First thing on the list was leveling up. The phone call had interrupted me before. I looked at how much xp I had to work with. 87 /30. I went into the experience section of my interface and chose the level up option. Confirming the expenditure of 30xp, I experienced the sensation of having my body changed in minor ways for the second time. This time, I definitely felt a difference once it was completed.

My shirt and pants were even tighter than they’d been before, and I could tell at a glance that my arms and legs were bigger and more muscular than when I had first woken in the forest after meeting Cax. It had me a little worried.

“If I keep leveling up, am I going to become some massive, muscular freak?” I asked Cax.

“No. Your frame was quite slim to start. The magic won’t alter you too far from your natural base. You should only become a little bigger than what you are now. From then on, the improvements in strength and constitution from leveling up will be contained within your muscle and tissue. Just like with the health potion vials, don’t judge the strength of something or someone based on appearance alone. Magic means there is often more going on under the surface.”

I was relieved to hear that. I was all for becoming stronger and better looking, but I didn’t want to become unrecognizable.

I checked out what had changed on reaching level 3. For starters, I now had twenty more health and mana points. Also, the requirements for my next level had increased to 40xp. When I checked my spell list, I was disappointed to see I hadn’t been gifted with a new spell for any of my affinities. I guess I didn’t get that particular perk that regular adventurers did.

As expected, I couldn’t learn any new professions or magical affinities. With my class, I knew that would be possible from level 5 and 10 respectively. I was happy to see that I could learn a new passive ability. I didn’t have any pressing need for anything at the moment, so I left it alone for now. Especially since it would cost 40xp to unlock and apply something due to the increased cost of leveling up. I would rather put that towards leveling up again.

I was tempted to spend some xp on learning a new spell, though. I wanted some kind of ranged attack spell. If I could have killed those skeletons before they got close enough to hurt me, I wouldn’t have had to worry about rationing my mana for my expensive healing spell. Not to mention avoiding the pain of getting injured, too.

At a cost of only 20xp, learning a new spell would leave me with 37xp. Not enough to level up again, but only a little bit short. Since I was planning on creating at least a few Void Blockers, I would be able to get the necessary xp together from that.

“You have any good options you can recommend, Cax?”

“There is a Light-affinity spell called Light Dart that would match what you’re looking for,” he answered. “It creates a condensed beam of light about as big as your finger that travels extremely quickly to the target. It has a range of 20 meters and does 10 points of damage. It is fairly inexpensive, too. It only costs 10 mana.”

That sounded perfect.

“Before you go and learn that spell, you should know it might be better to use the xp to learn another Life-affinity spell instead,” he advised. “You need to have two spells of the same affinity at rank 2 before the affinity can reach a higher Tier. If you can get your Life affinity to Tier II, one of the benefits will be that your Heal spell becomes cheaper and more effective.”

“Are there any ranged, offensive Life spells?” I asked him, considering it.

“Not that you can learn while still at Tier I, but like I mentioned before, there is a barrier spell that is very useful.”

I turned down his idea. “I need some kind of magical attack first. I remember what you said about the shard being able to make a wraith. I need some way to hurt things like that.”

“Now that you know Enchanting, you could just add some kind of magical damage effect to your staff,” he countered.

He was right. I remembered there was an open slot for an enchantment on my new staff. I decided to hold off on learning any spells for the moment. I would go and get my staff out of the car and then check what kind of enchantments I could put on it.

I could hear the TV when I got downstairs, so I knew Mum was up and about. I slipped out the front door and got the staff from the car, bringing it inside. I stopped in the entrance after closing the door, and after confirming I was alone, I sent the weapon into my inventory. Then I went in to say hi to Mum. She was sitting on the couch and watching the news while eating. She looked over briefly when I came in. “Hi, love,” she said.

I stood next to the couch. “What are they saying?” I asked with a nod towards the TV. I already knew the reason for the earthquake, but I was curious what theories the experts had come up with.

“Some strange stuff,” she said. “They think the center of the quake was somewhere close to here. Can you believe it?! They said something about the tremors doing strange things, but I couldn’t follow that stuff. A bit over my head. And there’s some kind of strange…”

Just then, the images on the TV screen changed. Mum got excited. “Oh, oh! This. Look at this. This is really weird.”

She turned the volume up even though it had already been quite loud. There was an image of the sky from the ground that didn’t seem to be showing anything special. But next to that was what I assumed to be a close-up picture of the same area. It showed a pitch-black shape with rough edges that seemed to be about as big as a desk. It was in the middle of the blue sky like a stain. There were some clouds spotted around it, but the area directly beneath it was completely clear. My skin tingled as I realized what I was looking at. The rift!

