Rue awoke on someone's shoulder, flopping in the motion of their gait.

Flexing a rested and considerably stronger body than the one she had 2 weeks ago, Two weeks ago, When she was malnourished, starving and desperate.

Far worse condition than now.

landing and assuming a stance for combat, Akyas looked at her confusedly.

"um, rue, why are you doing that?"

"Wasn't the deal that I guide you to the portal?" she replied

He blinked "yeah that is the deal, we have been travelling for 2 days now."

It was Rue's turn to be confused

"I don't remember the past two days."

Rue made a puzzled look as Akyas gave her a roll of sumpcat skin, clearly it had been treated to turn it into a leather.

Touching the leather, a spark of energy travelled to her head.

Pre-set routine found.

Countercurse activating . . . . . . . .

Failure - lack of appropriate energy

Diminished effect - temporary return of memories

and the two days returned to her as her eyes settled "Well this is annoying to do every time."

Akyas crossed his arms "this is fine for me, Getting out of here is better and worth the annoyance of merely pulling out a magical cloth."

"True. though I do feel a little annoyed about the process involved in navigating this curse."

As she said this, she was activating and utilising a minor feature of the arcane magic techniques.

Its most powerful feature was and is the creation of magical imbuements on mundane items, regardless of material and one's skill with said material, the lesser traits of it is the fine manipulation and imbuement of memories.

After the first day this lesser power was used in its fullest in order to retain the understanding of what was occurring, But it told both Akyas and Rue more than just the effect of the curse.

It told them that the spellcaster knew that Rue was helping Akyas, and they wanted that to stop.

The treated furs in her hands crumbled to ash before Rue pulled out another roll and began to draw mana into it.

with all the exercises she had done and her near constant use of it, there were several skill level ups across her time towards the portal.

Keeping their tracks hidden was the most difficult part of the process.

and eventually they made it half way to the ork camp.

"status" Rue said under her breath.

Name: Rue

Age: 10

Race: Human(91%)

Gender: Female(immature)

Class: None

Health: 48/48

Mana: 50.5/50.5 (750)

Statistics;

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 8

Constitution: 4

Resilience: 12

Wisdom: 7

Intelligence: 10

Charisma: 2

Perception: 5

Passive skills:

Poison & Disease resistance: Level 5

Hunger & thirst resistance: level 1

Steady hands: level 1

Strengthened mana pool: level 1 +NEW

increased mana regeneration: level 2 +NEW

Active skills:

Meditation: level 2 +NEW

Darkvision: level 1

Stealth: level 6 +level up

Mana control: level 5 +level up

Mana Blast: level 2

Mana compression: level 1

Survival: level 8

Craft: leatherworking: level 1 +level up

Craft: Tinkering: level 2 +level up

Trapping: level 2

Danger sense: Level 2 +level up

Arcane Magic Technique: level 3

Gunmanship: level 1

Unique skills:

Assisted Control

Composite body

Passion core

Status effects:

Toxin immunity 70%(Sump air)

Items equipped:

Reverence

Sumpcoat

Fateforged bulwark(500/500)

Rue grumbled to herself "UUU, damn it, compared to my skills growth my stats haven't budged outside of mana control's negligible effect on my maximum possible amount to control and a tiny increase to my mana total,"

"Well don't worry about it, you haven't trained them at all, only thing that you could have trained is not important right now, right now we need to get passed this camp, dunno about ya but I feel like very much avoiding this place as much as possible."

"Agreed" Rue answered.

They both took a sharp turn, taking care not to walk upon the driveways out of the ork encampment.

"In the past, I would have wanted to burn this place to the ground." Rue said to Akyas, spurring small talk.

"well, in my experience that wouldn't solve anything." he answered.

"what wouldn't it do? It would free the slaves they keep, end some orks and make this world a better place."

Akyas sighed "For one, there are people like me who buy slaves and take them from the sumps into arguably better lives, second it wouldn't kill as many orks as they would make in a week and third unless you are found, the orks would take their anger of being burnt to the ground out on the slaves. you would just end up damning the slaves held to a worse fate."

Rue paused for a minute

"you buy slaves?" she said her voice hard

Akyas froze for a moment before answering "yes, I do- did a little trade here and there, tends to be profitable since being from here prevents them from gaining unnecessary power and escaping."

Rue silently continued on, anger on her face before she cleared it at the sign of a clearing ahead,

"this wasn't here last time I was, be careful about it." she said

Despite her reservations about the large man, he was still her best ticket to her preferred life,

"I see it, mind scouting ahead to make sure?"

Rue nodded, after all, who could do it aside from her.

She peeked around the opening that spanned out into a 3-4 meter wide roadwork, there wasn't any kind of refinement outside of the obvious part that the scrap piles hadn't coated the exposed earth and had instead been erected into a retaining wall to hold the lower layers of scrap from sliding into the free space.

traces of tracks and deep ruts in the earth told Rue; it was new, and some BIG wheels had rolled through here.

pulling the grey hood over her head she began crawling into the walls of scrap surrounding the path the two took. Akyas took out a large sheet of grey and hooked the top corners on the ceiling of the path they were in.

if someone was walking here, they would notice him but a passing glance on the side of a speeding vehicle.

not a single chance.

