Chapter 606: Lost Count

They stayed the night at a really nice inn. They all got separate rooms and could finally relax, lying in beds that weren’t attached to the carriage. It wasn’t like the beds inside the carriage were uncomfortable in the first place, either. In fact, he would argue that the beds in the carriage were as, or even more comfortable than the one inside his room at the inn.

However, there was a weird difference between sleeping inside a carriage and a real room. Plus, this inn had a private hydrothermal bathhouse for its VIP guests to enjoy. Julius didn’t think he could get so much pleasure from a bath, but somehow he did.

The water was definitely special. Large amounts of mana were infused into every inch of the water, and even the stones that made up the baths were treated with some sort of special mana. The food was amazing too. Absolutely divine.

He had already thanked Loreyn several times and would need to thank her a dozen more when he had the chance. He didn’t know how she found the inn, but he was grateful that she had. He went to sleep with a full belly and a skin softer than a newborn’s buttcheeks.

He finally woke up in the morning to the sound of someone knocking on his door. In a rare case of laziness, he ended up sleeping for over eight hours. Unheard of for him, especially since he didn’t need as much sleep anymore.

That wasn’t without reason either. During the couple of weeks of traveling, he figured out a dubious technique that helped him stay asleep for longer. He didn’t really know if it was safe as of yet, but he had been using his ruinous aura on himself.

By using the aura this way, he was able to limit the effectiveness of his healing skill and his new body. It actually wasn’t easy at all, but he came up with the idea after helping Maya with her willpower training.

When he wrestled control over his aura, he sometimes repressed it so much that the backlash hurt him a little bit, and he felt a little bit tired after he was done with a session. So he played around with it and managed to figure out a nice balance that tired him out enough to keep him sleeping, but not so much that he killed himself in his sleep.

Oh yeah, he forgot to mention that he needed to do all of this in his sleep. Thankfully, he had some experience with this from when he used to train his spatial perception years ago.

He heard the door get knocked on again.

“I’m up, I’m up,” he said to Maya, who was on the other side. He could sense her, and she was tapping her fingers against her forearm impatiently.

“Well, then, get dressed. We need to leave soon if we want to get all of our shopping done before we leave.”

He groaned and crawled out of the comforts of his warm bed. He heard Drasil let out a strangled moan as well. The little guy had been tucked up against his neck and had also been enjoying their lazy day. Seraphyne was out of his soul, too, but she didn’t cuddle with him and had her own nest at the foot of the bed. She was similarly waking from her rest, itching her shell as she did.

When he finally got up and dressed, he opened the door. Maya was standing there and shaking her head at him.

“Jeez, I thought you were an early riser. One day in luxury and you turn into a sloth,” she said jokingly.

“You sound jealous,” he commented, noticing the dark circles under her eyes. She clearly didn’t sleep well. Was the idea of them going deep into the Brightwood Forest that scary to her?

She rolled her eyes and turned around to walk down the hall. “Come on. I have a lot to buy today since we can’t rely on anyone else’s storage rings.”

“You don’t already have some stuff prepared inside your storage ring?” Julius was surprised by this. He didn’t use them all that often, but he still had all of his camping gear and even his fold-up kitchen set inside his ring.

She laughed. “No, we never had the need to. We have potions and some other stuff, but most of our rings are full of personal items.”

Julius shook his head. He couldn’t imagine having a storage ring and not filling it with everything he needed to survive the wilderness. But he didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he followed her out of the inn.

They met with Shin outside. Loreyn and Cassandra were waiting for them, too.

“Everyone ready? We only have a couple of hours before we need to head out,” Cassandra said with a smile.

“You’re really not going to help us? You know that I have never done this sort of thing before,” Shin grumbled.

“That’s why you need to do it. Your father and family spoil you too much. You can’t expect to go the rest of your life with someone else preparing your necessities for you. I know you have servants at the sect who take care of your needs, but this is going to be different. You are going to be preparing your food, shelter, and even learn how to remove cores from various monsters.”

“Cores? Seriously? And what are the rest of you guys going to do while we do all of this?”

Cassandra smiled widely. “We are going to enjoy the comforts of the carriage while you sleep outside.”

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“What?! That’s unfair!”

Cassandra’s smile flattened. “Fair? Do you know how young I was when I started to learn how to survive in the wild?”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. “I was twelve and was by myself for over a month, fighting monsters every day. It has become quite clear that you and, to some extent, Maya, have lived too comfortable a life in recent years. I partially blame myself for this. I should have stepped in earlier. But now I plan to rectify this oversight.”

Seeing that she was serious, neither Shin nor Maya argued and looked down at the floor. After a few silent moments, Shin looked up and stared at Julius.

“What about him?”

Cassandra frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Will he be joining us in this training?”