Nic spent the rest of the day hard at work, shedding the shadow of unease his visit to the spiritual realm had left on his soul. Hard work was always good for that much.

The people of Winterhome still felt uneasy about using the bodies of the dead; most of them had been shaken to discover they'd eaten the flesh of sapient beings, and that shock gave rise to a powerful taboo.

But there were plenty of creatures beyond Winterhome's borders who weren't kind nor peaceful. Every day, hunters were lost, picked off from their patrols or killed in battle. Their dwindling numbers pushed the others harder...

And retribution for the dead brought in a supply of bones, pelts, and teeth.

Nic entered the workshop where these things were stored. The acrid smell of tanning vats and the reek of rotting flesh mixed into an ugly, head-spinning aroma, but the sole occupant seemed fine. He was a massive man with a messy, dark beard and a complexion like his own skin was leather.

Nic nodded to the man.

The man nodded back.

This was all they said to each other for the better part of the day. The man was breaking down the corpse of a massive elephant, stripping the flesh away from usable bone and tossing it into buckets to serve as fertilizer in the fields.

Nic couldn't help but wonder how much food was wasted this way...

Pulling up a stool to a workbench, Nic searched through buckets of bone waiting to go out to the other workshops; arrowheads, speartips, and armoring were all in high demand, and this one lonely butcher did the grisly work of getting the raw materials.

Nic was looking for...

There.

Last night in the chaos, a giant bat had attacked and tried to carry off a child. It had been brought down before it could escape with its food.

The bones were flexible and delicate. Nic selected the upper arch of the wingbone to work on, and began to construct a bow, bending the curve tighter and tighter and using runework to enforce the mix of rigid strength and bending force he needed.

The soul fragment within was faint, but Nic managed to kindle that lingering ember of a spirit as he wove a cage of runes to contain it. The work was long and arduous, but Nic had always enjoyed the delicate focus of runescribing...

It allowed him not to think. To enter a place of pure focus, beyond thought, where all that existed was the task and his body carrying out the work.

When the task was finished, Nic stepped back, taking a moment to breathe and center himself in the world. The bow was elegant and simple, Nic’s entire height in length. It was strung with demon spidersilk and had a sinister air- Nic had chosen runes of shadow and concealment to adorn the basic reinforcement arrays, shaping them like a band of feathers that wrapped around the grip.

“Shadowquill…”

With its name given, the bow seemed to come to life. Nic could feel the spirit within begin to rise towards consciousness…

“Shadowquill”

Bow of the Leaping Shade

Glyph of the Nighthunter

(100% Complete)

Masterful Rune of Concealment

(122% Complete)

Fine Glyph of Shadows

(104% Complete)

This bow thrives in darkness and gloom, where its enchantments can hide the bearer from both sight and more arcane, refined modes of detection. The soul within can be called forth for three breaths at a time; it will gain Essence from killing and fighting, gradually growing stronger. It can only be summoned once each dawn.

Nic smiled to see his creation. His runecraft had really grown by leaps and bounds- no longer was he just reaching the basic bound for completion, but regularly exceeding it. For a moment he turned the bow over in his hands and felt the spirit within. A cunning, hungry spirit…

It would be a good match for Shakes.

He admired his own work for a moment…

And then he reached for the next material; he had a long day ahead of him.

---

In the end Nic refined three weapons over the better part of a day.

The first was Shadowquill; a bow of concealed and underhanded nature. That would be for Shakes.

The second took more time. Nic constructed a gauntlet of leather, stitching it together into thread to form a crude armband fringed in furs. Fitted over the arm and secured with a leather brace around the palm was a half-glove, with two long claws extending outwards across the backs of the fingers. With the fist curled, they’d become a pair of punching daggers.

This was for Kang-Dae. The warrior had chosen a risky style of grappling, using his flexible-like-rubber body to absorb hits and his chain-making Shard to bind enemies. A close range striking weapon that didn’t take up his hands was ideal.

Nic had used the claws of a wolf, and named it Southrend. The secondary enchantments were purely focused around enhancing strength.

Finally, he’d set to work for Tarquin. Tark…

Didn’t really use weapons. Instead he relied on the overwhelmingly offensive nature of his Shard, which was reinforced twice-over by the dragonsilk robe; his flame could turn from gentle healing to terrifying destruction in the blink of an eye.

Nic wanted to create something defensive for him, then, but the problem was, Tarquin flew.

And the number of creatures that stood up defensively and could keep up with Tarquin in the air? Low. In fact, the only ones Nic could think of in the moment were mythical creatures.

