With a clack, another torch dropped down to join the others. All their ever burning heads together to form a campfire. Several rocks ripped from the earthen wall of the Clutch Mother's lair were circling it. Dren stabbed a chunk of the Clutch mother meat on his still barely holding together short sword before basically sitting the meat in the fire. Ten hours, it had been ten hours since killing the last boss. In that time he had finally found the fourth rune. It had been in one of the many empty rooms. The only reason he even thought to double-check it was the room lacked any torches. It was the only completely dark room he had found. When carrying a torch in there it always seemed to struggle pushing back the darkness. Eventually, in the back corner of the room. He found the shallow scratches on a brick that formed the Profane Rune of Darkness.

It seemed it was another debuff rune. If attached to a weapon it did no additional damage but added a stacking darkness debuff. It numbed the senses of those afflicted. Not just sight or even sound but all five senses. With enough stacks, one wouldn’t even be able to feel being stabbed anymore. On armor, it would allow an aura of darkness. It actually wasn’t meant as a stealth booster. But it did sound like it produced an actual pale of darkness that would hang around them. But melee attacks or just being too close would inflict the debuff on enemies. All and all it sounded like a great rune, if with a bit of an edgy name. In truth, he had found that rune only about two hours after the fight.

The last eight hours had been spent looking for the last one. Despite all his efforts, and checking everywhere he could think of. It was nowhere to be found. With a sigh, he sat down to check what extra effect the darkness rune would have on his profane mask. Each of the runes seemed to do something extra when applied to that mask. As he opened his enchanting menu and moved his mask to it. Something caught his attention. A silvery glow shone unusually brightly from the fire in front of him. When he was in his enchanting menu the rest of the world lost color and became a bit foggy. Squinting his mouth dropped open. Closing his menu he swallowed the swear he was about to spew as he snatched up one of the torches. It almost knocked the meat skewer away. Ren standing stiff as a board across the fire from him shifted as her eyes tracked the meat. Her stomach let out another loud grumble.

Holding the torch a bit too close to his face he squinted and finally let out a string of swears. Carved into the ever burning torch head was a rune. With surprising difficulty, he managed to extinguish the torch. Only for it to reignite. Snuffing it a second time he quickly jabbed his finger on the rune, ignoring the burning sensation it caused.

Profane Rune of Fire Acquired. Dren let out a hiss of excitement as Ren standing across from him looked down at the charring meat. Then up at him. Then at the meat. Then up at him. Repeating with more speed as the meat started smoking and turning black. Dren only noticed her actions when she made an odd mewling sound. It was the first sound she had made. If he ignored her stomach growling for the last hour. “Shit.” He grabbed the hilt of the short sword and yoinked the meat out of the fire. Not even pausing he stuffed the hilt into her hand as he turned back to his system messages.

Profane Runes Acquired 5/5

Congratulations. You have completed the Profane Ruins Enchanter quest.

Calculating rewards.

Profane Rune of Space acquired.

Almost bouncing with excitement he turned to Ren. “I did it…” His excitement trailed off as the girl stopped eating. The meat had been charred on the outside and bloody on the inside. She was halfway through eating straight into the middle of the hunk of skewered meat. “No no no stop that. Gross.”

He reached for the meat and to his surprise she took a step back. Hugging the hunk of half charred half bloody meat to her chest. That lasted only a split second before she held it out to him, with an embarrassed look.

“You can have it back when it is cooked.” Dren said as he took the meat and set it properly over the fire. He had no experience cooking but he knew that just sitting it in the flames wasn’t the way to cook it. It took arranging the rocks a bit before he got it right, he thought it was right at least. Then from his kneeling position, he glanced at Ren that was once again just staring at the meat. “Your face.” He used the filthy cloak she wore to wipe her blood and grease-smeared face. “Annd I forgot you are naked.” He sighed. “I’ll try my primitive leather working later.” An idea struck him. During the last ten hours, he had dug into the menus a bit and found sub-menus for his companion. They were well hidden and almost impossible to find. By that, he meant their tabs were on the side of the system menu, not the top like normal. Either way, he found she had a number of skills.

Advanced Stealth was one. It did kinda erk him that she had better stealth than him… The assassin.

She also had Silk Creation. Web weaving. And a few other skills. The Silk Creation one let her make silk strands while the Web Weaving let her well weave it.

