Chapter 16

When Adair woke up, it was still dark out, but after spending so long in this world she had gotten used to it being a regular occurrence. The only light she could see was the fire that the bear had kept going ever since he started seemingly so long ago. Adair saw that the bear was relaxing by the fire, cooking some of the meat that he had kept in the snow to keep it cold. Adair did not understand why Hank did not ask her to put back the food into the bag since the bag seemed to keep all of their food fresh but she trusted Hank knew what he was doing so she didn't question it.

Seeing him prepare food, Adair got some milk out of the bag. Although she was starting to get sick of drinking this milk, it was the only thing she had access to. She had tried summoning different kinds of food, but the only edible items to come out were the milk bottles and the meat which the bear was eating.

She would have loved to try some of the meat, but for some reason Hank had prevented her from taking a bite from it. The young girl wondered if there was a finite amount of milk in the bag or if it summoned it from somewhere on this planet. The thought of there being a limited amount of milk slightly made her worry because what she would eat after the milk ran out, but that would be a question for a different time.

Thankfully, the milk was not bad, just boring. Even as she grew, one bottle was enough to completely fill her up and provide her with the proper vitamins and minerals. If such a drink existed in the Galactic Empire, she was positive that it would be extremely popular.

Once she finished her milk, she went over to Hank because it was finally time for her to start reading the books her mom had handed Hank to teach her daughter the same magic she had used. At first the bear was non-responsive to Adair and only paid attention to the meat it was cooking, but after the young girl started jumping down on its paws, the bear let out a soft growl, which she took as an annoyed adult making it clear that she had to wait her turn.

Apparently Hank wanted to enjoy its meal before helping her get the books. While she was annoyed that he could not spare her a couple of minutes to fulfill his promise it was impossible to convince him. Still, Adair decided to at least be somewhat productive in the meantime, so she picked up one of the wooden brooms and started to push the water into one of the many holes in the floor. She had continued to do this for quite some time before she decided to look over at Hank and saw that it hadn't even taken a single bite out of the meat yet.

Adair then sighed and returned to her task at hand for the next 30 minutes. The next time she looked, she saw Hank take its first bite out of the food. Normally Adair would not be this impatient, but she was like a kid waiting for Saint Nickolas to deliver presents on December 25th, and she just couldn't wait much longer.

It also appeared that Hank was taking longer than usual to eat its food today. Her first thought was that he was purposely eating slowly to get back at Adair for all the trouble she had caused, but she realized that an adult would unlikely be that pretty, especially towards a toddler.

This caused Adair to pause and realize that a lot of her behavior was nothing similar to what a child her age should be doing. The bear didn't seem too shocked, though, that the two of them had been able to hold an in-depth conversation yesterday. Did this mean that it was not unusual for children to have in-depth conversations with adults?

If this would be the case, that would explain why the machine in the pyramid had been able to reveal that she was reincarnated. Adair had wondered if she should adjust her behaviour and act more in line to how she thought a kid her age would react, but she quickly decided against it. She was, for all intents and purposes, she was thousands of years old and was not sure if she could stand acting like a little kid who knew nothing about anything.

It might have been a reasonable course of action to do so if the two of them had been teleported into a town, a village or somewhere with civilization, but since it was just the two of them, and her protector was in bear form, it just felt counterproductive.

She eventually noticed that the bear was done with his food, so she quickly put away the broom and rushed over to the bear. Of course she brought the bag with her and pointed at it impatiently. She was afraid that her furry friend who had acted more like a sloth than a bear might troll her harder and take an eternity to move over where the bag was.

The bear reached the top of the bag and with his claws he opened it up, before a dozen books fell out. This surprised Adair because she had been unaware that the bag had literally been carrying items since it already possessed some sort of dimensional storage area.

No wonder she had been unable to wish them out, when they had been deposited the normal way. This made her feel quite dumb because she knew from her past life that bags carried items. In her defense, she had been completely fascinated with the fact that items could just appear and disappear with a thought from the bag, which was why she had only tried the single way she knew how to use the bag.

Now that they were in front of her, Adair immediately tried to pick up the books, but she just couldn't. This frustrated Adair to no end. She had waited for so long to get the books, but now she couldn't even move the book an inch, much less open those darned things to their first page.

She looked up to the bear for some help, but Hank was lying down near the fire, ready to take a nice nap after his meal. Adair thought about what could be the reason for this strange behavior of the books and reached the conclusion that they might be locked like the door of the pyramid.

In that case she needed to find a tiny circle on the book and drop her blood on it. She spent a lot of time looking over each book, but none of them had anything resembling a circle. Adair could only see five sides of the book, but not the sixth, so the young girl hoped that she was not unlucky enough for it to end up on the bottom for all the books.

Unable to find what she was looking for, she was tempted to drop some of her blood just on the cover to see if anything would happen, but she was worried that it could have unforeseen consequences. What if it would end up denying her the chance to ever read the book in the future?

She then did her best "help me" look towards her furry friend. A bit annoyed, yet unable to resist her puppy eyes, the bear tried to flip the books around, but as soon as he touched one, it disappeared and went back into the bag. She then asked the bear to summon back the book to see if it was on a different side, but that did not end up being the case, and it appeared the same as it had before. The bear then tried this with every book. After it was done with 8 of the books, Adair discovered three really small books that had been buried underneath all of the other books.

Adair started to look through these small books, hoping they either might be the keys that allowed her to get into the other books or at least tell her how she was supposed to read them. She began to point at the books above these three small books to get the bear to put the other books away back into the bag. Once this was done, the young girl put her hand up to stop the bear from touching the last three books.

She went to go try to pick up the first of these small books and found that she was able to and from what she could tell they weighed more or less exactly what she had expected. Unfortunately, these books also prevented her from opening them, though she eventually found a light circle.

By grabbing a sharp stick from the pile of firewood, she lightly poked her finger. A few droplets of blood fell onto the ground and she quickly put her bloody finger on the circle, and it healed her finger along with allowing her to open the book.

She then did the same thing with the remaining two books, but when she took a look at the titles of the books they read: "The Little Horned Wolf that Could", "Tale of the Bamboo Princess", and "The Crystal Bird and the Ice Phoenix."

With a hint of bad premonition the girl quickly flipped through the books, but her face dropped more and more as she went on, eventually exclaiming in frustration: "What the hell? These are just children's picture books!"