The plushy wiped her mouth with her trunk and took on a pensive expression.

“I am not quite sure.” She looked back at her master as if that answered his question.

“Want to elaborate on that. Like any ideas or maybe you could explain why you were so deflated after they overcame me?” He looked back at her with a probing gesture.

Silence stretched on for what felt like minutes as Sapphire went into deep contemplation.

“It might have something to do with the staff that attached itself to my trunk. I felt something deep in my core leave me and funnel into the gold wrappings.” She looked up to Drew with a serious gaze.

“The next shot I fired took on a beam structure instead of the normal projectile form I normally fire. It seemed to ash the monsters on contact while healing you in the process.”

“Hmmmm, so how did you do it?”

“When I was watching you get jumped by the shamblers, I started to fear the worse outcome possible and a substance inside of me moved to the wrapping, seemingly at the behest of my emotions.” Sapphire felt for the gold on her trunk and tried to remove it to no avail.

Her proboscis tried to pull it down only for the pressure to feel more akin to flesh than metal.

“I also believe it has fused with my flesh now. I am a cyborg organism.” She stuck her chest out and curled her trunk to show off the golden ornament.

Drew looked down at the sword in his grasp and to Nurgle’s hand where the pendant laid.

If Sapphire gained the ability of a healing death ray, what powers could they gain from the use of their artifacts?

A deafening tearing sound burst his concentration. The book Nurgle had been playing with had lost one of its pages thanks to the cyclops’s prodding.

“Stop that!” Drew snatched the book from his small hands and inspected the torn page. Nurgle wailed in protest while the contents of it stunned his master into silence.

Drew massaged his friend's head to calm him down as he inspected more of the book.

He could perfectly understand its contents.

The title read, “An Introduction to Artifact Usage and Its Impacts.”

The picture showed a double sided battle ax with the same iridescent sheen as the golden items they had received from the statue.

“Come look at this with me Sapphire. I think I just found all of our answers.” Drew sat against the wall with Sapphire in his lap and the book in his hands.

The pair read from page to page with the sunlight slowly falling behind the treetops in the distance, bringing their reading time to an end.

They had only made it a fourth of the way through the book before leaving it to rest for the next morning.

It was by no means a well written masterpiece that sought the entertain or educate in any clear fashion. The explanations were convoluted and archaic at the worst of times and just confusing at the best of times.

After readying what had to have been tens of thousands of words, Drew placed his face into his hands and groaned.

“I know right. Completely fascinating. The prose was interestingly measured and the figurative language spoke of a cultural base unaware to us. With this, by the time we finish this book I should be able to replicate the beam on smaller scales as well more reliably.” Sapphire seemed to be enamored with their new find.

Her master was much less impressed. The sheer volume of seemingly useless information and strange words stumped him endlessly while he read.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Mana bleed, hearticules, stringlers, evocation of thaum, and channeling of weltschmerz were just a few of the common trip ups he experienced. The book would require a lot of pondering for him to get any sort of deeper understanding.

His head aches with the strange information with sleep appearing to be the only way out.

His heavy eyelids closed under the dark night sky welcoming his consciousness into the recesses of his mind.

The strange nightmares of his last sleep did not return with the same viciousness that they once had.

The chirps that once haunted him seemed much less harsh and violent than they once had. The small gremlin that smashed rocks together looked much happier doing its repetitive task than last time.

His dreams took on a hopeful tune that he hadn’t experienced in a very long while.

Light green light filtered through his eyelids, waking him from the restful sleep that took him under.

He wiped his eyes clear and looked out over the lake in the distance.

“Ah master, I am glad you are awake. We must continue our studies on the book. I did some reflection on the information and believe the next piece of the puzzle lays in the upcoming pages.”

Drew glanced at Sapphire's intense gaze. She appeared to have been waiting for him to stir so they could get right to it. Her trunk held the book out towards her summoner, intent on continuing the study.

“Um. How about you continue reading through it? I'll catch up to you later. I think I have other stuff to do. Yeah. I need to learn how to take care of my equipment, sharpen my ax, and secure us some more food. We are just so busy ya know?”

He deflected as best he could in hopes of avoiding the painful study session that she wanted to partake in.

Drew grabbed the sleeping body of his smaller friend and hurried to the path downwards.

“You got this. We will be back in a few hours once we find some food.”

Nurgle hung awkwardly in his hand like a dead fish, completely without rigidity or movement. A few shakes to the limp barbarian startled him awake.

“We are going hunting unless you want to stay and read that book.” He continued to the smaller body of water with his rapidly stirring companion glancing for stuff to do.

The jungle was once again alive with life and prey to kill.

“Be safe master, I shall enlighten you once you return.” The plushy barely looked up as the pair fled from her.

The lake's sandy shores welcomed them down below. A new swarm of guests mingled about at shin height.

Some strange horse fly things flew around ow to the ground, only landing for short periods of time. The frogs were having a blast tearing these things to pieces unlike Nurgle who requested “uppies” once again to flee the swarm down below.

The smaller monsters seemed entirely pacified by the abundance of food, leaving the pair awkwardly standing around waiting for something to happen. It took a few minutes until they realized that they were low on the list of targets for them.

Light splashing noises brought Drew’s attention to a shallow part of the offshoot. A straggler of the blue dinosaurs that had run through the area days prior had been playing in the water like a kid splashing in mud.

The childish aura it gave off was quickly replaced with horror as its appendages came into view. The blue skin made its legs difficult to see in the water, but the arms had hands made of smaller arms with more gripping appendages on the ends.

The extremities seemed to continue on and on, ending in smaller and small arms until they were too small to see at a distance.

It seemed more in place at a freak show than in the wild.

Drew ducked into the bushes and approached it as quietly as possible. Once they were within 10 feet of the beast, everything went to shit.

They were not the only predator hunting these things. The pair had crouched in wait for the half horse monster to get closer to the shore only for them to stumble upon a bipedal wolf with prey mantis arms crouched to their left.

It had seemed completely focused on the creature it was hunting as it ignored their rude but stealthy intrusion.

A strange standoff between an uncertain Drew and clueless monster was ended by his cyclops friend. The small berserker used the arm that held him as a springboard and launched himself directly at the crouched beast.

The dual overhead swings did not immediately kill the abomination, but startled it enough to yelp and go flying off the ground.

Nurgle held onto the cleavers lodged into its body and was flung around as it tried to knock him off. The bushes around him erupted with life as the commotion startled the hidden pack of creatures around them.

The social creatures had been laying in wait to devour this horse thing only for Nurgle and him to stumble right into the middle of their hunt.

Drew thrusted his sword into the monster chest and ended its bloody suffering before its friends could come over to help.

+370 xp for defeating Betta Preying Canis [Summon small monster] has inherited the xp in your place. 5345/6400 xp

The pair stumbled into the clearing behind them to get a full scope of the enemy that began to approach.