“What about the enchantments,” Fabien hummed. “Are they any good?”

“Good doesn’t even begin to describe them,” Regis sighed. “One of them seems to be the runic diagram of the gateway talismans, then there’s another one that’s supposed to create this thing called a ‘domain heart’ that’s supposed to be some powerful stuff. I can’t even understand the other two, but one thing’s for sure. I’ll need to reach the next tier of infusion enchanting if I want to have a chance at making any of them.”

“That high, huh?” Osmond shook his head.

“So we just received the bunch of stuff we can’t even use until we reach the third tier,” Cruz scoffed slightly. “Can’t they give us something nice for once?”

“I don’t understand,” Mary looked at the records. “There were so many people in that outpost. Why didn’t anyone use the monolith? And why did it drew in Regis out of all of us? I mean no offence, but isn’t Quentin the chosen of an actual Saintess?”

“I think it’s not a question of who is who’s favoured,” Valerie tried to express her opinion. “It’s more about compatibility.”

“Those people were ordinary folks and not Shardwakers,” Osmond explained. “As for the rest of us; we simply don’t have the right class for the job.”

“The right class?”

“Regis is a loremaster,” the pale youth noted. “And not just any kind of loremaster, but a professed one with an ‘endless’ tome. That means whatever he reads will be recorded in his tome to recall whenever needed.”

“Even if that’s true,” Amanda argued. “There’s no way the high nobles or the royals wouldn’t know about these monoliths. I mean we have two gateway talismans, so someone must have made those and a whole lot more.”

“Just because the royals know about the stuff, that doesn’t mean they would share it so easily with the rest of the people,” Fabien pointed out the obvious. “The spell casters’ guild must have gotten hold of the gateway talismans because the royals needed high ranked enchanters to make them in the first place. I don’t know about the rest since we haven’t really been into the core of any noble’s territory.”

“We should concentrate on the present,” Quentin spoke up as the wagon stopped. “The road ends here and it seems we have company.”

The rest of the group peeked through the hole behind the coach’s seat, seeing a ruined outpost that looked similar to the one they recently left behind. Several undead shambled about, turning their attention towards the outlanders.

“Why am I not surprised?” Sophie sighed as they got off the wagon.

“I’d rather deal with these than those creepy demon minions from Rust-well Keep.” Amanda patted the sun elf on the back.

“No argument over that.” Sophie agreed as a shudder ran along her spine.

“What the hell is this place anyway?”

“It must be a previous attempt at an outpost by lord what’s his name.” Fabien shrugged before he swung his lightning covered sword at an incoming undead wolf.

“And those settlers are merrily living just hours away from a failed settlement filled with the undead? I’m starting to think that the nobles of this world don’t really care about the safety of their people at all.” Mary complained as she created a quicksand pit to slow down some of the burly looking undead that wore torn and rusted soldier equipment.

“It doesn’t matter which world we’re talking about,” Osmond said between two shadow bolts. “Nobles never cared about the common people. Heads up! We have a big guy incoming.”

The rest of the group followed the pale spell caster’s gaze, noticing that a large figure trotted out of the small outpost, breaking the already dilapidated gate in the process.

“Is that a troll?” Valerie asked befuddled.

“And an undead one at that.” Her brother stated after taking down his own opponent.

The troll in question was at least three metres tall and about one and a half metres wide, looking like the cross-breed of a bear, a gorilla and a human. Its long arms almost reached the ground even when it was standing straight, its bulging muscles quite apparent beneath its skin that was covered in patches of fur. It would have already been an intimidating sight when alive, but it was downright terrifying to see such a creature with rotting flesh and torn skin shamble toward them.

A greater runic light arrow struck the abomination in the face, making the creature stumble back for a moment, but then it continued on. Most of the skin and flesh on its face got incinerated by the light magic spell, but it was still lively enough to crack the ground with its fists as it slammed them into the ground after Quentin dodged its attack.

“Any suggestions on how to kill this thing?” The paladin asked after slashing the troll’s side and legs with his sword.

“It might look tough, but its still an undead,” Valerie swung her whip at the creature. “Light magic or fire should cause the most harm to it.”

