"You're sure you're alright with us coming to that town of yours?" asked Bill the next morning.

Kelima had escaped to her room early the night before. Terry was sure she'd barricaded the door with something heavy. Based on how bleary she looked, the girl hadn't slept a wink. She'd regret that after six hours of keeping up with his pace in the forest. He'd stayed up late discussing plans and just hanging out with the demons. The more time he spent with them, the more he liked them. They were real salt of the earth, or maybe salt of the abyss, types. Either way, he enjoyed their company. There were really low-drama people, and he'd been starved for low-drama people in his life ever since his arrival in Chines Period Drama Hell. As for Bill's question?

"Of course, I am. Just give it a couple of weeks. All the excitement should be dying down by then."

"That works out, anyway," said Janey. "There's a lot of magic here we need to disassemble before we leave."

"Is it dangerous?" asked Terry.

"No. But why waste it by leaving it here?"

Terry hadn't considered that possibility. His magic wasn't like that. It didn't just hang around like leftovers. He couldn't reclaim the power after he used to throw a fireball. It just sort of regenerated on its own. At least, he thought it did. Maybe the demons' magic didn't work that way. He'd have to ask the construct about those things. While it might not be able to explain his abs, it could probably answer those fundamental questions. He hoped it could, at any rate. Picking up the technicalities of how magic worked on the fly had mostly worked out so far. It was becoming painfully obvious to him, however, that it was all a lot more complicated than he'd thought.

He'd always imagined the various kinds of magic being a lot like a computer program. Point. Click. Results. Minimal need for the end-user to know what was happening behind the interface. Nobody but programmers actually cared what functions were being executed as long as, in the immortal words of a former coworker, "the thing did the thing." Terry suspected that magic even did work that way to some extent for adventurers in this world. Not that they had a drop-down menu, but more that they just intuitively knew how to use their own magic. Thinking back to the cultivation novels he'd read, it hadn't been anything like that for the characters in those stories.

They were constantly practicing, studying techniques, and eating pills they hoped wouldn't poison them. Precisely none of which he'd been doing. Plus, there was all of that stuff about actually cultivating. He'd mostly just glossed over those parts and substituted the word meditation for pages of text. In hindsight, Terry wished he'd paid a bit more attention and actually read that stuff. It might not have helped, since he got the feeling that he'd skipped over several preliminary steps. But it might have given him more context. Maybe a few places to start. Unfortunately, he'd just wanted to read cool fight scenes and picture people slinging around godlike power. Pretty much the same as everyone else, if forum posts could be trusted.

Terry knew that he had been better about asking relevant questions. That was a start. You had to ask questions to learn, but unstructured questions tossed out at random weren't the ideal information-gathering method. If they were, his educational experience back on Earth would have been very different. He didn't need anyone to tell him that approach damn sure wasn't a replacement for a lifetime lived as a cultivator. He couldn't even blame other-Terry. The construct had told him he needed to get his learning on, and more than once. It had generally provided him answers to strictly magical questions. Its snark only tended to surface when Terry drifted too far afield from that topic.

Basically, thought Terry, I should have asked the construct to walk me through a primer on day one. Instead of worrying that it was going to turn me into a murderhobo.

Look who finally caught up, said a delighted other-Terry.

You could have just suggested that, answered Terry.

Yes, because you've been so open and receptive to people's suggestions. Not to mention your deep and abiding faith in the basic decency and good intentions of others.

Yeah, alright, I get it. I haven't been the best candidate for learning the last few months. In my defense, though, you were a voice in my head that didn't belong to me. Not a good thing where I come from.

Hmmm, said other-Terry. Okay. I have to give you that one. Still, from here on in, less time spent gaslighting the jailbait. More time spent learning.

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Why didn't you offer me the primer the last time I said I needed to learn?

You weren't ready. You thought you were, but you were still convinced I was going to intentionally lead you astray. I had to keep it to things that had practical, immediate use, or you wouldn't have trusted it. This time, you actually are ready. So, like I said, less gaslighting and more learning.

Let me guess. My life may depend on it.

Don't be predictable. Nothing I'm going to cover in your introduction to cultivation is going to save your life. Make your life a little easier? Maybe. Make your life seem slightly less insane and a bit more manageable? Probably. We're a long way from the stuff that's going to save your life.

