The newfound vigour lasted throughout several hours with a song here or a joke there as they sometimes cast the shield spell, only to get it shattered by someone’s attack. It took a long while for the next stop along the river to show, but the dilapidated pier brought little happiness as an unwelcome sight greeted them behind it. Several shambling figures moved about on the small clearing where a wooden shack resembling a small hunting cabin stood.

“It looks like we have company.” Amanda sighed as they rowed closer to the jetty that was pretty much just a pair of large logs laid out on a crumbling stone foundation.

“I count five,” Regis spoke as he looked around. “Anyone seeing more of them shambling about?”

“There’s one on the right edge of the clearing beside the trees.” Cruz pointed out as Khan was ready to jump out to tie the boat to the pier.

He landed fast and pulled on the rope, tying the boat to the large logs before he drew his swords and spun around to face the enemy. Regis got out as soon as the boat was tied to place, aiming a runic arcana bolt at the undead warrior nearing them. The spell whizzed through the air, hitting the fallen one right in the head, making its head snap back.

Khan hurried on and swung his sword at the second nearest enemy on their left while Sophie put an arrow through an axe wielding undead’s eye socket on the right side. Three of the six undead fell on the ground fast, but several others began to shamble out of the dense forest foliage beside the three remaining ones.

“Bloody hell,” Amanda cussed. “How many of them are here?”

Her question got overshadowed by Cruz as her staff grew spiked mace heads on both ends before smashing down on a one-armed abomination.

“Keep it tight everyone,” Quentin said as he gripped his shield and sword, defending against a brutish looking undead. “Don’t get far from the pier! We’ll hold this position until the reinforcements arrive.”

“I like a man who’s willing to take charge!” Valerie laughed as her whip unfurled, burning through the air before shattering an unlucky fallen’s head with a fiery blast.

One after the other, the undead soldiers fell to the outlander warband’s attacks, their relentless assault only stopping when the fourteenth creature in the row was dead for good as well. The second boat to arrive found a group of slightly panting people surrounded by rotting corpses.

“What happened?” The captain of the 4th guard squad asked as they got out of their boat.

“What does it look like? The place was occupied, so we politely asked them to fuck off.” Cruz spat on the black blood splattered ground.

“You should get your squad to sweep the near vicinity,” Regis sighed. “We took out the ones that were willing to get out into the open, but we don’t know if there’s more around.”

“That’s a must,” the soldier nodded. “Get rid of the corpses while we sweep the area. The last thing we need is a bunch of rotting carcasses to spoil the place while we’re resting.”

“I guess this is a perfect time to show you how corpse sacrifice works.” The dark elf said to his friends as he bent down and grabbed a corpse by the ankle, dragging it towards the right side of the clearing.

“Is he serious?” Sophie shuddered as she whispered over to Amanda whom just shrugged.

Everyone followed the young spell weaver’s example by dragging the corpses towards the edge of the woods. Once they were done with the corpse hauling, Regis cast his earth wall raising spell to block the vision of the mercenaries that arrived one boat at a time. He began to draw lines in the dirt, slowly making an intricate ritual circle. When he was done, he waved everyone closer.

“For those of you that haven’t done this type of stuff before; this is the ritual circle you need for the offering. Just draw one on the ground that’s large enough to fit a corpse and we’ll help put one in the middle of it. Then, you will need to spill some of your own blood while saying the incantation to activate the ritual." He explained with an easy to follow pace.

"Don’t worry; usually a few drops of blood is enough to cast the spell and you only have to draw the circle once. After succeeding with your first offering, you’ll only have to let a few drops of your blood fall near an enemy you’ve killed while saying the incantation and the ritual circle will appear on its own. Any question?”

“Just one,” Sophie spoke up, still staring at the rotting carcasses. “Is this really necessary?”

