Chapter 147: "Hi, there."

After that weird part of my dream; I woke up, biting my tongue. My whole body twitched.

"Ugh!" I groaned, heavily frowning.

That somewhat dull yet sharp sense of pain I felt was enough to wake me up real quickly. Starting off from the inside of my not-actual mouth, it quickly spread all across my body, alerting the whole of it fairly painfully.

And argh, does my tongue have to hurt so much? And, hey, why's it even hurt to start with? Did I just bite it? Why in the world would I do that? What for? I mean, yeah, who normally even does that?

-Still painfully groaning and frowning, at last, I had awoken. Entirely. Through and through. Now, I looked around.

"Oh... right." I silently mumbled. I remembered. My frowning face and twitching eyebrows relaxed. Because that was it, really.

"I was needing storytelling yesterday... right," I continued mumbling, putting together every bit of my scattered mind. It was correct. I remembered. Yesterday, I came here.

Right. Right now, I'm at Elina's. Resting on the thickest bed ever, under the thickest pile of blankies ever. I came around that royalty's apartments. I had something to do with it.

Right. I fought that swordsman off. We danced together, had some real good fun, then I set off. Oh, and even before that, there were things, too.

Right. Yesterday, I went out adventuring; came back to town and fought my human swordsman; then came round Elina's castle, ticking some more cases of my personal growth. ...Growth and discovery, yeah.

And so, right now, we're the day after that one, and... wait up a sec?!

"Yes- yesterday?!"

Didn't that mean today was a new day?

At once, my eyes grew to their roundest-I thrust my glare through the window. It was now closed and latched. And what I found there, behind that gleaming, transparent glass was the sky.

Blue as it was. Not any kind of blue, however. Morning-blue. New-day's-arrived blue.

I came around here by the very late afternoon, and now, it's morning. Which meant again... I couldn't be wrong when I instinctively said today was a new day.

Yesterday, I knew that going out adventuring with my human friends didn't have much pragmatic utility to it. Still, did that mean I'd just discard them away from my routine and not see them again? The fact was that they had well outlived their usefulness to me, but no, I wouldn't. They were still part of my routine. I liked them, I think, probably.

But anyway, what do I do with the morning-blue shade of the sunny sky? That blue was relevant to the sense of (desperate) hurry I immediately felt washing over me, then.

I was about to shout. "Wh- who even wants to miss adventure time-" I knew not to give in to that stupid urge, however. Can't be heard shouting in here, after all.

Wiggling around, I found a way out of underneath the thickest pile of blankets and sheets.

That thick layer of warmth quickly got off of me. In about a second, I felt the fresh morning air naturally settling on me, heartfully welcoming this wave of freshness with an oh-so-fresher sigh of satisfaction coming from deep within me.

I lied on the bed a second ago. I theatrically jumped. Now, I was up on it. Feeling the smoothness and fluffiness of it wasn't something I'd be doing with my curling toes, then.

Right away, I jumped off the bed.

For a second, my face grimaced as I decided I could use some thinking, right now. "That dream..." But I left it at that. All of it was just a blur inside of my head. I didn't remember much, but it felt as though the day I'd need to remember back details of whatever the dream was about, I'd be able to effortlessly.

I mean, yeah, it seemed like I only would be thinking in circles if I got down to trying to tackle that.

Still, though. Deep within my brain, I had a hunch that this dream I just forgot was super-huge. Of capital importance. But whatever; better not be late.

Right. I'd just jumped out of the bed. Glancing around, I promptly wondered where the princess even was. I quickly gave up on that, thinking I didn't even care to begin with.

With yet another of my swift jumps, I climbed up that shelf close to the window. I unlatched the lock, opened the window wide, got onto the other side of the walls, and simply jumped again.

With a Splash, I landed down and formed back into the good ol' human form again.

From this point on, I pulled myself away from this place, going straight to where I belonged.

I had to play it safe in order to not be spotted in the royalty's endless gardens. I swung by this place many times now, so I knew where to go to sneak in and out somewhat easily. Very soon, I had nearly reached the point of gathering.

The sun wasn't so high this morning. I mean, it wasn't high at all, actually. But still, it'd woken up way before I had.

I mentally apologized to my team—I was the Porter, now, so my presence was probably mandatory—for being late.

And using some more <Slash>, the upgraded version of <Quick Pace>; my speed increased even more.

Today, I could check it. "System!" I cried under my breath.

❮ Skill Interface. (Main) ❯

What about my fatigue?

❮ Fatigue: 5 ❯

Oh-ho-ho... Well, I guessed that!

And what about... my 'mental points'? ...Or no, do we rather say 'mana points'? Mana as in, magical energy? Must be that.

❮ HP: 2419/2420 ❯

❮ MP: 350/825 ❯

Ah. I wasn't so proud of that one. Now I understood, though. To me, the unique monster that doesn't quite work like normal people, when my breathing gets ragged and laborious like right now—I'm beginning to huff a little—it simply means... In detail, I wouldn't know what's the operation of breathing harder specifically here for, but basically, my body needs to reach for magical particles of energy in the air around.

After all, everything here, under that sun, seemed to be made of mana.

My MPs were kind of low. Figures after all these quick dashes throughout your city. Still though, all this evidently feels weak to me. Maybe I should work on that. By simply not wasting so much of my mana so easily.

Now that I had my System by my side, life felt better. Oh, but I was "life."

I caught a glimpse of the Party from far away thanks to Mana Perception. I soon arrived. After I used that passive skill, I checked out my mana supplies again, and they barely dropped at all.

Still, by the time I reached the Party, my MPs had reached zero. As I wanted to observe something, I made sure to waste all the points away. Now, theoretically, if we take aside the HPs and my Fatigue Status, I'm at my lowest.

And sure enough, as I had arrived near the awaiting group of adventurers ... I heavily slumped on the chair behind me, needing some rest.

❮ MPs: 0/825 ❯

"A-Aoi..." the priestess cogitated. "Is my boy fine? What's with you all of a sudden..."

There was no chair behind me. I just let myself be slumped down on the dry ground, wiggling and shaking about, gasping for air. I felt a little stinging sensation in my chest. I knew I needed some air. A lot of it. I needed to replenish my MPs.

My observations pointed well too strongly at the fact that I didn't want to run so low on MPs in battle. That was important to know. Clumsy knelt next to me. "I'm not even worried, y'know... Knowing you, how weird you can be ... just stop?" Ouch! But she continued, "Or do you really need help? You're late, by the way."

I stopped, calmed myself down, but still needed to be breathing a little. I said yes. I was late.

More importantly, would my MPs go up again? To finish up my observations, I "System'd" the System again. That wide blue tab appeared. Down about the status part of it, my MPs indicated-

❮ MPs: 23/825 ❯

And then,

❮ MPs: 24/825 ❯

And again,

❮ MPs: 25/825 ❯

Going like this-"Okay," I said as I sat on my butt-I was revigorated little by little. Each passing second probably gave me about one mana point.

"Okay?" The priestess was crouched next to me, peering at me like I was some wild little animal she had just found. She reached my forehead with a finger and flicked it. I didn't react, and she continued, "Get up, now, young trouble-maker. Oh, you seem taller. Way taller. That's... Ugh. Maybe you just always slouched before?"

❮ Fatigue: 7 ❯

And for some reason, my fatigue had increased by two points. Might be thanks to my wiggling around just now. Well, let's not do that again.

Satisfied with having observed how it was that the magical points were being recovered, I got up. Clumsy sighed some words of complaint. I was full of dust, now.

"Hi, there."