Not ten minutes after Yuriko started the circulation pattern for Anima Refinement, the alarm stone sent a mental beep that startled her out of her meditation. The Animus strands naturally completed a circulation pattern before dissipating. Ten minutes was enough for most of the larger cracks to mend, which meant she was back in fighting form.

Yuriko got up to her seat and fingered her combat knife and the Plasma Lancet. One flaw with her Animus blades was that she couldn’t use it without glowing like a beacon and if she hoped to remain hidden, then that just wouldn’t do. Normally she wouldn’t care to do so, but…well, she wanted to rest.

Her alarm stone was quite rudimentary: it only sensed an intruder when it came within ten paces of it. By the time Yuriko got up, whatever it was had already reached the stone. Yuriko headed the other way and retrieved the other alarm stone. The loss of one was of little consequence. It was something she’d carved on a river stone and she could easily replace it. She only carried them around to spare her the trouble of carving runescript on the ground every time she camped.

Click click click.

Even as she retreated, numerous clicking sounds, from the antmen’s claws, followed along behind her. Yuriko held out a finger and channeled a couple of lumens worth of Animus on the tip, filling it with Radiant energy. It created a globe of light that she further shaped into a cone, such that the majority of the illumination was directed at the front. She hurried, hoping to find a branching path.

It took a few minutes before she found one and headed into the left hand one. This one sloped slightly upwards but that wasn’t too strange. The tunnel she’d been into before sloped up and down even as it twisted left and right. Currently, she had no idea if she was still at the same elevation as the sinkhole’s floor.

She took another left branch when she came up to another fork. It took about a dozen forks in the tunnel before the sound of the antmen’s pursuit faded away. By now, the tunnel’s composition had changed from pack earth to stone.

“Huh. What’s this?”

The tunnels before had rounded walls, but the one she found herself in were straighter, more manmade. It reminded her of the tunnels under Rumiga City. There weren’t any light panels but she did see weird metal rings embedded on the walls at regular intervals of five paces.

She touched one of the rights, feeling the grittiness of the rusted metal. When she put a bit more pressure, it started to flake. She dusted her hand and moved on. The light she had was slowly dissipating and she estimated she had a couple of hours worth before it was gone. The Animus was easy to replace but the Radiant energy was not. She shouldn’t have wasted it, now that she thought about it, but it had been almost instinctive.

She ended up in a smallish cavern with a few stalactites and stalagmites. There was a small puddle of water in the corner and quite a few bugs crawling in the dirt. From the tunnel she came from, a cobblestone path led to another tunnel off to the side. Yuriko moved inside the cave, scanning it with her light, before determining that there were no other exits, well nothing big enough to fit her or the ants anyway.

She placed an alarm stone near enough both tunnels that if anything went through she would be notified. Then she found a secluded nook, placed another stone, then continued her Anima Refinement.

This time, she completed the refinement before the stone disturbed her. A set of stalagmites concealed her from easy view, so she didn’t move. She readied herself to fight if she had to. When the sounds of movement faded away, she crept back to the alrm stone and fed more of her Animus into it.

Grrrglee!

“Haah,” she muttered as her tummy growled.

She no longer had any meat jerkies, vegetables, or fruit. The redbones were her source of nourishment and she had about thirty left. Thirty days. She’d need to find another food source soon.

“Humans should be able to live without food for a while, but I’m still a growing girl.”

She began setting up a cooking pit. She didn’t have any fuel but the Neophyte Rune Scribe had a set of runescript lines that converted Animus into heat. She rarely used it since it consumed too much of her Animus but she had little choice now.

Unlike the alarm stones, this one had to be drawn properly. If she carved a rounded stone that was as wide as the length of her forearm then she could have a portable version, but that would be more bothersome than drawing the runescript.

“I really didn’t expect how useful being a Rune Scribe is.”

She’d memorised the runescript because it was a requirement to graduate but she had really preferred training her body and skills instead.

Her condenser canteen was full. She had fifteen bamboo canisters left. Half of them were empty. She’d only etched five with condenser runescript but in her impromptu flight, she only managed to keep three. And she forgot to infuse them with Animus.

She sighed. Well, now she rectified it.

She dumped the water from the canteen into the stew pot, infused the campfire runescript with enough Animus to keep it running for an hour which should be enough to dissolve the redbone. It took nearly a fifth of her reserves to do it though.

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She kept a wary eye out while the stew cooked. After ten minutes of nothing, she settled back down to rest. She closed her eyes and used Recovery on her body. The bruise from the antman’s blow had turned a nasty yellow, but with judicious use, it faded to brown, then returned to her natural skin tone. Small aches and pains, from muscle tears, especially after being juggled about by the Skybeast for so long, healed. She felt stronger than ever.

The delicious scent of the stew brought her out of her meditation and she gulped down her dinner. Heat radiated from her belly, reaching all the way down to her toes. She hummed happily as she patted her tummy. Oddly enough, the campfire runescript continued to burn long past the hour she expected it to. She broke the lines and a puff of remnant Animus puffed out.

“Well, time to find a way out of here.” A yawn escaped her lips. “After a nap.”

Her sleep was devoid of dreams and she felt restless. She jolted awake when the alarm stone shot her a warning every time something passed by. She glared at the tunnel entrances. The bioluminescent moss barely gave enough light to make out silhouettes.