Why is that? asked Terry

Because you ran away to a place where your current level of power is usually sufficient for the threats you'll face. Massive berserking minotaurs aside. That being said, you are not a god. Superhuman? Yes. Powerful? Yes. But so are a lot of other people and things in this world. Do not overestimate yourself. You're not immortal. You're definitely not invincible. The truth here is fundamentally the same as it was in your old world. A bad call will get you killed.

Wow. Do you think you could have put any more gloom on that humility cupcake?

Would you like me to try?

Not really.

Good, said other-Terry. Now, try to stop being a smartass when I'm trying to tell you important things.

That really may be a bridge too far.

That's why I said try. Okay, head back in the game. People are staring at you.

Terry looked around and realized Janey, Bill, and even Kelima were giving him questioning looks. He supposed he probably had spaced out for long enough that it got noticed. He didn't really feel like explaining it, so he just shrugged.

"Sorry. Got distracted. Are you ready to get moving, Kelima?"

"Yes. Absolutely. I am completely ready to go any time you want to go. Are we going now?" she said in a rush.

Janey gave Kelima a sour look.

Looking at Terry, the demon asked, "Are you sure you need her alive?"

When he didn't immediately answer, Kelima aimed a death glare at him and even stamped her foot.

"Terry!" she snapped.

"What? She asked me a question. I was just thinking it over."

"What was there to think about?"

Terry gave her a blank look for several seconds before he said, "So many things."

It sounded like Bill snorted, but he wore a placid expression when Terry glanced at him. Kelima was giving the demon a suspicious look that didn't seem to faze Bill at all. Before anyone decided to do or say anything they couldn't walk back, Terry spoke up.

"Yes, it's time for us to go. Bill, Janey, I'll see you in a couple of weeks."

"Bye, Terry," said Janey and Bill with a smile and a wave. "Bye, girl."

Their second goodbye held all the affection of a running chainsaw. Terry shrugged it off. Some people just weren't meant to be friends. As far as he was concerned, it just meant more apple pastries for him. Delicious, demonic, apple pastries. Thoughts of those carried him through the rest of the day and most of the next. After that, other-Terry started talking to him about things Terry remembered reading in cultivator books. Things like dantians, cores, and cultivation realms. The construct briefly touched on the subject of pills, but said it didn't matter. As long as Terry stayed in the south, he wasn't going to have access to those. Besides, he was making plenty of progress without them.

The construct spared him too much terminology. Whether Terry knew the names of those realms wasn't going to matter that much to him in the short term. What was going to matter to him were things like bottlenecks. While Terry didn't understand it at a visceral level, he did understand that getting stuck at one would be bad. Maybe very, very bad for him if he did ever wind up getting dragged to the north to fight. The problem was that there were too many things that might cause one. If they had one cause, he could put in the effort to avoid that one thing.

Unfortunately, some bottlenecks happened for no reason that anyone could figure out. Terry's trope-sense tingled at that, which sent a shudder down his back. He definitely didn't want to get stuck with a seemingly impossible-to-solve problem. That almost always involved some long, complicated quest to get help from someone who didn't want to give it. It was usually some old master or elemental spirit or a dragon. And they always, always lived on an island in the middle of Lake Crotch Punch or a village at the top of Mount Ass Pain. Either way, Terry wanted no part of it.

Not that everything was bad news. He could tell that they were getting closer to civilization by the decreasing number of attacks that they faced. It made their daily progress dwarf what they had been getting deeper in the forest. That, and the fact that Terry was basically maintaining a running pace. It wasn't a crushing pace. Kelima couldn't have maintained that even if she wanted to, but even light running was way faster than a walking pace. When they finally emerged onto the road, Terry felt a little misty-eyed. He was pretty sure that Kelima would have hugged the road if she could have figured out a way to get her arms around it.

In the distance, Terry could see the city where things had almost gone completely off the rails. He still wasn't sure why those city guards had developed an abrupt case of good sense. Either way, he wasn't going back there if he could avoid it. The pair rested by the side of the road and ate some food from his storage ring.

"Alright," said Terry, standing up. "Let's go find the blacksmith."

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