After leaving behind the guild and its receptionist who now has a hell of a story to tell his coworkers, it's really late. It was already getting late when we started back toward the inn, before my breakdown.

So now we're walking, me a step behind Master Liina. I feel more comfortable and more awkward around her. At the same time. How does that work?

When we approach our inn, she looks around some and spots an area marked for the slaves. “Yumi, how are you feeling?” she asks seriously. “Do you think you can stay with the other slaves? Tell me if you think it's too scary.”

I stare at the sign, hanging above an open entrance into a room attached to the inn. The sign also calls out other animals to house inside, so it's basically a stable, or a barn.

Splitting up from Master Liina so soon after choosing to become her slave makes me anxious, but I decided to trust her. She'll definitely come back for me tomorrow. I just... need to make it through the night.

It can't be that bad, can it? I spent days sleeping on the ground in the training field, dressed in armor no less. How bad could a barn possibly be?

Kicking myself for raising that flag, I hesitantly nod. “Yes, Master. I should be fine,” I answer with determination. I have to remind myself, I've decided to be her slave. If I'm going to do it, I'll do it the best I can. That means being strong when she needs me to be strong. Not always troubling her like I've been doing until now.

“Alright. If anything goes wrong, if you get scared or start to panic, or the other slaves try to do anything to you, run to the guild,” she commands. “You'll be safe there.”

“Yes, Master.”

“If anything does happen, if anyone tries to stop you, you're allowed to use your magic to stun them, as long as you don't hurt anyone.” Woah, she's taking this really seriously...

Because she cares about me...

“Yes, Master.” I bow with a small smile, and she goes off toward the front of the inn. Then I turn toward the stable area, and head inside.

The first thing I catch is the smell. Animals and unwashed bodies. There are no lights inside, so I can't really see much, but there are definitely some animals stabled here. Various types of birds and lizards and giant hamster looking things with huge moose horns. I've seen them around before, work animals or mounts mostly.

Besides them, there are other stalls with more human bodies inside, barely visible in the gloom cast through the open door by a handful of green and blue moons, an hour or two before we start to get some more in the sky to brighten things up.

From what I can see, they're all asleep already. A few stir when I walk past, the straw covered floor announcing my passing with each crackling step.

One or two raise their heads to watch me, eyes so hollow and wary that I immediately avert my gaze. Rubbing my collar, I hurry past, searching for a vacant place to settle down.

One of the stalls on the left looks empty, so I hesitantly walk inside. I sniff around a little and it smells clean enough. No, like, piles of fantasy world horse shit on the floor as far as I can tell.

Patting some of the straw, I sit down. This is fine, I tell myself. It's a bit crunchy and nowhere near as soft as a bed, but still a step up from plain dirt. It's fine. Just a couple nights before we head back to Karshis and I can sleep in Master Liina's bed again.

Or... on her couch. We didn't exactly talk over the sleeping arrangements on my second night there after she, uhh, took care of my urges... I immediately push those thoughts away, I haven't had time to properly process any of that yet.

Either way, she'll definitely give me a nice place to sleep when we get home.

...Right? Are nice sleeping arrangements not a thing for slaves? Is it considered 'proper' that we don't get overly comfortable places to sleep?

I shake my head. No, no, I'm not going to worry. I won't let myself have another panic attack, not now. Master Liina will definitely take care of me. I trust her.

Assuring myself once more that this is just until we get home, I settle down into the crunchy straw. I would have liked to try talking to some other humans, but they're all asleep and I'm tired. I shift some, and close my eyes.

I only sleep lightly. I'm not panicking, but I'm anxious, for good reason this time. It's dark, I'm alone, in a strange place full of strangers, and Master Liina isn't here to protect me.

I have every reason to be anxious.

Nights on Verilz are long. Or, dark periods. I still have trouble thinking of them like that, as long as I've been here now. Given the stupid levels of stamina of the inhabitants, I think most of them stay up for like fifty or sixty hours, then sleep the rest of the day.

My stamina has been growing because of the punishing schedule of the days, but even with that, my crest boosting my stats, and my apparently high work ethic to just keep going no matter how tired I get, I still basically collapse by the fifty hour mark.

