The Misfits meet System-san

Cassy and Drayden:

The following day, they had their usual fun, then ate the remaining calamari rings and a serving of roasted spudnips. They cleaned up and walked back to the crest of the hill.

"Well, I suppose we should start running towards the wall now. May I suggest we slow down when going up to the top of each hill so we can take a cautious look at what might be on the other side?" said Cassy.

"OK"

They discovered holding hands or tails while running was impossible since they needed both to maintain balance. But that was all right; they considered the need to travel fast more important. The undergrowth was partly open, with the tree canopy blocking out most of the sun, so the lighting was subdued and gloomy. Sometimes, they passed a fallen tree, which had opened up a hole in the canopy. A profusion of shrubs, flowers, and many small trees grew in these clearings. Each such tree was a spindly trunk crowned with a top hat of leaves.

They stopped to look around one such clearing.

"Look, these trees must be desperately trying to grow up and be the boss of this area!" said Cassy.

Drayden was intently examining the many small flowers growing in every place where there was enough sunlight.

"Yeah, and look at this! See how the flowers grow in clearly defined areas? And each such area is precisely outlined by a patch of sunlight. And, in the shadows, the flowers are considerably reduced."

"Yes?"

"Think! The sun remains fixed in the sky. The trees and their branches around this clearing remain fixed, apart from when the wind blows. Which means the pattern of sunlight and shadow remains fixed. So that determines where the flowers grow."

"Ah, I see. Back on Earth, the sun is always moving, so the delineation of sun and shadow is nowhere near as definite, so the density of flowers will change in a much more gradual fashion."

The beauty of the colourful flowers must have overcome Drayden as he picked a bunch of flowers, wrapped some stalks around them and knelt on the ground to present the bouquet to the beauty that was Cassy.

"Will you be my girlfriend?" he said hopefully.

Cassy graciously accepted the bouquet.

"Hmm, isn't it a bit early in our friendship to make such a commitment?"

"But, but, I'm sure we are compatible!"

At this, they started laughing. Eventually, Cassy carefully put the bouquet down on the tree trunk. They sat next to it, looking up at the wall.

"How far away do you think it is?" said Bronsen.

Cassy said, “Inspect”.

Rim Wall: 52 kilometres high, 84 kilometres away.

"Hey, this must be an effect of getting more points allocated to Inspect!" said Cassy.

"Yeah, we now get distances! What if I look at the Ringworld itself and..."

Ringworld, Felixerra. Circumference: About 98,300 kilometres. Width: About 4980 kilometres. Weight: About 2x10^17 tonnes. Population (Felixian) about 1 billion.

"Yeah, I guess 2 with seventeen zeros after it is very heavy. So, we're on Felixerra," said Drayden.

"Wait a minute, Felix as in cat, erra as from Terra, so - Cat World? And Felixian - Cat Person?" said Cassy.

They looked at each other.

"Somebody's got a pathetic sense for naming things!" said Drayden.

Cassy stared at the wall.

"Say, are there marks on the wall? It doesn't appear to be uniformly plain and flat."

Ding! [Perception Boost] added, with an initial allocation of 20 points.

"Incredible!" said Drayden.

He and Cassy could now easily see that those marks on the distant wall were tall recesses.

"And, is that a zigzag line climbing up each recess?" said Cassy.

"Stairs? Sadly, even with our improved sight, we can't make out the details."

They had fun in the next half hour, looking all around.

"I can see little insects on branches twenty metres away!" said Cassy.

"Look, there are small birds right up there; I don't think I noticed them before," said Drayden.

They both became silent and concentrated.

"Yep! I can hear some birdsong. It's not very musical, is it?" said Cassy.

"No, looks like Earth birds have an edge there."

They listened some more.

"Oh," said Drayden.

They could now clearly hear growling and scruffling noises. There was an unmistakable roar of some injured animal.

"A fight? Considering how capable we are when it comes to fighting, shall we take a look?" said Drayden.

After walking steadily and as silently as possible for half a kilometre, they approached another hill and looked over the top. There, sprawled on the ground, was that stag or another one that looked the same. And, starting to feast on it, were seven enormous wolves.

[Inspect] thought Cassy.

Wargs. Powerful pack hunting animals. But you can take them on, no problem!

"Well, that's nice to know..." said Cassy.

At this point, two more wargs popped out from behind a tree, snarled, and leapt straight at them.

Cassy skewered one with a frontal thrust of her sword while Drayden stabbed another from the side. As they stopped in their extended lunge poises, this meant that a hundred kilos of dead warg was suspended on their swords. A few drops of blood dripped down onto some flowers.

"Hmm, perhaps we can have a bit of this for lunch?" said Drayden.

They lowered the bodies to the ground, then recalled the other wargs, currently having their own lunch. Those wargs stared at them intently. Cassy and Drayden picked up one of the dead wargs and stepped back. The wargs stayed where they were. So the teenagers walked away to one side, keeping careful watch.

"There now, puppy dogs, just go back to your lunch," said Cassy.

The puppy dogs did go back to their lunch, and the teenagers started jogging, carrying the body between them.

Cassy looked at her status. "We only got ten points for that! Five points per warg."

"It's called exponential decay. The number of points we get decreases with each animal we kill. Presumably, it’s because each kill becomes easier as we increase our expertise."

"But, still, only five points each! And they are huge wolves!"

"Maybe Bronsen and Alice have killed a few?"

"Maybe."

A couple of hours later, they stopped at the edge of a small creek tumbling down a low rock face. The ground they had been covering wasn't rough, but it undulated all over the place. Drayden looked at the rim wall, which was now taller, and invoked Inspect.

"Amazing, we've already covered twenty km, despite carrying a dead warg and having to navigate around these hills and trees."

"So, let's have lunch and keep going! We should be able to get there by nighttime," said Cassy.

They butchered the warg, cooked some meat and had their lunch. They also saved some cooked meat for later use, cut out a piece of the pelt, cleaned it, and made another backpack. This took some hours of work, so after they resumed running, they only managed to get within ten kilometres of the wall before the light started fading.

Tonight’s five-star accommodation was twelve metres high, in the gap between two close-together trees. As usual, their hotel room consisted of several long branches going from one crook in a tree across to the other tree. Laid sideways were shorter branches. The amenities might have been a bit on the basic side, but the view of the rim wall on one side and the interior of the Ringworld on the other made up for it.

They made love a few times, then contentedly cuddled up to each other.

"Just remember, Drayden, the only reason I can survive and feel halfway sane in this crazy world is because you are right next to me."

"Well, the same for me!"

Cassy became sad. "But, I do miss my little sister. And I keep worrying about who will look after her."

"Err, won't your parents look after her?"

"Dad is hopeless, and Mum is, well, she kind of spends all her time catering to Dad, and, well, I'm not quite sure what the situation is, but it leaves me very worried about Veronica."

"Nothing we can do about that now."

They went to sleep.