“We’ve already talked about this,” Valerie said as she patted the sun elf on her back. “You won’t be able to advance along your combat oriented pathways unless your health and stamina gets high enough and we simply don’t have better or faster alternatives for that. Don’t worry; this isn’t some kind of Satanism stuff. Just think of it as recycling or something along those lines. Okay?”

“Okay.” The sun elf girl sighed and grabbed a small stick so that she could draw her own ritual circle, albeit without the same enthusiasm as the rest of the group showed.

Soon, six similar looking large magical drawings were lined up along the earth walls with a corpse placed in each of them. Amanda held Sophie’s shaking hand as they both tapped the held out knife’s tip with their free hands, drawing a bit of blood that fell into their respective ritual circles while whispering the obscure words Valerie taught them during their drawing session. Quentin and Khan both stood beside their own soon to be sacrificed corpses with a slight disgust on their face.

Cruz and Letty just shrugged as they did the ritual they’d often seen Osmond do when nobody else was watching in the aftermath of their previous battles. The ritual circles lit up like burning coal and soon the corpses began to turn into dry husks as different coloured specks appeared above them, forming into small colourful crystal shards the size of a kidney bean. When the ritual was over, the light faded, leaving behind dried out mummy like corpses with a few shards floating above them.

“And that’s about it,” Regis noted as he pointed at the small floating crystal pieces. “Those are your payment, so to speak. The number of shard slivers you get varies depending on the strength of the defeated enemy. It also matters whether you’ve already harvested the Amaranth from it or not. Put five slivers of the same colour near each other and they’ll fuse into a larger one. You can absorb the large ones to increase your main stats. Blue is obviously used to increase your arcana reserves while the green one augments your stamina and the red one raises your health. That’s it for today’s lessons on ritualistic sacrifices. Class dismissed!”

His terrible joke ended in more awkward sighs than chuckles, but it did seem to ease the heavy mood of the group.

“Oh come on,” Valerie patted the girls on the back. “I know it’s creepy and all, but look at the bright side. You’ve just turned a putrid corpse that was considered to be a source of plague and necrotic taint into a compact and harmless pile of bones and skin. In a way, you’re doing the right thing by making sure that no other living creature would get poisoned or tainted from getting near these remains.”

“It just… it feels wrong, somehow.” Amanda said as she looked at Sophie with worry written all over her face.

“I know what you mean,” Cruz prodded the dried husk in front of her with her staff. “I guess we’ll just have to get used to this like we do with everything else around here. It’s adapt or die, after all.”

“Oy,” a rough voice called out from the near distance as one of the guards walked towards them. “The captain said that we don’t need a wall for the short rest.”

“We just made one to direct the magic outwards while we’re getting rid of these corpses,” Fabien spoke up immediately with a distant tone. “You wouldn’t want dangerous magic to drift towards you lot, right?”

“No, sir.” The guard shuddered as he quickly turned around to head back into the safety of his group.

“I swear,” Valerie shook her head with a sigh. “You enjoy scaring these poor folks out of their mind.”

“Perhaps,” the infernal scratched the stubble on his chin with a small grin. “But this time, it was necessary. We don’t want them to see us sacrificing corpses and all that. You know; the whole pitchforks and torches stuff.”

“Let’s just get rid of the remaining corpses and rest while we can,” Regis drew their attention back on to the important matters at hand. “I’d also like to recycle these weapons and armour for materials while we have time.”

“What for?” Amanda looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “I thought that you were done upgrading our gear.”

“I did finish most of them,” the spell weaver admitted. “But I noticed that Quentin’s kite shield is in a bad state. Sure it can be mended, but it’s far too flimsy. I’ve figured it could use some minor alterations and a couple of small upgrades. The same goes for Sophie’s bow and Letty could use a proper shield as well. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some decent wood around the night camp.”

“Well, he is right about that,” Osmond agreed as he looked at the wood elf woman’s terribly clunky shield. “We’ll need all the advantage we can get before we find any better gear in East Fork.”

