Lurk was dreaming, he was once more floating in the gentle warm sensation, that he ended up in when he first died and began his Resurrection. He opened his eyes, this time instead of being formless he had his goblin form, but he was aware of it as if seeing it in a third person view.

He had not looked proper at himself through a clean reflection, he had to admit he looked rather normal if not for the size difference, which he could somehow understand he was around half the height of a human. His hair was black short and arranged in a normal messy way. His eyes was a deep purple hue, with clear black pupils.

His form was extremely defined muscular wise, he wondered why that was, this seemed extreme for such a lean form to be this chiseled. When he began examining his body looking or rather observing it all at once from all angles. He stopped briefly looking at his left arm, where it looked like there was a clean line running across his arm, the arm after that looking transparent, he looked at his muscles, wondering why he looked like this. But before he could examine more, a old friend appeared.

Menu popped up with lines drawn from certain parts of his body as suddenly his skin vanished, his musculature became fully visible, with many small descriptions of each little muscle group if he looked closer at it. But what also was shown were two runes floating beside his body, he could sense a clear connection between the runes and his muscles. Examining the Runes he realized that he could read the runes, at least the main part of it, it was surrounded by magic spinning circles that were moving like a clockwork, exchanging tinier runes between each other. Some runes changing shape, or vanishing only be replaced by another, all moving elegantly without discord or chaos.

But the main rune spelled out.

[STR Boost] : Moderate

[Ogre Pure Power] : Ogre

They both were vastly different, the STR boost one was simple and rudimentary compared to the Ogre pure power one. With endlessly more complexity and when observed seemed to have Magic circles that appeared out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere, making no sense in a purely observable way.

But it was all beautiful to watch slowly move and tick in front of him. He decided to examine what was a common reference between them and he found something at the very core that seemed to be the base structure. Here they were the same but it would expand out and become infinitely complex after just a few circles.

He understood one of the common runes, he thought about it and the rune flicked out of existence. His body at the same time changed slightly as his muscles became less defined, he flicked out the same run on the other one. His body becoming a average looking body type.

A on/off view rune for them, the runes became to complex after much further away from the rune he looked, interweaving with to many things to easily identify what one rune would do or could even be manipulated. He flicked the two runes again and his body once more turned normal.

He thought of his body as a whole, several runes began appearing all around him spread out in a orderly fashion into a big complicated magical circle network, with his body floating in the center of it.

Watching every rune with its own little system of magic circles and runes ticking along, seeing them interact with each other. Energy could be felt flowing around in this magic network. Pulsing like a heartbeat the runes acted together.

Observing each rune one by one he realised it was all the things his menu had shown him. His skills, traits, natural talents and magical cores. When he saw the magical runes for each Magic type he had it was easy to identify them they were each glowing a specific color, some of them more potent than others. He easily identified his [Wind Magic], it was pulsing faster and was considerably more complex and larger than the others. The newest one the [Dark Magic] was barely ticking with almost no extra connections to other runes.

It was like looking at a Game talent tree, but it was infinitely more complex except if you stepped back and viewed it all at once. He noticed a special grouping of runes that seemed more separate from the others, a clear distinction that these were not a direct part of the overall system, but were latched onto it.

One of them in particular read in its name as.

[Horncrown Viper Poison]

It seemed aggressive and was sending out connection points into many different runes in the core of the system, [Blood], [Nerves] and many other smaller ones. He remembered he had been poisoned, and he realized he only had once chance to survive it. To cut of the injection point in his left arm.

Now that he was watching the rune in detail he saw that it was connected to parts inside his arm that was still connected to his body. But in very very small areas of the blood vessels. Knowing that poison required almost no amount to be deadly.

Like the most deadly poison know to man was Botulinum toxin, which only required 1 nanogram per kilogram of the victims mass to be deadly. As little as an intravenous dose of just 10-7g would be fatal to a 70 kg person. Lurk was a goblin and much smaller. Granted the Viper poison here would most likely not be this poisonous.

What he also noticed along side of the poison rune were some other runes.

[Lessen Pain]

[Lesser Status Clear]

[Light Regeneration]

The last spells he cast on himself before he blacked out from the pain, he could see them pulse and then their effect on his body. Lesser status clear had surrounded the Poison and was removing it slowly but it was fading right away, with more poison still to go. The lessen pain was effecting his nerve system fighting against a torrent of pulses that were connected to a pain description. It was far from enough to hold it back.

His arm was connected to the Light Regeneration he could see his arm knit it self together very slowly. First it was closing off the wound, but then it was beginning to build below the stump, adding to bone and flesh.

All three of the runes were being fueled by their own little system of runes, that were slowly vanishing with each little pulse they worked. The Lesser status clear had no fuel rune connected to it and was slowly vanishing again.

It was after all just a single target spell with instant effect and no upkeep to it. But this would not do, if he was just a little bit unlucky, then that tiny tiny amount of poison would be more than enough to kill him several times over or make it last way past his lessen pains duration, but it was not enough even at its current strength. His body would not handle this much he instinctively knew.

He remembered when he was touching the runes and they interacted with each other. But he needed more time for what he now had planned to try out. With that thought the pulses of the system slowed down substantially. He quickly began to examine the Lessen pain and Lesser status Clear for similarities and compared it versus the now very very slowly fading Light regeneration.

It took a while, though time seemed like a very loose term in his current state. He began to tinker with the runes on the two runes with a duration, until he figured out what made them have a duration and how those specific runes connected to the other systems of the spell.

During this he figured out he could manipulate the runes and the small pathways that would all amass into the magical circles that the runes ran along like as if on power lines or a train system.

He focused on what was the connecting point on the lessen pain of its duration system, and he decided to get ready for something very unpleasant. Just as the spell had done a pulse, he severed the connecting point of the duration part. Moving it quickly over to the almost faded out Lesser Status clear rune. It snapped on but not in a elegant way, and there were conflicts. It was like a hamster in a wheel compared to a elegant complex race car engine.

The "hamster" struggling to keep it the rune going, but it began flashing as if it had stopped fading out. But the energy stored in the Duration system was leaking out fast! It was clearly too demanding a spell to keep running with this simple of a system. Worse also was that the body his body he was viewing was now being flooded by pain to a dangerous degree.

He needed to hurry fixing and to cut unnecessary traits of the spell itself. It was to demanding, he quickly looked it over and saw where he part effected the body. He localized a point that connected all the limbs and main body parts. The targeting system of the rune, it was set to effect everything in his body all at once. He did not need that. He severed all the parts that were pointing to anywhere not his left arm, after making sure that the poison had not left his arm. Realizing he could narrow it down even more he connected it to the very term of the core part of the Poison rune.

He used some of the left over runes he thought would fit to stabilize the connection point and suddenly the spell turned into...

[Lesser Poison Clear]

The poison began vanishing with each tick, but the pain thrashed around in his body from each little piece of remaining poison until it all vanished and his body calmed down.

("phew...wait.. everything seems to be fading, my sense of self is back.. before it was like i was viewing everything.. now everything is fading..")

Getting a last view of his body surrounded by the complex clockwork of runes he noticed one rune standing out above all the others that was connected to everything. But he had not seen it before due to his focus on the minutia and micro of how things worked.

[FATE]

("...Ok...")

Lurk thought as he slowly faded out of unconsciousness and slowly opened his eyes and waking up in a cave, seeing a sleeping Sala right up against him.

"Ahh!!" (Lurk)

"Eeiik!" (Sala)

*Bonk!!!*