Very dully, until familiar faces show up.

This trek reminds me of why I had such a hard time keeping up any consistent exercise routine in my last life. Just the repetitive act, one step after another, while your energy is focused solely on that...is incredibly boring to me. Video games had always been far more stimulating than a run around the block, or a rep at the gym. Even when your form of locomotion is inching over the ground as a titanic, wood-plated mass of tentacles and vines, this doesn't change.

And so, over the miles, I looked and around and tried to entertain myself by focusing on things until I was filled with the gnosis concerning them I'd come to enjoy-taking that little vow in exchange was turning to be more worth it every day. Unfortunately, this wasn't all that entertaining, either. Basic fact about life science I already knew, save for a few interesting tidbits where the flow of mana had changed things. At the end of the day, though, it was just another energy source for them, and that fact got squirreled away in my memory soon enough for that to stop being noteworthy.

Attempts at firing up conversation with my companion proved even more fruitless. She seemed completely unwilling to engage in anything. Honestly, it makes me wonder about her. Didn't she get similarly bored? I mean, she always had a look on her face that made her look such, but that might just be a reflexive poker face years of being an assassin had gained her.

"Say, know you have a few spare vials from when you last filled up your daggers during our fight-mind if I borrow a few? Want to try and see if I can do a little external alchemy to supplement my internal. Hard to keep things properly separated long enough like this-"

"STAND AND DELIVER!" A figure stood mounted in the center of the road-shouting and waving an axe around. Even if i didn't have her face, it's easy for me to recognize her-only so many one-armed axe-wielding bandit queens around. I made a slight theatrical show of complying with the first half-before raising up the front portion of my body to scan around. More were waiting in the shadows of trees-random weapons and real nags for mounts. Guess they must have been in a rush to take the one's I'd gotten earlier. "Errr...what, exactly, do you expect me to deliver? I'm not exactly carrying anything right now..."

There's a pregnant pause in the air as she seems to consider, before a manic grin crosses her face. "Well, that sounds a whole lot like something you'd better think of right quick now, won't yeh?" She raises her weapon and gives it a small wave-from the way her men come reveal themselves, weapon fully drawn, must have been some kind of signal. Much like they'd done before, they move to encircle, completely surrounding us. My roadmate seems disinterested in these events-if anything, she's watching me more than our robbers. Probably because they can't see through her stealth, so it's only my tentacles on the line. Save that I could just trample over all these mooks without a problem.