CHAPTER 14

Yesterday, especially at night, and especially under the influence of pressuring factors such as fatigue and hunger, Isaia overlooked one important detail. It consisted in the necessity to keep to the outskirts of the forest in order to be able to get out of it, but logic and common sense allowed him to get out of this situation once again.

The solution was basically on the surface. All he needed was to find a tree that stood out among the others, climb it, and from there he could see the area where the forest ended.

Maybe luck was on his side this time, because the guy did not have time to go far into the forest canopy, from where it would not have been possible to see the place where the forest ends.

What he saw in the distance, namely a mountain range, led Isaia to some conclusions and musings. In the mountainous area, in particular, where it is colder than on the plain there will be fewer people, and therefore it will be much easier to wait and lose tracks.

To an ordinary man such logic would be alien and absurd, but Isaia was pushed by his new peculiarity. He wanted to test the limits of blood manipulation and whether it could restore or better yet give resistance against the elements. Blood itself restores stamina, and thus indirectly can be survived if you have a constant source of energy.

In all the time he had spent here, he had not felt the slightest discomfort, which should have come upon him without delay, considering the light clothing and lack of shoes.

Stamina itself was not spent, and there were no feelings of hunger or fatigue if he was idle for a while. It was most expended during moments of using blood manipulation. It could be deduced that blood was just a source of energy, but resistance was another element that had changed, and it was its aspects that needed to be studied more carefully.

There was one thing, though, and that was the lack of much time spent with the skill itself. During the whole day that he was here, all the time was spent either moving around or trying to find wildlife to satisfy his needs, and sitting for long hours just waiting to see if his stamina would decrease if he did nothing was an impermissible luxury for the young man.

Curiosity was gnawing at him to find out what temperatures his body could withstand and if there would be any repercussions.

In addition to testing his strength, it was important to conceal the connection of his own person to the incident, which would be easier to do if he went to places where there was not a large population, and of course, to move as far away as possible from the place where the incident had occurred.

He'd gotten pretty far away already, but he wanted to be sure. If the situation had been different and with distinctive turns, Isaia would have been faced with a choice: to go to the mountains and make an experiment, or to think about it and try to find a way to avoid criminal prosecution. Whether it was an act of luck, or whether fate decided to take pity, but in the current situation the movement to the mountains allowed to make both of these birds invalids with one stone, the main thing was to hit the cup.

No less of a source of curiosity was finding answers to the vexing question, according to which there should not be such high natural elevations on the territory of Uruguay, but here there was a whole mountain chain.

Again, there was no one around, with a stale decent riddle of experience to inform Isaia about visual illusion, when a person sees mountains and it seems to him that by walking a few tens of kilometers you can get to them. In fact, it may be a good hundred kilometers, or even several, which will be necessary to overcome in order to be at the foot of these very mountains. Everything will depend on the terrain itself, and of course on the height of the mountains.

From everything he had seen around him and encountered during the day, it could be concluded that he had most likely been drugged with something experimental and thrown into the territory of another country, the landscape and terrain of which were so radically different from the usual mild and beachy moods of his native country. Other conclusions were even more absurd, and one didn't even want to play with fate by starting to speculate about it.

His strength was again at its highest, and he felt no fatigue or hunger, so Isaia stopped thinking and headed toward the mountains.

It was decided to move through the woods, both to replenish his energy if he met an unlucky victim on the way, and at the same time to stay in the shelter where the tall vegetation played the role of an ally against the forces of justice and the stupid legislative system, which works only as a way to secure and guarantee the rich man's even greater wealth.

As it might seem, and rightly so, the lad was also not the friendliest of personalities towards the authorities. All the more so now that he has a skill and absolutely no interest in studying it behind bars.

On the one hand Isaia wouldn't mind stumbling upon some semblance of a road once he was out of the forest, for it would mean that there were at least signs of civilized society nearby, rather than this backwater construction he'd encountered recently.

He had a feeling that something didn't add up in everything that had been revealed to him, but he couldn't put the pieces together and figure out what it was.

The strange magic, the settlement as if humanity had given up and forgotten about the inhabitants here, and these cosplayers of the tattered and poor knights strangers Isaia had met on his first day of being here. It all suggested not the kindest and most sensible inferences.

The other side of the coin clearly stated to stay away from people, at least for a while, until things settled down and his existence was forgotten. With these thoughts he wandered further towards his intended goal.