Alex left through the southern entrance and saw the southern area behind the Central Wild.
It didn't look much different from the other parts of this Zone, except for maybe it being a bit flatter. There were still some hills here and there, but it wasn't as exaggerated as the northern part of the town.
As Alex went past the southern entrance, he put the wheels of the sled wagon away again and transformed it back into a sled.
pᴀɴdᴀ nᴏveʟ Then, Alex took a deep breath and continued pulling.
It was currently afternoon, and Alex still had enough daylight to travel.
Not much of note happened as Alex continued traveling to the southeast. It was just incredibly boring and tiresome.
Alex saw some big birds flying over the street occasionally, and Alex always stopped to look at them. He didn't want to be caught by surprise by some powerful bird swooping down from the sky.
These birds looked rather powerful, and Alex didn't trust that they didn't eat humans.
Alex even saw some of the bigger birds flying circles above him, but they all left after circling him for two times or so. He wasn't sure if they were evaluating his power or if they were just curious.
After a couple of hours, dusk arrived. Alex had probably traveled for around 25 to 30 kilometers in these couple of hours, which was way too slow for his liking. Sadly, the sled wagon was simply too heavy.
'Being a trader sucks,' Alex thought. 'The merchants that passed me in the last couple of hours all used horses and bulls to pull their cargo. Wonder how expensive these animals are in this world. I didn't see many of them in the town.'
Several traders had passed Alex during the last couple of hours. They were all driving way faster than him, and they all passed Alex easily. Most of them were driving carriages with trailers behind them, but that wasn't all.
The merchants also had bodyguards running alongside their small caravan. These bodyguards all threw Alex some confused looks, which was understandable. After all, Alex was pulling the sled wagon himself, and he was traveling alone.
Whenever a merchant passed Alex, he heard several greetings from the guards, and the merchants even told him their names and their specialties. They had seen the sled wagon Alex was pulling, and they knew that he would earn big money with all that Ice Wood. To the merchants, Alex was a potential client.
But all of that had stopped about an hour ago.
Starting from an hour ago, no more merchants passed Alex, which gave him some insight into the remaining distance to the southern wilds.
'There should be about half an hour of daylight left, and everyone stopped passing me about an hour ago. That means that their carriages can't travel the remaining distance in one and a half hours.'
'The carriages were traveling at around 40kph, which means that there should be about 50 to 60 kilometers left. I'm moving at around ten kph, which means that I probably have around five to six hours of travel left. Sure enough, in total, it should be about a day's worth of travel. The guard was right.'
'Anyway, I think it's time to pause for the night. I don't know what kind of creatures are living here since all the merchants are avoiding traveling through the night.'
Alex pulled the sled wagon to the side of the road, into the forest. It wasn't easy to find a gap big enough for the sled wagon to pass through, but after a bit of searching, Alex found one.
After putting the Sled Wagon partly into the forest, Alex left the sled wagon and stretched. 'Man, my muscles are all sore.'
After a bit of stretching, Alex took out his sword and began training. He never skipped a day of training.
By now, Alex was able to swing his sword with incredible speed, and whenever he unleashed a strike, one could basically only see an afterimage due to the strike's speed. Alex's different kinds of attacks also flowed more easily into each other, eliminating the awkwardness between strikes.
Alex hated awkwardness in his fighting style, and he tried his best to get rid of it.
After about an hour of swinging his sword, Alex was drenched in sweat, which was normal.
Alex jumped up a nearby tree and sat down on one of its thick branches. The trees around Alex were still mostly conifers, but he had long since gotten used to sitting on branches filled with small needles.
The reason why Alex was sleeping on the trees was that he wanted to be careful. He had no idea what kinds of creatures or beasts lived here, and if he had to fight one, he would rather have the initiative. If he stayed the night on the carriage, basically everything in the surroundings would notice him.
However, by staying on a tree, all the curious eyes would be drawn to the carriage first, allowing Alex to gather information on any newcomer.
Alex closed his eyes and started meditating. Meditation worked somewhat as a replacement for sleeping, but he still needed to sleep for about six hours every two days. Of course, Alex wasn't stupid enough to sleep in an unknown region.
Alex slowly lost himself to his meditation. All his muscles had already fully recovered in just a couple of minutes, but Alex continued meditating to bridge over the time he should be asleep.
Meditating without training wouldn't increase Alex's power, but it wasn't useless. Alex was pretty good at controlling Mana by now, but after every couple of sessions of meditation, his ability to control Mana became even better.
Alex's body wasn't without Mana. Yes, his Mana was mainly used to train his body, but Alex had noticed that he also had some Mana stored inside all his muscles. Right now, that stored Mana mainly acted as a storage used for regenerating injuries.
With Alex's higher control over Mana, he had noticed that the stored Mana was being used up during his training. That's when Alex had realized that the stored Mana worked similarly to the sugar stored in one's liver.
To move a body, one needed energy, which mainly came from the stored glucose in one's liver. At least, that's how it had been on Earth. When the glucose was used up, the body burned fat, but the burning of fat was way more complicated, and the process was quite elaborate.
By burning fat, the body couldn't reach the same explosive power as by burning glucose. As a former athlete, Alex had to know all of these things.
So, how did Mana differ?
From what Alex had seen, Mana worked like an upgraded version of sugar. By moving around, Alex's body was using up Mana. Of course, Alex's body also had a passive regeneration of Mana, which was strong enough to get him through an entire day of work.
The passive regeneration of Mana was strong enough to allow Alex to jog indefinitely, assuming he didn't need to sleep or eat. Yet, if Alex started running, sprinting, jumping, or slashing with his full power, he would use up far more Mana than he was regenerating. It became even crazier when he injured himself.
Apparently, healing an injury took a ridiculous amount of Mana. In the past, when Alex got injured, his passive Mana storage would be nearly entirely used up just by healing a cut, but now, Alex had enough control over his Mana to stop that from happening.
Obviously, the ability to continue jumping around and fighting was more important than healing a cut.
'The ability to control Mana is probably of imperative importance,' Alex thought while meditating. 'Mana is technically a very potent form of energy, and you can basically do anything with enough energy. I'm certain that I can use the Mana in my body for more than just jumping around and attacking. There have to be other kinds of uses.'
'Well, I should learn all these things after joining that academy. It's funny that I'm actually looking forward to going to school. I've always hated school.'
Crk.
Alex opened his eyes as he heard the sound of something stepping onto a twig.
Alex looked at the origin of the sound, and he saw a familiar beast.
'Oh hey, another Frozen Lake Stag,' Alex thought as he looked at the small stag. 'Its antlers are smaller, and they're not shining brightly. I can also not feel as much Mana coming from it. It's definitely weaker than the one I killed.'
The Frozen Lake Stag was carefully moving towards Alex's sled wagon.
There was a ton of Ice Wood on the sled wagon, and the Frozen Lake Stag loved Ice Wood.
One could say it was hungry.
However, it wasn't the only thing that felt hungry.
Alex looked at the Frozen Lake Stag greedily.