The next morning Blake started the day with a quick workout. Well, quick wasn’t exactly right. It took nearly two hours to build up enough of a sweat that he felt he had reached his limit before needing a break before going again.

  He was starting to run into a wall with his physical training routine. At this point, he was close to the peak a human body could reach without the power of the spirit realm. Body weight exercises just did not do enough for him now. He needed exercise equipment if he wanted to keep pushing his body.

  Blake almost started working on that right away but he didn’t know how to make weights with the tools he had now. He needed rope or some form of adhesive to bind things together to create something heavy enough to be useful to him. Unfortunate as it would have been the perfect excuse to delay his excursion outside the defenses of his glade.

  Looking down at himself he couldn’t help but sigh. If he could bind materials together he would also be able to make clothes. After being in the spirit realm for… Blake paused for a moment as he had forgotten how long he had been there. It didn’t matter but highlighted that he had been there a while and had gotten used to having no clothes. That didn’t mean it was comfortable, far from it, but at some point, his subconscious mind had given up being embarrassed at being found in the state he was in.

  Since he was on exercise cooldown for the next while Blake began to prepare for his trip to the stream of water. He needed that water for his attempts and herbalism. He also planned to clean himself off a bit if he didn’t find anything dangerous nearby. He was still covered in the mud, blood, viscera, and vomit of the days since his fight with the first rabbicorn.

  Before heading off he needed a way to store the water and bring it back. During his one and only attempt at making a salve, he had used a small stone to carve a divot into a fallen log to help keep everything together and not falling off the edge.

  What Blake did now was the same thing taken to the extreme. He used a stone to carve into a log hollowing it out. He would then carry that log to the stream and fill it up. It was not an easy or quick task. He had to be careful not to overstrain his muscles in fear of increasing his workout cooldown making him take frequent breaks. If it hadn’t been for his diligent efforts to increase his strength he doubted he would have been able to complete it at all, let alone within the two days it ended up taking.

  As he wanted to take advantage of his Talent, Blake had to maintain focus on his task during the entire duration of its crafting. That was hard enough to do for so long and the mind-numbing boredom that was repeatedly scraping rock against wood did not help matters. Luckily he had become much better at maintaining his focus since arriving in the spirit realm.

  He had even attempted meditation a few times, a nemesis of his, and found that not only was it much easier to fall into and keep but it also provided the relaxing relief from his jumbled thoughts that many school counselors had told him about. Meditating had always been stressful to him so he had believed those counselors to be, well he didn’t want to say ‘stupid’ but lacking in intelligence felt too soft.

  Blake was starting to struggle to keep track of time. When first arriving in the spirit realm he had a good sense of how long a minute and hour was. He had spent enough time around clocks and in classes with set time periods. All his measurements for how long he worked out or took a break were based on this intuition of time.

  The problem was that the longer he went without a concrete way to tell time the harder it became. What was the difference between one or two hours when you were doing the same thing the entire time? He could try to tell time by how often he could exercise but that was taking longer and longer.

  Blake decided that he needed to change how he thought about time until he found a better way. So now he measured in cycles and days. A cycle was just how long it took for him to exercise and then the accompanying break. Sure it was inconsistent but it accurately reflected how he was separating his actions for the day so what did it matter if it didn’t fit with some exacting measurement? No one else was there with him that he needed to sync his actions up with.

  The second day of carving into a log to craft a rough container passed with only three cycles. His physical growth had mostly plateaued now. He struggled to push himself hard enough to trigger his growth and something else was happening too. Blake couldn’t quite put his finger on it but he felt like he was pushing up against some wall.

  Had he reached some sort of cap on how strong he could become while tier 0? He didn’t think so but maybe it was a soft cap and he just had to push harder if he wanted more strength. If he knew how to advance to tier 1 this wouldn’t be a problem but for now, he was stuck at tier 0 and had to make the most of it.

  Even if he did know how to reach tier 1 he wasn’t sure he would go for it. While he didn’t know how to do it he did know that reaching tier 1 meant going to a tier 1 realm. A higher-tier realm would have stronger monsters and a more unforgivable environment. Since he couldn’t be sure that he would land in a tier 1 realm with human civilization he would likely be putting himself in more danger instead of less by taking that avenue to get stronger. It was a moot point until he knew how to ascend.

  The day after finishing his rough container Blake only put a token effort into his morning exercise before heading out. Since he wasn’t really growing anymore he decided to not work so hard and only worry about maintaining his strength until he found a solution.

  He did not want to admit it to himself but this was the exact attitude he had back on Earth that led to him being so skinny and weak. Well, not exactly as he hadn’t even been worried about maintaining a small amount of strength but the thought process was the same. He didn’t see any immediate benefit so he he did not want to put in the effort to keep moving forward one tiny step at a time.

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  Blake set out from his glade at a sprint. In his right hand, he carried a spear the height of his body. His left arm and hand balanced the log-turned container on his shoulder. He couldn’t help but grin as he moved through the forest despite his terror leaving the comfort of security that was his glade.

  Both the log and spear were heavy, the log obviously more so. Had he been on Earth Blake would have been surprised had he lifted the log at all let alone sprinted with it. He moved at a speed that he hadn’t felt before without being in a car. There wasn’t enough room in the glade to run anything more than a short dash.

