Morgan Mackenzie was having a very frustrating morning. Nearly an entire week had passed since parting ways with her distant ancestor, and every day had managed to be more irritating than the last. The [Skyclad Sorceress] currently sat upon a low stone stool raised from the earth with her magic, bent forward in a grouchy slouch with her elbows on her knees while she looked upon yet another failed enchantment attempt.

The object of her frustrations floated between her hands; several fragments of stone that had once fit together in the shape of a shallow cup. She had finally learned the [Spatial Expansion Rune] enchantment after dozens of failures at emulating how the needle and thread of Moghren’s spellwork pulled the Mana fabric together. However, her inability to utilize such tools meant she had been forced to hold the threads of Mana in the woven pattern in her mind, and it was headache inducing to a surprising degree.

She could apply the enchantment to the inside of a bowl or cup made with [Earth Sculpt], but her best efforts had yielded nothing more than a slight bending of the space inside. Every attempt she had made to further twist the volume of the storage area led to the enchantment destabilizing. The space would snap back to normal size, shattering the stone no matter how much she strengthened it. With a slight push of mana and a defeated sigh, Morgan tossed the broken shards to the side where they joined the remains of previous attempts.

“At least my campsites are improving, Lulu,” she groaned, rubbing her face.

The puffy lace scrubby merely purbled in response and continued scrubbling around the flat stone ring that Morgan had sculpted around the fire pit. The fire, having been allowed to burn low, now featured a stone spit upon which rested a well-cooked murdersquirrel. It had made the fatal mistake of being too oblivious of its surroundings while Morgan was practicing her [Fade Presence] skill, and had paid the price for its inattention. The cooking process had resulted in spatters of grease and fat around the fire, which Lulu had happily set about cleaning up.

The campsite itself was a fully-enclosed dome with a small opening in the middle of the ceiling for the smoke, and a mat of forest moss lay on a low stone bed to one side. Compared to Morgan’s first attempt at a temporary abode, it was a significant improvement. The walls were smoother and much more uniform, the stone much stronger.

And there’s a door, she thought to herself with a grim reminder of her one-time loss and subsequent regrowth of her arm. Won’t be making that particular mistake again!

“I just don’t get it, Lulu,” she said as got up to tear another chunk of meat off the roasted squirrel. “I learned the basic enchantment, but it keeps collapsing -- like a house without load-bearing walls.”

Morgan sat back down and continued her breakfast, carefully tearing bite-sized pieces off of the roasted squirrel. She took her time, looking at the stone walls she had pulled up from the earth the night before. Her skills had improved with her evening construction projects, and a trail of increasingly bigger and better stone hutches marked her travels since leaving First Raven’s Roost. Her current abode was over twice the size of the previous, as the rains that started the day before had forced her to make camp several hours earlier than usual. The respite from the tough slog through the mud was sorely needed, but it sorely lacked for entertainment; more out of boredom than necessity, she had spent more time expanding the structure before falling asleep.

The rains were still falling outside, a constant whispering in the forest she could hear through the hand-sized windows spaced randomly around the little house. The roof was large and dense enough that the falling droplets did not make audible noise from the inside. Large enough, in fact, that she had added vertical support ribs of stone every few feet to support the weight. It was while she looked at these irregular protrusions standing out from the walls, and the now-meatless rib of murdersquirrel in her hands, that realization struck.

“I’ve been looking at it all wrong, Lulu!” she exclaimed, tossing the rib section back into the coals as she stood back up with excitement. The puffball wurbled in admonishment as the bone hitting the ashes kicked up another mess, but happily set about cleaning it up as its nature dictated it must. “It’s like Engineering class for my Architecture Major at school back on Earth! I can’t make a big room without supporting the structure itself!”

With renewed enthusiasm, Morgan pulled up another fist-sized ball of Earth from the ground below, returning to her seat and focusing all of her attention on her new project. A surge of will and Earth Mana had the raw dirt compressed into a dense, magically-infused putty that she warped like taffy into the rough shape of a round jar. Spinning it on three different axes simultaneously allowed her to make the jar almost perfectly spherical, and earned her a bonus in the form of another level in [Earth Sculpt], leaving the skill mastered at last.

Spatial Magic did not seem to have any distinct elemental flavor to the Mana, at least not to Morgan’s Rune-enhanced sight and other senses. It seemed to work with just raw Mana, as best she could tell with her current abilities. She looked inside the jar, instinctively brightening the flame runes inscribed in a ring around the inside of the stone hut in order to better see.

