Sheila remained quiet for a second when she heard Stanley’s words. "I’m sorry," she said after a bit. "Ask what you want, I will help you stay distracted. It might help me with not focusing on the pain as well."

Stanley nodded. "First of all, how big is this world?" he asked. "We have been running for nearly 4 hours and we still haven’t seen the edge of it."

Sheila nearly laughed out loud in response. "Didn’t you learn anything about the world?" she asked. "I thought you guys were taught stuff."

Stanley nodded. "We were taught that the land called Valor is a single large piece of land surrounded by water. You told me that too, so we must reach there soon, right?" he asked.

Sheila thought for a moment. "I don’t think you were taught the scope of the world, were you?" she asked.

"Scope?" Stanley asked.

"About how large the world is,’ Sheila answered.

Stanley thought for a bit. "Is it even larger than how long we’ve run?" he asked. "Will it take another four hours to reach the edge?"

Sheila thought for a bit and answered. "If you ran straight east from the hole we crawled out of, it will take you at least an entire day to reach the end of the land where you can see the sea again," she said.

"What? An entire day?" Stanley looked back in shock. He couldn’t understand how that was even a possibility. "How is the world so large?"

"I’m not finished," Sheila said. "The place you reach after running for a day? That’s just this one singular island," Sheila said. "And it’s the short side. The longer side will take you at least 3 days to run to all in all without a stop."

Stanley truly couldn’t believe it. "Wait, I can run for 3 days and that’s just an island? Aren’t islands supposed to be smaller than continents? I’m sure that’s what they taught us," he said.

"Yes, it’s about 40 times as small as the actual continent," she said. "Of course, I’m throwing out random numbers. We can check out how large everything is once we return."

Stanley nodded. "Return to where?" he asked.

"I come from Pandene, a country on the Southern-West edge of the continent," she said. "Where we are right now is Eyland, an island west of the United Voras."

Stanley gave some weird looks. He did not understand most of what she was talking about at all. "Pandene? Eyland? Voras?" he asked.

"Those are names. You don’t have to remember much, except that you are in Eyland right now," she said. "Everything else you will learn slowly."

"I see," Stanley said. His mind still reeled at the concept that the outside world was as large as it was. Not to mention, there were no monsters at all out here.

"So there really isn’t any monster out here?" he asked. "Were the crawlers truly just..."

He remembered the moment Freddy was turned into one of those monsters as well. Even as he wanted to ask whether the monsters truly were roaming the land or not, he knew deep in his heart that everything that he had learned about the situation of the outside world was wrong.

"So... we were just food to the Nova, huh?" he asked as he sat there. "The entire reason that we lived... it was just to die for her."

Sheila looked at him with deep concern. The fire crackled in front of them as it burned brightly. "We still need to get out of here quickly," she reminded him of it. "Let’s just finish warming up and kill the fire. We can’t let the woman see that we are here, okay?"

Stanley nodded. "Where do we go tomorrow?" he asked.

"Whatever town is in the south," she said. "We just need to go close to one. That’s enough. I should be able to take us to Pandene after that."

"Us?" Stanley asked. "Isn’t Pandene far from here? Why do you want to take me with you?"

Sheila looked at him for a second, wondering if she had been caught, but she could see that he hadn’t caught onto it just yet.

"You’re a Nova, which means the girl will keep coming after you no matter what," she said. "My organization has strong individuals that can fight her and protect you from her for now."

"Your... organization?" he asked curiously.

"We are... like cops," she said. "Uhh... like Defenders, just like you, just on a larger scale, I suppose."

"Cops? What’s that?" Stanley asked curiously again.

"Cops... police, it’s kind of like Defenders. People who are hired by the country to maintain the law and protect its people," she said.

"Oh, so you’re like that huh?" Stanley nodded to himself as he heard her. "And your name... is it really Sheila?"

"Sheila Hales, that’s my name," she said.

"Sheila Hales... I don’t think I’ve heard either of those two words before you," Stanley said.

"I don’t doubt it," she said. "There weren’t enough people there for you to find people with similar names."

They talked for a little while until their clothes were dry from the heat. Then, Stanley snuffed out the fire so as to not attract anyone there.

"We’ll have to take turns sleeping," Stanley said. "There are beasts in forests here, right? Ones that can eat us."

"Maybe," Sheila said. "I don’t know much about the Elyish Mountain range to tell you if there are any predators living here or not. But, I don’t think we have much to worry about."

"Hmm?" Stanley turned towards her voice.

"Here, come sit down next to me," she said. Staley found his way in the dark and sat on the soft land next to the tree."

"Hold my hand," she said, and Stanley complied.

Then, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "16 hours."

Stanley didn’t feel any difference, but he could tell that she had used her technique. Which meant they were going to remain unseen for half of the time she said.

Which meant, they could freely sleep together for the next 8 hours.