-We gathered together after the sudden ambush and took stock of our condition. Adra looked at Sigmir with undisguised awe.

“You sure held back when sparring against me, didn't you?” She asked with a small hitch in her voice.

“No, I did not. I regained a lot of my strength after the ritual Morgana did for me. And after I regained my strength, I did not want to use it in a sparring fight, I wanted a fight I did not have to hold back in, to gauge how much I truly regained.” Sigmir answered with a smile. The combination of her sweet smile and the blood that was still splattered across her armour and face created some heat in interesting places.

“We have been careless. I will make a habit of placing concealment-spells around all of us, I hope we can avoid another ambush.” I told the other two, and did just that.

I wanted a long-running concealment, so the runic formation I created focused on the mystical medium I wanted to use. Shadows and mist were in my opinion the best choice to conceal someone, so the formation was composed out of two rune-triangles made out of shadow and mist, both set around a single concealment-rune. It took quite a lot of focus to create the spell like I wanted to, but I felt it take effect. I realised that I was successful when a thin, dark mist formed around the one concealed, not enough to conceal to physical sight but hopefully enough to prevent magical scrying. Sadly, I only had enough power left to conceal Sigmir; the stunt with the Eisblumen had taken a lot of power out of me. On the upside, I gained a point in my Darkness-Runes. Ever since I had reached skill-level 50, the progress had massively slowed down.

When I wanted to re-summon my mount, I realised that the spell-formation on the crystal was disrupted, slowly regaining its original appearance. We would have to wait some time to ride again, so Sigmir and I had to walk. Adra walked with us, not shifting into her animal-form considering that she would have to slow down anyway. Ylva joined us as well, now that she was able to keep up. After walking for some time, I placed concealment spells on Adra and myself. I doubted they had the ability to track Ylva so I did not bother with her. I knew it was most likely not necessary as they would not respawn for a day but I felt I should get into the habit.

I placed the two points I had gained into intelligence, bringing it up to thirty. A short look into my special-skills showed me that I was now able to use three-rune spells instantly and tried it out, shooting an icicle, using my new blizzard-rune for movement and hard-ice as a medium. The result was not bad, it would cause some damage but when I saw the power-cost, I was sure that instant-casting was reserved for emergency situations. The cost-modifier was applied exponentially, increasing the cost by a factor of eight.

Once again, I looked over my stat-page and liked what I saw.

Basic Overview Name Morgana Race Firn-Elf Level 50 Health 480/480 Stamina 470/470 Astral Power 1468/1680 Divine Power - Strength 9 Agility 13 Dexterity 12 Intelligence 30 Intuition 22 Charisma 9 Courage 13 Endurance 11 Vitality 14

Getting my intelligence to 30 even gave me a new ability, called Improved Recall, passively increasing my memory. Once more, I was intrigued by the effects the game was claiming to have on a body. If they could simulate better memory, what else could they do? How would it carry over into the real world? I had seen a couple of articles about it and people screaming about it but they had been screaming about video-games and their effect, ever since a white ball was bouncing between two moving slides, so I was not overly worried. In addition, I had far too much fun in this world to consider leaving it.

We walked for another hour before we could re-summon our Spirit-Golems and when we did, neither Elding nor Hringur were overly happy about getting their shell destroyed. Apparently there was some feedback, nothing truly harmful but very uncomfortable. After talking a little to the two of them and Adra, we learned that they were able to find their way to places they had been before, so we did not need to use the exact same path on our return to Tegi. We could stay further west and keep away from Yari. None of us wanted to be too close to it, if the four bounty-hunters respawned. We feared they could get local support to go after us, if they paid the right price. Probably not even that high a price, if the guy I had knocked down when we were there had anything to say about it. I doubted that someone would go out of his way to hunt another down for a bar-brawl but getting paid to get revenge? I knew I would happily go for an offer like that.

We managed to travel a couple more hours before setting down for camp. We went through our routine of gathering firewood, setting up wards and preparing a place to sleep before settling down.

After dinner, it was time for a little training, first it was me against Sigmir, then Sigmir against Adra and finally, Adra and I together against Sigmir and Ylva. Individually, neither Adra nor I could get to Sigmir and together we had to work for it. The weak link quickly showed in Ylva.

It became obvious that the strength of a class helped quite a bit as Ylva lacked the specialised skills each of us had. Sigmir was now freely able to use her red aura as an armour, something that greatly increased her strength and endurance in addition to multiple simple skills like the charge-skill, which allowed her to use her Astral Power to increase her linear speed for a short moment and some direct attacks that enhanced singular strikes. She never used them directly against us, showing that they were simply too powerful by shattering a specially prepared Ice-Shield with a single blow. Adra told me that it was that skill that killed the Half-Orc with a single strike, armour and protective buff from the paladin be damned.

Adra in turn focused on her self-buffs for both melee-combat with her spear, and ranged-combat with her bow. Now, I saw one of the problems of my sorcerer-class: I was missing those specialised skills. I could manage with my self-created spells, but I had a feeling that they were lacking in comparison to abilities that had been passed down and perfected by generations of fighters.

Looking for a solution, I started to use forms I had learned in the real world, and tried to add my flying shuttles as close-in support. I had always used them together but never tried to make them into one. I lost myself in the motion, both the magical motion of the flying shuttles and the physical motion of my practised forms.

