Before Erik could even grasp anything else about the situation, the skeletal arm collapsed.

He was having a hard time trying to figure out what was happening. Was this the manifestation of a wild Undead or...

"Draugr weaver," he whispered, and his eyes widened.

He looked down at his shaking hands—rough, bloodied, and dirty.

Was he the cause? Had he stirred the dead? Had he used his own Talent for that?

Based on the vague intuition he was getting about his Ability and Skill, and the name of his Talent... it was possible. In fact, he was starting to be convinced that this was the case.

He fell backwards on the ground and stared at the gray, gloomy clouds with a wide smile, which grew with each heartbeat. He burst into laughter, the feeling was exhilarating. He had just started Awakening his Talent and he had already killed a Nilgrim—something that he had feared since he was a child.

This one was far weaker, and definitely of lower Grade and Rank than the one he had seen his parents fight, but it was still a monster.

How many times did he dream of this moment? How many nights had he stayed awake, imagining how he would do it?

Granted, it was suppose to be more glorious, and he was suppose to handle it with more valor, and cunning instead of flailing about like the village fool, but he had done it nonetheless! And on top of that he had done it while not being a fully established Refiner.

He wondered how his parents would have reacted to the news. Would they be proud? He would never know...

Slightly sobered up from his high, Erik felt a strange sensation, like he was being submerged in cool spring water. Invigorating. Then a thought occurred to him.

He sat up with groan, he had almost forgotten about his injuries, lifted up his shirt and observed his Talent Rune. It had grow a bit, appeared a little brighter, more intricate and more complete. His gazed moved to his forearms and hands, and it was the same for his Ability and Skill Runes. But he also saw that a new Blood Rune had appeared. When he focused on it, knowledge gently surfaced in his mind.

Spawned Aberration, Shackled King's Mischief.

Huh... so it was this weak, Erik though, as his face fell a little.

Nilgrim monsters had Ranks and Grades like humans. It being at the First-Rank, Spawned, was expected since Erik was in a First-Rank Whisper.

As for Grades, the hierarchy among them was as followed: starting with a mindless Aberration, followed by Monster, then Eerie, Fright, Dread, Horror, Terror and finally to the mythical Nightmare. Most First-Rank Whispers were almost always populated by Aberrations and Monsters, rarely with an Eerie or at worst a Dread mixed in.

Given Erik's ordeal, he hoped that he might have killed something stronger. However, when he gave it a second thought, he realized that would have been absurd. He was getting way ahead of himself. If it was anything stronger, he would have surely died.

So he decided to still count this as an incredible achievement.

The first thing he had to do was to take care of was his injuries. Now that the excitement had passed he quickly became aware that he was wounded and bruised all over. Aside from a bunch of shallow cuts and scrapes, there was the gash on the left side of his torso. It did not appear life treating as it had almost stopped bleeding on its own, but it required attention.

He was thankful for having the foresight to pack everything he needed to treat his the injuries.

Overall, he was in a much better condition than he expect to be after his first fight with a Nilgrim. This was most likely also due to his budding Talent. His soul along with every aspect of his body had improved.

With his injuries tended to he then quickly moved to the most important thing. Rune Bearers acquired one Ability Rune and one Skill Rune at each Rank. And going by the vague intuition he had of the half-formed Blood Runes on the back of his hands, that was the case for him as well. His guess was that it was his Ability that he had used earlier, since they usually required active use while Skills were generally used passively.

So if he had just used his for the first time, then he definitely wanted to see if he could do it again.

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Erik stood up, and walked over to the corpse that had killed the Nilgrim. He wasn't sure what to do exactly. So he tried to follow what his instincts told him. He lifted his hand, trying to will the skeleton to move. Nothing happened.

"Awaken."

Nothing again.

"Rise?"

It didn't move.

He kept on trying different things, but none of them worked.

He then thought back to what had happened during the fight, and an idea came to him. Kneeling down he touched the bones, willing them to move. Finally, something did happen.

Teal mist seeped from his hand and into the remains. He saw thread-like, almost imperceptible, tendrils connect them together. Tiny, teal, sparks flashed into existing inside the eye sockets of the skull. Then it just lay there.

"Erm... hey?"

The skull of the skeleton moved and directed its deathly gaze at Erik, not doing anything else.

"Looked over there." He pointed in the opposite direction.

