I waited for Daru outside of his tent. Far outside of it, actually, as I didn’t want to overhear anything. My Brain stat being so high meant my perception was quite good, including my hearing, at least when my focus wasn’t entirely internal like it had to be when I was using [Blood Restoration], which had allowed the mantises to sneak up on me.Though I had already mostly healed up while washing—there was a visible scar on my arm, pink and fresh, but I was no longer bleeding—I debated using the skill again now, or go into deep meditation just to tune out the sounds and smells of the camp. But then I would miss my moment when Daru and Loma were finished. Reluctantly, I kept my awareness up, though the bulk of my focus was thinking back on the mantises’ biology, my battle, and what I had learned.When Daru finally emerged from his tent, I got up from my rumination and headed over.“Mali,” Daru said when he saw me. “Why’d you run away earlier? I wanted to—”“I just saw some uqandu close to camp,” I said, interrupting him. I gestured in the direction of the battle. “That way.”Daru’s brows furrowed and his eyes swept over me, landing on the scar on my arm, then darted back to my face. “You saw?”I shrugged. “At the least.”It was practically impossible to hide my strength, or at least my potential, from Daru, as he was actively teaching me my Blood techniques. Daru had his own circumstances in the tribe, so it wasn’t like he was going around bragging about me either, as he didn’t want me to be targeted by youth with something to prove. While I wouldn’t call him a true confidant, as I hadn’t told him about [Metasurvival] and the reasons I was able to learn to fast, I wasn’t exactly hiding my progress from him either.Daru moved past that quickly enough, asking a few more questions about the finer details, which I was mostly honest about. “That’s close,” he murmured, crossing (...)