Scientists are investigating the appearance of a strange phenomenon in the sky over Brisbane, the news anchor announced. It was first picked up on satellite images. The black spot is so small and so high up that it is not visible with the naked eye. High-tech viewing equipment has been used to capture these images. The black spot is almost completely flat and appears to be unmoving. Projections place it directly above an area of Bunyaville State Forest in Brisbane. This is also the area that was hit by an usual earthquake late last night.

The prevailing opinion is that this black spot is somehow linked to the event and possibly the worldwide quake that hit the day before. As a result, the area beneath it has been declared a no-fly zone out of safety concerns. The Australian government has announced they are putting together a team of specialists to investigate the area and they will be dispatched immediately.

Police have cordoned off the main park in Bunyaville State Forest and they are requesting people avoid the area and refrain from entering the forest using other access points. At this stage, they are refusing to comment on why they have taken this measure, saying they are waiting for the arrival of the government team.

As worried as I was that the government was involved, I was also kind of relieved. With all the resources at their disposal, maybe they would be able to do something. Who knows? Maybe our technology could be effective where magic on other worlds had failed. It also made me feel like I wasn’t in this alone.

The fact the area was blocked off put a spanner in the works, but I was still confident I could sneak in to try and create a dungeon room and set up my Void Blockers. It was a big area, and there was no way they would be able to watch every part of it. It was likely that any underground rooms I made would be discovered now that they were investigating the area, but if their attention was on the rift in the sky, they might go unnoticed. Anyway, even if they did find them, there would be no way to trace them back to me.

The program was now showing interviews with some people on the streets around Brisbane related to the news, and there was an angry old guy that brought a small smile to my face.

“Bad enough we’ve got a bloody hole in the bloody ozone layer,” he said, gesturing wildly up at the sky. “Now we’ve got some bloody black hole shaking the damn ground. ‘Stralia’s becoming nothing but a hole, and it’s those damn politicians’ fault!”

“He’s right about that,” Mum muttered. The news story changed, and she started eating again. It was a toasted ham, cheese and tomato sandwich.

“I made a couple for you too, darling. They’re in the kitchen. Everything else in the fridge probably needs to be chucked, but I thought this would be safe enough.”

“Thanks, Mum,” I told her. “Did the news say why the power went out?”

“Yeah. There were just some problems with transformers or something. They said they managed to fix them up pretty quickly.”

I looked at her closely. She was taking this strange news much better than I thought she would. Especially after her reaction to the global earthquake. When I told her as much, she just shrugged.

“What you said then was good advice. There’s nothing I can do about this, so I should just go about my day,” she told me. She sighed. “I do miss your father, though. I always felt safe with him around. I know it’s silly, but I feel like he would have known what to do about all this.”

A lump formed in my throat, keeping me from saying anything. Instead, I just gave her an awkward hug from above. She patted me on the arm. “Sorry, love. I’m just tired from work. Creeps up on me.”

I vowed to heal her tomorrow, no matter what. I would do it right now if I could, but I needed to get some stuff first to distract her with in order to cover up the healing spell. “I’ll get my hands on some of the stuff I’ve been taking tomorrow,” I told her firmly. “There’s a new concentrated batch so it should make you feel good right away.”

She gave me a smile. “Don’t go getting in any trouble because of your old mum.” Then she frowned a little and started squeezing my arm. Squinting at me, she looked me up and down carefully. “Although, I won’t say no. I swear you look better than you did yesterday. That stuff is magic.”

I froze for a second in shock at her innocent comment that had been completely accurate. Luckily, she didn’t notice. She pushed me away and said, “Go and eat before it gets too cold.”

As I walked towards the kitchen, she called out, “I’m on again tonight, but I have tomorrow off. I’ll go shopping and replace everything when I get up. You’ll have to order something for dinner tonight.”

I turned around. “Actually, I’m going out with the boys. Josh’s dad pulled through ok, so he wants to go and celebrate.”

She shook her head. “That boy will find any excuse to party. That’s good news about his dad. Have fun and be safe!”

I gave her a smile and then walked off. I wolfed down one of the sandwiches she’d left on the counter but left the second one alone. I was so hungry. I knew two wouldn’t be enough. Not a problem now that I can make my own, I thought with a smile. Confirming Mum wasn’t coming, I absorbed the remaining sandwich below the counter and out of eyesight, just in case.

