FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife

"Wake up."

I pried my eyes open, fully expecting to see the saintess leaned over me and shaking my shoulders with an annoyed look on her face.

To my surprise, however, she wasn't anywhere near. Heck, she wasn't even within the bounds of her barrier.

How did she make her voice sound like she was a military sergeant standing right over me, ready to tell me to drop down and give her fifty right this very moment?

"Haaa…"

I sighed out, pushing away my dizziness, sleepiness, and all the other after-effects of being woken up rather than waking up naturally, once the body got all the rest it needed.

There was nothing I wanted more than to get back to sleep and delude myself for just a little longer that once I woke up, I would be back to the world I knew.

But I was too sober to keep living in delusions. And in the current situation, annoying the saintess was the very last thing I should be doing. As such, before she could even call for me again, I was already up on my feet, ready to pick up our travel right where we left it.

"That was fast," Saintess remarked under her nose, only to reach out and point at the other side of the barrier. "Go pick up the rest of the stones from over there, but make sure to stay on the inside. If you step out, you won't be able to find your way back."

Once again, I felt like showering the woman with a thousand questions, each designed to give me some information about how stuff worked in this world.

But once again, what I wanted was of little to no significance. Right now, my one and only priority was to leave this god-forsaken place and go somewhere with at least a semblance of a civilization present.

'Well, time to get working.'

With that thought in my mind, I carefully approached the edge of the barrier, keeping the Saintess's warnings close to my heart as I constantly monitored my position in relation to the stones.

Bit by bit, one by one, I plucked the stones out of the embrace of the earth, calculating the position of the next one by extending the curved line on which all the other stones lay.

With both of us working on the task, it took us mere minutes to complete it, even with all the added difficulty of actually spotting those stones before we could pluck them up.

Yet, right when I thought I could get a breather, some time to stretch my back and warm myself up for the road…

"Let's go," Saintess called out, only to then add, "We have a long way to go."

To say that this was the last thing I wanted to hear would be a gross understatement. In the perfect scenario, we would only need a short time to leave the jungle…

But as the little experience I had living in this world already proved, no one gave a crap about my wishes, be it this world, my circumstances, or even this damned universe itself.

Weirdly enough, though, there was a small part of myself that welcomed Saintess's warning. A part so delusional in its nature I wanted to outright deny its existence.

A part of me that simply enjoyed Saintess's company.

'It's not every day that I get to be all alone with a beauty like that!'

Putting those moronic thoughts aside, I quickly secured the straps of my backpack, tightening them to their limit.

It wasn't a comfortable setting by any means, but a necessary one for when we crossed through the jungle's difficult terrain.

And so, with our camp fully packed up and with no mercy in Saintess's voice or behavior, we set out.

Just like the day before, traversing the jungle was no easy task. Constantly calculating the safest path to take, saving Saintess's every movement so I could try my best to replicate it, pushing away the thorny bushes, climbing up the small hills…

Every step I took was a challenge. Every hour came with a plethora of different obstacles we had to cross and different challenges I had to overcome.

But today was clearly not the same as yesterday. I could tell as much after just a few hours of doing my best to follow Saintess.

Yesterday, she pushed me to my absolute limits, moving as fast as she could while making sure I could still keep up.

It would be a lie to claim she slowed down by a whole lot today…

But Saintess's pace was no longer as drastic as it was yesterday. It was only by a little bit, but she did slow down.

And judging by the few stares I caught her throwing my way, there was even a small hint of… compassion in her eyes?

Normally, I would be grateful for the mercy she pretty clearly showed, saving me from total exhaustion a single hour into our travel.

But today?

After that weird, oddly realistic dream?

With the memory of it still stuck in my mind, Saintess's minimal degree of compassion only made me feel awkward all around, amplifying the sense of guilt I felt over slowing her down with my clumsy presence.

And slow her down I did, without even a shred of a doubt.

The hills I had to put my entire body to work to climb? She would leap up a step and end up at its top.

The marshes that proved extremely difficult to cross? Rather than sinking into the watery ground with every step like I did, Saintess appeared to float above it, with her feet barely putting a dent into the soft wetlands.

The ease of her movement was so great that even in a situation where I put every last bit of my energy into keeping up with her, I just couldn't help but comment it out loud.

"Even though this place is so dangerous and hard to traverse, you still can move around so easily…" I muttered under my nose with a shake of my head. "Doesn't this make the entire world pretty much your playground?"

The saintess looked back, her eyes glimmering with a small bit of surprise at how I could still talk despite pushing myself so hard just to keep up with her.

A surprise that quickly turned into a teasing smile as she clearly took a moment to reconsider if she shouldn't speed up to yesterday's pace given how I still had enough spare energy to talk.

In the end, however, rather than chastising me for daring to open my mouth, Saintess simply shook her head and turned her face back towards the goal, not gracing my words with any comment of her own. Yet, just like I thought she would dismiss what I said with nothing but silence—

"You just wait until we get to the edge of this jungle," Saintess spoke in a voice modulated perfectly to reach my ears before fully dispersing into the jungle and joining the fray of all the other slight noises. "I might be strong, but there's always a bigger fish lurking around."