Generally, this has been mitigated by naps. Lots of little naps. I'm just glad none of the adventurers on quests with me so far, or Master Liina, have gotten mad at me for it yet. Maybe it's normal for humans of this world not to have the same level of stamina as altraska and need more sleep?

Another question I would have liked to ask the other human slaves.

I squint my eyes open. I'm not sure what time it is. Sitting up, I stretch a little, somewhat stiff from lying in straw. It's still pretty dark, but I feel good again. How long until sunrise?

It's annoying that I can't tell time better. They don't even have clocks, or bell towers, or like, church bells that all those old medieval towns used to tell time throughout the day.

Wait, how the fuck do they tell time here? How do they even know what an hour is?

I facepalm. God damn it I'm so dense sometimes.

You're in a world where everyone has celestial magic in their heads to do things for them. The altraska have mapping functions and you basically have an auto-translator shoved into your head. The answer is obvious, dumbass.

I turn my attention to the time in the same way I've become accustomed to doing, and it comes right up. A little window that lists the time as four twenty two.

Alright, one more mystery solved.

Still, there are so many things about celestial magic that are complete unknowns. There's no manual or user guide.

At least for the altraska, they can hear others use their command words to do things and copy that. I have to somehow mentally gymnastic my way through everything without any instructions. I'm glad I can cross-apply the feeling of one operation to other similar ones, or I'd never call up any of the windows beyond the first few!

Not to mention, the ones I've managed are at least similar enough to information windows I would expect from games that I've been able to...

Those thoughts trail off as a new one presents itself. So far they've been similar enough to game info windows. Maybe there are others I could try too.

The very first one that always comes to mind? Health and mana. Followed immediately by the party window, to get that information on others.

It only takes a moment for the health and mana display, which is cool, but honestly not that helpful in this world. I can already feel my mana, and it's not like a game where health is just a number you have to keep above zero. If I'm that hurt, I'll fucking know it...

Besides that, it feels like I Scan myself when I make it come up, probably to fill in the info.

Thinking as much, I mentally dismiss the window and try the party one instead.

It's like, the concept of allies, or the people you're working with... I try to wrap my head around the idea and the feeling using the celestial magic from my crest. Naturally, I feel like it should include Master Liina since she's, you know, my master, so she's always part of my party...

After some time, I actually get it. I get the same crawling sensation like being Scanned, but the window finally appears.

Party Liina Health: 394/394 Stamina: 398/421 Mana: 306/306 Yumi Health: 86/86 Stamina: 83/86 Mana: 319/319

Hmm... that is... not that great. There's a reason that information is displayed with colored bars instead of numbers in games. Some games let you change the displays, but the bars were always the most easily readable under pressure.

Maybe I can change the displays? If it's the magic choosing how to display the information, I just need to tweak it a little.... I squint at the window, cocking my head a little as I try to twist the magic just a bit.

Party Liina Health: 100% Stamina: 95% Mana: 100% Yumi Health: 100% Stamina: 97% Mana: 100%

That's... a little better? I really don't need the Stamina listed though. I don't need to know about that at a glance in combat.

I'm getting used to the different parts of the magic, so I pull that part out and it disappears. Good. Now, how do I convert something like a percentage, to a visual representation of that percentage?

I don't know, so I just keep changing it around, twisting my mind and the magic over and over as the display changes repeatedly in mostly useless ways until after a minute, I finally get it.

God damn, so that's how I need to think of it got make them bars... With one final thought, I color shift them and slide the window off to the side of my view. It'll still be there whenever I want to look at it. More useful information is always good.

Ok, so after a party panel, what else might be useful that actually carries over into this world...?

My thoughts are interrupted by rapid pounding footsteps coming down the main stretch of the stables.

“Yumi?!” I jerk when Master Liina suddenly calls my name. She sounds panicked.

Stumbling up and out of the little stall I slept in, I look over to meet her eyes and ask, “Master?” Other slaves are peeking out as well at the commotion.

“Are you alright?”

“Y-yes, Master. I'm fine.” Why is she so worried? She wasn't actually this worried about me sleeping outside and just hiding it earlier, was she? I had no idea...

Master Liina marches up to me, grabbing me by the shoulders as she looks over, top to bottom. Once she has confirmed that I'm fine, her panic abates. Only to suddenly be replaced by her stern look that makes my heart squeeze with worry. Why is she angry now?!