“Ren.” He said to get the girl to look at him instead of the cooking meat. “Can you make some silk for me?” She lifted her hand without a word and silk started dangling from her fingertips.

“Nice. But I need it thicker.” He held his fingers apart to give her an idea of a decently thick string. She just looked at his hand a moment before both her hands moved together. Her fingers and hands moved in a fluid almost hypnotic manner. As if her fingers were dancing amongst each other. As he watched slowly the almost invisible strands of silk were woven into a decently thick string. “Nice. Now what about cloth? Can you make cloth?” She looked at him and tilted her head. He grabbed his silken cloak while letting it return to pure white. “Cloth.” She just stared at it for a while then nodded hesitantly.

“Perfect. Make me about his much string twice over.” He held his arms apart. “Then just make as much cloth as you can.” She nodded and he sat back down to open his enchanting menu.

The profane rune of fire did much as he expected. It would allow a weapon to burn with flames adding some fire damage. For armor, it would provide fire resistance. The space rune tho was where the big reward was. It allowed space manipulation. When he thought about applying it to a weapon he got weird thoughts that just didn’t make sense to him. Same for armor. It was one of those times when the information was right at the tip of his tongue. But he couldn’t spit it out. Still, the real test. And the one he was more excited about was thinking of adding it to his backpack. That, that gave him information. “YES!” Dren jumped up, his arms in the air with excitement. “Item Box confirmed.”

Looking down he found Ren crouched over the meat. “Yeah, I think it is probably good to eat.” She looked at him a second as if processing his words then took up the meat before nibbling on it while looking at him. When he didn’t say anything she started tearing into it. It would have almost been cute, if not for the small mandibles starting to poke out of her mouth as she savagely tore into the meat.

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Dren turned his attention back to his enchanting. There was just one problem. The rune cost a thousand health, mana, and stamina to use. While he could afford to do that. Nothing he had could come close to handling that rune. With a sigh his eyes moved to the piles of imbued leather. “A leather bag or something shouldn’t be too hard right? One might say primitive even.” Taking up his dagger he got to work. Ren had finished scarfing the meat skewer down and licking the blade clean. Sat back on her haunches and started spinning thread.

*****

Dren sighed as he held up the square pouch he had made. It had a little flap and even a claw from one of the smaller ruins lizard for a crude button. The leather had been cinched together with silk thread woven by Ren. It actually turned out much better than he expected. Looking almost like a proper pouch. He had even gotten a level up in the skill for it. Glancing over he checked on Ren. She was again making another skewer of lizard to roast. Making thread consumed her mana. To the point, she had collapsed with a mana headache before making a foot of the silk thread. Since it appeared she didn’t have meditation and she still seemed hungry. He sent her to get and cook more lizard on her own. Completely so she wouldn’t stop standing right next to him watching his every move while she regenerated mana. Nope, definitely not.

To his surprise, she seemed happy to do the cooking. She had even continued doing so after she seemed full. He let her as he figured the food could be stored for later. Hopefully, his storage item would keep it fresh. That thought had been one with pure glee in it. He had tried to feed her one of the survival biscuits but she flat our refused to eat it. He wasn’t sure if it was that she couldn’t or just they really were horrible. Even he had eaten some of the charred meat and thought it was better if a bit on the greasy side.

With the pouch done, he held his breath as he opened his enchanting menu. Dragging the space rune over he got an error. The bag only had a capacity of five hundred. Dren sighed. It had been a long shot he knew. But still. Checking to see which rune he wanted to put on it while he was in the enchanting menu. He discovered something, something great. When he mentally dragged over the durability rune, its cost went from three hundred to one fifty. Focusing on the change he realized that he got a reduction in the cost of applying a rune if the base material was imbued with it. For a moment Dren wanted to bash his head into the wall. He had forgotten that bonus with the skill. It hadn’t been important before. He quickly got over it though, washing it away with pure excitement.

With a huge grin on his face, he jumped up in triumph again. “All is not lost.” He glanced at Ren who was looking up at him even as her hands continued skewering meat chunks. Her blank expression met his grinning one. “Trust me. It really is worth celebrating.” Turning around he scrambled to find a piece of unimbued leather. Snatching up one he tossed it aside to grab a piece of the boss leather instead. With that, he sat down with the dark green lightly scaled leather to imbue it with his profane rune of space. Filling the rune was easy enough. Well as easy as draining a thousand of each resource was. But once he started trying to imbue the actual leather it got hard. He wasn’t sure if it was the rune or using the boss leather but it felt like it took far too much to make any headway. His pools drained as far down as he felt safe he collapsed back to lay panting from low stamina and groaning with a mana headache. A moment later a small hand patted his head as he lay face down on some hides.

