The walk back to Meadowbrook took forty minutes.
It should have taken fifteen. I knew the distance because I had placed every landmark on this path myself, had walked it in god-mode during testing at full speed with no injury penalties and no hunger debuff pulling at my stamina. Fifteen minutes, door to door, forest chokepoint to village center.
With a bandaged ribcage, a shoulder that had decided grinding was its primary mode of operation, and a FATIGUE debuff that made each step feel like moving through shallow water, forty minutes.
I stopped twice. The first time was about a hundred yards out from the bandit clearing, when my ribs sent up a protest sharp enough that I had to brace against a tree and breathe through it in slow, deliberate counts until it faded to something manageable.
