The group continued to head north towards the wall of the underground world.  The farther they traveled, the more desolate it got.  As they neared the wall, rocks were more common than grass and soil ceased to exist.  The wall sloped up like mountains, and from a distance, you could see the various peaks as they slowly reached up and merged with the dome ceiling above.

The directions Jude had gotten from the bandit den ended once they got to the aquifers.  So now Jude was looking for a vantage point where he could figure out their next move.

Along the way, Jude spoke to Cairfray about her new magic.  She wouldn't say where it came from, but she was more than willing to talk about the magic itself.  Jude decided not to pry into her secrets.

Even after so much time had passed, she was still fanatical about Jude.  She said, “This ring contains knowledge about various magical techniques.  I have been afraid to try it up until now as the source could be dubious.  The only skill I have access to is the , which is an invisibility magic.  But it seems to temporarily erase memories of the person or items that it conceals.   The other magic’s inside the ring I have yet to access.  I’m not sure what exactly I need to do to access them.”

Jude was quite surprised, the main weakness of invisibility magic was being seen while casting it.  For a short period of time whoever saw you would know the general location of where you were, and all it would take was an area of effect attack to break it.  But if the person forgot you were even there, how great would that be?  Even if someone sneak attacked you, one and you could sneak attack them back!

And this was just the first spell of the ring!  What could other superpowered magics be hiding in it?  Unlocking it would be a major task, not to mention understanding how it stored such knowledge.

“Perhaps it is like other skills. You have to rank it up before the next one unlocks,” Jude suggested.

“I’m not sure if it has a rank.  I’ve been using it continuously for several days, and I haven’t received even a Rank I notification.”

“Interesting, perhaps it has something to do with the ring itself.  Do you mind if I look at it?”

“No, please do,” Cairfray didn’t want to reveal her family history, but she also respected Jude a lot.  If there were any adverse effects from using this ring, she wanted to know and knew that Jude was the best bet in finding that out.

Jude took the ring from Cairfray and began to use his on it.  An explosion of information hit him, and he fell to the ground from the shock.  But he tightly kept hold of the ring and continued to analyze it.  could tell him the properties of an item and it would show the item's internal structure.   A rock, for example, would show him properties such as mineral concentration, but wouldn’t have any internal structure because it wasn’t a magical item.  This ring was very magical.  Its properties were extensive, and its internal structure was vaster than anything else Jude had ever seen.

Most magical items created by people have a few magical ruins or glyphs inscribed into them externally but would show up inside them through .  Items created by the didn't have external runes or glyphs but had an internal structure similar to the Modicuit.  However, this ring had a combination of ruins, glyphs, and skill circuitry!  Jude had never seen such a combination before.  And it wasn’t just a few lines like most items.  It was vast enough that could compete with the Wizard classes area inside the Modicuit.  And the exterior was completely free of markings.

Whoever created this ring was far more advanced than Jude could make even with scripts.  He even suspected that whoever created it might have been a Spell Analyst as well.  And if they weren’t a Spell Analyst then they were a class that shared some of his skill trees.

After a few moments, Jude opened his eyes with everyone surrounding him.  There were worried expressions on everyone’s faces.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I was just a little surprised at how complicated this ring was.”

He quickly got up to show everyone that he was okay.  Then he handed the ring back to Cairfray.  She still had a worried expression on her face; it was her ring after all.  But he smiled to reassure her.

“You have a very fantastic ring here.  Your skill can probably only be cast while you are wearing it.  I looked inside, and it seems to have something like a Modicuit built into it.  How to progress in unlocking new magic from it will be up to you to figure out.”

“Would you like to have it?” She asked.  She knew that a treasure like this was extraordinary and a reasonable response would be to horde it.  But she viewed Jude as something greater than herself and had no problems giving something worthwhile to him without a second thought.

“No, that won’t do, you need to keep it.” Jude told her, “I don’t know where you got this from, but I won’t take something like this away from you.  Especially a thing this precious.”

Cairfray blushed, only her Jude would say and do something like this.  She said, “Then I will study it properly and make sure to unlock all the skills in it.”