“Thanks Ren.” He grunted. The patting just continued. Sitting up he sighed. “Keep making thread and some cloth when you get done. You can keep cooking between then. I’m going to use my skills to restore my resources then keep going.” Dren half explained half ordered. The girl just got up and went back to the fire.

Sucking in a deep breath Dren got started.

*****

Dren wasn’t sure how long it had taken to fully imbue the leather. But it was multiple cycles of restoring and imbuing. Even then, when finished he was completely exhausted. Draining his pools repeatedly like that just took it out of him. With hardly a word to Ren, he curled up and went to sleep.

Waking up he stretched and heard the popping of joints. Glancing around he found Ren still crouched at the fire. “I guess I wasn’t asleep that long. Did you…” He stopped talking. Beside her were several loose rolls of thread and a pile of what looked like silk handkerchiefs. There were also several of his rawhides on the other side of her. All stacked up with a mountain of cubes of cooked meat. “Holy hell.” He hadn’t paid her much attention while he was doing the imbuing. She had left several times for more meat but just how many trips had she made? Still, there hadn’t been THAT much when he fell asleep. At least he didn’t think so.

“How long was I asleep.” He asked and Ren looked at him. Even with her eyes on him, her hands kept moving. She was using his dagger to perfectly cube the well-marbled dark red lizard meat before skewering it. She didn’t look any different but something had definitely changed. Using Identity he shot up to his feet. “How did you get to level three already?” Opening the menu he looked for an explanation and found it in her skills.

Her Silk Creation skill, web weaving had reached level three each. But stranger still. She had acquired and already leveled the cooking skill to level two.

“Do monster skills level up that much faster than ours?” He asked. But shook his head. That didn’t feel right. Another idea hit him and he opened his menu to focus on his two competency stats. Sure enough, he got the feeling she was sharing them with him.

“Well fuck me. You also don’t count as a party member for the solo portion.” He said both excited and a bit confused. Still, that meant she was getting a fifty percent increase in skill gains and experience in the dungeon. Dren was almost positive skill ranks didn’t give him experience but as best he could figure. They would for a monster. “That is almost a cheat. You get experience from kills and skills.” Ren was still watching him even as she moved the skewered meat over the flame.

Shaking his head he just sighed. Examining the silk items next he used identify and was surprised. About a third of both the string and silk cloths were rank two. With a few of each being rank three. He picked them up, Ren watching his every movement but making no protests as he took them. “Don’t worry. I am going to put these to good use.” Reclaiming his dagger and the space-imbued leather he got to work.

*****

Holding up his second pouch Dren couldn’t stop grinning. He glanced at Ren who was again weaving more rank three threads. “What do you think? Pretty damn nice. Right?” If the first one had almost looked like a proper pouch. This one definitely was one. The dark green scales on the leather had turned silver when imbued with space. With his rank up in the primitive leather working skill all his actions were just a tiny bit better. He cut the leather straighter. Worked the silk thread in better, so not only did it hold together better but looked nicer too. He even lined the inside of the bag with the rank three silk cloth. The final touch had been going to fetch the tip of one of the brood mother claws to make the button clasp. It was all the best materials he had. If this didn’t work he didn’t know what to do. Actually, he did, he had gotten to rank three in the leatherworking finishing it.

But Dren really hoped this was enough. Opening his enchanting interface he examined the capacity of the bag. 0/600. “Yes!” Dren Exclaimed. It was enough. He almost put the rune on right then and there but had to stop himself. Refining the bag first would allow him to for sure fully work the mana network. As it was, he might not have enough spare points. Dren wasn’t sure what impact that would have on the item. With a sigh and almost trembling with excitement, he started the long slow process. Noticing it took all three resources to refine as well.

*****

Congratulations. Using exceptional materials, patience, and skill you have created an item beyond your limits.

Primitive Leatherworking increased to level four.

Material Refinement increased to level two.

Item Refinement increased to level two

Skinning increased to level three

Profession: Enchanter increased to level seventeen.

Dren couldn’t keep his jaw from dropping at the sudden spam of messages.