On the way back to the fort she briefly explained to Garuna what had happened to her. Garuna in turn discussed some of the subjects.
He explained that he hadn't heard of most monsters she described. He was only acquainted with the Bonestinger, as they had regularly taken prey fallen to the health draining moss while he had observed them. Furthermore, he also added that he had also seen the sun set three times while lying in the moss, confirming Liz estimate of the passed time.
Besides that he couldn't give much constructive input on any other subjects, still he demanded information about every minute detail from Liz. Especially about the abandoned structures. However, Liz was neither willing to describe the masonry techniques she had seen nor was she interested in documenting as much of the structure and cavern layout as she could remember. And so they stayed silent for most of the trip back. Luckily, the trip took only 3 hours, Liz attributing her speed increase to fewer stops and her level increase.
She had also finally taken to spending her remaining 9 points during the travel. Garuna had mentioned in passing that the auto-assigned points went into class specific attributes, which answered Liz's question regarding the fact. She had spent her points in Endurance, Strength and Dexterity. This brought Endurance to 21, Strength to a round 20 and Dexterity to 22. The application effects were even more subdued this time around.
Arriving back at the fort at around noon, she went straight for a bath while grabbing some of the few remaining fruit from the pantry. Her ruined clothing practically fell away from her body to reveal dried blood and soot on every bit of skin. Her hair was a complete mess as well, several strands cut short by claws, the rest caked and crusted in soot and blood despite the grooming efforts of the cubs. Even opening the tight bun proved a challenge.
Desperately missing the excessive hair products from Earth for once, Liz was finally able to relax in the bathtub while snacking the strawberry-like fruit. She had turned the heating runes to maximum power and savored in the steaming water. The four cubs had taken an interest in the bathtub at first, but after the first drops of water had entered it, had decided to spend their stay in the bathroom in the corner furthest from the bathtub.
After soaking in the water for an hour, Liz recognized that her stomach also had needs. Dried off, she made herself the first cooked meal in days, leaving 4 pieces of raw meat to the cubs. They lunged at the meat, purring throughout their meal.
Her own cooked steak was tasting like heaven compared to the stale water and fruit mix of her trip. During cooking, she also had realized that she wouldn't be able to support the four additional mouths to feed for long. If the cubs needed as much as they ate in the caverns, the meat remaining in the pantry would hold for about two weeks for the four of them, not even considering Liz's needs. While she could sustain herself on the herbivorous part of the food stock, a piece of meat every now and then would be a nice boon.
Garuna had been surprisingly silent in regard to the cubs during their travel. Only when Liz had given them the pieces of meat, had he seemingly realized that she didn't see them as a food source and complained about the increased consumption by the 'monsters'. Liz ignored him.
'I think I will take them with me on future hunting trips. Not only will I be able to hunt faster, but also possibly survive more powerful monsters than if I am alone. And I don't think anyone can call the these bundles of cuteness monsters.'
While Garuna complained about distilling the Quicksilver as fast as possible, Liz simply ate her meal and, when it became too much for her, shut the locket. She then had to put him in the workshop, open again, as the constant clicking in his shut state annoyed her even more than his demands.
Instead of attending any of the serious and pressing issues, Liz spent her time cuddling with the adorable cubs, elated to be rather safe and clean. She also finally checked out the four cubs in detail and went about naming them.
[Shadownyx - lvl 17]
The biggest of the males she named Logan. He was the one that she had always seen at the front of their little group. He also seemed to never be standing still. She identified him by his black fur with an even spread of lots of gray blotches.
[Shadownyx - lvl 16]
All of the others were one level lower. There was another male she named Nick. On their travels he had stayed back and observed rather than rush forward. He was identifiable by a pattern of gray blotches on his black fur, that abruptly ended just above his shoulders, leaving his head fully black. The remaining two females she named Charly and Dana, after her best friend and her little sister, as they were as inseparable as their namesakes were in their childhood. Both were very playful, having regularly engaged in mock fights during the trip back to the fort. They were practically indistinguishable with their completely black fur, only based on one faint blotch on the front leg of Dana could Liz differentiate them.