  So entranced was Blake at his newfound physical prowess that he tripped over his own feet that he faceplanted into the ground at speed. His container and spear went flying as he slid face-first through the dirt. Not his most dignified moment.

  Face red, more from embarrassment than damage, he quickly scrambled to grab his spear. He did not want to be separated from his weapon while outside his defenses. Collecting his spear then moving and grabbing the log he moved forward once again. This time he did not move as fast as he could. He had learned his lesson.

  As he moved Blake focused on the placement of his feet so that he didn’t trip again. Fearing an ambush he also worked to stay aware of his surroundings. It was difficult splitting his focus like that. He had always been scattered-brained and had difficulty focusing but that was more flitting from one thought to another rather than thinking of two things at once.

  As he worked to split his focus he found himself falling into the semi-meditative state that he did when crafting with his Talent. He couldn’t think of it in the moment but he would later realize how much of a boon learning to do that was. He hadn’t thought of it as something useful outside of his Talent and had only seen the benefit it tangentially had with his efforts to meditate.

  He only tripped twice more before reaching the stream. Given he had been actively trying not to trip over his own feet and had been moving below his maximum speed, Blake was quite embarrassed. The constant exercise had made him more in tune with his body than he had ever been but his strength had grown faster. Perhaps it was the enhanced growth of the spirit realm or maybe he was just untalented at physical movement.

  In his mind, Blake began planning an obstacle course he could setup in his glade. Since he wasn’t working to improve his strength at the moment an obstacle course would allow him to maintain his strength while improving his control so he didn’t feel like such an idiot when running.

  Having arrived at the stream Blake spent a moment looking around and listening for rabbicorns on the hunt before leaning down to stick his log-turned container into the water. He had already confirmed via his Talent that it didn’t have any cracks or holes that would leak water so he wasn’t concerned about that.

  Once that was finished he spent but a moment contemplating whether he had time to wash off. Still not hearing or seeing anything he decided a quick dunk wouldn’t harm anything. The stream was deep enough for him to cover his whole body if he lay down in the middle. Calling it a stream might not have been fully accurate. It was more like a creek. About ten feet across the center of the creak came up to his waist.

  The water was cool to the touch but not freezing as Blake entered the creak. He quickly shuffled to the center, careful not to slip and fall. He dunked his head under the water and as he came back up his heart began to beat rapidly. A sense of dread filled him.

  His grip tightened on his spear as he dashed out of the water. He didn’t know what was coming but it wasn’t good. He only spent a moment grabbing his log full of water before running as fast as he could back to his glade.

  Despite not being able to focus and moving as fast as he could he only stumbled once and caught himself before falling so only a little water sloshed out of its container. Arriving back at his base of operations he dropped the log to the ground losing a bit more water. He spun around spear held tightly between both his hands.

  His eyes scanned the forest for threats as blood pounded in his ears. There was no sound besides his own breathing making the pounding of his heart audible.

  Blake did not know how long he stood there searching for threats before his heart rate began to drop. The adrenaline that was pumping through his veins began to fade and he felt lightheaded. He slumped to the ground tired from his sprint and extreme vigilance.

  While he had been waiting for something to pop out and attack him his exercise cooldown reset meaning he had been in a state of panic for hours. While it messed up his measurement of time, Blake couldn’t bring himself to go through an exercise. It took a monumental effort of will to start the fire before he sat down and tried to meditate.

  He didn’t know what was going on but he did know that his head was not on straight. He needed to get his thoughts in order if he wanted to figure out what had happened. Unfortunately, his mind had not recovered from his panic and he struggled to meditate at all. Eventually, he gave up before lying down in his leaf bed staring up at the sky.

  The sun had begun to set and the sky was covered in bands of color as the night overcame the day. There was still an artificial feel to it that Blake couldn’t quite get over but it was better than nothing. He had heard of realms that were just giant caves leaving people in perpetual darkness or, if they had a source of light, a ceiling of stone. By that measure, an imperfect sky was much better.

  The stars had only just started coming out when Blake fell asleep. His nightmares were worse than they had been in days waking him up multiple times throughout the night. Each time he woke up he stoked the fire to keep him going. Its orange glow brought him comfort in the darkness.

  The next morning Blake woke up groggy. His mind was more settled now but he still didn’t feel like exercising. He spent the morning doing a whole lot of nothing. He did get some comfort by drinking some of the water from his log container but he didn’t want to take too much as he needed it for his herbalism experiments and he had no desire to leave his glade.

  By noon he was stable enough to try meditating again. This time it worked well enough for him to try and analyze his own actions. The day before had not been normal. Nothing had been normal since arriving in the spirit realm but his response to nothing had been the real problem.

  One moment he had been dunking his head in the water the next he was sure he was about to die. Honestly, he was lucky he had been thinking well enough to grab the container of water before leaving. He had been so sure that something was out in the forest about to pounce on him.

  Thinking back on it there had been nothing that gave that impression. Sound had been consistent and he had spent time looking for monsters before entering the creek so unless it was something other than a rabbicorn, an ambush predator of some sort, there was no way he had missed a monster only to detect its existence while underwater.

  This led to one conclusion that Blake really wanted to ignore. The mental trauma from the first rabbicorn attack, and maybe even before that when entering the spirit realm, ran much deeper than he first thought.

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