I slept the sleep of the exhausted and far too soon, I awoke, basking in the warmth my hug-pillow was giving off and enjoying the feelings that I had when hugging her and being hugged by her. Again, I stoked our fire, knowing that any bit of warmth would help. In addition to the fire, I closed off most of the entrance with ice so only a gap large enough for Sigmir remained. I should have done so yesterday but had simply not thought of it before sleep had taken me. Not wanting to wake Sigmir, I simply stayed in her embrace and took in her features. Somehow, her face seemed a little leaner, sharper if you will, when I had first seen her, her features could have passed for a male, now there was no question that she looked like a woman. Strong, rough features, yes but clearly female. But they could not have changed in the few days we had been together, could they? I simply did not know.

My reverie was broken when Sigmir grumbled a little in her sleep and then, with slowly blinking eyes woke up. It took a couple of blinks but then her eyes focused on me and a smile spread over her lips. “Good Morning, Morgana. I could get used to waking up like this.” she said and brazenly planted a kiss onto my lips. Interesting looks like she took to kissing like a duck to water. Not that I was complaining, not at all.

Still, there were things we had to talk about. “Sigmir, as much as I hate to interrupt this, I'm afraid there are things we need to talk about. You know your tribe, do you think they would continue their hunt for us?” I asked. “No, I don't think so. When we fought them at that canyon, they had to have very little in the way of supplies left, their packs were far too light. They would have to hunt in unknown terrain and continue their hunt at the same time. In addition while the curse on me would guide them, whatever you did stopped most of it before it could take hold. It will fade in a few days, so unless they already found a way over the canyon they won't easily find us again. And their losses are getting painful, the tribe had maybe two-hundred warriors and hunters, most of them are needed for the defence and the supply of our village, sending such a large group out and even losing quite a lot of them will hurt them. I doubt that they will continue after losing their prey like they did. So we are safe.” she concluded with a smile. In addition, laying her thoughts out like that seemed to have convinced herself of our safety and while speaking a tension she had ever since I met her was slowly melting away.

“We should stay in the general area until the curse is gone so they don't know our further direction.” I suggested to Sigmir. “That way, we also have time to replenish our supplies and some gear.” She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Then we will have to hunt for more pelts and search for other materials. Let's go out after breakfast.” Outside, the light of the false dawn told me that the short daytime would soon be upon us, so meditating out, due to bad timing, wasting daylight would be foolish. Both of us snacked on the newly made jerky, due to lack of spices it was rather bland and gamey but it would stave of starvation.

We started out of our cave and I closed the entrance with ice, making sure that nothing would move in while we were gone. Sigmir wore my cloak as a tunic, using it to keep as warm as possible. I watched Sigmir stalk, trying to emulate it as much as possible as she was moving silent as a ghost through the forest, far better than I could ever manage, even aided by concealment magic.

It took quite a while but Sigmir managed to find the tracks of a small pack of wolves and follow them until we happened upon them. Together, we attacked, first me, striking with Icicles wounding and slowing two wolves down, then Sigmir charged into them like a landslide, managing to take one out with the momentum of her charge in combination with her own, considerable, strength. The other wolves were momentarily confused due to the sudden, brutal attack. I used that confusion to strike with my shuttles, focusing on the legs of previously uninjured wolves, taking their mobility would be a devastating blow to them.

My shuttles managed to inflict severe wounds on the legs on one more wolf, all the while Sigmir used the distraction my shuttles caused to strike one wolf that had just evaded my shuttles. With that, one wolf was down and four were unable to run.

The rest of the pack decided to flee, abandoning the wounded wolves but saving the pack. Killing them was rather easy, I used my shuttles to harry them, forcing movement onto their wounded legs causing stumbles and giving Sigmir openings to strike them. Within a few exchanges, they were all down and I got a screen.

Black Wolf died You gain 500 EXP. . . .

As the wolves were of a similar level to Sigmir and me, the EXP were ok but not immense. Interestingly, those wolves also had a thick, dark pelt, not white to blend with the snow. Sigmir skinned them out here, while I stood watch. She discarded the meat, only keeping the pelt, claws, teeth and sinews, I guess she was not a fan of wolf-meat which I can understand having tasted it in-game and the taste was best described with 'meh'. Still, the pelts would be useful. As I didn't want to stand around like a bump on a log, I looked around when I saw a small plant, deep in the shadows below a tree. Somehow, the shadows were deeper than they should be, almost concealing it fully. I reached out with my Dark Magic and there was a resistance in the darkness, as if they were trying to cling to the plant. Curious, I reached down and carefully pulled the plant out.

When making contact, I felt a familiar presence, similar to the shadows created with my concealment magic, Inspect told me that the thing was called Shadeleaf and was a plant touched by Dark Magic. Interesting, I'd have to try finding out what to do with something like that. I searched more but found no more below the trees here. Then Sigmir was done and we moved on, me looking carefully for strange shadows but finding only very few during the rest of our hunt. Still, we managed to hunt down another stag and Sigmir showed me quite a few edible roots. We stayed out, looking for materials until the sun started setting, then we returned to our cave and gathered wood from the dead fall in the dying light. In addition, Sigmir was gathering long branches to create racks to stretch the pelts over.

Back in our Cave, I restocked the fire and then did something I had wanted to do for days, meditating on new runes. Ice-Runes were at 39, Darkness at 42 and Blood Runes at 32 after our flight and I had yet to meditate on any of them.