She spent the rest of the day switching between meditating, cycling the crystal for the enchantment and reading more about runes. So far she had only learned the runes for most basic elements, like fire, air, water or rock. Alone they were limited in their uses. At best, she could summon fire, move some air or accumulate the moisture of the air. For more she needed to understand how to interconnect them with other runes and that was where she was struggling to go further, despite a skill helping her.
While meditating she had also discovered that mana now trickled and cycled through some unseen ducts from her center to her arms and back. However, the flow was far from smooth, and she was unable to detect it if she didn't fully focus on it.
'Seems like the struggles of the past days have started to form mana conduits. If this is what would be necessary to form just the beginning of them, I'm even happier about choosing the enchantment option'
When the sun set behind the mountains, she made herself a quick fruit dinner while giving each of her cubs another piece of raw meat.
"How lucky you are, that your stomach can digest the meat raw. I have to cook or boil nearly everything I want to eat! And you don't even have to clean your cutlery afterwards!" Liz spoke while watching the felines eat.
When she was lying in her bed, she went over her status and reviewed her gains of the past days.
Name: Elisabeth Larson
Class: Arcane Mage - lvl 15
Title: Wanderer
Status:
Health: 312/312
Stamina: 230/231
Mana: 496/496
Vitality: 26
Endurance: 21
Strength: 20
Dexterity: 22
Perception: 28
Wisdom: 31
Intelligence: 30
General skills:
Arcane Magic Resistance - lvl 3
Eastern Plains Common - lvl 8
English - lvl 7
Health Drain Resistance - lvl 1
Identify - lvl 2
Mathematics - lvl 1
Meditation - lvl 2
Pain Tolerance - lvl 10
Stamina Drain Resistance - lvl 1
Class skills:
Arcane Blast - lvl 3
Runic Intuition - lvl 1
Spell Channeling - lvl 2
Mana Draw - lvl 1
'I made some real progress in this short time. I feel fitter than I've ever felt in the last few years. All it needed was constant danger and crippling pain. Yayy. But seriously, being this unprepared for the last days of near-deaths definitely isn't my thing. Without the potions and tonic I would have died several times. Still, I absolutely had some fun with the cubs and really hope they stay with me, even if food will become scarce. I need something living and not an obnoxious piece of jewelry as company. Even if it costs me as much as they do in food. At least I don't have to worry about having the money to buy the next meal. I wonder what is happening back on Earth? Dana will probably freak out about me missing. My mom likely hasn't heard about it. Maybe when my Christmas card doesn't arrive will she maybe wonder. If she even received the cards I sent before and they weren't withheld for some made-up reason by these cult jerks. And Andy will probably mourn the free tech-support he lost for a moment and promptly hire the next college dropout. But why do I still feel like some memory is missing regarding my job? Was I fired? But without me Andy wouldn't even be able to open his laptop. Or did I insult the wrong jerk for once?... Anyway, the here and now is more important: I really hope this enchantment works. I seriously want to do magic. Not that I have many alternatives, without a proper teacher and Garuna refusing helping me in any other case. Regarding his help; he also spoke of self-healing skills. They would be good to have in this environment. Hopefully my constant healing potion consumption prompts an appropriate skill to emerge soon!'
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With this thought Liz went to sleep, snuggling into the soft and warm fur all around her. Surprisingly, the nightmares, that had left her alone for the trip, visited her again this night.
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Liz judged waking up to four small noses nudging you and mewling for food as a nice change for the better to the first week of isolation she had experienced in this world.
After the predator feeding was done, Liz portioned off some of the remaining into new daily rations. The remaining meat was earmarked to feed the cubs while she herself would eat from the remaining fruit and bread. She would definitely need to go out to hunt for more food in the next 2 weeks. Especially with winter fast approaching she would need a stockpile beforehand if she wanted to see anything other than this fort ever again. But for now the trees in the valley still held all of their leaves, although the air was certainly more frigid than it had been on her first morning in this realm.
But first she would become a mage able to use magic without crippling herself. To do so she went downstairs to the workspace, her bag slung over her shoulder. Walking down the stairs she had an idea 'Why was I never on the first floor of the tower? I should visit it!'