Then Undead shifted its sight where Erik was pointing.

"Wave," he ordered.

It followed his command again.

He then told it to get up. The skeleton shook for a bit, but the sparks disappeared.

It became a pile of bones again.

Is this it?

Fighting off the feeling of being let down, he tried it again. But this time he felt lightheaded.

Wait... I am using my Ability or Skill to raise the Undead and like other Rune Bearers I am using essence to do that. This must be my limit on how many times I can raise one before I need to recover, he though.

Shaking off the lightheadedness he tried more commands with the Undead, but it barely yielded any different outcomes. Aside from moving for a bit, it didn't do anything else before collapsing.

Erik came to two conclusions.

The first was that, because his Ability and Skill Runes were not fully formed, they were too weak, which led to the creature falling apart.

The second was that, he could fully command the Draugr he raised, which gave some... interesting things to consider.

What would his Ability look like if it was fully developed? How far could he take it?

Although the Draugr was currently really weak and not that useful, he did not want to judge too quickly what his Talent was capable of. Life had been tough ever since he came to Skulheim. And through his experiences so far, although he wouldn't be disappointed if he turned out to be some sort of melee warrior, he knew he was not cut out to be swinging a sword in the tick of battle.

His parents had trained and prepared him as best as they could, while he was still a child... but they simply did not have enough time to fully prepare him. Still even back then he remembered that his father struggled to get him to swing his wooden sword correctly.

So he had hoped that maybe he would inherit some of his mother's extraordinary aptitude for the mystical practices. Perhaps some sort of Talent to trow fireballs or ice spikes. Raising the dead... well, not exactly what he had in mind, but maybe it could turn into something strong. Even if the Draugr were weak on their own, if he had enough he might be able to make up for it. That is if he could raise more than one, he wasn't even sure about that.

The corpse of the abomination had no reaction when he tried to raise it. He guessed that perhaps it did not work on Nilgrim or he could only raise human skeletons.

He also tried raising the second guard, but nothing happened to it. With this one, Erik surmised that it was most likely too damaged.

Yet, there were just too many questions and possibilities. To learn more he would have to experiment further when he got the chance to learn more, for now that was all he could manage.

He looked back at the corpse of the Nilgrim, there was something else he had to do now. Something unpleasant but absolutely vital!

He went to fetch his hatchet and with a deep sign, he walked back over to corpse of the of the monster.

Greed crept into his eyes and pushed the reluctance away.

Each Nilgrim had a Blood Rune that was an Essence Rune, even the lowest Rank and Grade ones. But those needed to be... excavated.

After a lot of chopping, vomiting and cursing he finally cleaved it out. The Blood Rune had crystallized, giving off a soft white glow. These were often referred to as Rune Crystals, or Blood Crystals.

When a Nilgrim died, their Power Rune turned into a Blood Crystal. And this was the primary type of currency between Rune Bearers.

There was a constant need for them.

A content smile spread across Erik's face, he barely held himself back from daydreaming about what he could buy with it. However, there was another way it could be used, he could absorb it...

Normally, it would have been much better for him to sell it, and buy himself gear and tutelage. But given his circumstances, he had to prioritize any possible increases to his strength. So he crushed it, and saw the essence inside turn into mist and seep into his main Talent Rune. Then all three of his Talent Runes—the Ability, Skill and main one—grew brighter, becoming even more complete.

Another gentle, invigorating wave washed over him, melting his disappointment about having to sacrifice the Blood Crystal.

The Blood Runes of a Talent needed to be saturated when striving to prepare for the next Rank. It varied from one Refiner to another, but it was usually done by killing. However there also another way that tended to be common. It was to use Blood Crystals. So Erik assumed that he could speed up his current essence absorption with the Rune Crystal, and he was correct.

"Now this is much better."

I wonder if there would be any changes to my Abilit—

There was a splashing sound from a few dozen feet away, startled Erik looked around, but realized it was only a branch that had fallen off a tree into a puddle.

Right... I better leave this place before something comes here attracted by the noise and smell of blood, he though.

He gathered his things and searched the corpses. But he found nothing.

The others probably took their rations and anything of value they might have carried.

Their armors were too damaged, aside from those there was only the broken sword that was left. Erik decided that it would weight him down so he left it.

He then made his way towards a particularly large tree he saw some distance away. He needed to get a lay of the land and orientate himself.