“Just don’t overwork yourself like you did last night,” Quentin added as he looked at his own cheap wooden shield. “We can’t have you pass out on us or something.”

“Yes, mom.” Regis chuckled as he began his own corpse sacrifice ritual that netted him a full vigour shard and a fortitude shard sliver.

With the rituals done, he unceremoniously stripped the dried out corpses of their armour, noting that they were the same low quality basic leather gear and bronze weapons he got used to seeing back in Hunor. It seemed that finding iron weapons and high quality armour was still a great challenge this far from the battlefield.

Once he had the items piled up, he quickly drew up the transmutation circle behind the dirt wall, placing the armour pieces in the middle in pairs. In the light of day, the magic circle’s light was less noticeable, allowing him to be more inconspicuous as he sat there, recycling whatever he could. Amanda walked over with the empty mill sack about an hour or so later, watching Regis as he erased the drawings from the ground.

“That thing’s really useful to have around.” She nodded towards the destroyed circle.

“It is, even though it’s the simplest one of the bunch.”

“Just make sure you don’t overdo it. From what Valerie told us while you were busy tinkering, this stuff sounds really valuable. We wouldn’t want others to see you dabbling in this kind of thing.”

“I know,” Regis nodded. “Luckily, we don’t have any spell casters amongst the mercenaries or the guards. These people seem to want nothing to do with magic unless it’s for healing purposes or to get their weapons hit harder.”

“Yeah. It still feels weird how they look at us sometimes.” The tall woman sighed as she helped the spell weaver stuff the bronze ingots and leather pieces into the sack.

“They’re afraid of us,” Quentin joined in to the conversation as he stepped closer. “From what the priests of Hunor’s temple told me; outlanders always brought about great changes when they showed up. Most of them were bad kind of changes. Couple that with the war that pretty much destroyed the country and it becomes reasonable why they’re so wary of us.”

“Nothing we can do about that,” the dark elf shrugged as he tossed the last piece of leather into the mill sack and the trio headed over to the others. “We’ll keep our heads down as best as we can, doing our job and getting our payment before getting the hell out of dodge.”

“What took you so long?” Khan asked while fidgeting with the hilt of his short swords.

“Can we go now? I want to reach the night camp before it gets pitch black.” Valerie added to the list of impatient people as the outlander warband walked along the rickety pier and got into their boat.

A strong push with the paddles moved the large boat to a safe distance from the pier as Khan untied the rope and jumped over to join the group. Their boat began to cut through the water once more, light drizzle pattering away on their moving bodies. The weather slowly turned for the better over the course of the next couple of hours as Regis routinely rowed while deep in thoughts.

“Valerie,” he finally spoke up when one of his many thoughts wouldn’t stop bugging him. “Can I ask you something about constellations?”

“Oh, go ahead.” The woman urged him to speak his mind.

“I managed to form my enchanter constellation, but it increased my attributes less than I thought.”

“You mean it stopped at two whole points, right?”

“Yeah,” Regis nodded out of instinct. “Why is that? I’ve calculated that it should have been around 2,1.”

“Constellations fall under the rule of the World Soul. From what I understand, the soul of the Shardlands limited the maximum attribute increase you can get at 2, no matter how many nodes a star chart has.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that it’s pointless to get charts with higher node counts?” Letty asked in surprise as she and the others listened to Valerie’s explanation.

“If you talk about it purely based on mathematics, then yes. Looking at it in real life, the answer is less ideal. If you want to go further on your path, you’ll need to form a constellation appropriate to your class. These will go higher in node count with everything above tier one being made up from more than twenty nodes.” The infernal sighed as she cracked her neck, releasing a few slight pops as the tension was relieved.

“I don’t know why it’s like this, but if I’d have to guess; I’d say that the World Soul doesn’t want people to get too strong too quick. Otherwise, we’d have inhuman freaks running around with their attributes through the roof.”