Entering the workspace she realized how stupid her idea was. 'Isn't that just the space for all the power-routing runes? What would I want there?'
Liz stopped in her tracks, confused by her strange thoughts, only to be brought back to reality by a surprisingly eager sounding locket
"Finally! Did you bring the crystal? Oh I see, you even attuned it to you even further. If you continue at this speed, it should be ready in 2 days. Now for the Quicksilver extraction. I am not sure how to best approach it since you didn't leave me with a sample to study last night. We will have to experiment with some things!"
After placing the bag on the table, Liz spent the next ten minutes fetching various implements and ingredients on the directions of the locket. Every new object collected was inspected by the four cats lounging around her designated work table.
Dragging a particularly heavy tub to said table, Liz finally voiced her opinion. "The supplies are all quite nice to have but would you be so kind to finally tell me what exactly 'we' are doing now?"
"We will first try to extract the metal using an elixir. If this fails we will have to resort to the way the Quicksilver was extracted from the snails, using an extractor rune framework. But this will take up to three days"
"If you only want to experiment at first, why did let me fetch tubs of all sizes? What use does this have if it fails?" Liz replied, annoyed at the taciturn pendant.
"For once, you make a good point. Then you should follow the instructions for about a vial of the bone-marring elixir in 'Exotic brews for the aspiring alchemist'."
After looking at the recipe, Liz was only more annoyed.
'I fetched the materials to fill all the containers here twice with this bone-marring elixir. This locket seriously needs to start thinking before acting, nay ordering. And still he calls himself a scholar!'
Gritting her teeth, Liz went to making the elixir. After mixing dozens of strange liquids, herbs and powders, all only identified using the respective skill, Liz held a vial of reddish-brown translucent liquid. Submerging one of the bonespikes in it, caused a heavy sizzling and made the lounging cubs to perk up briefly.
Shortly afterwards the reaction died down, and the cats went back to their state of half-sleep. The liquid had turned opaque but there also wasn't anything solid left in it.
"So I guess this was a failure. Only good that I didn't haul all the other equipment here" Liz spoke.
"Oh no, this was a huge success. The snail shells would not be affected by the elixir. This however dissolved perfectly. We can now place it in the fireplace. We can repeat this with the rest of the material"
'This almost feels like chemistry class from school.'
Liz made a small fire and boiled the elixir over it. After some time, in which she started to make more of the elixir, only a small metallic drop remained.
[Drop of Quicksilver - legendary]
'Finally! Now I only need a hundred times the amount.'
"Oh good, it worked. Now we need to repeat it on the larger scale"
By the time the sun was at its zenith, Liz had processed all the spikes and had 5 vials of mercury on the table in front of her.
'That should include almost all possible modifications and then some. Oh, but I still need some for Garuna's skull'
After her success, Garuna started designing the enchantment with her. Or rather dictated it to her and let her draw runes on a piece of paper while constantly criticizing her strokes, technique, handwriting, and overall posture.
'What the hell is wrong with this piece of jewelry? Lying in a ruin for decades definitely did him a disservice. I can't believe it. "ThAt CiRcLe iS NoT supPoSeD tO bE sO bOtChEd". This is a test drawing for hells’ sake'
Despite all this, Liz continued the drawing. The runes would be painted on her stomach and chest. Supposedly this was enough, even if she wanted to use her hands for casting magic. As this arrangement offered limited space, the runes were rather intricate.
When she was finished, Liz understood why the pendant was so strict. Garuna ordered her to take the finished papers and memorize the enchantments, possibly even understand the basic portions. The parts where Garuna had the most to criticize were the hardest to read and caused a headache just looking at them. They just felt wrong. The parts she had aced were easily readable and felt easier to understand, not that she understood them.
'So this is Runic Intuition'
The pendant encouraged her to rewrite the crooked enchantments multiple times until they felt right to her. With this new task, Liz gathered half a dozen healing potions to heal any headache and started to read, study and correct the enchantments.