It soon disappeared, successfully added to my knowledge core. I had a theory that I was keen to try out. I hurried up to my room and closed the door, leaning back against it. I was going to try and use Create to make the sandwich I had just absorbed. I knew the ability had only worked before when I was in my dungeon because of the mana-rich atmosphere in there. This was an ordinary item, though. The ability didn’t have any profession restrictions on it for ordinary items anymore. I was hoping that it also didn’t need a lot of mana to make it.

I crossed my fingers and then I raised my hand with the palm facing out. I found the pattern for the sandwich and triggered Create. I almost yelled out in excitement as the ability successfully activated and the now familiar feeling of mana flowing out of my hand began. The shimmer in the air in front of me soon resolved into a perfect copy of the toasted sandwich, which proceeded to fall down onto the carpet.

Oops! I quickly picked it up and blew any dirt off it. 10-second rule, no problem. Taking a bite, it tasted exactly as the first sandwich had, right down to the temperature. It was only slightly warm instead of hot since it had been sitting on the counter for a little bit. The tomato was juicy, and the cheese clung to the roof of my mouth a little. I didn’t know if I would be able to taste magic, but as far as I could tell, it was just an ordinary sandwich. But made with magic! I thought with a huge grin.

“Before you get it into your head to cheat, you didn’t get any experience for creating that,” Cax told me.

“Ahh, you know me so well already,” I told him, smiling. I was so happy this had worked that I wasn’t even upset that ordinary objects didn’t give experience. I took another bite. “How much mana did it cost?” I mumbled.

“Only 10 points. Much cheaper than a rank 1 item.”

Very good! I finished off that sandwich and then made two more which I quickly ate, not wanting to waste any more time. Finally full, I dusted my hands off and then teleported to the dungeon beneath the backyard. It was just like I remembered, comfortably lit and temperature controlled. The notification waiting for my attention came as no surprise.

Congratulations!

You have gained a sufficient amount of insight into your [Teleport] spell to reach Rank 2.

Apply your insights to evolve your spell in one of the following ways:

1) You will be able to take one person with you when you teleport.

2) The range will be increased from 50 meters to 1 kilometer.

3) You will be able to attune to new locations faster, reducing the cooldown from 5 minutes to 3 minutes.

I threw out the last choice immediately. Being able to use the spell a couple of minutes sooner was nowhere near as good as the other two options. I reluctantly also passed on the first one. As cool as it would be to teleport someone around with me, there was nobody to use it on since I was trying to keep all of this secret. That left me with the increased range option, which was pretty damn good. It would help me get in and out of the forest without the police spotting me.

I made my choice and then put it out of my mind. It was time to get down to business. I retrieved my staff from my inventory, having it appear in my right hand. Then I opened up the Enchanting section of my interface. There were several different categories listed. Offense, defense, utility… I felt Cax become extremely focused when I read over the category names of Dungeon and Integrated Structures.

“I take it they aren’t a regular part of enchanting?” I asked him.

“Not at all. It didn’t occur to me that you would get this kind of thing. That was a mistake on my part,” he said apologetically. “I will look at everything more carefully from now on to see if any other new options open up like this.”

“No worries, mate. Not a big deal. I wouldn’t have had time to look at it until now anyway.” I looked in both of those sections, but oddly enough, they were blank. There were no dungeon-related enchantments available.

“It might be because both professions are only at Tier I,” Cax theorized. “Or you may need to research some special enchantments that can be applied.”

I nodded. “Could be. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Now that I’d been reminded of it, I quickly found the information on integrated structures. The house and the fences now had a 30% durability increase to match my level, but no other benefits had appeared. Oh well.

Back in Enchanting, I looked at the available options for offensive enchantments. They were all pretty simple. “Does this list include all the patterns you absorbed from adventurers?” I asked Cax curiously.

“Yes, although there are not many additions to the standard list. Tier 1 enchantments are pretty basic. After you increase your skill with enchanting and reach the next Tier, more varied options will be available.”

Always later, I thought, a little disappointed. I wasn’t averse to some hard work and was a fairly patient person, but still. I wanted the good stuff now!

I chose a simple fire-based enchantment that would add a little magical damage. I focused on adding it to my staff.

This weapon has one available enchantment slot.

Do you wish to apply [+3 fire damage]?

I confirmed it and waited as my energy went into the weapon. I watched in amazement as some runes formed in the middle of the staff. To my surprise, with the knowledge that had been deposited in my head after learning the profession, I was now able to understand what they were for.

