Of course, even as Jason was considering how he managed to run for days, he could already feel how that wasn't going to be possible this time. As he guessed more than once since the incident, even with whatever changed about him, there was still a limit, still a barrier to further progress. A feeling that if he tried it again so soon, he would end up hurting something vital that even with magic might never fully heal.

This was a strange thing, even if he trusted said feeling. After all, for most people, this was a game. The very idea that the money earned here was equal to money irl felt like some kind of crackpot scheme even now after generations of it working that way. So to still be a game for so many meant certain game-like aspects still existed and as far as Jason had seen, HP was one of those.

A simple enough idea, full HP meant you were completely healthy. Yet here Jason was, feeling his body scream at him that any more and things would be permanent. Though he does suspect that part of the problem might be the fact that his body has strayed away from what would be normal. Maybe the System was capable of fully fixing a meat and blood body, but his broke some sort of rule or template and would be beyond the normal methods of fixing.

That, or more dangerous of an option, this might be damage to the soul. After all, the System should be capable of making an entirely new body from scratch whenever a player dies and Jason didn't feel any threat from dying. An event that if anything would end up causing permanent damage if his body really did become outside of what the System could handle.

Though the more Jason searches through his body and gets a feeling for what is happening, the chances of it being soul related increases. After all, while he had thought it happened much later on, there is a point where the soul and body merge together. Maybe even early on those changes had started, at least to the extent that whatever his running was doing, it was able to mess the connection up.

All this meant for Jason at the moment though, was that he couldn't keep running. Yet as a quick look around shows he also couldn't stop running. The fox heads randomly poking out of the tree high grass all turn to follow him as he moves by. Those monsters are clearly waiting for a chance, either for revenge or having sensed his weakness.

Jason, however doesn't let things reach a breaking point and changes from a run to a walk. He can still feel it pulling at something, but now the speed at which he approaches the point of no return has significantly decreased. Not that this would necessarily mean he can move any further, just that he would be on the move for a longer period of time.

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The only bright side is that the monsters aren't grouping up. As Jason watches both sides, the visible fox heads don't increase. Sure, they don't decrease either, but things are pointing towards a very territorial monster. Otherwise, with how obsessed they seem, those that he had already passed by should have followed him. Though the fact they still seem to be keeping a grudge for one that was killed so far away is a little odd. Even if he was tagged with some kind of pheromone, this should be a new group by now and the scent shouldn't be so effective with them.

Jason shakes his head and focuses back on what was happening inside of himself. It was clear that the monsters weren't going to give up and so the only thing he could change was himself. This wasn't a quick process though, and even just looking for the problem took quite a bit of time. Though in the end, the answer was simple enough.

Jason was a void with threads running through it in the vague shape of a circulatory system. That meant his true body was closer to a soul form and so overdrawing himself could pull on his soul. This was a problem because it meant there wasn't a shortcut. His previous run had weakened him at a core level and while like muscle training, it might end up strengthening him in the long run, at the moment he needed to heal.

Worse, his only other solution was locked by the System. At the time, having his movement technique merged with his cultivation technique was just a thing. Now, though, it means he can't hope for a breakthrough to get out of this situation. That left only one option in his mind: deception.

The monsters aren't sapient and even if they are smart, they would be on an animal level. So Jason stopped moving to see what they would do and at first the answer was nothing. For a solid minute, he was able to catch his breath as the fox-headed monsters froze in place.

Then they started to jump out of the tree height grass and approach Jason at a creep. So he started moving again and sure, the break wasn't long and Jason didn't really recover anything, but he also didn't lose anything. This led to a series of tests with varying his walking speed and pauses.

None of it stopped Jason from losing whatever resource was draining away, but he did find the sweet spot. A simple pattern of step, step, pause, and repeat. Just two steps and a pause of a step was enough to reduce the wear and tear and would make the monsters cautious. One or two might come down from their perch, but that was it. Now it was just a matter of a waiting game.

Jason wasn't going to damage his potential, so it was simply a matter of seeing what would last longer, the grass or him.

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