Limits

I fell asleep almost instantly and then I started to have weird dream. In that dream, a hooded dark figure spoke to me some words but I couldn't understand any of them. As if the dark figure spoke in language that was not human. After some time has passed, the dark figure stopped talking and ran towards me. I was startled and tried to reach for my weapons but I had no weapons on me. No daggers, pebbles or even sticks. When the figure arrived in front of me, it stretched its hand in order to throw a punch towards me. Its hand and fist was covered in black flames or maybe dark cloud that partially hidden its hand from view. The figure punch arrived and I was like a paralyzed animal in front of a predator, I couldn't move even if I wanted to. The next thing, the punch arrived and I woke up. When I looked around it was already morning.

I was drenched in cold sweat and thought 'What the hell was that weird dream. It seemed to be real, as if I was really there facing that hooded figure'. I got up from the makeshift bed and woke Shelly up to continue our journey.

We travelled further north. We already passed the point where no villages were present on the map. The map would become invalid in about 2 weeks of travel on foot, so we would have to either go by instincts and just travel further north or stay at the edges of the area that the map showed and live there for the time it took me to master my skills.

I opted for the latter option. We would be able to still use the map I got from Nick in order to travel back. It would also be possible to travel towards north, if we ever felt the need for it. The days passed like this and another week went by. I still practised in the Art of Stealth as well as Art of Hidden Weapons whenever we were on our travels. I also made medicine when there was a chance to and trained the 1st diagram that I modified every morning.

I could now last exactly 10 minutes as my muscles got used to the exercise. The next step for me was to break that limit and train till I could stay 20 minutes in that pose. Although my improvements were quick, it was all due to my muscles just getting used to the pose in that diagram. Now I had to break the limits and it would take much longer for me to train my muscles.

Shelly also made some improvements with its senses and could now walk around without hitting anything. Running was still too difficult for it but with time it would be able to do that as well. When Shelly masters its other senses to a certain degree, I would need to train together with Shelly using the puppets. Shelly's senses need to develop before that because puppet training will be much more difficult than walking and running.

There was only one thing that worried me. Every night, I had the same dream of a figure in dark clothes that covered its whole body as well as a hood that covered its whole face. The dark figure would talk to me in some kind of weird language at first and then attack me. I never had any weapons on me and I couldn't move when the figure attacked. I tried couple of different things, for example I tried moving and attacking the figure before it was done saying stuff. This didn't work as the dark figure would simply stop talking and attacked me first. This always froze me into place as if some strange power was forcing me to stand in place.

I tried to figure out the skills of the dark figure but I couldn't figure out anything. It was as if this dream was real and yet not real at the same time. I was worried because I had this dream for over a week now and yet I could do nothing in it. It was as if I had no control even though it was my own dream.

I also checked for any medicine possible that would cure this weird dream but I found nothing in Great Scriptures of Evil Medic or Evil Medical Manual. There was no mention of such thing in any of the books. Because I could do nothing about it, I decided to not think about it. What use was there to worry when I had no way of changing it?

That day we arrived at a small waterfall. I saw some herbs that could be used to make medicine and decided we should make camp here. I said to Shelly "This place looks quiet so we will stay her for a while and practise our skills. We will need to make a better shelter. Follow me, we shall gather wood to build it from".

I walked in front of a tree and used a small hatchet to bring it down. This hatchet was made from normal steel and wasn't as sharp and durable as my purified steel daggers but it was enough for cutting the tree. I then took care of the bark so that only the hardest part of the tree, the core was left as building blocks for our new home. I took out some ropes and tied them to the prepared tree. I said to Shelly "You will drag this to our camp and I will prepare the next one". Shelly nodded its head and I gave it the rope that was tied to the tree. Shelly dragged the log to the camp while I cut the next tree. This went on for a while when I cut the last tree and decided we had enough logs to make the shelter.

I had some ropes with me but that wouldn't be enough. I also had some nails and tools such as hammer that I took from the Horseplain Village's workshop but I opted to use as little of that as possible in order to save the materials. I needed to cut the logs through their whole length in order to make long planks. The trees that I cut down were about 5 metres long and had about 50 centimetres in diameter. This would make about 6 planks. If I were to cut them in half I would get about 12 planks from one log.

After a while of cutting and cleaning the wood I had 6 logs that were ready to be cut into planks. If I needed more, I could always cut more trees. This shelter would be more time consuming but at the same time, it would provide much better protection from elements. I started my work on the planks as this needed to be done first. I still had couple of hours before dawn and I wanted to cut as many as possible.

I had a saw with me which was very useful in this part of the job. I cut one plank from the log which took me about 10 minutes of quite a lot of sawing. I then started another one and another one and so on until 2 hours have passed. I now had 12 long planks which would give me 24 if I cut them in half. I decided to do that first instead of producing more planks. It would be dark soon and I wanted to at least start some kind of foundations for the planks before that.

After cutting the planks I had in half, I started to dig the foundations for the shelter. I didn't know much about construction but I used my imagination and common sense. The wind could topple it over or even blow it away if it was not secured properly to the ground. I decided to dig a small trench that was about 4 metres long and about 50 centimetres deep. The planks would go inside about 50 centimetres which meant about 2 metres would stay outside. That would be easily enough for me to stand in the shelter without hitting my head on the roof.

I dug a trench and noticed that the sun was already gone and moon was replacing it. I decided to stop and continue tomorrow after resting and eating something. Shelly was kind enough to bring some animals it hunted to our small camp and I cooked them for our dinner. We then went to bed early to start the work in the morning the next day.