“Good, that’s the proper attitude!  But if you don’t mind I would like to borrow it every once and a while to see how it was made.  Its structure is simply amazing, and I can’t imagine how it was constructed.”

Cairfray giggled, “Of course, anytime!”

Ellie and Wen’s faces turned sour seeing Cairfray’s expression.  Jude sighed in his heart.  He knew that these girls had a crush on him, but he didn’t feel right pursuing a relationship right now.   His body was still a sixteen or seventeen-year-old.  And from experience, relationships at this age never ended well. 

***

They soon started climbing the mountains, and the world seemed to turn gray.  Nothing grew here, not even moss and the light was dimmer as the that hung from the cavern above grew fewer in number.

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They hadn’t seen a wisp of an animal either.  Not that Jude was sure if there were any normal animals down here.  Perhaps the grubs that the feed them were considered a local animal, but from his knowledge, larvae usually change into other bigger bugs.  But in this world, who knows what would happen.

During their trip, Krinn began grumbling about his lost items back in the .  But Jude ignored him as there was not anything he could do about it.  If anyone should complain it should be the girls, they usually had more necessities than guys did.

Finally, they reached a high peak.  The ground leveled off a short way before it merged with the ceiling.  Even after climbing for several hours, Jude was surprised at how high they had gotten. 

Looking out over the Arkess Aquifer, he could see the still burning .  He wasn’t sure what those huts were made with now.  It seemed like they would burn forever.  Past the village was a grand view of trees and hills.  Massive columns extended out of the ground every so often that held up the ceiling.  The columns were made out of the same porous rock that they had seen when they first arrived here.  They looked like works of art as the holes formed graceful arches and beams with a natural twist.

Jude wondered what this place looked like when it was healthy and whole.  The sickly trees of the forest reminded him of skeletal fingers reaching up to the sky, and the barren hills looked unforgiving and harsh.  However, he did see one green thing.  It was a large tree on the other side of the forest before the hills took shape.

This tree was bigger than all those around it by three to four times.  It seemed to defy the harsh environment and live life in glory.

Beyond that tree and in the hills Jude noticed something else that was strange.  One hill appeared to have large glyphs imprinted on to it.  Ellie knew much more about glyphs than he did.  As a crafter, she used glyphs to make magical items.

He asked her, “Ellie, do you see that hill over there?  Are those glyphs?”

Ellie took a moment to find the hill.  She squinted her eyes and then drew in a breath.  She said, “I think that is a mana glyph!  The others I’m not sure about… Could this be a sort of control node?”

“It might be; they were trying to create an area that was over level 30 so that they could advance.  The best way to accomplish their goals would be a spawning area.”

Jude knew about spawning areas with the help of Anthea.  Spawning areas could spread to new territories, but this was something different.  Most likely it was something similar to what Murl had done.  He created a dungeon from the remains of Grimwar, and it essentially was a spawning area, though it operated by slightly different rules.  But all of that was speculation; they would have to go to the giant glyphs to find out exactly what was going on.

Krinn started coming up with a plan, “We should head towards that large tree, that way we won’t get lost in the forest.  That tree seems big enough that we should be able to see it anywhere in that forest.  As long as we make to the tree in a straight direction, we will know how to orient ourselves to get to the hill with the markings.  From here it seems to be about three hills over.  Oh and look, there is a dark valley next to it.  So that can be another landmark, then look there…”

Krinn went on for a few minutes pointing out the different landmarks they could use to find their way or use in case they got lost.

“Let’s make camp here tonight,” Jude suggested since it was getting late.

They had lost some of their supplies due to the burning of the village, but still had plenty left between Jude’s and Ellie’s .

***

The others were talking and eating around the fire like .  Before eating Jude had asked Ellie to make him a simple ring that he could test with.  So while everyone else ate and relaxed Jude tested out some theories he had about Cairfray’s ring.

Using the ring showed that it was a bronze ring and nothing else.  It was completely blank and could be enchanted.  Bronze, however, was a relatively weak material and couldn’t flow magic power very well.  Any enchantments he could do on it would not be very strong.

Jude had attempted to enchant a few objects back in Longdale with his