Several light arrows struck the rotting troll as soon as the infernal woman finished her sentence, making it stumble again, a lightning covered blade stabbing into its left side.

“We’ll have to whittle down this thing as fast as possible,” Osmond yelped after having to dodge an oversized rotting arm that nearly crushed him. “After that I’m calling dibs on its corpse.”

“You do realise that sounded creepy as fuck, right?” Cruz asked as she cast another light arrow, draining the remainder of her arcana reserves.

Amanda’s burning great hammer mashed into the troll’s chest, bending it inward before it got skewered from all sides by swords. Regis used his phasing strike to stab it in the skull from the side, right before he released the last runic light arrow he prepared, using his weapon as its focus. The creature’s head burst into a bright light that seared it clear of any flesh from the inside out, making it finally collapse on the ground with a loud booming sound.

“Finally!” They said as one, holding their sigil toward the troll’s carcass to claim a part of its Amaranth for themselves.

“Regis,” Valerie called out to the dark elf. “Could you check out how strong this thing was? My charlatan’s wisdom can’t identify it.”

“Sure, just give me a moment.” The young spell weaver nodded as he cast the spell on the corpse to reveal its description.

{Fallen Forest Troll}

{Level: 15}

{Attributes}

Allure:4

Deftness:15

Erudition:0

Luck:5

Might:20

Mind:3

Physique:18

Spirit:5

Willpower:5

{This beast of the forest died from necrotic taint and became an undead due to the strong presence of foul magic. Its original attributes had been halved by becoming an undead. It retained some of its capability of using its inborn skills.}

“Damn,” Regis whistled. “It was a fifteenth level creature with a strength of twenty and a physique of eighteen. Other than that, it was as dumb as a bag of hammers.”

“A strength of twenty,” Sophie mumbled. “Wouldn’t that mean this thing had a strength of forty when it was still alive?”

“Well it was a troll,” Osmond said as he kneeled beside the carcass. “They’re known for two things.”

“Being dumb and freakishly strong,” Cruz finished the shadow touched spell caster’s thoughts.

“This part always creeps me out.” Amanda shuddered as they all watched the skin and flesh melt from the troll’s frame, only leaving milky white bones behind.

Barely a minute later the oversized skeleton began to move, standing up straight with a pair of pale blue flames in its eye sockets.

“It sure looks menacing.” Fabien admitted.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Osmond smiled as he patted the skeletal puppet’s arm.

“Now that we’re done recycling the big guy’s corpse,” Valerie cleared her throat. “We should decide on how to go forward from here on out.”

“The road ends here,” Amanda sighed. “And from the looks of it, the path along the river gets too rocky for the wagon.”

“We’ll have to go on by foot.” Quentin deduced, looking at his companions and the wagon.

“What about the stuff on the wagon?” Osmond asked what most of them wanted to.

“We can’t carry everything,” Letty shook her head. “It would slows down way too much.”

“The path beside the river might be unfit for the wagon, but it’s still passable for us.”

“And Os can make his puppets carry the extra stuff for us.” Cruz suggested, earning a firm nod from the rest of the group.

“Sounds like a plan,” the paladin agreed as he looked at the destroyed outpost that was nothing more than a dilapidated wooden wall with a few collapsed shacks behind it. “Do you think there’s anything of use in there?”

“I highly doubt it,” Regis shook his head. “And even if there is; it would take us way too much time to search through the area for some common stuff. Let’s just get rid of the corpses and leave. The sooner we get out of here the better.”

No one argued against his suggestion and they began to pull things off the wagon. Osmond summoned his bear while Cruz freed the skeletal horses, all of them becoming carrier beasts packed with camping equipment and raw materials. Once that was over, they piled up the corpses after looting them and they went on with the usual sacrificial ritual. Regis got a fortitude and a vigour shard out of it, which he immediately absorbed. After that, the outlanders began to hike, following the river for hours with nothing but the sound of the birds and the local wildlife catching their ears.

“I’m glad to hear that all this undead crisis and the war didn’t harm the forests too much.” Letty spoke up after a while.

“Nature was always resilient,” her sister patted her on the back gently. “It would take far more than this to cause real harm to it.”

“We’ve all seen what an advanced civilization can do to nature.” Osmond reminded her.

