With no walls to speak of, the sun hits me right in the face in the morning waking me from a sound sleep. I check the ward and the duration has decreased, but no damage. I sit up and stretch while I look around the church. The altar and statue look totally out of place within the ruined church. I guess I will start working on the foundation today, since I will need to make sure it is sound before starting on the walls, but first I have the other statue to work on.

I take out a sandwich from my inventory and eat it while drinking from a skin of weak ale. When finished my simple breakfast I walk through the ward. I receive a prompt asking if I want to add my party to the access list for the ward? I add the party, which is a nice feature. I was thinking I would have to remove the ward, so Nora could get out. Next, I walk over to the altar and place the new seed I created yesterday on it and select sacrifice. This larger seed produces twenty-five faith points. Now just three more days until I can upgrade the altar.

I take a seat on the altar as I focus on the other statue. The process goes quicker now that I have done it once, but it still wipes me out and gives me a mana headache, which is not the best thing to start the day out with. I inspect the statue, which give me the first proof that my quest may not be in vain.

Name: Statue of the Twin God Poth

Description: This is a statue created by the Twin God Poth for his worshipers. It still has a faith aura of celestial energy, which links it to the god, which made it allowing a follower of the Twin Gods to see their status.

Durability: 750/750

Status: Alive

This is great news, Poth is alive, now I just have to find him somehow. Hopefully rebuilding more of the church will give me more clues. I walk over to the remains of the wall. Using earth sense to get a feel for the foundation, it feels like the wall sinks two stones deep into the ground as a foundation. Many of these stones are showing signs of stress and cracking. Nora woke up about thirty minutes later while I was working my way around the foundation checking what I would need to repair. I walked over and make sure she could leave the ward without any problems. When she was eating, I went over my thoughts on building up her endurance first.

“I was thinking I could teach you how to create a raw mana ward. I can make it the exact size needed to consume all your mana and even though you pass out it will drain all your mana. If you are feeling up for it I can set the ward bigger, so it will drain your health down to 20%, so that you will be training endurance with both your health and mana. There should be no risk as long as you wait to fully recover both your health and mana before starting again.”

She frowned as she thought about it. “Is this how you trained your endurance?”

“I could not drain my health in Starter Glade, but I did use it to increase my endurance by fully draining my mana. Captain Varus trained me in endurance in both health and mana.”

“Did he give you potions to numb the pain?”

“He didn’t, but I did use Potions of Iron Will. I have several of these on me that we can use for your training, but of course it will still hurt. Training this way, you should get the Numbness and then Numbness II skills. Captain Varus told me if you use Numbness II before hitting zero health you can keep going until the skill duration runs out or you go below -10% health.”

“I had not heard that. Very well, let’s try draining both my mana and health to level as fast as possible.”

I take a Potion of Iron Will out of my inventory and hand it to her. “You will probably want to hold your noise when you drink it.”

She pulls the stopper and smell hits me from where I am standing. She takes my advice and holds her noise as she finishes. “By Vera that is horrible. Whose recipe is this?”

“That was the Tavern owner John.” I say as I move over to the best section I have found of the wall, so she can rest against it when she passes out. I reach out with my earth sense and shape earth to clear the area of debris, so I can chalk in a circle for her to cast her ward in. After chalking in the ward, I walk her through casting a ward. After about 30 minutes, she can successfully cast the spell, while I am chain casting with her. I nervously watch her mana and then health drop ready to pour mana into the casting if her health goes below 20%, but everything goes smoothly. I leave her resting there regaining her mana and health, while I continue to walk around the foundation.

It takes about one hour to finish examining the foundation. The foundation is the most damaged in the front of the building and the least in the back. I walk over behind the altar and start repairing the foundation. One stone block is about 500 lbs. and is 3 feet long, one foot high, and one foot wide, so it takes 100 mana to shape it. In most cases, I am repairing cracks and some chips. In cases were the stones have just lost durability I use Mend, finally having an opportunity to level it. The church front and back are sixty feet wide and it is 100 feet long. The foundation is two feet thick, so the entire foundation is 6000 square feet and 12,000 cubic feet. I continue to work on the foundation until lunchtime and then caught up with Nora for a lunch break.

She has already increased her endurance by two points. It looks like she is holding up well. I remember vividly how leveling endurance sucked. Creating wards is a little easier than what I did with Captain Varus. At least she passes out at half mana and then doesn’t wake until her mana and health are restored, which means she goes unconscious right when the pain is getting bad. We both go back to our respective tasks after lunch. It is taking me 100 mana per cubic foot to fix a stone, with each stone being three cubic feet. It takes three minutes to regenerate the mana and continue to the next stone. From my review of the foundation there are about 1300 stones out of the 4000 that make up the foundation that need repair. That alone should take about sixty-five hours of work. Hopefully my leveling up Shape Stone will help improve the speed. Also, I hope the altar will give something to help repair the church when I level it up.

