Bk 2, Chapter 17: A Quick Jog

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"So that's it?" Cayden asked as they huddled around the tiny orb resting on Tiana's palm.

"That's it," Tiana responded, but when Cayden reached forward to grab it she closed her hand into a fist and pulled it back. "Ah, ah, ah! What do you say, first?"

Cayden sighed as a smirk pulled up the edges of his sister's lips. "Please and thank you?" he guessed.

"Please and thank you who?"

"Please and thank you...Tiana?"

"Hm, close. How about 'please and thank you Tiana, greatest and beautiful-est sister who ever was or will be'."

Once again, Cayden sighed. "...please and thank you Tiana, greatest and beautiful-est sister who ever was."

"Or will be."

"Or will be," Cayden echoed, and Tiana stretched out her hand with a self-satisfied smile, once again revealing the skillstone.

The expedition had stopped at another roadside inn, purchasing the use of the inn's large bunkhouse for the night. Cayden had heard a few of the noble students complaining about the less-than-five-star accommodations, but Instructor Mynar shut that down immediately. If this was already too much of a struggle, she warned, they might as well quit while they were still close enough to the capital to have that option.

From the looks on some of the students' faces, Cayden wouldn't be surprised if a few of them took her up on the suggestion, but he didn't concern himself with worrying about it. After years of sleeping in the orphanage, his old tiny apartment, and in the Lost Forest outside of dungeons, it would take more than just a crowded bunkhouse to bother him. Plus, he had more important things to focus on.

He, Tiana, and Elise were circled up in the dark outside of the inn, and Cayden examined the small orb through his new [Share Senses] skill, courtesy of [Borrowed Power]. He'd been putting off taking his friend's skill for a long time, but he could put it off no longer. Jeremy had been nice enough to accept the burden almost non-stop since lunch, but Cayden knew it wasn't right for him to keep taking advantage. The formine's binding skills were not without cost, though Jeremy insisted the backlash from maintaining his binding skills for hours at a time was not nearly as bad since they'd hit level ten. Cayden was not looking forward to the backlash he would inevitably face after ending the skill, but he didn't want to keep imposing on his friend.

And as much as he trusted Jeremy, some things were best kept private – things like an ultra-rare skillstone.

From looking at it, Cayden didn't see anything special about the orb. It was just a dark orange sphere roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. It didn't even glow. But from everything everyone said, it was likely the most expensive single item he'd ever seen in two lives – a skill that would be impossible to otherwise acquire. A single chance to get a skill off-limits to almost everyone else. [Opened Mind].

Opened Mind (passive): Gives the user the ability to manipulate psionic forces, at the cost of increased susceptibility to external persuasions and mental effects.

It didn't fit perfectly into his build. It wouldn't synergize together as seamlessly as his class skills or be as powerful as [Resistance], but it wasn't too far off from that, either. It gave him a chance to do magic, or at least a form of magic, without sacrificing the rest of his build by forcing him to invest into the mana stats. But most importantly, it would hopefully allow him to use [Immutable] without sacrificing his control over his mind.

He wanted it. He wanted it so very much.

Cayden reached out and tentatively plucked the skillstone from Tiana’s outstretched hand. And with a grimace, he turned and dropped it into Elise's, the intelle fumbling to catch the valuable orb before it slipped through her fingers.

"You should use it, Elise."

There was a pause as his sister and his friend looked at him dumbly.

"What?!"

"Are you serious?" they exclaimed at the same time.

"I'm very serious," Cayden said. "I've given this some thought, and if the two of you think about it, I think you'll agree – Elise is obviously the best person for this skillstone."

The two girls blinked at him, and he sighed.

"The ‘psionic powers’ are based on the mind stat, right? I haven't met anyone more invested into mind than you, Elise. You already have [Focused Mind] at a ridiculously high level, so you shouldn't have issues with the 'easily influenced' part. And I know it doesn't necessarily help you with your research or enchanting or anything like that, but if you want me to bring you into higher-ranked dungeons, you need at least one skill that can be used to help defend yourself. Enchanted items are well and good, but you of all people know they have their limits."