After the fifth time she woke up, she grabbed the stones and moved them a bit further from the tunnels. This way, it would only wake her up if anything came deeper into the cavern. She still felt restless though and after a few hours of tossing and turning, she got up and grabbed her gear.

She continued down the tunnel, following the ones that felt promising. Yuriko wondered if she was going around in circles. She thought of marking the tunnels but worried that it would only lead the ants to her. Still, she was sure she hadn’t trodden back into tunnels she’d already moved in, that was, until she rounded a curve and found herself back in the same cavern.

Blinking in confusion, she studied the layout and determined that she came back using the same tunnel entrance she went out from. With a sigh, she backtracked to the original tunnel. Maybe she should just climb the sinkhole?

She’d gotten tired of avoiding the antmen. She clenched a fist and cracked a knuckle. The next one she saw she’d kick into a wall.

Hours later, she was still in the tunnels. And now she knew she was lost.

“Oh, Ancestors!’ she groaned.

Maybe she should follow the ants back? She hadn’t actually seen any of them today. To calm herself down, she sat against the wall and summoned Fri’Avgi on her lap. The Anima Telum started glowing gold as soon as it appeared, banishing the darkness. She stroked the blunted blade with her fingers and delved into it with her Animus, following the lines inside.

She hadn’t really allocated much time to exploring Fri’Avgi’s mysteries. After she traced the three essential paths inside it, the ones that allowed her to sheath the artefact in her Anima, she had put it aside to focus on her other studies.

After setting the alarm stones around her, she fed her Animus strands into Fri’Avgi and traced.

She found out earlier that it was no use forcing her strands into a specific direction. No, what she had to do was to flood her Animus into it and let it follow the lines naturally. The cardinal lines were easily filled simply because they were the widest and most straightforward. Then, as the cardinals were saturated, her Animus entered thinner and more intricate lines.

Once you’ve filled Fri’Avgi’s runic lines completely, you will become her true master.

Damien instructed her back then. The main trouble was that her Animus reserves were nowhere near enough to fill the artefact. Fri’Avgi was longer than she was tall and the blade was several inches wide. The central gem probably housed the artefact spirit, but her previous attempts at bypassing the protective winds had resulted in failure the entire time. Further, she didn’t think she’d ever have enough Animus to fill Fri’Avgi.

Knights had a cap of two hundred lumens. Knight-Captains had two hundred and fifty. Knight Commanders had the same limit, so did a Knight Dominus. That was common knowledge. After Knight-Captain, the Anima had reached saturation point and the only way to improve was to change the quality of their reserve. Hence why Knights were incredibly common, Knight-Captains a little less so, and those above were so rare that a plane like Rumiga only had a handful.

A handful out of a population that reached millions.

Completing the cardinal tracing had taken half of her reserves. The only saving grace was that since she didn't need to impart an Intent into it, she could take the Animus back. And it didn’t hurt to get to know the artefact better.

Yuriko sank her Animus into it, letting her consciousness be drawn in as well. Her perception of the outside world dimmed and she now relied on the alarm stones to wake her. The cardinal lines quickly took her in, and no sooner had she filled them than her Animus started to seep into the branches.

Interestingly, she had the weapon slightly tilted, with the tip set lower than the hilt. Her Animus spread out from the cardinal line that led to the very end of it, as if it were water and gravity held sway.

It spread out into twelve branches. The movement was excruciatingly slow, as though those lines were filled with debris and her Animus was slowly clearing it out. Much like how soap would dissolve oils into water.

Hmmm…

That debris was expelled from her Animus as soon as it returned to her Anima. If she just let it be, it would take a long while before it got transported out. So she tugged at the edges and pulled it back willfully. Except when she did, the Animus had been stained. The concentration of filth was too thick. With a sigh, she dissipated that bit and let the slow dissolution happen rather than rushing it.

Well, she didn’t need to watch it while it’s happening. This was boring. She exuded her remaining Animus above her palm and practiced her braiding technique. Master Alfein’s methods and the Golden Silhouette’s were remarkably similar.

However, what she couldn’t forget was how the silhouette had shown her a perfected strike. The braided strands created runescript when it was executed. The problem was that she didn’t recognize the words and the silhouette hadn’t repeated that demonstration again!

She was tempted to experiment with the runescript she knew now, but other than alarm, heat, and cold, she didn’t know much else. And those lines were quite long. How many strands would she need to braid them? Heat and cold she could already mimic with her Animus even without the runescript. The concepts were simple, honestly. Fire was hot, ice was cold. She just had to impart that need into her Animus and that was it.

As for alarm, what would that even do if she merged it into her sword dance? Proximity? Would it react to enemy attacks and direct her weapon to defend? Or maybe it would allow her blow to avoid an enemy’s parry? The alarm stone blared its warning when things entered the detection range, and the closer it was to the source, the more intense the warning. If she had that function in her blade would it give her better feedback on how close she was to striking?

Hmmm, perhaps not so useless then. Lost in her reverie, she didn’t notice that she’d spent the greater part of the day sitting there, or that her tummy was growling. The alarm stones were silent, so she was in no imminent danger. Damien was quiet too. Perhaps he didn’t want to waste what little Radiant energy they had.

After another hour, the call of her growling tummy had grown too insistent to ignore. So Yuriko retracted her Animus and put away Fri’Avgi. She sought another cavern and dug a campfire inside, cooked her redbone stew, then spent the rest of the time with her evening ablutions.