Due to it being midnight, there wasn’t much to look at for Stanley. He knew how the landscape would go in general, and wanted to know what it was like in real life, compared to the pictures and videos he saw.

Past the mountain range that the Association was built upon, there was a plain land with the occasional hills for a long while. This was the country of Barson and it was the flattest country in the entire world.

At the very edge of the eastern region, there was the Uralus Mountain range, and then after a small piece of land, it was the ocean.

He regretted a bit that they were going around at night time. It would’ve been so much better if it was daytime.

’Should I just sleep then?’ he wondered. He turned to Reena who was on the wheel, flying the car.

"How long will it take until we reach the Barson headquarters?" he asked her.

"About... 7 hours. When we reach there, it will be 10 in the morning, so we are taking our time," she explained.

"Oh," Stanley nodded when he heard that.

Timezones were certainly one of the weirder stuff about the world that he had come to learn. He knew the planet rotated, but he didn’t imagine that the time would be different as a result.

He had assumed that time was universal and everyone just knew what time the sun rose and set in their particular city.

It was better, wasn’t it?

"We’re going slow, huh?" he asked. Barson headquarters certainly wasn’t that far away that it would take them 7 hours at normal speed. "So, are you going to sleep?"

"No," she said. "I will need to remain on the wheel, just in case."

"Uhh, can’t you let it go on... what was that word? The one where it drives on its own," he said.

"Auto pilot? No," Reena said.

"Yeah, that. You can’t?" Stanley was perplexed. "Why? Ulia did so when we were returning."

"It’s not something I’m capable of doing," she said. "Leaving the wheel to the AI. Don’t worry about me, it’s just how I am."

"I see," Stanley said. He wondered if she was scared of doing so for a good reason.

It was going to be a long journey, so it was better if he slept, but he didn’t feel right leaving the girl to transport the two of them asleep all on her own.

At the very least, he wanted to keep her company. "Can I sleep once I’m in Barson? My work doesn’t start immediately, right?"

"No, you should have plenty of time to sleep, why?" she asked.

"Ah, I wanted to keep you company," Stanley said.

Reena chuckled a bit. "You don’t have to. Being Gray’s personal scout, I’m used to driving him around all on my own while he is asleep."

"I’m not yet asleep that you can just talk bad about me," Gray spoke from the back. Even though he said so, his voice made it clear that he was about to enter deep sleep.

"If speaking the truth is speaking badly about you, then you have a different problem to worry about," Sheila said before pressing a button that turned on a shield between the front half and the back half of the car.

"Alright, he can’t hear us now," she said. "You should go to sleep too. You should be sleepy."

"I’m not," Stanley said. "I want to watch the cities. It should be dawn in a few hours right?"

"In about 5 hours if I’m not wrong," Sheila mentioned. "Although it looks like it might rain soon, so I don’t know if you can see the sunrise."

"Oh, it’s not the sunrise that I want to see," Stanley said. "Although that would be awesome, I just want to see the rest of the world with my own eyes."

"Well, you’ll have to at least wait 4 hours before it becomes visible," she said. "But you should see the big cities clearly."

Stanley nodded. He looked forward to it.

There were hundreds of cities in the country of Barson. Each one was as developed as the rest, with most of the remaining land being either left as forest or used as farmland to grow their food.

Due to the existence of Plasmium, the world that once relied on resources that were in nature and destroyed it for them, now let it foster and grow.

Stanley saw a few cities, all of which glowed like a single large light bulb that colored even the surrounding land in its light.

It was a beautiful scenery that he was surprised by no matter how many times he saw it. As he continued watching the cities that passed by, he remembered something and turned to Reena.

"Do you want my help in moving time quickly?" he asked her.

"Doing what?" she asked with a confused look.

"Moving time fast," he explained. "I can help your perception of time speed up so that you will feel the time flowing faster than normal. In what feels like half an hour for you, we will have reached the headquarters and it will be 10, just as you planned."

Reena looked at him with a stunned face. "Are you... serious?" she asked.

"I am," Stanley said. "It’s a power I recently acquired. It’s quite useless in combat scenarios, but for other instances, I keep finding ways to use it."

"And you said you can change my perception of time?" she asked.

"Yes," Stanley said

"What’s that like?" she asked. "Do I just experience the time speeding up, or is there something else to it?"

"No, that’s just it," he said and explained how it worked.

"Hmm, I don’t think I want this," she said. "It looks like a problem waiting to happen."

"Problem?" Stanley couldn’t understand why there would be a problem. It was just to help her feel like less time had passed than it actually had.

"Since everything speeds up for me, it will be hard for me to drive normally," She said. "Since I am incapable of leaving it up to the auto-pilot, I need to be alert at all times."

"I see," Stanley said. He wasn’t of any help.

"Why don’t you sleep?" she asked. "If you don’t want to, I suggest looking up information about Yardin City as soon as you can. The more you know about it, the better it is."

Stanley nodded and asked the car to pull up information about Yardin City before reading about it. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The information he learned helped him understand a bit more about the city, how the civilians were, and how it was treated by the country.

"And where are we going?" he asked. "Where is the Barson Headquarters, I mean."

"Freenox city," Reena said.

"Freenox..." he thought for a moment. "Is that not the capital?"

"It is," Reena said. "Which is why the headquarters is established there."

"Oh," Stanley was amazed.

"Do you know what to do when you go there? Do you know your identity?" Reena asked.

"Yes, Frank Allord," Stanley said. "Son of Peter Allord and Helena Allord. I was born 18 years ago in the city of Prenstone in the north of the capital."

"My father owned a paper mill and after the mill went bankrupt, he killed himself by suicide. My mother was taken away by a sickness 3 years ago, and now I am alone, with nothing but a bit from my mother’s side to my name."

"Not bad," Reena said. "That’s a tragic backstory for a fake character though."

"It’s better than my real one," Stanley said with a hollow smile on his face.

"Oh, I’m so sorry," Reena said quickly. "I forgot."

"It’s alright," Stanley said. "At least, I know what Frank feels in his day-to-day life. It should help me get into the character if I ever need to be."

"Goo," Reena said. "Each country has its own identity for you, so you need to remember it carefully."

Stanley nodded. He had a different identity for every country, which he could access using his badge if needed. It was necessary to have a fake identity, not to hide from the government, but the bad actors that might try to sabotage the mission.

It also helped one stay away from any criminal database that they might have stolen from a system.

"By the way, the money that I have in my account. Is that real or fake?" he asked.

His fake new account had money, and he wasn’t sure if he could acquire it or not.

"It’s real money, but you can’t spend it on anything useless. They will accept it up to some point, but the moment you use it for something that had no reason in the mission, they will deduct the money from your pay, as well as your Repentance point," she mentioned.

"Ah, that’s quite bad," he said. "I will make sure to not use much of it."

Reena nodded. "Our association is government funded so there is no way they will let you waste it," she said. "So, it is better to not use it at all, except when you’re desperately in need of something."

Stanley nodded a lot.

Once the conversation ended, Stanley looked away from Reena, looking at the scenery once more. Only a few hours later, the sky brightened, surprisingly without any rain clouds.

The fields below were way more visible now, and with how slow they were riding the car, Stanley could enjoy it all very comfortably.

He continued enjoying it once dawn came and even after the sun rose.

He only stopped when he realized that he was reaching the capital, which happened to be the biggest city he had seen yet.