Mage Among Superheroes

"All of the stories…" Ceira breathed heavily as she tried to walk, "About heroes trekking through a forest… has them effortlessly going all day…"

I shrugged, "Sounds like you read the wrong stories."

"You don't… seem to have a problem," she said.

"I mean, I went through physical fitness training," I pointed out. "Along with Senan," I gestured to Ice Guy. In our current situation, it was easier for us to just use real names for each other, especially since we would be traveling together for… at least a while longer.

"It was also my job," Izzy said.

Midnight also worked on his physical fitness- but being able to ride on my shoulders gave him alternative options. Ceira was an average sized human woman, so that wasn't exactly something we could sustain for more than a few minutes. So we took more frequent breaks, which was for the best because we needed to find as much water or supplemental food as we could. Just eating dried panther was not great. Though when Izzy and I couldn't confidently identify scavenged plantlife, we erred on the side of not dying to horrible poisons.

Moving around gave us time to stretch out our kinks from sleeping in suboptimal circumstances, and frequent breaks let us keep going for more of the sunlight filtering through the trees above. But just because Ceira was the one showing the most fatigue it didn't mean the rest of us were doing just fine. Senan was still in the best shape… probably. Midnight was mostly uninjured. Izzy had her arm, and I really needed to just sleep for a few days to let my internal mana take a rest.

"Should we look for something to fight…?" I asked. "So I can level up."

"Why?" Izzy asked. "You should level up tonight if you get in a decent spar, right?"

"Probably," I shrugged. "But I might have to push myself some. And I'd rather expend the effort earlier in the day."

"... Would we just attack some beast?" Ceira asked. "I don't know if that's a good idea. They just live here. They aren't hurting anyone, are they?"

"A fair point," Senan said. "Anything that attacks people can't be tolerated near populated areas, but out in the wilderness provoking battle is unnecessary and unwise."

"We could hunt something, then. If we could find anything small enough we wouldn't waste too much of it, at least."

"Everything's getting bigger," Izzy said. "But maybe some insects?"

"I'm not sure any of us know how to cook those," I admitted.

"Like lobster or crab?" Ceira surmised. "Boil them for a while in their shells? I don't know if that would be any good though."

I didn't know either. It made me both a little bit hungry and a little sick feeling to think about it.

Ultimately, we didn't hunt anything down, but after a proper spar at night I just pushed over the border to the next level.