I felt soft, velvety lips call me back to wakefulness. Blinking my eyes open, I saw Sigmir’s face looming over me, pulling slightly back after the kiss she had just laid onto me. If she wanted to kiss, I would gladly oblige her so I grabbed her head and pulled her back, kissing her with fervour.

When I felt, I had shown her enough that I liked kissing her, I ceased my attack and took stock of my surroundings. I was placed on Sigmir’s lap once again and held in her arms. All was good in the world. But beyond her protective arms, I saw the twisted forest around Tegi, surprised that we were still here. The position of the sun told me that I had been out for a few hours and I would have thought that neither Adra nor Sigmir wanted to stay in the creepy forest longer than necessary.

“Adra is doing something. She said it was a necessity.” Sigmir told me when she saw me looking around in confusion. There was nothing more to see in my field of vision that required my attention and I did not want to leave Sigmir’s lap so I focused on my interface.

Unformed Nethersprite died You gain 113 EXP (50% diminishing returns). For killing an opponent without a Traveller in your party, you gain Bonus EXP . .. . Nether Devourer died You gain 2200 EXP. For killing an opponent 87 levels above you, you gain Bonus EXP For killing an opponent without a Traveller in your party, you gain Bonus EXP

My mind went blank for a second. ‘87 levels above me?!’ The devourer had been level 137? No wonder the quest had said that it was impossible. But the experience-points Nethersprites gave were pathetic. The base-amount for the devourer was less than what a humanoid on our level gave and the unformed Nethersprites were just as bad. But considering that Nethersprites seemed to be the punishment by the game-world for over-farming, it was reasonable. There was probably some kind of in-universe explanation along the lines that Nethersprites were diminished beings and gave little EXP because of that, but it did not matter. They were unpleasant enemies and I hoped to fight them as little as possible.

And we had encountered the annoying diminishing-returns penalty. I had read up on it, using the forum and it was rather simple. If you killed the same type of creature in subsequent combats, for every creature you killed, you gained less experience, up to a maximum penalty of 50%, halving the gain. So when we had killed more than ten Unformed Nethersprites in the clearing, we had stacked the penalty up and no Nethersprite had given more than half the normal experience. The system was suspended for quest-enemies and was reset by killing something else so it was rare to run into it, but when you did, it sucked big time. It didn’t feel fully thought out - if you wanted to circumvent it, it was easy, but if you didn’t pay attention, it could bite you in the ass. I’d have to put something in the report I planned to submit to Pantheon.

Skill increased You increased your skill: Ice Rune-Mastery [53/100]

Skill increased You increased your skill: Ice Magic [65/100]

Skill increased You increased your skill: Astral Meditation [40/100]

The skill-gains made me smile. Ice-Runes gained three full points and Ice Magic gained two. Using a serious large-scale ritual obviously gave a lot of skill-experience. But most likely it only gave that much when I used it for the first time. Consecutive rituals would help, but not as much. What made me sad was that there was no trait or title, nothing along the lines of “purifier” for killing a huge Nethersprite, or “giant slayer” for killing something so many levels above me.

Quest Completed Destroy the Devourer. You gained: 30.000 EXP

With the messages taken care off, I wanted to get going. No matter how great it was to sit on Sigmir’s lap, I wanted to leave the creepy forest. For that, Adra had to do whatever she had deemed necessary.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Let’s find out how long we need to stay around here. I’d love to leave.” I said and realised that the concealment-spell on Sigmir had lapsed at some point during the night. I refreshed it on her and on me before we went looking for Adra and spotted her closer to Tegi.

When I looked down towards the ruins of Tegi, I saw the after-effects of my ritual. The devourer was still there but it was impaled with a huge spike, like a butterfly pinned by a collector. The Astral Power I had used in my last strike had coalesced into a silvery-white spike, shaped like an icicle and was still persisting in frozen perfection. On closer observation, I discovered that the devourer was not only impaled, it was frozen solid. It would be hard to imagine ways that something could be as thoroughly dead as that.

“Ah, good, you are awake.” Adra said as we came closer. She was inscribing stones and placing them around the devourer. “That thing contains a lot of essence, both the essence of life and the essence of death. I’d love to siphon some of that essence off when it returns to the land.”

“How?” I asked. To me, ‘returning to the land’ meant that it slowly rotted and decomposed, feeding the land with its essence, just like we all did after our death. I doubted that anything other than microbes, would feed on that carcass so it would simply rot.

“Can you thaw it? Or shatter it? Currently, the essence is trapped by your spell, it’s frozen within the devourer. If you can set it free, I can gather some of it and progress on my own path.” Adra asked with a smile and I realised just why the Grandmother had sent us here.

Helping Adra sounded like a good idea to me, so I walked a little closer to the corpse and stretched my mythical senses towards it. I felt the Ice-Spike and it was still infused with my essence, allowing me to manipulate it easier than normal. The frozen flesh of the devourer resisted a little but it was frozen and thus under the domain of my ice-magic. I had a feeling that I could shatter it, but it would take some effort.

I told Adra as much and she smiled happily while she told me she needed to prepare some more anyway. I asked Sigmir what she thought and she felt it was a good idea. According to her, if I shattered it, the remnants would spread further, helping the surrounding area to recover and while Adra would siphon off some of the power, it would still be enough to revitalise the forest. The dryads had gathered so much life-energy before and it had been devoured so she felt we should get a nice reward. Or in this case, Adra should get a nice reward.

While we waited, she told me about their night. For them, it had been a night of almost non-stop combat. We had killed most of the Nethersprites in our first battle in the forest, but the devourer had either called in more from their realm, or they simply appeared, creating an ceaseless stream of attackers. They had managed to prevail, though, mainly thanks to teamwork and Sigmir’s silver-plated Lok’nar, which gave her a huge advantage against Nethersprites.

“I am ready.” I heard Adra call over. As I wanted to leave the forest as soon as possible, I stood and walked over. I had thought about the easiest way to shatter the corpse and I believed it was rather simple.

I placed my hand onto the frozen corpse and willed my magic into being, using Ice-Magic to pull down some of the Ice-Spike and formed it into a shatter-rune before walking further around the devourer and repeating the process six more times. Like that, I had created a rune-heptagon out of shatter-runes, all linked to each other and the central spike.

“Everything returns to the land. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I intoned. It felt strangely false to say that, my path was deliberately chosen to go against that logic. If I had my way, I could freeze something for eternity, ripping it from the circle of life and enclosing it in eternal ice.

But for now, I had not enough power, so ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

With that thought, I let Astral Power flow into the runes, causing them to glow and with a dull noise, the frozen corpse broke apart, shattering into small fragments. Some were picked up by the wind and moved over the twisted trees, others got picked up by the river and the rest simply sank to the ground. At the same time, I felt the mixture of essence flow outwards, returning to the land. Neither life nor death was good on its own, both needed their counterpart to exist. The wards Adra had prepared flared to life, gathering some of the essence and carrying it to her but the amount she took was miniscule compared to the amount that returned to the land.

When I looked at her, I noticed a glow around her; she had definitely profited from the essence, looking vitalised and strong.