Alex woke up early and got ready to go. He felt fresh and ready to go. He didn't have too much of the 'non-alcoholic' mead and mainly stuck to the food.
He didn't want to feel like crap on the first day of the race. That's what the rest of the days were for. He practiced combining and creating more skills as he was getting dressed.
[New skill created: Fire Shield]
[New skill created: Ice Shield]
[New skill created: Storm Shield]
[New skill created: Aura of Heat]
[New skill created: Aura of Cold]
That was just a few of the skills he had been creating the last few days, but he didn't want to reveal all his cards right off the bat.
When they had first started studying for the race, Alex had created the skills Auto Muscle Builder, Flexibility Generation, and Cardio Enhancer.
For the last few days, he had been running them in the background. The longer he ran them, the stronger, more flexible, and more endurance he would get. He could already feel the difference.
They were all sub-skills of psychometabolism. He hadn't used it since he got it and realized what a waste that had been. He just hadn't figured out how to use it at the time.
He would likely have to turn them off while fighting, but while they were just moving from place to place with no visible danger around them, he could keep getting more fit.
He was just getting onto Sophia's physical fitness level, but by the end of this race, he wanted to be at Astrid's level.
That may have been too high of a goal to shoot for in just five days, given that physical fitness was kind of her whole thing, but he would shoot for it anyway. It's not like there were consequences for failing.
He could also run four skills at a time now that he'd leveled up. It seemed like he could run one new skill simultaneously with every level up, but he was open to being wrong about that.
Getting more than one simultaneous skill per level up would help him greatly in the future. Only getting one per level up while getting five new skills every level up was actually rather limiting.
He had so many skills but could only use a handful of them at a time. He was hoping when he ran out of new core skills to get, he would start getting more simultaneous skill usage, but only time would tell.
After getting dressed, he packed up his dimensional pocket full of everything he needed out of his duffel bags, as well as the massive amount of equipment that Finn asked him to take with him. He also remembered to include spare clothes and different outfits for different climates. Then he headed down to the main gate.
Everyone was already lined up in a huge wave. When he came up in the rear, a guard put a rune-covered wristband on his wrist to keep track of his exact time for the race.
It would keep track of exactly when he crossed the starting line and the finish line, as well as allow Heimdall to subtract time off his run for extra checkpoints.
Finn and Astrid got there just after Alex and the guard put wristbands on them as well. They looked a little worse for wear.
Astrid looked sick, and Finn could barely open his eyes. Alex was disappointed.
"You guys were supposed to keep in mind that we had a war deciding race coming up the next day! Give me your arms," Alex said.
"How? If I remove one arm, then I won't have another arm to remove the other arm with," Astrid said, confused.
"Oh my gods, just come here," Alex said.
"Don't blame me," Finn said, rubbing his eyes. "It was her fault. She kept me up all night."
"You two?" Alex said, surprised.
"I played with his apparatus," Astrid said, smiling unabashedly.
"You didn't have to tell me that. I figured that out by myself," Alex said, sighing.
Alex focused on creating new skills using psychometabolism as his base skill.
[New skill created: Hangover Cure]
[New skill created: Wake Me up Before I Go Go back to Sleep]
Alex shook his head. That name was too long.
[Skill name changed: Wake Me Up]
Alex grabbed Astrid's arm and Finn's arm and used Hangover Cure on both of them. Astrid got less pale and looked less like she was going to throw up. Finn also get some color back, but his issue seemed to be more sleep deprivation.
Then Alex used Wake Me Up on both of them. Finn got alert all of a sudden, and he looked great. Astrid looked a little more awake, but sleep deprivation didn't seem to have been as much of a problem for her.
"I did my best, but you'll both need either rest or for me to do that every few hours until we make camp tonight," Alex said. "Why did I pick you idiots as my partners?"
"You didn't," Astrid said. "We picked you."
"Oh, yeah," Alex said. "So it's not my fault if we lose then."
"Hey. I'm not sure it works like that," Finn said.
"You couldn't figure out your ass from a hole in the ground right now," Alex said. "Just make sure we don't get lost. You're our navigator until we find the first checkpoint flag."
"Ok, I think I can handle that," Finn said, pulling out hand-drawn maps that he'd copied off the maps in the cartography chamber.
"Are you allowed to bring those?" Alex said.
"Of course! As long as we didn't steal anything, we were allowed to bring whatever we needed for the trip," Finn said.
"Good, because I brought a lot of stuff that I forgot to get approved, including your stuff," Alex said to Finn.
"Where? It doesn't look like you're carrying anything," Finn said, with a confused look on his face.
"In here," Alex said, taking the Dimensional Pocket out of his regular pocket and unfolding it to full size.
It just looked like a flat empty bag to Finn. "How? It looks empty."
"No," Alex said, unzipping it. He pulled out two bandoliers of throwing knives and strapped them across his upper body. "It's a Dimensional Pocket. I can hold nearly infinite items in this thing."
"Whoa! That exists in real life? I thought that was just a Catacombs and Chimeras thing," Finn said.
"It does, but not in this universe. I got it from another universe when I was saving an old lady," Alex said.
"Oh. I won't ask anymore questions because I feel like the explanation would take too long," Finn said.
"Racers!" Thor said. "The race will begin in 1, 2, 3, Go!"