“If you're fine, then what was that earlier? It felt like you Scanned me. Explain.” Like I Scanned her?

Then I remember that feeling, right when I got the Party window to work. It did that by Scanning me, didn't it? Which would go for every party member!

“I-I-I'm sorry!” I bow deeply. “I d-didn't realize that would happen! I'm sorry, Master.”

Oh my god I Scanned her. I still remember how angry that made the guild receptionist when I did it accidentally. I know how awful it feels. To do that to my master, out of nowhere, in the middle of the night?! “I'm sorry!”

I keep apologizing until Master Liina pulls me out of the building. She sits me down on the edge of a well in a small town square outside the inn, only a few early morning stragglers walking past at this time of day.

“Yumi, I'm not that mad at you. Just calm down and explain. If it was an honest accident, then it's an opportunity to learn from your mistakes so you can do better. As long as you didn't mean any harm. So just explain, what were you doing?”

I swallow, pushing down my panic at the thought of making her mad. I try to explain as clearly as I can.

“I was trying to see what information my celestial magic could give me by using my gaming knowledge from Earth. A lot of games would have party information so you could easily tell how your party members were doing, so I tried to see if I could get that to work here, and it did.”

She just shrugs and rolls her head a little, so I go on. “It worked, but when I got it to work, I think it Scanned everyone in the party. Which is just you and me.”

Master Liina strokes my hair. “See, just an honest mistake. You didn't know that would happen, so it would be unfair to punish you harshly for it.” Lifting me from the edge of the well, she pulls a hand back, then swats me on the ass.

“Eep!” I yelp. Ow ow ow shit ow that stings.

“See? A little reminder not to do it again without permission,” she says gently while I rub at where she smacked me, tears forming at the edges of my eyes before I blink them away. “Now, tell me about this new information. Is it anything useful?”

“W-well, I think so.” I stammer a little, still flustered by the sudden, physical punishment. She's always used my slave crest before. “Like I s-said, it helps keep an eye on your party members so you know if they're hurt or running out of mana.”

“Mm, that does sound useful,” she nods slightly.

“I could, umm, try to show you?” I ask uncertainly.

“Sure, having information like that could be really useful for leading parties you know.” Now that I think about it, she has lead the last two parties I've been in for quests...

“B-but umm, I'm sorry, Master. I don't know if it will Scan you again when I do,” I try to warn her.

“That's fine, if it's for testing, I'll let you do that right now.”

With a nod, I try to focus on the party window and do the same thing I did to show my stats. Like sending the information over to her. I don't feel any crawling sensation this time, but I can feel when it works.

Good, so it doesn't need to do another Scan to make a separate window for her. Or... however she does interact with the information anyway.

“That's... odd. I don't understand this. It has our names, but nothing else makes sense,” Master Liina says.

“That's... weird. Is it because I sent you this one?” I ask aloud while eyeing the window. If I sent her like, a copy of mine, then maybe changing all the formatting messed up however it appears to her? “Umm, just a moment, let me put it back...” After trying to mentally reformat the window to how it was originally, I realize that I can't because I actually removed the Stamina information.

“Sorry Master, I messed with the formatting some. It originally had Stamina as well, but I removed it. Here's what it still has.” With one last mental push, I show her the window, and she nods appreciatively this time.

“Wow, this is really useful. Normally it includes Stamina as well?”

“Yes,” I bob my head.

“I'll definitely be making use of this later. Good job, Yumi.” She rubs my head and I smile a little. I'm glad she likes it. “Now, you're a smart girl, so I'm sure you've got plenty of other ideas rattling around up there. What are you thinking?”

When she suddenly asks that, I stiffen up a little. She wants to know? I mean yeah, I have a ton of ideas based on video games I used to play, but for her to just... want me to tell her everything...

Well, she always has been asking me to tell her what's on my mind, even if it was more about my feelings so I wouldn't bottle up my anxiety, so this is sort of different but still kind of similar...

Her hand lands on my head with a small thump and she says, “Yumi,” to draw me from my rambling thoughts. “Come on, it's fine. Just tell me what you have in mind.”

Relaxing a little, I smile, and just tell her.