Some time later, Sigmir startled me out of my trance by asking about my plans for Tegi and the Jonari-Tribe. I had some ideas for Tegi, the key was quite simple. The video showed that the devourer was static but huge. I doubted that something like normal Icicles or arrows would even penetrate it's skin, it wouldn't even be a pin-prick for a beast that size. With the quest saying that it was impossible, I knew that only thinking outside the box had any chance at all. Parts of me wanted to flood the river or bury it in an avalanche but neither was possible. What I believed to be possible was a blizzard, even a thing that size could be frozen, with enough time and Astral Power. I had tried a runic formation that might be a working foundation for ritual magic the night before.

Setting up somewhere on the hills with line of sight to the beast and controlling the access to the ritual-side was probably our best and only shot. Sigmir had her Lok'nar to hurt Nethersprites and I hoped Adra was able to do something with her magic. I explained my reasoning to the two of them and learned that Adra could attack Nethersprites but it took a toll on her, so it came down to Sigmir and her ability to handle the them and my ability to use a brand new ritual magic. We made plans to try out the ritual magic when we were closer to Tegi and further away from our pursuers.

The Jonari were a whole different ball-game. Each of us had enough strength to handle the normal tribe-member and the hunter without trouble. Sadly, the core-forces were at least as strong as Sigmir, most of them stronger. Against a single one of them, we would be hard pressed to win as a group. At least if we didn't cheat. Well, good thing that I had no compulsion against cheating in battle. Relationships were another matter.

As we talked about possible ways to separate the elite-warriors and ambush them, Ylva turned up in camp. She had taken off before, stretching her legs after the time within her Hallow.

Spoiler: Spoiler

“There is a warm spring close by.” she told us. “You might want to wash off the blood, before it smells.”

I looked over to Sigmir and there was a definite glimmer in her eyes.

“Why don’t we let Adra take the first bath? Just in case we want to stay longer?” I asked, probably looking very similar to Sigmir. I could almost hear Ylva roll her eyes as she bounded over to Adra and gave her the information. At the same time, Sigmir stood and the look on her face reminded me of earlier, when she wore the blood of our enemies as make-up. She looked at me like a predator, part of me truly liked it but another part wanted to be the predator, not the prey. Preventing her from simply using her physical strength to take control, I pushed her to sit back down and straddled her lap before starting to kiss her. We lost us in the dance of tongues until Adra came back to camp and told us to get our bath in so we could get to sleep.

Sigmir simply stood, holding onto me before walking over to the hot-spring. As she walked, I started to open the various bands that held her armour and clothes together so I could quickly strip her. As soon as we got there, she started to do the same to me. She didn’t even have to set me down, she was strong enough to use one arm as a seat for me while using the other to strip me. I managed to get her upper-body armour and cloak off but getting at her pants was quite and simple impossible.

Just before she managed to start in on me, I handed her her bloodied clothes with a smile and told her that she should wash them before we got too much into it. Her growl would have made Ylva proud, it was a nice mix of ferocious and lusty, sending shivers and heat in all the right places. I was lucky that I had not splattered myself when I dismembered the rogue so I could watch a naked Sigmir cleaning her clothes while sitting in a hot spring. I scooted around a bit, searching for the coldest place in the spring, it was a little warm for me. I washed myself while I waited for Sigmir. Soon, she had washed the blood splatter off her clothes and joined me.

Just as she was about to pounce on me, I struck. I had been naughty and taken the Eisblumen into the spring with me. With a lot of care and focus, I let one vine wrap around each of Sigmir’s arms, bringing carefully bringing them together behind her back, effectively binding her before making her sit. She looked at me in surprise but when she saw the look on my face, it seemed as if she decided to stay put. I had no doubt that she was strong enough to break the vines but chose not to. I was able to use two more vines, as long as I didn’t move them around wildly or too independent from each other. I used them to simply spread her legs a little, giving me room to wash her thoroughly.

It didn’t take long for her to start squirming and putting pressure on my vines but as long as she wasn’t making a concentrated effort, I was able to hold her. There was no way to go down on her as long as she was in the water so I wrapped the vines around her knees, using them to bind her knees together and lift her out of the water. Pushing her knees up to her chest, I had wonderful access to the promised land, one might even call it the netherlands. My tongue instantly made plans to invade, aided by probing fingers. I even tried teasing another hole, I had just cleaned it, so there was no point not to check her reactions. From the cries she let out, into the night, she enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed it. I built her up, close to a peak before letting it recede a little, just to start the build-up again. After four cycles of teasing she started to beg so I let her trip over, bringing her to an earth shattering climax.

Well, maybe vine-shattering, her convulsions were so strong, she almost broke her bindings, so I quickly let her down into the warm water. As I retreated the vines, I realised that they were indeed made out of ice and thus rather cold. Naughty parts of my mind conjured up images of cold vines, teasing stiff nipples or maybe even inserted into hot places.

As my mind was swimming with ideas, Sigmir took her ‘revenge’, snatching me up and taking control of my body. Once more, I was reminded that she was strong enough to simply lift me and use me as she pleased and that she liked to get even. I mirrored her cries into the night before we both settled down in the hot spring, simply enjoying the warm water.

When we finally made it back to our camp, Adra was sitting with Ylva, shaking her head in amusement.

Soon, we all retreated into our sleeping furs, catching some shut-eye before the next day dawned.