They were simple runes to convert energy into a fire-aspected form and direct it. They would sink into the staff, becoming part of it and altering its structure. When the weapon hit something, the ambient energy at the point of impact would be converted and directed into a small pulse of fire-based energy. The runes faded away from sight as the enchantment process finished and they became one with the weapon.

As amazed as I was by what I’d just done, I was a little skeptical about the effectiveness of the result. “Will this actually work against a ghost? The staff will just go straight through it, right? There is no impact to trigger the enchantment.”

“Thought and intent,” Cax replied. “If you believe you hit it, it will work.”

“Don’t give me the wise, all-knowing professor routine,” I told him.

A sense of smug satisfaction was all I got back in reply. I chose to just accept it would work and moved on.

“If it does work, a few extra points of damage aren’t going to do much,” I told him. “I’m going to go ahead and learn that dart spell you told me about.”

He didn’t say anything against it, so I went in and found the spell. I paid the 20xp to unlock and assign it, and just like that, I now had a ranged spell. Light Dart.

I wanted to try it out and had an idea.

A little hesitantly since I wasn’t sure how he would react to the question, I asked Cax, “Is there any taboo about attacking your own dungeon creatures?”

“For me, no,” he said unhesitatingly. “In fact, I would even call it a hobby.”

That took me by surprise. “A hobby?!”

“There wasn’t much to do when there were no adventurers going through my dungeon. I had to occupy myself somehow.” His tone made it clear he thought it was perfectly normal to kill his own creations. “Besides, it allowed me to test out different trap ideas and room layouts.”

Not the answer I was expecting, but it didn’t matter. “If it isn’t a problem for you, then it isn’t a problem for me,” I said, happy I could go ahead with my plan.

I found the relevant section in my Dungeon Construction profession for creating defenders. The ‘welcome message’, as I’d come to think of the screen that appeared when I accessed a new section of my interface, was short and to the point. I could create a defender to be any level up to the dungeon’s level, which of course matched mine. It would cost me 10mp per level of the creature to make it.

There were quite a few options available for me to make. “How did you get this many patterns?” I asked Cax, surprised.

“That’s not even all of them. You need to be a higher level to be able to see and make the stronger ones,” he said proudly before answering my question. “Some were wild animals that wandered in and died to traps, others were companions and familiars of adventurers.” His tone took on a wistful quality. “I also had an ability that let me make adjustments and combinations to my defenders, so most of the patterns are actually my original creations. You might get the same ability once you improve your Dungeon Construction profession. I didn’t have it at first, either. Although, I guess your Research ability can serve the same purpose.”

“That sounds amazing! I really hope I get that ability.” It would be so cool to design my own defenders. With the hefty cooldown on Research, I wouldn’t be able to use it so often just to play around with altering defenders. An idea occurred to me. “If I don’t end up getting the ability naturally, do you think I could research the same ability and then learn it?”

From the sense of excitement I got from him, I knew I was onto something. “That might just work! The information must be in here somewhere. And if not, it’s very similar to how your Research ability works that it should be able to base it off that.”

My excitement matched his. I was looking forward to the day I could design my own defenders. For now, I went back to looking at the list of the ones available to me now. Conveniently, they all had little pictures so I could get an idea of what they were. That was a good thing, because some of the names were too strange to easily guess. Rockauncher? What the hell is that? The picture of it was actually kind of cute. It looked like a rough rock as big as my clenched fist, with tiny appendages that resembled arms and legs poking out.

“Ahh, yes. I liked those little things,” Cax reminisced. “I used to set up a room full of loose rocks and boulders and hide the rockaunchers among them. They can fuse their limbs inside any stone material so they don’t stand out, and it also helps them launch themselves at their targets. They could get considerable force behind their little bodies. They then run away and conceal themselves again, waiting for another chance to hit the adventurers.”

I chuckled as I imagined a group of adventurers being pelted by these cute little guys. “From the name, I take it these were one of your creations and not native to your world?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said. I could detect a hint of pride in his voice, so I was careful to keep my mind free of what I thought of his naming skills.

I ignored all the other options for now and found the one I was looking for. Skeleton. I had a bone to pick with them. I thought it might be cathartic to go to town on them, and I’d be completely safe since they couldn’t fight back.

Could they? “Umm, they won’t attack me when I start hitting them, will they?” I asked, concerned.

“No, not at all. Although, you could order them to if you really want to work on your fighting skills,” he suggested.