"Skills have their limits too," Elise rebutted, but Tiana was rubbing her chin in contemplation. "And what about [Immutable]? Are you going to just give it up? Or risk it messing with your head?"

"But the skill will at least be something. And for [Immutable], I can just take your [Opened Mind] with [Borrowed Power]."

There was a pause, and then Tiana mumbled under her breath, "...how did I not think of that..."

Cayden grinned.

"But that would lock in your only [Borrowed Power] slot," Elise argued, and Cayden nodded. It was true – it wasn't possible to [Save Progress] on both [Immutable] and [Opened Mind] at the same time, which meant he'd be forced to keep [Opened Mind] as his only [Borrowed Power] skill for the foreseeable future unless he wanted to risk the negative effects of [Immutable].

"True. But let's be real here – what are the odds I keep [Immutable] long-term anyway? It's a good skill, but we still don't know how good." Elise grimaced guiltily. Between the delve, planning for the expedition, and her frantic final push to upgrade her class, they'd never gotten around to doing the additional tests they'd had planned. But it wasn't Cayden's intention to make her feel guilty, and he pushed on before she could speak. "What happens if it ends up being a dud and I dump it? Or if I want to get [Resilience] back to re-grow my eyes? I can't learn [Immutable's] constituent skills while I still have [Immutable], and [Resilience] is the best option I have right now for getting back my sight." He shrugged. "It just seems like an awfully expensive waste of a skillstone when I can get the same effects for free with [Borrowed Power]. Especially since we have someone else who fits the skill so much better."

Elise still didn't look convinced, but Cayden was happy to note Tiana was nodding along with his arguments. That had been his biggest worry, since his sister was the one who earned them the skillstone in the first place. To Cayden's mind, the three of them were a team – strengthening any one of them was strengthening all three. But he hadn't been sure Tiana would feel the same way after so long on her own.

"...are you just doing this to make me feel better about earlier?" Elise asked, looking slightly overwhelmed as she stared down at the skillstone in her hand.

"No. That's what this part is for," Cayden replied, picking up a mangled handful of straps he'd subtly dropped on the ground behind him earlier.

"Is that...what did you do to your backpack?" Tiana asked as Cayden slipped the straps over his shoulders and knelt on the ground.

"Hurry up and absorb that skillstone, Elise, and climb in. It's thirty miles from here to Avernon. If we leave now, you'll only have three hours with your dad if we plan to make it back before dawn."

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Six minutes per mile. That's what Cayden calculated it out to; thirty miles to Avernon, at six minutes per mile, was three hours each way. It was roughly ten hours until sunrise, which gave Elise three hours to spend with her father, leaving one hour for any unexpected delays.

Cayden thought it was doable. He'd always been told that ten stat points in each of the physical stats was the human average, with around twenty being the max to what someone could naturally train their bodies. Accounting for outliers, Cayden figured the best athletes on Earth might have had physiques equal to twenty-five in each of the physical stats. He had thirty-eight in strength, thirty-six in endurance, and thirty in dexterity. If the best marathon runner on Earth could run twenty-six miles in under two hours, he should be able to do thirty in three. Sure, that didn't account for the fact that he'd be carrying a hundred-pound Intelle on his back, but still. Cayden figured it wouldn't be too difficult.

He was wrong. He was so very wrong.

Elise hung on his back like a monkey, her legs sticking out of the two holes he'd cut into the bottom of the backpack. It might have been easier to balance if she'd faced the other way, but Cayden was relying on her eyes and the glowstone in her hands to guide his way forward, and he was worried the backpack's straps wouldn't be able to support her for the entire run if she didn't bear at least some of her own weight. The backpack was meant to carry heavy weights for long distances, with straps that wrapped around his waist and chest in addition to the ones over his shoulders, but a hundred pounds was a bit more than what it was probably rated for.

