Brains and Brawn

Opening my eyes, I noticed that the day had passed and the moon was hanging in the sky. The next thing I noticed was a horrible stench. Looking down, I noticed some sort of black gook sticking to me. It is ,by far, the most disgusting thing I had ever looked at. Even a mangled corpse would be less revolting than this sticky black monstrosity.

Jumping into action immediately, I ran to the river next to the village as fast as I could. However, just moments after running, I tripped over my own legs. Perhaps it was the darkness of the night or the incredible speed I instantly accelerated too. Unfortunately, I had no time to pay attention to these occurrences as my senses were completely overloaded with the sight and smell of the black gook.

Jumping over the village walls and sprinting towards the river, I was so focused on getting there that I didn't even notice the astonishing speed I was moving. A journey that should've taken 10 minutes from Old Man Yang's house to the river took only 3 minutes!

Seeing the river ahead, I immediately jumped as high as I could to plunge into the river. Once again, I failed to notice the fact that I had jumped from the banks to the center of the 20 foot wide river.

Washing the gook off of my body as frantically as I could, I started to think properly again. Once I had got it all off, I sat on the banks of the river and looked up into the stars. My mind was moving faster than it had ever had before. Without realizing it, I had counted all the stars in the night sky after a single minute. 2,875. That's how many stars I could see this night.

While astonished at my thinking ability, I noticed something touching my body. I glanced down to see an average sized water snake had curled around my body. Instinctually, I grabbed it in an attempt to pull it off of my body and throw it into the water. However, when I grabbed its body, I failed to control my strength and squeezed it into a mush. The snake hadn't even had the chance to realize what was happening before it was killed.

Frantically throwing the half mush, half corpse snake into the river, I once again jumped into the river to clean myself off. Pondering how my body was able to easily crush that snake, I realized that I was much too tired to think. Making my way back to the village, the trip took much longer than when I was running.

20 minutes later, I made it back to my small house and jumped into my small bed. Soon after jumping in, I fell asleep. Waking up, I got out of bed and made my way out of the house to grab some bread from Johns bakery. Even after eating 2 slices, enough to fill me up any other day, I realized I was still starving. Spending the rest of my money, I bought 6 more slices of bread in order to satisfy my hunger.

Afterwards, I was finally able to sit down and think about yesterday's events. The grey speck, the black gook, the quick counting of my brain, and the easy crushing of the snake. Deciding to further test my body, I set off to Tonton valley with my axe. Coming to my usual spot, I noticed the destruction that the storm caused. Multiple trees were either bending or completely knocked over. Luckily, there were many more in fine condition. The valley had a fair amount of protection from the wind after all.

Finding a relatively unaffected tree, I got in position to cut it down. The first swing lodged the axe fully into the tree. Astonished, I pulled the axe out with surprising ease and swung the axe once again. The second swing mirrored the first one and by the twentieth swing, the medium size tree started falling.

I was completely dumbfounded with my own strength. The least swings I had ever needed to knock down any tree was more than 50. Not to mention, a tree of this size often took over 500 swings to cut down. Once it fell and I regained my witts, I started cutting it into sections. I hadn't only come here to test my strength after all. I also needed money as I had used all of it in order to buy food this morning. After an hour of work, I had cut down and chopped up 8 medium sized trees! The quickest I had ever cut down 8 trees was 10 hours! Not to mention, I barely felt any fatigue after the constant cutting.

Turning around, I looked at my sled and realized that it is far too small to carry 8 trees. Loading up as much as I could fit, I dragged it to Old Man Yang's shop. After 3 trips back and forth, I was 25 copper richer. Repeating the action of cutting down 8 trees and bringing them back in three trips 3 more times, I finally saved up a silver. Unfortunately, it took all day. If it wasn't for my increased strength and stamina, I would've collapsed after the first three back and forth trips.

Deciding to pass on dinner tonight in preparation for tomorrow, I went to sleep.

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Waking up, I went to Old Man Yang's store and bought a much better sled from him. This sled could carry 8 trees worth of wood. Old Man Yang was naturally suspicious when he saw that I had brought back 32 trees worth of wood yesterday. However, luckily for me, (since I had no reasonable explanation), Old Man Yang used to live in the Imperial city where asking too many questions is a quick way to get killed. The sled only costed 95 copper, so I had enough to get a couple slices of bread from Johns bakery. Setting off to the valley, I prepared to spend all day cutting trees.