Skills! I’d forgotten about the free weapon skill that came with my class! I should assign that now and then try out the spell and my new skill at the same time. After a little bit of navigating through some screens and some adjustments to my mind and body as the knowledge was applied, it was done.

Congratulations!

You have learned a new skill.

Staves

Effect 1: You will be guided on basic ways to hold and use a staff and these positions will be incorporated into muscle memory faster.

Effect 2: Your basic understanding of how to use a staff means attacks will do 2 extra points of damage. In addition, the durability of your staff will decrease slightly slower.

I was pleasantly surprised at the additional damage I got from the skill. I would have been happy just with the knowledge of how to use it properly. Now I was ready to fight! Well, practice, really. I found the pattern for the skeletons that I had fought and absorbed in the forest and began to create one. I set it at level 1 to match the one from my first encounter, and also to save a bit of mana. Although, another reason I had chosen the skeleton was because of my Life affinity. There was no penalty when using Create to make bone, so it only cost 10mp.

Just like when I saw the shard making one, the air shimmered and took on the general shape before resolving into a skeleton. It stood before me, unmoving. I walked around it slowly, looking at it carefully. There was no sign of any of the damage I had inflicted on the original skeletons.

Cax chimed in. “Between all the skeletons you absorbed and the fact they were still in decent condition, there was enough for the magic to work out the original structure.”

The eyes were the same eerie dark holes. I couldn’t look into them for too long before feeling creeped out. Alright, professor. Thought and intent. Staring at the skeleton’s slightly less creepy jaw, I focused and gave it an order. “Go stand over there.” I pointed to one side of the room. It immediately obeyed and walked over and stood facing the wall. Got to be a bit clearer, I guess. “Turn and face me.” With some clacking, it spun about.

I went and put my back against the opposite wall to create as much space as possible between us. Let’s start with the spell, I thought, putting my staff back into my inventory. I knew I didn’t need to use any gestures, but for this kind of spell, I wanted to. I raised my right hand with the palm facing towards the skeleton and said, “Light Dart,” trying to maintain a serious demeanor. Since I was feeling like a 6-year old on Christmas morning, I completely failed.

A bright bar of light as big as my pointer finger formed in front of my palm just like Cax had described it, and then it shot towards the skeleton about as fast as I could throw a ball. It hit it in the forehead exactly where I had been picturing, knocking it back against the wall and leaving a charred spot where it had connected.

“Wow!” I eagerly looked at the damage notification. 15 points of damage?! That was amazing. It had done the full 10 points of damage and then the extra for the critical hit to the head. The skeleton obviously had no defense against magical attacks. It would take four shots to kill it, which would actually cost as much mana as a single use of my healing spell. Killing it before it could hurt me was definitely a better use of the mana.

“Just so you know, that didn’t count towards ranking up the spell,” Cax informed me.

“What? Why not?”

“It’s an offensive spell. There was no challenge or danger in what you just did. You might as well have shot it at the wall. The universe can be quite strict about certain things. You’ll get a feel for all the rules eventually,” he told me.

It hadn’t occurred to me to power level the spell before, but now that I was being told I couldn’t, I really wanted to. What a stupid rule. “Alright then.” It was time for some experimenting. Not only to try and get around the unfair restriction on offensive spells, but also to become more familiar with using the spell in a ‘real’ situation.

I ordered the skeleton to run around and try to dodge my attacks. It was only able to move at a fast power walking speed and seemed incapable of actually dodging, but it still made it hard for me. Too hard, actually. I focused on hitting it in the head again, but the spell didn’t adjust for the skeleton’s movement and the dart hit the wall behind it. I tried again by picturing a spot in front of the skeleton, but I overcompensated and hit the wall in front of the bloody thing.

I moved my focus to the body since it was a bigger target but missed the next two shots, although I swear the second dart went straight through the bony bastard.

I kept at it until I was almost out of mana while the skeleton just kept running from one end of the room to the other, never tiring or varying its speed. I alternated between using my hand and simply casting the spell mentally, but there was no difference in the two methods. Finally, I was successfully able to account for the skeleton’s movement and hit its pelvis for the full 10 points of damage. “Yes!” My feeling of triumph was short lived.

“It still didn’t count,” Cax told me. “I would say it’s still due to the lack of any danger.”

“Damn it! Maybe I can have it attack me?” I was reluctant to do so considering the bad memories I had from the encounters in the forest, but I couldn’t ignore what a great opportunity this was to rank up my spell if I could just get around the rules imposed by the universe.

