climbed out of his bedroll and sent it back to his inventory in a flash. He meandered through his menus for a moment before equipping his light traveling armor and [Nevermore] in a similar fashion, wondering how he had ever lived before the convenience of the system's flashes of light.
Next to arise was Bree, who yawned unceremoniously before catching Lucas's eye across the ashen fire pit. She returned his look with a scowl and covered her yawning mouth with a delicate hand before stretching out her limbs. The whole thing reminded Lucas of a cat rising in the morning, stretching, and immediately demanding food in a fickle display of affection.
Joten had still not woken up from his place beside his bedroll. He must be an active sleeper because he now lay outside of his bedroll in the grass, limbs splayed out like an exaggerated starfish.
Lucas took advantage of the quiet moment alone with Bree to ask her a few questions. He had gotten to know Joten a bit during their time traveling to Hillsborough, and had learned a bit about Bree during his conversation with Elvira, but by and large they were a mystery to each other. Learning about one another could only bolster their relationship.
"Hey, Bree. Is this your first time outside of Hillsborough?" Lucas asked from his seat on the ground. He faced the fire pit they had created last night out of habit, though it now only contained ashes and chunks of charred wood.
The girl glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she rolled up her bedroll. When she responded she kept her back to him, muffling her voice a tad. "Yes, it's my first time."
"What do you think of it?" Lucas asked.
"A lot more sand than I thought there would be. And you snore like a field cow," she answered briskly. Lucas brushed a hand through the grass beside him and felt the granules of sand from the nearby desert embedded in the ground beneath them. She was observant.
"Wait, I snore?" Lucas asked after a moment's realization.
"Like the bellows of a smith's forge. Has nobody ever told you this?" Bree answered. Lucas thought he caught a hint of a grin on her face before she turned away to tie up her travel pack. Thinking back to his travels with Cara and Ben, Lucas realized nobody had ever told him this before. Those two wouldn't have let him hear the end of it if he snored like that, so it must have been a recent acquisition. Either that, or Bree was making it up. She must have been, right? Otherwise Joten would have said something during their time traveling together.
Lucas glanced over at Joten's bedroll, but the boy was nowhere to be found. A small panic flared in the pit of his stomach before he turned slightly further and saw that the boy had rolled down the soft decline between the forest and the desert, coming to rest around fifteen feet away from his bedroll. He somehow had slept through the whole ordeal.
On second thought, maybe Joten wasn't the most trustworthy witness to things that happened in the night.
Lucas shrugged and turned back to Bree. "Never. I guess there are some things you only learn about yourself while in the presence of others," he said off-handedly.
Bree paused her packing for a second and stared off into the woods toward Hillsborough as if she had forgotten something before returning to her packing. "Elvira told me you lived in exile for the past five years."
Lucas leaned back on his arms and thought about her statement. Not quite a question, but it was tinged with disbelief. Perhaps the snoring had finally convinced her that Elvira wasn't lying. "Self-imposed exile is a good description of it, I guess," Lucas agreed.
Finally Bree turned around and faced Lucas from across the fire pit. "Weren't you lonely?" Bree asked.
"Oh, terribly lonely. Sometimes the loneliness was unbearable, like a knife was stuck in my chest. I yearned for some sympathetic person to come and remove the knife and sew me back up. Maybe it was my fault for avoiding everyone for so long, but I just couldn't bring myself to rejoin the normal world when nothing in my life felt normal anymore. I couldn't bear pretending like the world hadn't ended when - to me - it had. After some time I just became numb to it." Lucas thought about continuing, but realized he was rambling on again. She hadn't asked for his life story.
Bree nodded at him, accepting his answer. "Helluva way to start the day," she said with a sigh as she got to her feet and turned to observe the morning sun. Lucas felt an embarrassed flush fill his cheeks. It wasn't the response he expected, but hopefully his opening up would help Bree open up to him as well. Seven days was a long time to spend with strangers.
Lucas figured that was enough sharing for this morning, and slapped his thigh to indicate closure of the conversation. Bree hadn't turned away from the sunrise yet, but he figured she understood.
"Right then," Lucas said as he got to his feet and started toward Joten. He had lost a sock during his fitful rolling away from his bedroll, so Lucas bent down and scooped it up as he walked.
Some people sleep peacefully. When you look upon their face, you can just tell they are enraptured in the blissful world of dreams. Comfort fills their face as only ignorance can provide, tugging at the edges of their lips in a tiny semblance of a smile.
Joten did not sleep like this. Joten slept like a corpse, having just been slaughtered in a ruthless battle. His tongue hung from his mouth in an undignified manner. One eyelid raised halfway while the other remained shut. His short hair was somehow still wildly misplaced in an almost impressive way. Today was the first time Lucas had awoken before Joten. It felt like discovering a secret someone hid deep within their diary.
After observing the mess that was Joten for a few seconds, Lucas nudged him awake with the tip of his boot. To his credit, the nudge sent him to his feet in a flash, his arms raised in a crude defensive stance.
"Settle down Fang Yuan," Lucas said with hands raised in a 'I'm not going to hurt you' stance. "It's time for training."
And time for training it was.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
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Casual_ Thanks again for reading!! Leave a comment if you have a question!
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