3 Chapter 003

'This is really fucking aggravating...' thought Leon. Despite his lack of a physical form, he had to walk, push through dense brush, and climb over obstacles using hands and feet he couldn't see. The most annoying thing was that he couldn't push things out of the way, so he had to endure the feeling of objects passing through him, creating tremendous drag.

'This doesn't make any sense...objects literally pass through me, so why can't I move through them directly...?'

Feeling exhausted after pushing his way through hundreds of meters of thick shrubbery, Leon placed both his non-existent hands against a tree, hung his head, and took several deep breaths. He could feel the humid air flowing into him and the sensation of the bark against his palms, but when he raised his head and tried peeling away a piece, it didn't budge.

"I can force my way through shrubs yet trip over loose rocks and tree roots..." muttered Leon. "I must be missing something..."

Pushing his right hand against the tree as hard as he could, Leon initially felt disappointed before noticing his hand was sinking into it. The feeling was like trying to push through damp clay or congealed molasses, but his hand eventually disappeared into the tree's surface before he pulled it out without issue. More accurately, the moment he stopped pushing, the tree repelled him.

"Could it be that the more Mana an object has, the more resistant it is to my moving through it?" Leon asked aloud. Then, looking down at a small stone, he remarked, "But stones are even harder to move through, and I doubt they have much Mana..."

Passing his hand through the dense foliage of a bush, Leon focused on the sensation. The sensation of the branch passing through him was more prominent, but most of the resistance came from the leaves. He could feel each leaf clinging to him, but since they didn't move, it was more accurate to say his immaterial form clung to them...

"Am I like a liquid, then? The bark of a tree is certainly more porous than the average stone..."

Using his curiosity to supplant his frustration, Leon looked around for a young tree or one with a fork in it for a few minutes. Most of the trees in the jungle were fully grown, their root systems likely preventing younger trees from taking root, but he eventually found one around the thickness of a human wrist.

"Here goes..." muttered Leon, walking into and attempting to force his way through the tree. If his postulation was correct, he should be able to 'flow' around it. That appeared to be the case at first, but once he reached the halfway point, his perspective abruptly changed.

"What the fuck...?"

With his vision going from a bifocal point of view to suddenly being able to perceive everything in his surroundings, Leon felt his non-existent eyes flicker back and forth, unable to reconcile the lack of a focal point. It was like his vision had been set to panoramic, but that was just the tip of the iceberg as far as incongruencies were concerned. His head felt warm, and he could feel a peculiar tingle permeating it. There was also a sensation of something flowing into and spreading through him from his many 'feet,' so it didn't take Leon long to realize he had somehow fused with the tree.

'So I can possess things...' Leon noted, feeling a paradoxical mix of relief and panic as he didn't know how to separate himself from the tree. When he tried moving, the tree, particularly its branches, actually wiggled a bit, but it took a tremendous amount of stamina.

As a last-ditch effort to escape the tree's confines, Leon materialized his console and tried moving to Mordred. His efforts were successful, but he was unfortunately still inside the tree, causing the golden-haired girl to startle and immediately kick him as he appeared less than a meter away.

Though he felt the impact of Mordred's kick, sending him tumbling head over heels, Leon was relieved to find he had been liberated from the tree. The tree was split in two by the force of Mordred's barefoot kick, but he didn't mourn its loss as he rose to his feet and remarked, "That was some kick..."

Blinking in surprise, Mordred looked to Leon's approximate location and asked, "That was you...?"

"Yeah, but don't let it bother you," replied Leon. "It turns out-"

"Why would it bother me?" asked Mordred. "You appeared out of nowhere and startled me. It's only natural that I would retaliate."

"..."

Deciding to continue where he left off, Leon explained, "It turns out that I can possess objects. I didn't know how to get out, though, so I ended up teleporting over to you. Thanks for getting me out."

Furrowing her brows, Mordred looked like she wanted to rebuff Leon for thanking her unnecessarily. Instead, she placed her foot on the tree she felled a few minutes prior, saying, "Try placing this into your Storage. I couldn't lift it due to my weakened condition, but it should weigh at least a thousand kilograms."

"You're weakened condition...?" Leon parroted. He suspected Mordred to be weaker than the version he was familiar with after seeing her struggle with the moss-covered stone and checking her status, but he didn't have a point of reference to compare to.

Demonstrating she wasn't a complete tight ass, Mordred didn't seem to mind as she replied, "Yeah. Before coming here, I could have felled a tree like this with a single blow. Now, it takes me several minutes, and I even bruised my knuckles in the process. Check it out."

Holding out her hands, Mordred revealed her torn and bloodied knuckles as if she wasn't even a little troubled by them. If anything, she seemed to be proud of the injury, sporting a smile as she clearly waited to hear what he had to say.