Cax shot down that idea. “I don’t believe that will work. You control it, so you would never actually be at risk.”

“What if I act really scared and let it get in some hits?” I suggested.

There were several seconds of silence where I swear I could feel him questioning his decision to join with me before he answered. “You want to trick the universe, a force so far beyond us, beyond even the World Spirit, with some bad acting?”

“What if I unlock and learn an acting skill first?” I joked. Before he could answer and call me an idiot, I kept going, giving up on my idea of power leveling my dart spell. “Alright then. So, offensive spells are going to be tough to rank up. Let’s try out the staff.”

I summoned it into my hands and as though an invisible force were pushing and pulling on me, my hands slid into a position that somehow just felt comfortable. My right hand was holding it from beneath while my left hand had an overhand grip. At the same time, my feet, hips, and shoulders shifted to readjust my weight and put me in a stance that again just resonated as correct.

“Woah! That’s weird.” I wasn’t sure how to feel about being Patrick Swayze’d like that.

“That’s normal for a skill like this,” Cax assured me. “Once you become fully accustomed to the correct positions, the guiding nudges will stop.”

I paid close attention to the position I was in, wanting to speed up the removal of the weird hands-on help as quickly as possible. I called the skeleton over and ordered it to stand in front of me. I thought about hitting it in the head, and immediately I felt my right leg nudged. I stepped forward with that foot and then my hands were guided so my left moved the staff down towards my left hip and my right hand swung the staff forward to connect with the skeleton’s skull. It was forced to take a step back from the blow, but otherwise didn’t react.

Thanks to focusing on following the guiding sensations, the strike wasn’t very fast. It would be pretty distracting in a real fight.

“Don’t worry. You will get used to it soon,” Cax told me. “Although, it might be best if you train until you fully incorporate the movements and no longer need the help.”

I completely agreed. First, though, I wanted to make a Void Blocker. Then, while I was waiting for my mana to regenerate, I could practice more with my staff. If I continued like that until I had to head back up, I should be able to get several made.

As I’d expected, making one of the new items was going to take 75mp. Because they were made of stone and I didn’t have an affinity for earth magic, the 200% cost penalty was applied to Create. I’d considered using bone as the material when I researched the pattern because of that, but ultimately thought stone was better. If someone stumbled across a big chunk of bone, it would have drawn a lot of attention and definitely been removed. A stone would be left alone as just part of the woods.

I had to wait for my mana to regenerate first after my work with the dart spell before, so I kept going with my staff training. I found that when I thought about the strike I wanted to make, the skill nudged me to shift my hands and body into the correct positions. I kept trying different basic moves for attack and defense, trying to imagine various scenarios. At times the skill didn’t guide me, which told me that what I was trying probably wasn’t a correct way to use the staff.

I also tried doing some complicated swings and combos I thought might be good for chaining together some attacks, but the skill never activated for any of them.

“It’s just a low-rank skill,” Cax reminded me. "That kind of complex instruction will come at later ranks."

I kept working on the fundamentals and made a Void Blocker when I had enough mana. Thanks to the faster regeneration rate while in my dungeon, I was able to recover enough mana to make about three every hour. Everything was going smoothly until I hit a snag. When my latest low-speed practice attack landed, the skeleton crumpled to the ground, dead.

Crap! I’d forgotten to keep an eye on its health. “Let me guess. No experience or loot?” I asked Cax.

“Of course not,” he replied. “Mostly due to the fact that it was made from your energy, but also because there was no danger. No risk, no reward.”

“But I get experience when I absorb or create something! Where’s the risk in that?”

“You only get 1 point of experience for both of those things,” he pointed out. “And actually, the amount of energy manipulated should warrant more than that. I assume it’s so you cannot grow powerful by basically doing nothing. I also believe both abilities are balanced so you don’t lean too heavily towards either destruction or creation.”

I rubbed my head tiredly. “Rules, right?”

“Get used to them,” he replied sagely.

I summoned another skeleton and kept at it. By the time I needed to head up a few hours later, I had seven Void Blockers stacked in my inventory and I’d managed to perform a couple of the basic moves with my staff without the skill guiding me anymore, meaning that I had successfully committed them to muscle memory.

Beyond that, I had a new spell that would help me out in a fight, I had evolved my Teleport spell so now I could travel even further, and I’d picked up enough xp that I could level up again immediately. I held off for now, wanting to keep it in the bank so to speak.

I felt like I’d earned a bit of downtime and was looking forward to a night out to help me unwind.