At first, I focused on Ice-Runes, not wanting to make the same mistake as last time, I focused my mind in directions I knew. The rune that condensed was interesting. It was an extension to the basic Ice-Rune, reaching in directions I was unable to go yet, it was the feeling of timeless, eternal glaciers, unyielding, even in the face of time. The Rune was specialised to create a stronger, sharper Ice, strengthening the crystal-structure but took a bit more Astral Power to condense and was losing out on the slight flexibility I had with my normal Ice-Rune. I guess a good name for the Rune would be Hard Ice. But at least I had a good direction to go to, making my ice colder and harder would be worthwhile.

Then it was time for Darkness, this time I simply let my mind float and the first thing in my mind was the curse striking Sigmir. I wasn't happy but it was something important and soon I was able to condense a rune meaning 'Curse'. This might allow me to weaken the curse on Sigmir but I wasn't sure. But it might allow me to develop my Darkness-Runes into the direction of Meta-Magic, directly affecting magic as Darkness was the element of Change, so Magic was certainly part of it.

Finally, Blood Runes, I wanted something to help Sigmir. Swiftly, I was able to condense a Rune that was meant to strengthen the muscles of a target. With that, I might be able to go into the direction of Body-Strengthening Magic, giving me a whole, new world of magic.

With those new runes in my mind, I opened my eyes to see Sigmir scrape off small chunks of meat from the pelt of a wolf. As I wanted something different than jerky, I took a nice, large chunk of stone and used a combination of Ice Magic and the new Hard Ice runes to carve a bowl out of the stone. Afterwards, I did the same with wood, as the Hard Ice made some great carving knifes and strengthening magic on myself let me carve the wood with little problems.

Then it was time to cook, first I threw in some untouched snow and melted it to create nice, hot water. The next step was to cut up some of the meat and roots, adding them to the pot and stirring. The soup cooked quite a while and soon the smell was permeating our small cave.

Skill gained You gained the Skill: Cooking Cooking allows you to make basic ingredients into tasty food. Higher skill-levels allow the use of higher level ingredients and improve the effects of cooked food.

Sigmir stopped her work and joined me at the fire. I handed her a wooden bowl, added soup and made myself one as well.

With that done, I sat next to Sigmir, sharing our warmth and we ate mostly in silent but happy company. When we were done, I wanted to get a few questions out that plagued me. “When you told me about you, you mentioned something called Divides. What are those?” Sigmir looked at me incredulous for a moment, then explained. “Well, when you reach a certain level of strength, the System gives you a quest, a trial depending on your class and your personality. That trial is a Divide. After overcoming it, the Astral itself changes your body, strengthening it. Few manage to reach the first Divide, I think there were only twenty in a tribe of hundreds and the only one that ever reached the second Divide was my father's predecessor who left the tribe long before my birth, never to return.”

Ok, interesting, but why would some classes get it earlier than others? “You said that you got yours at level 50 but others get it only later, why?” I asked. Her answer was rather enlightening. “Well, levels are just the condensed power you gained from opponents when they enter the cycle, they influence your power but they are not your whole power. As you know, the stronger the class and the more varied abilities it has, the bigger are the class' disadvantages. In addition, individuals train in different ways. For example, my original Berserker Class, it's main abilities were in sustained fighting with two-handed weapons and strengthening the physical body. The abilities had little to no preconditions and I could easily integrate them in whatever fighting style I wanted, making them incredibly versatile.

The downside was the Berserker-Rage, while fighting I might have fallen into a rage, no longer able to control myself, literally fighting until I became too weak to stand. My father trained me in his self-developed fighting style and to control and harness the rage. The resulting trial was a long, gruelling battle and I had to embrace the rage to fight my enemies but at the same time control it to not exhaust myself. I succeeded and gained the Mountain Splitter-Class, strengthening me and my style of combat even further. Sadly, due to the malediction of the shaman, I can only use basic movements, all class abilities are locked. Of course, information about training methods to go a certain way are closely guarded secrets, often only passed from master to disciple.”

I blinked in surprise, that was rather interesting. Now I truly knew what the philosophers meant when they said 'I know that I know nothing.' If I understood her right, there was an aggregate Power-Score, based on level, class, possibly race, skills and even combat-style and depending on said aggregate Score you would get special Quests to advance your class and each passed test gave overall-stats.

“Why would one want to get those Divides as early as possible? Wouldn't it make more sense to wait until you are stronger to pass them without trouble? You said your Father didn't take it because he wasn't certain to pass so why not wait and challenge them after getting stronger?” I latched onto the first idea, trying to make sense of things.

“Well, the Dividing Trial is based on your strength, if you continue to train and get stronger after getting the original challenge, the trail will adapt to your higher strength and become more difficult. And overcoming a Divide gives you a stronger body so every level up allows more Astral into your body to further strengthen it. Before the first Divide, everyone is the same, they can only take the amount of Astral into your body required to raise your Attributes by two points every five levels. After the first Divide, that changes, I gained extra Strength every three levels and extra Endurance every four, in addition to the two general points one gains every five levels.”

I wondered how the balancing worked with that, would some classes in the game be the play to win-classes due to higher potential and others simply reduced to trash? It would be a shame if only few classes saw play out of the list I had seen in the beginning. So maybe there was a certain way for any class to reach the requisite Power-level with the right training-guide? Or maybe balance was just an illusion, like it is in the real world.

So many questions, so little real knowledge.