Chapter 4: One Hour of Freedom

Serayne pulled up Featherstep’s description once more, comparing the upkeep cost to her maximum mana pool. With a full eighty points, she could maintain the state for an hour and twenty minutes.

That sounded fairly decent - until she remembered that those final minutes would likely be spent high above the ground. Losing her weightlessness midway between a branch and the cabin entrance would end in something far worse than an awkward landing.

An hour at most for an entire trip, round-trip included…

And even less if I use any other skills.

She had no desire to learn the hard way whether the system gave any warning before her mana ran dry. From now on, she would check her status panel regularly, especially when venturing away from the Hearthhold.

The Talent itself would take some getting used to as well. In her initial burst of excitement, she had called it flying, but the actual movement felt closer to drifting in zero gravity than soaring freely through the air.

As long as she had a wall, a bough, or any surface to push off of, she managed well enough. But in open air, she couldn't just pick a direction and will herself forward.

She was left riding whatever momentum she had built up, carefully tweaking her weight, or waiting for air currents to carry her somewhere she had no intention of going.

So no leaping blithely over chasms just because I'm light as a feather…

Good to keep in mind before I run into my first cliff.

There was one more thing she preferred not to dwell on, but recalling her reflection in the dark pane of the window made her wince and tug self-consciously at her clothes.

It wasn't even about hiding the Talent - trying to sneak around the forest among other arrivals while pretending nothing was out of the ordinary would be hopeless anyway. It was the awkward angle her body assumed whenever she kicked off with any real force.

Her arms and torso launched forward first, while her limp legs trailed behind at an ungraceful tilt. For a moment, she must have looked like a crooked number seven topped with a pair of lynx ears.

In the heat of the night, she had been too thrilled to care, but picturing herself drifting past a stranger in that exact posture made her press her fingers to her forehead with a quiet groan.

Right. Maybe I should learn to look like I'm doing this on purpose first…

She had no intention of giving up her newfound freedom over a few awkward stares, but if there was a way to move with even a shred of dignity, she wanted to find it - ideally before anyone wrote her off as the weird woman gliding sideways through the bushes.

***

The meal was finally ready. Serayne peeled back the lid, and as a plume of steam escaped - rich with the scent of spicy sauce, savory seasonings, and rendered fat - any lingering concerns about her dignity vanished.

Fishing out a piece of potato, she waited just long enough to keep from scalding her tongue before popping it into her mouth, her eyes fluttering shut almost instantly.

“So good…” slipped past her lips before she had even swallowed. The savory heat coating her tongue sent her hunting for another bite.

Ever since the fire, her diet had been strictly limited to whatever bland fare the facilities served, turning even more monotonous toward the end. The bold, spicy flavor hit her senses with unexpected intensity.

She knew it was just an ordinary instant meal - the kind someone on Asterra might grab on their morning commute and eat without a second thought - yet right now, she couldn't imagine anything more delicious.

She forced herself to slow down. Hunger urged her to wolf it down, but her shrunken stomach wouldn't appreciate devouring the whole thing in seconds.

Bracing the container securely, she slid closer to the console and pulled up the Regional Channel, hoping browsing the feed would distract her enough to pace herself.

[Has anyone gotten a spell other than Gathering? One cast takes 20 MP for me, and I only have 50.]

[How do you know how much it takes?]

[I stepped outside the entrance and tried it on some plants.]

[You went outside? Right now?]

[Admire your guts.]

[I got Gathering too.]

[Same here, but with 30 MP I can use it once and then I'm sitting on my hands.]

Serayne paused the scroll, leaning in to read more closely. That mana cost upended her previous calculations.

Only a moment ago, eighty minutes of Featherstep had seemed like a generous reserve; now she realized a single cast of Gathering would cost the equivalent of twenty minutes of movement.

[You still have it good. My Spirit is 1, which means I only have 10 MP. If the cost is really 20, I can't even cast it.]

[How in the world do you only have 1?]

[Don't know. Maybe the system decided magic isn't for me.]

[Then how do you plan to gather materials?]

[I used to work in timber logging and chose an axe, so tomorrow I'm just doing what I know.]

[I took a pickaxe. If we're nearby, we could trade tools later.]

[Add me to contacts, we'll check our distance.]

Serayne nearly choked on her food when she read about the single point in Spirit. Until now, she had viewed her own stat sheet as the absolute bottom of the barrel.

Her wry amusement faded as she read on, however. The woman with barely enough mana to function clearly had a far more practical plan for the coming day than many of the people bragging about high-tier Talents.

So low Spirit doesn't stop you from using your head… Good thing I didn't treat my eight like a certificate of genius.

She returned to Gathering's cost, crunching the numbers against what she needed to stay mobile. At full capacity, she could cast the skill four times, but that would drain her completely. In her situation, doing that made sense only if she fancied spending the rest of the day stranded beneath a tree, contemplating every poor life decision that brought her there.

Three casts leave twenty points… Which means twenty minutes of Featherstep at best, travel and return included.

Not knowing her passive mana regeneration rate, she couldn't count on a quick breather to top her back off. She decided to treat three casts as a strict ceiling rather than a quota to fill.

Better to return with fewer resources than to watch her last mana point vanish while suspended ten feet from the nearest branch.

Meanwhile, the discussion on the channel shifted to another topic, drawing Serayne closer to the display.

[Has anyone checked the Hearthhold upgrade? Mine requires 3,100 units of vines and 10 E-rank monster cores. Where am I supposed to find that?]

[Must depend on your shelter. I'm in a cave, and I need 3,000 stone and 100 wood.]

[I have vines, stone, wood, and soil. Looks like I got the whole package.]