Rue continued to worm her way around the crevice's and curves of the scrap before popping her head out above the retaining wall and stared down the road, looking both ways before checking for the path forward.

the roads were quiet, far too quiet for orks anyways.

there didn't seem to be a normal path available, so Rue moved out of the scrap and inspected the road ahead, then the wall to see if there was any way to go through it as they had so far.

Rue thought she had found some path traversable by akyas before... a rumble shook around the piles.

Rues hair stood up on her head as she turned in time to see a massive rolla in the distance.

and it was COVERED in orks, enhancing her eyesight with a variation of dark vision's technique she saw a mass of metal held together with the combined might of a small ork army.

crawling into a nearby crevice she waited for the rumbling mass to pass, the rumbling got louder, and louder.

she started to hear orks speaking like a deafening hum of machinery.

Then the rumbling began to slow.

the voices quieted down until the driver could be heard.

"DA SHAMENZ SAID E'D BE OUT ERE, SO DON'T COME BAK TIL YA FOIND HIM YA LAZY GITZ!"

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH." the orks replied enthusiastically.

Rue peeked out to see where Akyas was hiding, to see that they had overshot their mark, Akyas was a fair distance behind the ork warband, and to that, so was Rue.

But it wouldn't take them a huge amount of time to come back. Willing the mana stored within her armguard into action, she did three things, first she coated herself, Akyas and a thin curtain of air across the path in mana.

second she activated a form of illusion magic that she called 'marked filter' a rather useful technique, though Rue could only use it for a few minutes at most and the size of the so called filter was limited.

the magic wouldn't be possible at all without the armguard.

the magic essentially took an image behind the marked targets and projected it as if they weren't there.

it wasn't infallible but at the same time, it was a very effective use of resources right now.

and so the third thing rue did was rushed over to where Akyas was hiding helping him with the curtain.

"so is there a way through this wall?" he asked, fear obviously in him.

"we will have to climb it, and carefully at that, unless you want to fight a 50 ork strong warband out for blood."

Akyas cringed for a moment before nodding his head "alright, lets do this."

Rue turned back and ran for the wall and gently began to climb it with Akyas behind her.

As he touched the wall she changed the shape of the mana filter, given that half of the mana she used earlier had dissipated she would have about a quarter of what she started with IF she could reclaim the filter.

Reshaping the violet energy into a shroud around the massive body of Akyas and the comparably small body of herself.

the efficiency was even worse than she thought, barely an eighth of the mana used came to reform the filter.

She could practically FEEL the mana dissipate as energy emptied from her arms and legs, her core burnt hot and bright by comparison.

the thinness of the veil covering Akyas left little room for error in her magic and soon a headache formed.

Then the climb began, Akyas only picked the sturdiest handholds to avoid excess noise and to avoid falling to his death.

of course the fall wasn't what scared him, it was fighting an entire warband with only a half-baked slave girl as backup.

Over the course of the weekish he knew Rue he could guess she had 10s across the board in terms of stats,

her skills were mysterious however.

she could create many items and effects merely by touching metal, skin and bone. if it were possible to do so on a person, no even just Appling the skill large scale would be deadly, her resistances and ability to survive in the sumplands on her own as a child frankly scared Akyas.

he knew little about the small child, what he did either scared or excited him about the potential of Rue.

Slowly he climbed the mountain of scrap, far quicker by comparison was the approach of the ork party and a land-speed record breaking motion was Rue's exhaustion, she was already performing 4 separate magics between the two of them, now she was climbing a scrap wall, silently while finding sturdy handholds for Akyas and applying the knowledge to Akyas's veil in real time.

for her normal capacity she shouldn't be even casting a single true spell yet.

They reached higher and higher, further and further, the orks were all over the place,

Rue was holding on by a thread, had already had to deactivate Broken free to maintain mana cost to regen.

Akyas took a new handhold, many orks looked in many places, another second passes, Rue feels on the verge of collapse.

Her core Roars in protest against the unfair treatment, her limbs are heavier than blocks of lead, her head pounds harder and harder.

Blood drips from her nose,

she touches the wet patch under her nose.

her eyes water up.

her vision goes red,

She starts crying blood.

She has made it to the top, she flops onto her back, deactivates the field of magic around her. focusing everything she still has on Akyas.

A notification flashes across her mind, wholly ignored by Rue.

Eventually she is forced to stifle coughs of blood and bile.

The pain has transcended mere excruciating agony into unbridled suffering, her head no longer pounds it quakes.

Her limbs shake despite not having been used, her chest is scorched by the outflow of power and the beating of her second heart.

Time slows to a crawl, 'Why are you doing this?' 'What is the point? 'Doing this only dooms you!' 'Do you think you will be so lucky for him to help you?!' and so the voices said on.

Rue woke again to Akyas carrying her. this time she remembered everything, she wasn't draped over his shoulder like usual, he was holding her wrapped in the large fur blanket tied together in his large arms. (also yes being draped over Akyas is essentially being on his head)

Rue moved her arms over the dried blood webbed on her face, attempted to speak only to cough.