What Nic settled for was a compromise. Wandering between the workshops, Nic acquired strips of ironwood bark, as hard as metal but far more flexible. He bound them together with braces of scrap metal to make a crude buckler. It wasn’t his best work- Nic was honestly much better with runes than weaponsmithing- but it would serve as a canvas.

The bark was the color of blood, red and vibrant. Nic mixed blue coloration into his ink, creating a cobalt shade to draw across the surface. His designs resembled a wheel of wings, extending outwards from the skull of an enormous eagle mounted at the shield’s center. The keystone rune was a single open eye marked on the skull’s brow in cobalt ink.

“Sunglory…”

“Sunglory”

Shield of the Rising Sun

Glyph of the High Hunter

(100% Complete)

Fine Rune of Protection

(107% Complete)

Fine Rune of Resilience

(113% Complete)

He paused.

Time had flown by. Through night and into dawn, the hours had simply slipped by. The only times Nic could remember clearly are when he’d paused to go find materials among the workshops; everything once he set down to draw was a blur.

Nic let out a slow breath of satisfaction.

Essence 20,053 / 27,046

+ 19.272 per Minute

(3.212 Base)

100% Local Modifier

+ 100% Dominion

+ Devoured an E-Class enemy (200%)

+ Consumed a F-Class treasure (100%)

+ Rested in toxic environment (300%)

Flicking open his cultivation map, he examined his options.

Mire-Caller (F)

Calls to and creates binding masses of mud, sludge, or tar. A powerful Shard for binding and controlling that requires work and imagination to master.

II Base Enhancement (414/2,000)

Add Aura Efficiency (0/1,000)

I Secondary Slot (0/50,000)

Mire-Drowned Remnants (0/50,000)

Futile Struggle (0/50,000)

Mire-Dweller (0/10,000)

Clay Idols (0/50,000)

Totemic Hieroglyphs (E)

Creates tools of bone, rock, and leather that contain nascent divinities, able to grow and rise towards the heavens as they serve you. A high-quality magical shard.

VIII Base Enhancement (114/4,500)

I Add Essence Efficiency (346/2,000)*

II Additional Secondary Slot (0/100,000)

Summoning Limit (0/50,000)

Spirits of the Earth (Complete)

Shard-Crafting (0/100,000)

Speaker of the Lost (0/10,000)

Tributes for the Divine (0/100,000)

Totemic Hieroglyphs was close to reaching its maximum stage at his current Class. Every five levels seemed to bring some kind of cultivating vision, linking him to past creators of the skills contained within each Shard…

But Nic didn’t think such a vision was something he needed now. He was still exploring the new form of the Hieroglyphs, eking out discoveries on his own. He’d ask for guidance when he reached a stopping point.

As for Mire-Caller…

He truly hadn’t unlocked much of anything for it.

Without much hesitation he instantly filled Mire-Dweller to completion. As the rush of power pulsed through his veins, roaring in his ears, he felt a sharp sense of attunement to the mud of the lake. Stepping outside, Nic put his foot down into the soft muddy ground beneath shallow water.

With a thought, he sank. In a moment there was no sign of Nic or where he’d gone, only the unbroken surface of the mud.

It really was an exemplary ability. He could move through water-saturated earth with only a thought- like a fish swimming. The more water and earth were in balance, the less aura it took to sustain. Nic grinned to himself in the quiet dark beneath the lake as he did backstrokes, dolphin kicks, swimming agile and playful through solid earth, enjoying the slight pressure and warmth of the world around him.

When he came up again, he eagerly checked the other options.

Mire-Drowned Remnants… It sounded deathly, and offensive in nature.

Futile Struggle… An increase in binding power, for sure.

Clay Idols… He thought back to when he’d made decoys of mud to lure the primordial slimes. Maybe it was something like that, the ability to create humanoid forms?

Of all three, Futile Struggle best suited how Nic had integrated it into his arsenal of tricks. And once he solved the issue of not always having mud to control around him, it really would skyrocket in the value it could provide.

Futile struggle received his remaining 10,000 Essence, Nic sitting patiently by the lakeside guiding the energy into place.

As he did he felt a strange resonance with the mud underfoot. It was odd but…

He found that by concentrating on how the world felt, how the energy of the earth flowed through the muddy lakeshore around him, Nic understood how the energy within himself should move; Mire-Caller seemed to advance more easily than it had before, as if this was always the way it was meant to be done.

When he opened his eyes…

He could hear the shouts and grunts of practice from the training grounds.