Serayne glanced at the timber walls, recalling the warning about the seven-day grace period and the imperative to upgrade her shelter. She navigated to the corresponding section on the console.

For a fleeting moment, she hoped her requirements would be more modest, but when the list materialized, her hand slowly lowered the piece of food she was holding.

[Tree Trunk Hearthhold Upgrade to Level 2]

[Wood × 2500]

[Stone × 100]

[Vines × 500]

[E-rank Monster Core × 10]

Two and a half thousand wood… It would be nice to know if a single unit means a twig or a whole tree.

She had no frame of reference yet, but even without one, measuring those figures against her limited casts of Gathering was disheartening - especially when she still had food and water to secure.

Monster cores sounded even worse. Regardless of how one obtained them, the name alone pointed toward something far less pleasant than picking up deadwood.

The system insisted a higher-tier Hearthhold meant sturdier defense, but Serayne couldn't hear that as just an offer of safety. It just as easily meant that once the week ran out, her current barrier wouldn't be enough.

She stared at the requirements for a moment longer, then closed the window and turned back to her meal. She wasn't going to solve everything in one night, especially when keeping her eyes open was becoming a battle.

Tomorrow I'll see how much a single cast yields, and then I can worry… For now, I have a roof, water, and hot food. Just this once, I can let myself sleep without fretting.

After finishing her meal, she packed away the wrapper, checked that the bottle was sealed tight, and confirmed the sausage was safe inside the chest before easing back onto the pallet.

Straw was nothing like a hospital mattress, but it was dry. The door was locked, and for once, the silence didn't mean she had been abandoned outside a dark clinic.

Her hands relaxed. Turning her head, she watched the warm glow of the lantern as exhaustion gradually pushed aside thoughts of the woods, Gathering, and the system's baffling demands.

Somewhere between her final glance at the console and her first slow, drifting breath, a faint nag pricked her mind - a feeling she had forgotten something. But before she could grasp it, sleep pulled her under.

***

When she woke the following morning, light was already streaming through the round window, casting a warm patch across the floorboards. Serayne lay still for a while, letting her eyes adjust to the wooden walls.

With a flick of her wrist, she brought up her status panel and checked her mana pool, feeling a surge of relief to see that a night's rest had replenished her reserves completely.

Reaching for the water bottle, she took measured sips, fighting the temptation to drain the rest just because the cool liquid soothed her dry throat.

After setting the chat channels to stay paused, she retrieved the sausage from the crate and activated Featherstep, intending to scout her surroundings before getting down to gathering.

This time, she didn't rush toward the door. She drifted over at a measured pace, steadying herself on the frame, and when she peered outside, she forgot all about breakfast.

The forest was colossal.

It wasn't just the sheer number of trees, but their immense scale. Trunks rose from the loam like ancient pillars, their high, interlocking canopies weaving a verdant vault through which sunlight filtered in slender shafts of gold.

Fern-like vegetation and lush foliage swayed below, parting to reveal the gleam of a winding stream. A delicate mist hovered over the water, giving the vista an ethereal quality she had only ever seen in CGI renders back on Asterra.

Gripping a sturdy branch, Serayne drifted a little farther from the entrance to inspect the tree housing her Hearthhold. Only then did she comprehend just how tiny her dwelling was against the sheer mass of the trunk.

She had no way to measure its girth with precision, but the titan appeared nearly a hundred meters wide. The door and porthole window were so inconspicuous against its bark that spotting them from the ground would be nearly impossible.

Well… Unless someone knows exactly where to look, they're never going to notice a home up here.

The realization drew a quiet smile. For once, her Hearthhold’s location felt like an advantage rather than an obstacle. Then she looked straight down, and a sharp knot of tension tightened in her gut.

The landing platform hung at least twenty or thirty meters above the forest floor. Without Featherstep, she wouldn't have had a prayer of reaching the ground, let alone climbing back up.

“Of course stairs were too much to ask for…” she muttered, sliding carefully along the trunk.

Then she noticed the thick creepers coiling around the bark. In several spots, they formed a jagged, natural trellis that an able-bodied person could scale up to her ledge. It looked neither easy nor particularly safe, but it was an ascent route all the same - and the warning that other arrivals could be dangerous flashed through her mind.

The system guaranteed no one could enter an active Hearthhold uninvited, but that didn't mean she fancied finding a stranger lurking right outside her door.

I'll need to prune this back… Just not so much that I leave myself with nothing to grab onto.

Selecting a section well away from the boughs she had used during her nighttime outing, she planted a hand on a sturdy limb and focused her attention on the vines, willing Gathering to activate.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then a crisp snap echoed through the foliage, and a severed length of vines sheared away from the trunk, tumbling straight to the forest floor.

Serayne watched it fall, half-hoping the harvest might dematerialize into some convenient inventory space. But the vines simply settled into the loam between the roots, stubbornly physical.

So the skill severs it, and I have to haul it all myself… Naturally.

She checked her status panel, confirming the mana drop matched what chat had claimed. Scouting the descent route, she began carefully lowering herself down.

Knowing the climb back would demand real physical effort, she didn't try to haul the entire bundle at once. She gathered a portion she could manage under one arm while keeping her other hand free to grip the branches.

The weight of the vines served as an immediate reminder that Featherstep only lightened her own body, not her cargo. The trip back forced her to make several stops, hauling herself upward from limb to limb.

When she finally dragged her haul over the threshold, she let out a long breath of relief and dropped it onto the floorboards. Only after catching her breath did she glide over to the console.

Opening the Regional Exchange, she selected the stall activation option and hovered the prepared bundle above the right panel, curious whether this promised feature would actually live up to its description.

The moment the greenery touched the surface, it vanished so fast she was left hovering with empty hands, blinking at the spot where her first harvest had rested only a heartbeat before.