Elise was only six inches shorter than him, but thankfully extremely thin and light for her height. With her chin resting on his shoulder, arms linked together across his broad chest, and legs wrapped around his waist, they set off, waving goodbye to Tiana who promised to take care of Cayden’s ‘pile of junk.’ Cayden began at a slower jog before gradually speeding up into the pace they needed to maintain for Elise to get her promised three hours.

Luckily, there was a road they could follow that took them directly to Avernon. It wasn't a straight shot, but Cayden figured better the extra five miles than twisting his ankle in a gopher hole or getting lost and wandering in the dark. Plus, Cayden had made note of the locations of a few roadside inns along the way, along with the times they should pass them to maintain the correct pace.

By the time they passed the first, they were twenty minutes behind schedule and Cayden was already struggling. Fortunately, he was offered [Running] a few minutes later, which he didn't hesitate to accept in place of [Claw Mastery]. Unfortunately, while the [Boost Passive] enhanced skill greatly increased his speed, it did nothing to help with his exhaustion. He ran along in the dark, able to see nothing beyond the ten yards or so the glowstone illuminated. As time continued, his run transitioned more into a loping stumble, each step feeling more like he was falling forward rather than stepping, only catching himself a split second before collapse.

[Endurance] helped, once it was finally offered and accepted in place of [Inspect], yet still Cayden struggled. He knew he'd gone through much, much worse – less than a month earlier, he'd had his eyes literally melted out of his head – yet as he pushed forward, always fighting to maintain the speedy pace he knew he needed to keep, each step feeling heavier than the last...it was hard to imagine anything could be more difficult.

Perhaps it was the stakes. He was doing this for Elise's enjoyment, which he'd thought would be more than enough motivation. But at the end of the day, if they gave up, if he simply stopped, nothing catastrophic would happen. No one would die or get hurt – Elise would just be mildly unhappy that he wasn't able to provide what he had promised. It made it so tempting to just...stop. Or, barring that, to slow down. Elise might not even know the difference; one hour was just as good as three, wasn’t it?

To his surprise, [Immutable] was the biggest boon in Cayden's struggle when he finally swapped it out of [Save Progress] for [Taunt]. It lessened the weight of the straps digging into his shoulders, Elise’s arms no longer choked him when she hugged him a bit too tightly around his neck, and each step forward felt just slightly less heavy. But most importantly, it removed the doubt.

He needed to run twenty more miles in the next hour and a half. That was what he'd decided, so that was what he'd do. His pain, his exhaustion, his fatigue – they were all still there. But what did they matter in the face of his will?

He sped back up.

A half-hour later than planned, Cayden all but collapsed when they finally made it to the gates of Avernon and he disabled [Share Senses], the backlash from the skill hitting him like a ton of bricks. Cayden wasn’t sure which were the aftereffects of the skill and which were the symptoms of his dehydration and exhaustion, and he didn’t have the energy to try and figure it out. If he had been by himself, he doubted he would have been admitted to the city, the two guards manning the gate looking at his sweaty, gasping form in the middle of the night with suspicion. But up until seven months earlier, Elise had lived in Avernon her entire life, and a pretty, young intelle who regularly made trips into the Lost Forest was a memorable sight. One of the guards recognized her and let them enter, despite the hour.

Cayden remembered nothing of their walk through the town, nor of the reunion of Elise with Mr. Heymore. All he remembered was drinking long from the jug of water Elise handed him and then waking up in Elise's old childhood bed, feeling as if not a second had passed.

He knew he was only half done, that he still had another thirty miles to run with his friend on his back. But the happy lilt to Elise’s voice, and the thankful gushing from Mr. Heymore – kinder words than Cayden had received from his friend's father in years – were enough for him to know that it was worth it.

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Three and a half hours later, Instructor Mynar tapped her foot impatiently outside the loaded wagons as the sun rose in the east. If she was surprised to see the approaching two students running up the road five minutes after the expedition's scheduled departure time, the one being carried looking just as haggard as the one who carried her, it didn't show on her face. She simply waited until they disentangled themselves from the mangled remains of the backpack that tied them together before pointing into the back of the wagon and climbing in after them.

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