Drawing the thread-thin traces into the stone with her Earth Mana let her anchor the space-manipulating weaves into the hardened jar, similar to her [Candleflame Rune] enchantments. A single rune for the spatial magic had thus far proven to be too unstable in practice, however. So instead of one single spherical rune, she inscribed seven matching pairs of them on the inside of the jar. “Eight feels like too many,” she mumbled to herself as sweat beaded across her brow. “Six isn’t enough, it doesn’t balance right…”

Seven tiny circles lined up in a ring along the inner opening of the jar, each with a matching opposite seated in a ring closer to the bottom of the jar and a spidery thread linking each one to its mate. Holding so much detail fixed in her mind took extreme concentration, and spikes of pain began to develop behind her eyes as she held the traced designs in her thoughts, waiting for the Mana to slowly coalesce into the forms.

Just before the pain became an agony strong enough to break her concentration, her efforts were rewarded.

You have learned the enchantment [Spatial Reinforcement Rune]! Reinforce the underlying structure of a localized spatial zone! Practice and experience with different applications will improve this enchantment!

Between the sudden relief of the disappearing headache and the shock of the notification, Morgan very nearly dropped the floating jar in surprise; she recovered in time to catch it with a light touch of Mana. She levitated it above one hand while cupping her chin with the other, suddenly thoughtful as she inspected her work.

“The reinforcement should definitely help,” she mused out loud to Lulu. The scrubby was now inspecting the reject pile, glomming one fragment after another and tossing them away with strange puffling motions of its fronds after cleaning them to a shiny gleam.

After another few bites of squirrel and a brief rest, Morgan set about working the actual spatial enchantment into the jar. Once again she went with a doubled pattern of seven smaller enchantments, staggered between the reinforcement runes. With multiple anchoring points, the overall effect was extremely stable, and the effort led to her gaining [Spatial Affinity]. Pulling the space inside the jar still felt wrong, but as the affinity skill settled into her mind it became clearer just exactly how the lattice of hair-thin threads of Mana was actually affecting the space.

“Ha!” she exclaimed as she inverted the tiny rune circles to reverse the effect. “I was trying to make the space inside bigger, when I should have been trying to put more space...into the, uh...space?” she finished, a puzzled expression crossing her features.

The inverted spatial runes finally did the trick, and the enchantment snapped into place with another notification.

You have learned the enchantment [Spatial Compression Rune]! Compress a larger volume of space into a smaller area! Practice and experience with different applications will improve this enchantment!

The feeling of accomplishment was immensely satisfying; a smug gratification that Morgan felt on a visceral level, radiating out from her chest as she grinned with an exuberance similar to when she received the keys to her first car as a teenager. Wait, she thought, it’s coming from the [Soul Anchor]...

You have increased your understanding of [Runic Enchantment]! Your [Soul Anchor] has gained a level due to your learning new Runes! Living Runes that have been linked to the [Soul Anchor] may now grow to a maximum level of two! You may now link a total of two Living Runes to the [Soul Anchor]!

DING!

You have reached Level 11! Health and Status partially restored!

Remember, combat is not the only path to advancement. Performing tasks and training skills aligned with your class will often yield surprising benefits.

Rewarded points doubled by Class Traits!

10 distributable Stat points awarded.

Class Template: [Skyclad Sorceress] auto-assigns 3 points(+1 CON, +2 INT), Distributable points reduced to 7.

10 Skill points awarded. New Skills available for purchase due to meeting prerequisite conditions!

Morgan had not fought anything tougher than a few murdersquirrels since her near-disastrous encounter with the hydra and subsequent faux battle upon meeting Moghren. Her thoughts had not been focused on leveling at all, so the sudden notification without a preceding experience gains message had her tumbling backwards off the stool, the hardened clay pot bouncing along the floor beside her.

“Well,” said the [Skyclad Sorceress] as she picked herself up and brushed the dirt off her bottom and back as well as she could. “Moghren did say levelling happened from doing class related things…”

Lulu had been startled as well by her sudden fall, and had immediately made its way over to assist in restoring its mistress’ skin to immaculate condition. With the purbling minion contentedly going about its task, Morgan returned her attention to the skill menu she had been ignoring for the past week. No new options had been available since her class selection, so she had not bothered after an initial check upon gaining the class.

“I guess if I don’t have enough points, it won’t display things I can’t afford to get…”

After spending her remaining stat points on INT, Morgan mentally pulled up the skills menu.

Skill Acquisition Menu

Leveling Class Abilities may provide unique skills for purchase when conditions are met!

One unique Class Skill is now available for purchase due to learning the required skills!

Experimentation and learning more skills will grant access to more skills for acquisition!

[Runic Belt(Living Rune)] - [20 Skill Points] This Living Rune links to your [Soul Anchor] rune. One spatial storage enchantment may be added to [Runic Belt] per level of the Living Rune. Living Rune level is capped at the current level of [Soul Anchor]. Improving your abilities with spatial magics will increase the level of [Runic Belt].

