Looking at my character-screen made me smile in delight. The last week had been a gruesome grind, but it had been worth it. After being forced to retreat by the first encounter we had with the undead of the swamp, we had healed up and tried again, without much more success. Within five minutes of entering the swamp, another group of shambling crawlers had tried to ambush us, with a similar result. At first, I had been annoyed by their attacks until I reached level sixty-nine after the second attack. The shambling crawlers gave an insane amount of EXP and the quest we had been given disabled the penalty for repeatedly killing the same type of enemy.

So, for the last week, we had struck into the swamp again and again, never pushing in too far, instead killing undead, first by the dozens but by now, we had accumulated over two-thousand five-hundred kills, by hunting them twelve hours a day, for a week. The shambling crawlers ranged from level fifty at the low-end up to level seventy-eight on the high side, with no telling what else was hiding in the deeper reaches of the swamp, making us cautious and vigilant, even as we killed them again and again. We could have gone deeper, especially in the last few days, but there had always been the question, what was waiting for us there, and was it worth losing our current grind-spot.

And the effort we had put into our hunting was showing a clear effect, pushing me up to level ninety-seven. It was such an insane boost that I wondered if I should report it as a bug, it seemed just too broken. For months, I had travelled and slowly gained level after level and now, just by hunting undead for a week, sure a brutal and gruesome grind, had brought me more experience than everything I had done before.

But the extreme gain had also shown me something else, that you couldn’t just grind or your abilities would start to lack behind. During the grind, despite the amount of experience being insane, I had only gained a single level in my Ice Rune Mastery and Ice Magic, with similar small, incremental gains in the other magic skills, each of them getting a point or two.

The attribute-points I had gained over those levels had been funnelled into Intelligence and Intuition, bringing them to forty-seven and thirty-nine respectively, so once I reached level 100, both would get a nice, even number at fifty and forty. The last point went to Agility, making me just a little harder to kill. I had considered Endurance or Vitality but decided against it, my best chance was to avoid attacks, not tank them.

Another effect of the grind had been that the special abilities I had gained for forty-five Intelligence and thirty-five Intuition were both centered around it, Intelligence strengthening my ability to freeze non-living creatures and Intuition increasing my detection-capabilities for them.

However, compared to all my gains, the one who had gained the most was Rai. During the second night, as we had been camping out, he had finally managed to breach the first divide, using his experimentation with his strange shadow-shift-skill to break through. His new class, called Shadow Scout, was pretty much what it said on the tin, allowing him to enhance his abilities when it came to hiding and sneaking even further, while pushing that part of Darkness-magic to another level. I was quite proud of his achievement and was looking forward to the things he’d be able to do in an environment better suited to his talents.

In addition, I was planning to get a good look at his new abilities, once we had some free time, hopefully I’d be able to emulate parts of it, to improve my own stealth-abilities.

“We need a break.” I decided, looking at the others. For me, the last week had been gruesome and brutal, but for them, it was even worse. I could log-out every night, getting a change in perspective and scenery, take a hot shower and simply relax, knowing that I was safe in my apartment for a bit. For them, it had been killing undead, keeping watch so we weren’t killed by undead, sleep and repeat. I knew that my own exhaustion was slowly building up and at some point, there would be mistakes, even if we had become extremely good at killing the crawlers, simply by virtue of practise.

There was a palpable air of relief around Adra while Sigmir and Rai nodded in agreement, relaxing visibly at the idea.

“Where to go? Back to the dwarves and the cottage or simply away from the swamp?” Sigmir asked, focused on the practical issues as always.

“I don’t think I want to talk to the dwarves. It’s a lot easier if we present them with a fait-accompli instead of reporting the progress. Just looking at the swamp in its current state, I’m not sure if they even want to destroy it, which would cost us the quest.” I explained, causing Adra to look up, nodding in agreement.

“You mean that they might want to keep it to train their people? Maybe even use that wish to turn the quest we did into a failure to keep their silver? Just from the undead we already killed, they owe us quite a bit. If we go by reputation, they would be greatly pleased if they can keep the silver without openly breaking their word.” Adra suggested, sounding pensive. Apparently, the greedy dwarf was a trope the developers had transferred into their work, making me wonder just how true it would be. Normally, tropes about whole populations were based on a feeling of animosity and an us-vs-them mentality but how would that hold true in a world like Mundus, however Pantheon had created it? Here, there might be truth to such a trope, simply because the developers had ingrained it deeply into their work.

“Would they really do that?” Rai asked, looking unsure of himself.

“It’s not impossible.” I admitted, thinking back to the short talk I had with the Thane. “I think that, if we fulfill the quest as it has been defined by the system, they will pay up and keep their bargain, especially as they know that they cannot permanently kill me. If they commit treachery, they will be found out, no matter what. So the idea to secretly deal with us and take what is ours is off the table. But if they realise just how much of an exp-mine the swamp is, they might change their mind.” I explained, agreeing with Adra on that part.

“Anyway, why don’t we just head into the other direction, maybe going along one of the small streams so we have water? I can make us a nice cottage and we can relax for a day or two, before pushing into the swamp again.” I suggested and the others nodded, taking one last look at the swamp before we cleaned up the debris from our midday rest and headed out, going the opposite direction as the days before.

Travelling outside the swamp was such a relief, while we were still vigilant, it wasn’t the hypervigilance where every rustling leaf, every little noise hinted at an attack. The lack of mist and the rays of the sun peeking through the forest canopy helped to chase away the gloom of hunting undead. As we walked, Lenore and I were discussing what we had seen over the last week. Part of it was the question how all those undead could exist, there had to be a source for them, another part was the question who was using the magic that suffused the swamp to attack us. I had a strong feeling, the answer would be the key to fulfilling the quest we had received from the Thane. Only, would we be able to beat the source?

The exp we gained from killing them had been levelling out over the last two days, ever since reaching level ninety the levelling times had become longer and longer. Of course, they were still not nearly comparable to the time we had needed outside, so continuing for a little longer would be useful, as long as we didn’t get complacent.

In addition, I continued a very cautious experimentation on the effect of placing runes directly on my skin and creating formations from them. I had used the basic-concept for quite some time but now, I was trying to get a feeling how the runes would work if carved permanently into my flesh. I had no desire to have my body ripped apart or, maybe even worse, muck up the process and create a flawed formation that’d permanently cripple my character.

The centaur I had ‘gifted’ with the first working formation had been helped by the developers with tattoo-removal, as there was almost nothing he could do about it, without some serious help from the other people, help which would be hard to get. But would the developers help someone who placed the tattoo on themselves, in an attempt to gain power? I wasn’t sure, I had a feeling that they tried to keep their interventions into this world at a minimum, even the help they had given the centaur had been cloaked into Mundus-lore, a local cleric receiving direct, divine help from their deity to cast the required spell, apparently a seriously high-levelled healing spell.

At the end of the day, it just wasn’t worth the risk. For now, my stop-gap measure of continuously using concealment-magic on myself had worked, so there was no need to use myself as a test-subject for the Blood Magic Tattoos.