“I just hope that the people of this world will take better care of their land then ours did.”

“How far are we going to trek today?” Amanda asked as the group kept on walking.

“As far as we can go before sun down,” Quentin answered. “We’ll stop an hour or so before dark to make camp.”

“So another two hours that best.” Valerie noted while looking at the descending sun.

“Better hurry up then,” the pale youth said with his cane tapping on the rocky ground. “Thorn Vale is quite far away.”

“Speaking of Thorn Vale,” Sophie spoke up. “What do you think we’ll find over there?”

“Ruins most likely,” Regis stated. “According to sir Derris, the place was abandoned almost two centuries ago.”

“And we still decided to go there.” Mary looked at the group questioningly.

“Collapsed buildings can be fixed using lesser mending and with a gateway of our own, travelling to other places won’t be an issue either.” Osmond explained.

“Building new structures will be a hassle though.”

“I can raise and shape walls before turning them into solid stone,” Regis reminded the group. “That should make things go faster. We’ll still have to craft the roofs though.”

“Making the Landwaker grow into a useful state will be a bigger challenge.” Cruz pointed at the second largest hurdle in their plan.

“Letty can teach you that growth boosting spell she taught me and we’ll practice it during the journey,” the dark elf said reassuringly. “The higher we can raise our mastery over the spell, the faster the tree will grow.”

“I think we should make camp there,” Quentin pointed ahead to a small clearing beside the river. “It looks well defendable and the sun is about to reach the trees. We won’t have long for it turns dark.”

“You heard the man,” Valerie chuckled. “It’s camping time!”

The warband hurried on to reach the clearing, spending near half an hour setting up their camp. Amanda and Sophie searched for firewood while the dark elf flattened the ground to make space for their bedrolls before raising a defensive wall around their camp. Fabien and Mary prepared the small iron pot with the tripod, so that they could cook some fish soup from what Cruz and Osmond were trying to catch. In the meantime, Letty was foraging for berries and other plants near the wood gathering duo. By the time the fire was lit, several small fishes were caught and an assortment of forest forage was laid out beside them.

“Valerie,” the dark elf called out to the infernal woman. “Could you use the blood of those fishes for your blood magic?”

“They aren’t that big, but sure. Why?”

“I need your help in making bloodstones,” Regis explained. “There are a couple enchantments that need the stuff, so we might as well use what we have. I’ll also need their guts?”

“What for?” Sophie looked at him perturbed.

“Fish glue.” The curt answer resounded.

Mary began to unceremoniously gut the caught fishes, the infernal woman standing beside her with one of the bowls to draw the blood into. When she gatered what she could, Valerie walked over to the dark elf.

“Let’s hurry up and do this.” She said while holding the blood filled bowl.

Regis nodded as he walked over to the river side of the camp where he flattened the ground on a small area. He touched the ground and thin blue threads of arcana left his palm, forming a runic circle.

“It’s pretty.” Valerie noted as she watched him work his magic. “I never really understood how it works, but it’s fascinating none the less.”

“It definitely wasn’t easy at the beginning,” Regis sighed. “But after all this time on the Shardlands, it feels about as natural to me as it is to use chants.”

The spell weaver created a couple of clear quartz crystals and placed one in the middle of the circle.

“So what now?” She looked at him before turning toward the runic circle.

“Just cast any simple blood magic related spell and hold it close to the magic circle. It should syphon it away, transforming the crystal into a bloodstone.”

“Okay.” Valerie agreed before casting a basic blood bolt spell.

A chestnut sized glob of blood floated out of the bowl under her command, but before it could take shape, the runic circle lit up and drew on the spell’s energy. The red blob turned into a crimson mist that floated toward the quartz crystal, giving it a faint reddish hue.

“Is that all?” The infernal looked at the stone sceptically.

“No,” Regis shook his head. “It will take several more to completely charge it. Usually five fire bolts were enough to create an elemental stone, so I guess we’ll need five blood bolts as well.

After a minute or so the circle’s light dimmed somewhat as a blood red gemstone stared back at the two. Regis cast charlatan’s wisdom on it, just to be sure.

{Bloodstone}

{Gem/ Crafting material}

{Item rarity: common}

{Item quality: chipped}