Limits

After a while of rest I said "We should go back to the camp. I need to catch up now with my skills otherwise a turtle will be stronger than me, hahaha". Shelly looked at me confused as if I was saying something stupid. I didn't give it more thought as I took out the map and tried to determine our location. I wanted to swing by the places where we killed all those bears in order to collect more meat. I would need it the next morning, after my dream.

We traveled for about 30 minutes when we reached the place that was littered with black bears. I should rather say carcases and half eaten ones at that. When we arrived, we noticed a pack of wolves eating their dinner or to be exact my breakfast. I wanted to immediately spring into action but I almost had no daggers left. I used loads of them while fighting the silver and black bears. I could see some of them still lodged inside the bears. Not many of my daggers were visible due to the carnage the wolves created while eating the dead bears.

I said to Shelly "Chase as many of them as you can and kill, I shall fight in close combat". Shelly listened as usual which surprised me a bit because it was now stronger than me so it wouldn't have to be scared of me. 'It turns out Shelly is still the same Shelly. Perhaps it doesn't think about who is stronger. Maybe it can feel that I treat it as part of family and it doesn't simply care' I thought and ran at the wolves as well.

We managed to kill about a dozen of them while the rest ran away. This time I didn't sit around anymore. I said "Eat as much as you want and we will leave as soon as I collect couple of wolves and collect back all my daggers". I then started to scavenge all my daggers I could find. it wasn't that easy to find them and I didn't manage to get all of them anyway. I've lost about 10 daggers, which I couldn't just replenish. I then stuff whole wolves into my bag.

When I stuffed the 4th wolf inside the bag, it became quite heavy but I didn't have the time to just sit there and dismember these wolves. When I was searching for my daggers and later packing the wolves inside my bag, Shelly on the other hand ate as much as it wanted. When the bag was heavy enough and any more wolves would make it too difficult to travel, I said "Alright, we will leave now" and Shelly followed after me, although a bit reluctantly, it was because Shelly was a glutton and didn't want to leave all that meat behind but we had to leave, just in case.

We travelled back for about 40 minutes and finally reached the camp. It was as peaceful as usual and nothing was going on. I placed the bag on the ground and took out the wolves I stuffed in earlier. I started to extract meat and fur. We didn't need bones so I would just burry them. Intestines would also be disposed of, as would the head and other parts that were not really edible or just tasted funny.

After I did that, I decided to train even harder now. Shelly was becoming stronger and stronger. While I improved in one way or another, I felt that I was stagnating at the same level. 'If I don't put in more work, I will never be able to match Shelly and what about those strong people like Nick was? I would never be able to reach their heights' I thought.

I needed to develop my skills and finish what I started. I needed to focus on the skills I was about to perfect or those that didn't require hours of daily training before I could gain anything. I wanted to master my puppet skill, which I was not far away from mastering. I needed to focus on that all the time, until I've mastered this skill.

I could still train the pose from the Strength Manual because it only took me about 15 minutes to do so, this would bring benefits in long run but also was not time consuming. I practised the puppet skills for the rest of the day and then went to sleep.

When I opened my eyes I was back in the same dream. I did what I usually did and simply listened and tried to figure out another word from the dark figure. After another 8 repeats, I got an idea what another word could mean. The word was Lak and it was possible the word meant "You". This could further broaden my understanding of the language because if the word Lak meant You then the next word could be "Are" in human concept of language. It could be wrong as well but if I were to try couple of variations and one of them made sense, then I could choose that meaning and try to create a sentence. Maybe this would change something in the dream.

I listened and died dozen more times before waking up. I couldn't figure out any other clue but I wouldn't give up. 'This must be some kind of ancient language or it just isn't human' I thought. if it's the former then it would be possible to use the current language structure and decipher this language as well. On the other hand if the language is non human, the language can be govern by different rules such as, there is no "Are" after "You". In that case, deciphering the language will be multiple times harder.

I wouldn't give up hope that fast. I sat down and ate my breakfast. I felt hunger as usual but because of constant supply of food, my body got kind of used to the hunger it felt and just demanded food but didn't produce any negative effects anymore, which was good news.

I didn't wake Shelly up and simply left the shelter in order to train in the 1st modified diagram of the Strength Manual. This time I could last almost 14 minutes but not quite. I had to stop about 10 seconds short of 14 minutes. The improvements were smaller but they were there. Next I practised my puppet skills. I was close to mastery of all 5 puppets. I could now move all of them and even make them attack, retreat or defend. The problem I had to solve right now, was to learn how to control such amount of puppets independently. Maximum I could do was to control 2 groups of puppets. For example 2 puppets would attack and 3 would defend or retreat. I needed to figure out how to control each one separately, if I were to accomplish that, then I would have reach the mastery of the puppet skill.

While I was training with my puppets, Shelly came over in order to get some food and the mask that sealed the vision. I first placed some meat in a pile in front of Shelly and waited while it ate. I then placed the mask on Shelly and said "When you are done with your training and can run around the obstacles without hitting them, you will train with me. Besides, it may actually help me develop my puppet skills as well". Shelly nodded and went off in the direction of trees in order to practise.

I wondered about Shelly's progress but I had no time for that. I needed to train myself in order to catch up.