"Wow...that's pretty gnarly..." said Leon, forcing a non-existent smile. In truth, he didn't like seeing anyone injured, but based on her reaction, he doubted Mordred would be happy having him fret over her.

"Is that an expression from your world...?" asked Mordred, bringing her right hand up to her mouth and licking the blood from her knuckles while looking directly at him.

"Yeah. It basically means something is cool or morbidly fascinating..." replied Leon.

Catching Leon a little off guard, Mordred abruptly asked, "What's the worst injury you've ever received?"

"It's not a pleasant memory, but I shattered my femur in a car accident. Before that, I had a promising career as an athlete. Unfortunately, even after giving it my all during rehab, I was never able to recover fully. Oh, and if you're unaware, your femur is the bone in your thigh."

"I see..." muttered Mordred, averting her eyes and looking like she wanted to apologize but only briefly. Evidently, she wasn't very good at exhibiting empathy or conversing with people, as the very next thing she did was turn around and resume punching the tree she was working on before his arrival.

"..."

Instead of pointing out the oddities in Mordred's behavior, Leon silently approached the downed tree and attempted to place it in his Storage. To his surprise, he was actually able to do so, but only a meter-long section. That alone afforded him more than 100kgs of wood, so by the time he had the entire thing in his Storage, including most of the branches and leaves, he had 608 units for construction.

"That's great," said Leon. "A little more than two more trees of that size, and we'll have all the wood we need for a Workshop."

"Understood," replied Mordred, punctuating her words with a particularly heavy punch. It failed to knock the tree down, but a loud cracking sound could be heard as a fracture ran up its interior.

Figuring he should give Mordred some space, Leon resumed his search for a water source in earnest. She was literally bloodying her knuckles to secure the materials they needed for the Workshop, so Leon suppressed his frustration and pushed through the dense jungle foliage with a resolve he previously lacked...

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After hours of searching, Leon couldn't help exhaling a dry laugh as the stream he discovered was less than a hundred meters from the clearing. To find it, however, he had to navigate several kilometers and double back at least twice after getting turned around. If not for his console providing access to a map through the Assign tab, he likely would have trekked the same trail a dozen times over before realizing he was going in a disjointed circle.

"Once we're done with the Workshop and setting up a place to stay, I should invest in an Outpost..." muttered Leon. According to the details section of the Build tab, an Outpost was the precursor to the higher-tiered Explorer's Guild. He could explore himself, but with 1,308 regions denoted by the Assign tab, it was better to entrust the responsibility to those with the skills and desire to explore the unknown.

After nodding in response to his utterance, Leon spent some time trying and failing to place objects and water into his Storage before teleporting to the chamber where Mordred was summoned. He didn't want to startle her as he did before, so he departed the chamber and emerged from the underground to find her sitting atop a log next to a campfire. The way she was seated with her legs spread caught his eye, but he only briefly glimpsed her exposed thighs before turning his attention to what she was cooking, skewered on several sticks.

'She had time to find water and catch fish...'

Sensing Leon's presence, Mordred looked over, her expression neutral as she called out, "Is that you, or am I imagining things...?"

"It's me," replied Leon, making his way over and taking a seat on the log Mordred had presumably prepared for him opposite her own.

"Well, if it wasn't obvious, I found a water source not too far from here," said Mordred. Then, picking up one of the skewers, she held it out and asked, "Can you eat...?"

"I doubt it, but I can probably place them in my Storage and save them for later," replied Leon. "If we're lucky, it should be able to preserve heat and the freshness of ingredients."

"If so, that would be a tremendous boon during a campaign," remarked Mordred, grabbing a skewer for herself and taking a large bite out of the fish's head without any additional preparation or seasoning. Then, while unabashedly chewing with her mouth open, she gestured with her head toward several downed trees and a pile of stones, saying, "I couldn't find any metal, but that should be plenty of wood and stone. Once I've eaten and recuperated, we'll head to the nearby river to gather clay and search for iron and other mineral deposits upstream. I found a few flecks of gold while sifting through the sediment, so if nothing else, we can dump a ton of it into your Storage and see if it can detect other metals. If that doesn't work, we can repurpose the sediment for farming."

"Is that a thing...?" asked Leon.

"Yeah. I'm honestly not sure how it works, but when I was learning how to manage an estate, I was instructed that sediment from free-flowing rivers and lakes could rejuvenate poor and dry soil. Peasants would mesh it with sheep manure and topsoil from the forest. The smell was horrendous, but I've witnessed the effects first-hand."

"Then let's gather a lot," appended Leon, adopting a smile. What he didn't expect was for Mordred to do the same, ostensibly pleased by the fact he believed her. It was a fleeting moment, as she promptly took another bite out of her fish, but Leon felt that, for the duration of her smile, the world as a whole became a little brighter...

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