As we break for a late dinner I have finished about 20% of the foundation stones and Nora had reached 6 on endurance, which is really good progress. We spend the remainder of the evening talking more about the Empire and its neighbors. There is a collection of city-states to the south with a god of nature protecting them from the Empire. To the east is the ocean, which has several islands that foster both a lot of trade and piracy in equal measures. To the north in a frozen tundra full of monsters and a collection of unique dungeons that are only accessible on certain days of the year. These are unique in that tent cities will spring up around the dungeon when they open and several open at the same time forcing adventurers to choose, which one they will delve. To the southeast is a high mountain range claimed by the dwarves. Northeast of us is a mountain range with passages to the other side where a tribe of elves populates a huge forest. Directly west of the Empire is a large desert that borders the domains of fire and light. It turns out that while most of the population in the Empire is human, about 10% are elves, 5% dwarves, and another 5% a mix of other races. It is a lot to take in.

I finally broach a topic I have wanted to discuss. “Nora you mentioned blood oaths before and that breaking them can cause permanent death. Can you tell me more about that?”

“Very well, a blood oath is taken by two or more people invoking the System and cutting themselves letting blood spill on the ground. They speak the oath and are bond by it until all who take the oath together revoke it. They are typically used for personal guards to ensure their loyalty. It can also be used to swear vassals, but this is frowned upon.”

“Then two people could use a blood oath to promise to keep each other’s secrets?”

Now Nora looked at me suspiciously. “Whose secrets are you talking about?”

“Ours of course.” I say grinning. “Before you deny it I know you are interested in know many things about me and my abilities. I can curious about what you are hiding. I am fine with you knowing as long as we just keep them between us. I was thinking an oath like the following.

I swear to hold the secrets passed on to me by George Petersen, not divulging them to anyone without his permission. I will also share the secret of why people are out to kill me as long as I judge its value is equal or less than the value of the secrets he has shared with me.”

Nora gave me a considering look, “You would leave it up to me to judge the value of the secrets you share against mine?”

“Of course, only you can make that determination.”

Nora surprised me by standing up and then clasping her hands together bowed from the waist to me. “I am honored by your trust and will return it as best as I am allowed. I agree to take an oath.”

We both draw daggers and cut our hands to spill blood on the church floor as we speak our oaths to guard each other’s secrets. As I watched the blood seems to vanish into the floor as a burning sensation runs long the palm of my hand healing the cut but leaving a faint scar.

As I look up from my palm I catch Nora staring at me hungerly. “Well out with it.”

Laughing I take a seat and gesture for her to do so as well. I think back over the last several weeks and talk about being reborn, my Shaper ability, solving Cal’s quest, training with Captain Varus, finding the dimensional pocket, the legendary map, and the Deck of Fate.

By that part she is staring at me in shock. I go on to describe my meeting with Vera and how I met the Demon from the Deck of Fate, which brought us here.

“Well what do you think, worth your secret?” I say with a grin as I enjoy her obvious discomfort. I am sure she never expected my secrets would involve so much.

“Yes, they are worth it, but I must admit I never expected that would happen.” As she sat there thinking.

I don’t push her as she is obviously considering something important. “I am the daughter of the Empress of the Tassan Empire.”

Maybe it is a holdover from Earth and my never having to deal with any powerful authority figures, but I can’t help blurting out. “That’s it?”

She frowns and says. “There are many that would use me against my mother or my own sisters who want to remove me as a rival. There are also some who would try to control and help me in hopes that their investment would be returned many fold if I became the Empress.”

“I am sorry, I was just caught by surprise. So, people are after you, but we are not sure why. I am guessing we need to get you back to the capital and your mother?”

“Something like that, but we will have to be careful who we talk to. Without being able to travel via portals it will be sometime until we can get to the capital. For now, we should focus on our level progression and the quest.”

“I have something I was hoping to ask you. When I got the Deck of Fate it awarded me a lot of intelligence, but I don’t really feel smarter. I gain mana of course, but isn’t there something more to it?”

“That is a very good question to ask. It is not a linear progression. Instead it takes an exponentially higher intelligence to increase your raw intelligence. Mana is a linear progression based on your intelligence, which is why it seems an increase in intelligence is only increasing mana. A number of people have studied this and they concluded that the System doesn’t want a group of super geniuses with great power running around at the higher levels.”

“Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I wanted to ask that question before, but didn’t want to explain my high intelligence.”

As we settle in for the night, I renew the ward it hits me again how far from home I have come. I stare up at the moon Vera while she moves across the sky with my eyes get heavier and I fall to sleep.