Morgan danced happily in place, hugging a protesting Lulu in her excitement. “Ha, ha-ha!” she half-giggled, half-sang with satisfaction, placing the scrubby back on the bed to allow it to resume its wandering scrubbly travels. “So experimenting pays off!”

There were no other options available at present, other than greyed out skills that were useless to her. Many applied to tools, weapons, or items that she would never be able to equip, and others she simply had no interest in whatsoever. She ignored the other skills and hastily spent the points to acquire the [Runic Belt] enchantment.

“Huh..”

She felt the skill settle with a strange pulsing sensation from her [Soul Anchor], but no new tattoo appeared.

“Okay... “

Slightly confused, she brought up her skill list with a thought. Focusing on the living runes listed at the end, she finally realized the problem.

“Oh,” she said with sudden understanding. “[Mana Sight] is listed as an active rune, and [Runic Belt] isn’t…”

Selecting the skill with her mind and activating it was simple enough, yet still nothing happened at first. Morgan frowned, her confusion growing every second.

And then she was yelping in pain while jumping up and down and slapping at her belly just above her most sensitive bits.

“Fuck! Oh shit oh shit oh shit!”

In the crook of her hips, on either side of what was formerly her bikini line (when she had still been able to wear such things), bright blue arcs of Mana began tracing an ultra-fine filigree pattern into her skin. The burning ignored her [Pain Resistance] entirely, and she dropped to the ground once again. Her heels drummed a staccato pattern on the dirt floor and her back arched while she sobbed through clenched teeth, eyes screwed shut.

The tracings began at two points slightly above and to either side of her crotch, and as they spread up her abdomen from there, the runes grew outward to either side and arched over and around her hips. The entire process took only minutes, yet felt to her like hours. Morgan wailed until the two ends of the tattoo met at the base of her spine, just above the tailbone. The last few inches of the inscribing process hurt more than all that came before, and she flopped and screamed helplessly until, after what felt like an eternity, it was done.

Morgan simply lay there in a limp heap, whimpering and exhausted and panting to catch her breath. Lulu, the loyal scrubby, rushed over to its fallen mistress with frightened wurbles while it began inspecting her for damage. The scrubby's panic at its mistress' distress took a while to fade as it continued to search for whatever unseen foe had caused such violence. Once her poofy companion had finally determined there were no immediate threats, the loofah set about checking Morgan over in its typical hopping fashion.

In this instance, however, that inspection was cut short as Lulu hopped from Morgan’s arm onto the outside of her hip -- and suddenly vanished, with an alarmed, trilling warble that was cut horrifyingly short. The naked girl felt panic begin to claw at her mind once again, scrambling to her feet with a cry.

“Lulu! Shit, no!”

The tattoo that now circled her hips sat like an unbuckled belt, not quite meeting in the middle of her pelvis. Five empty circles were traced along evenly spaced sections on each side; the forward-most circle on her right hip, however, was filled with a complex triple-spiral pattern that was now pulsing faintly with a gentle blue light.

Placing her hand over the glowing part of the tattoo she could feel it pulse with her heartbeat, and with a hurried thought she pushed extra mana into her hand, and from her hand into the rune.

A very upset loofah suddenly popped into existence with a faint rush of air and immediately resumed its outraged warbling, until Morgan gathered Lulu up in both hands to administer soothing pats while hugging it close.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Lulu!” she cooed, sitting down on the moss-covered bed that occupied one side of the hut. “I wasn’t expecting the tattoo part to hurt at all. The first one didn’t.” She gently petted the loofah as she lay down on the bed, and the soothing rhythmic motion seemed to unlock something in her mind. Emotional walls she did not realize she had put into place finally began to fall apart.

“Why does almost everything cool in this world hurt so much?” she whimpered. Then, she felt a burst of anger. “Everything! If it’s not something trying to fucking eat me, I end up burning alive, or-”

The anger was as short-lived as it was intense, her own words bringing back memories of her first night in the Tree. She had walled the entire experience off inside her mind as an instinctive self-defense, leaving her more able to deal with the chaos and threats that came her way. But since leaving Moghren’s home and the ancient ruins of the city, her experiences had been much slower paced and far less dangerous. Traumas such as her burning on that first fateful night could never be truly forgotten, however, and after a few calmer days -- and now, her relative safety in her reinforced stone hut -- the shock of the tattoos and the familiar burning sensation brought all that pain back in exquisite detail.

WIth the memory came the emotions long denied. And, as the rains played a dreary susurrating tune outside the windows, Morgan finally cried.