Akyas's eyes looked down on Rue seeing something and he said "Thank you for doing that for me, Though that was very stupid even for my species." he said in a low voice.

"W - COUGH w-what, h-happened?" she asked him in confusion

Akyas's eyes expanded then his mouth curled into a twisted gnarled grin "You took the negative consequences of a curse, intentionally or not without a countercurse or magic resistance of any kind AND your constitution is below 10 from an elder ork shaman."

"That in my culture is known as a True way, though saying it in my native tongue would make no sense whatsoever." he chuckled.

Rue smiled and closed her eyes before asking "So, our deal?"

"Unchanged, but you no longer need to hold my hand the whole way, I can manage from here, besides you don't heal and you are just looking to die."

Rue tried to nod before realising that her body refused.

since her eyes were already closed, she looked inside herself only to find many marks of jagged black energy slicing through her.

even if she wasn't needed to walk him there, she needs to deal with this.

and so she while being carried by Akyas, began the slow process of teasing the black malevolent energy out of her body.

on occasion containing the energy, before she got too curious however -

Activated curse energy incompatible with host, Composite body could enable fusion of separate cursed energy organ should you find or produce one however, Recommended action - destruction or purging of body into another container, any material can hold curse energy as it is a derivative of mana itself - Recommend copper bell or jar, enchant copper with mana resistance, allows physical storage of magical phenomena.

'I mean nice to know but not really helpful right now, and second did it really look like I wanted to have more of this stuff hanging around?'

then she thought about it 'but then again more energy types more magical stuff I could potentially pull off, I would be absolutely screwed if not for the bulwark from containing 10x my base mana pool in capacity.'

"A-akyas, c-could you p-pic-pick-up some copper, please?"

"yeah I should be able too, what's wrong with ya though, from my knowledge you should be able to heal with that passion core ya got."

"Y-You c-can see that?!" rue exclaimed

"well yeah, I am no longer cursed so my perception is a far bit higher than yours." he answered

"besides wouldn't be much of a sponsor if I couldn't verify my claims would I?" grinning as he said.

Rue kept this in mind before answering "my body is full of active curse energy, I need to remove it before I can heal the wounds..."

"huh, alright, what is the copper for?"

"making a container for the energy for later." she replied

Akyas just nodded before leaning to a side and collecting some vaguely copper coloured metal, Rue looked a little disappointed at the quality but had no other complaints.

Given that she had already cleansed her pathways towards her right arm she channelled the violet energy like usual, letting it flow into the impure structure of the metal.

A strange sensation assaulted her damaged brain, feelings of water flowing through something, bewildered by this her mana dissipated after she lost control of it, once again she felt like she had run the whole distance of a slavers camp to neutral territories.

letting the exhaustion get the better of her, rue fell asleep again.

Waking up for the third time today, though it was much darker now than earlier, some 6 hours Rue predicted. Rue got back to work now expecting the sensation, working the copper fluidly, the voice of her skills telling her what she knew about the material and what to do to get the best out of it, sealing the mana into the enchantment notably, apparently her previous items were damn near useless in the grand scheme of things.

Though just like her bracer, mana saturation to the point of decay was dangerous, mostly because the copper would be as useful as shredded gold, extra parts, not tough and completely pointless.

keeping a manageable quantity of mana in the copper after manipulating it magically. difficult but doable, that and then full enchanting basically every surface, sure, while paralyzed with only an arm to perform the engravings, hell.

But Rue is a girl of a few things, Luck, skill and sheer determination to survive and earn a better life. that and one of the few things that define Rue is not the word, restraint.

So taking the sweet time she now had she created the cursed storage jar.

And the next few days were dedicated to purging the energy from her body and sticking it into the jar.

Riveting....

Course there was also the fact Rue did minor experiments on it but until there was that material that could accept the curse energy for what it was it would be canned literally.

and after another week they arrived at the portal

"So this is the portal you were telling me about?" Rue asked

"yeah this is the one, it will take us to a small outpost to let us... eventually get to our destination." Akyas responded.

"Honestly a lot less competition than I though there would be" Rue said

"There is no point guarding this since nothing can destroy it and I imagine that the chieftain has more on his plate than a cursed customer and a runaway slave since his shaman collapsed." Akyas said dryly almost mockingly

"well regardless, lets get in before anyone gets here, and er- how do we use it?"

Akyas grinned before leaping as high as he could onto the tiny ball of blue.... and he disappeared.

Rue grinned as this tiny sphere would end her imprisonment in this hellhole, 10 years 4 months give or take a weeks or two.

Raised to be a slave, grew to be a mage, learnt the skills of a rogue while on the path of a warrior.

Oh how life could be so much worse here rather than anywhere else.

She prodded the orb.

Teleportation gate permission

You have interacted with an instant transport gate please confirm your wish to teleport from here to Volas Manour

Y/N

"yes"

and from here on, Rue would see the worlds beyond a mere sump, a scrapyard of people living in literal trash.

for now Rue saw darkness, but it would eventually see the light of another land.