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The whole process took her the next two days until she could reproduce all the runes on the papers. Her understanding was still very limited, only reaching the outer parts of the framework. Together with Garuna's input she understood that the runes wouldn't be visible from the outside at all. Instead, they would enter her body and settle on her ribs and surrounding tissues. Liz saw none of it in the runes, just thinking about them and their connections caused massive headaches. Drawing the respective runes and connections seen on the papers was already barely possible. She didn't even know most of the runes, just how to draw them. She had even tried to find some of them in the encyclopedias but found no mention of them. The only parts she understood were at the edges and were only responsible for crystallizing the metal when infused in her bones.
'I don't even understand what most parts are supposed to do, and replicating or creating this is so far beyond my knowledge and ability that it is laughable. All the more incredible that Garuna simply dictated them to me!'
Besides her task, she had also spent a lot of her time with the mana crystal and playing with the kittens. She had begun training together with them. Garuna had told her; that no matter how much the stats assisted, one still had to train how to move the improved body effectively. Getting the cats to include her in their mock fights took surprisingly long, but now she would regularly fight with her fists against their claws and fangs, unwilling to injure the young with her daggers. Not that there wasn't blood, Liz body simply wasn't as resilient as the young predators, making most mock fights end in a still smiling Liz applying healing potion while petting the concerned cats.
She had also realized the purpose of the mana crystal. Garuna had chosen it as a mana input for activating the enchantment. With the mana crystal attuned to her personal mana signature it would complete the initial fill of the runes and direct them to bond with her. This way she wasn't needed in any capacity beyond drawing and placing the crystal on her stomach. It was a truly foolproof system, if not for the high preparation costs and the need to draw the runes absolutely perfectly.
Although she didn't understand even a third of it, studying the rune framework even brought her two levels in Runic Intuition, bringing it up to lvl 3.
She had also taken the time to remove the 'find-me clicking'-enchantment from Garuna, finally silencing the obnoxious clicking when closed. She had accomplished this feat by scratching the responsible runes, to the dismay of the locket.
On the evening of the second day, she prepared for the enchantment. As a small part of the runes needed to be scratched into her skin, she meticulously cleaned and boiled a small hollow knife for that purpose. The rest of Quicksilver was to be applied using a special fountain pen.
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Early the next morning she had one of her now few meaty meals and also let the kittens have a small extra share for the occasion. Afterwards she bathed once more to make her skin as clean as possible, despite Garuna urging her multiple times that this wasn't necessary.
When she had scrubbed her skin red, she left for the workspace. And promptly had to spend 5 minutes getting the cats to not snuggle up to her and instead wait on the table across the aisle.
And then the drawing began. Garuna corrected her on every mistake, always a second before she realized them herself. For once she was thankful for it, since she didn't feel like wasting too much of the valuable material. When it came to scratching the parts just above her sternum, Liz had to grit her teeth to stop herself from screaming. Metal under the skin was a truly horrific experience.
Shortly before sunset, Liz was done. The whole process had been incredibly mentally exhausting and even painful when she needed to enforce the drawn runes with mana or when it came to the scratched parts. Therefore, she spent another hour inspecting the whole work and looking for and correcting any errors. Despite being careful for the whole 8 hours, she still found multiple spots where it wasn't as precise as she or Garuna wished and swiftly corrected them.
Sitting at the edge of the table, the locket in her hand so it could observe the process better, she strapped a belt around her stomach. The mana crystal was to be held in place by it and was already attached to it. The mana practically exploded outwards into the lines of Quicksilver.
For a short moment nothing happened. The runes were still filling up.
And then all the lines across her whole body started to warm. Some pressed into her skin, the ones cut into it already moving through her tissue, healing the flesh behind them.
But the heating didn't stop. It continued. Going beyond what was comfortable. Suddenly, the lines nearing her bones slowed down, some even halting their progress fully.
Her skin around some of exterior runes blistered and sizzled. Her heart stopped beating before resuming at thrice its normal speed, her muscles relaxed before cramping, in her cramped hand the fingernails dug deep into the skin. Liz registered none of it.
Her whole mind was filled with the fiery pain, emitting from across her whole upper body. Any rational thought impossible, she simply screamed.
But even that quickly ceased as another flare of pain caused Liz to pass out completely.