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"And how exactly did you do that?!" Jen asked the next of her many questions about the new incantation Avan had developed. "I mean, you've already explained that the spark is made of two runes connected together, sure, but how exactly did you come up with the idea to arrange the construct the way you did?"

The group, followed by Linob a few meters behind them, was just following Dani, who had clung to the blood and forest tracks of the last red wolf.

"First of all; how did you manage to not have anything just explode like poof?"

Avan thought about what to tell her, and decided on a middle ground of half-truths, while he just climbed over a slightly larger root weave on the forest floor, and without much thought he helped Jen with his hand as well, which instantly turned red.

Ignoring the odd amorous behavior of the young healer once again, he began his explanation. "You remember when I suffered that mental recoil and fainted a short time later?" The still slightly blushing healer nodded, but looked more sideways at the ground and not directly at Avan.

"That was apparently something that shouldn't have been done that way. I had a few free stat points left over, and I distributed them into dexterity, wisdom, and intelligence until it just seemed to click. While completing the otherwise very inconspicuous runes, a new skill burned itself into my mind... And I'm sure I went about it the wrong way, because you should certainly learn the skill in a completely different way than I did. Considering the pain and possible death that could result from my method..."

And above all, I don't want others to be encouraged to do this, only to also either have these glitches in the status, or find out that I've done something impossible!

Since waking up among the three trees, Avan had checked his skills and current status to be sure, and indeed discovered the same anomaly that came with learning [Origin of Runes].

A new section had appeared in his character interface, showing a similar broken area.

 

?̴̡̝̖͙͍̫̮̭͕̬̠̖̺̙͓̖͉͊̌̀͑Ι ̸̢̜̦̪̳̗̻̙̭̠̜͚̘̽̓͋̇̈́̅͊̎̒̽̽̀́͘Ι?̴̧̬͓͔͖͖͇͂̍͊̄͒ ̵̧̢̛͇̦͈͒̊͛̋͒?̴̛̬͙̜͙̦̳̭̫̭̭̫͔̣̗͈̗̭̄͛̿͊͆̾͐̀̉̂̆̆̚͜

[Origin of Runes]

 

Apparently the heading of the section was somehow broken, or incorrect, while the skill itself was recognized normally.

Jen, meanwhile, tilted her head thoughtfully as she tried not to trip over any small elevations in the earth realm, stones, or branches. "But just like that...?"

She turned her head around to face him, looking at him questioningly. "That might explain how you could just shake a new spell out of the sleeves of your robe in less than twenty minutes, but not how you prevented anything from going wrong."

"Hmmm... That's actually something that came with this rune skill. I can mentally call a rune or rune weave in front of me once I see it and then change it and even test it in front of my mind's eye. Sort of without letting them become physical, in a sort of test environment? If that makes any sense."

Jen nodded slowly in response, and you could see the look on her face as she imagined it. "Okay, that does make sense.... And how did you get the working result so quickly?"

"Hmm... I used meditation to better block out outside influences so I could think more fluidly. Then I went through different scenarios, like just making the rune much much bigger, but that resulted in an extremely long casting time of the spell."

So Avan explained step by step, at least superficially, how he had approached the problem and how he arrived at the working incantation in the end. When asked how he got so good at it, he just shrugged and quickly fished out another lie, that there had been similar games based on logic in his home village.

Fortunately, she didn't ask why I didn't need an incantation for it... And could cast the spell just like that.

What Jen had asked him, though, and to which he himself had no answer, was whether he now had a new skill for the new spell, which to her mild surprise he denied, except that he had now learned spark on bronze.

Apparently, the skill [Origin of Runes] was already a higher category and did not bring any new skills, even though he had a perfect memory of what the rune construct had looked like and could immediately summon it again without thinking. The new rune skill came with an almanac or a kind of collection of all the runes and rune weaves he knew and understood.

The conversation went on a bit more, and Patris had joined the silent Linob at some point and was talking to him, while the elite guard seemed to just listen stoically, having nothing to say himself.

A raised hand that became a fist soon came from Dani, and everyone stood still while she knelt down and examined some totally irrelevant branches for Avan and the floor itself.

"Several heavier but sneaking monsters came along here... No matter how good you are at sneaking, with such a crowd, something always leaves traces sooner or later..." And stood up again while pointing in a northwestern direction.

So it went on, but this time with whispering and quieter conversations, while again all followed Dani, who now went on with the bow in her hand and much more carefully.

Patris continued to talk animatedly with the unresponsive Linob, and Jen asked Avan some more questions about runes, how they felt, how they were woven, and what kinds of things he had noticed.

A small melancholy spread through him in between, as he thought of the inquisitive and always questioning Elisa, and once again could only hope that she was doing well. I hope you are alive...

Jen, however, managed to distract him relatively quickly, without even noticing his state of mind, and simply continued to ask, which brought Avan back to other thoughts.

Half an hour later and several detours through the forest, which the wolves had probably taken on their hunt, and suddenly they came to a small clearing, in the middle of which a large mound of earth with a two meter large hole which led into the interior of the earth gaped.

Dani again told everyone to stop, and walked on by herself, crouching slightly, while a moment later she crept up to the side of the hole and peered inside. Her shoulders were tense, and whatever was visible inside didn't make it any better.

Avan himself already knew what the group would find inside, and let his senses probe a little further into the tunnel vault until he came upon some sort of barrier that cut off his sphere of influence. A dungeon?!

Interested, and still waiting for the ranger to return to them, he scanned the barrier, and poked some of his mana threads at it.

"Uhh... There's a dungeon down there..." He whispered when Dani was back within earshot, much to the momentary surprise of everyone else, which quickly subsided when he reminded them of his senses, which he had even used in battle.

Trying the dungeon harder with his senses made him feel that, unlike Akkalon's dungeon, this barrier seemed somehow lighter and more malleable.

With mental strength and nearly 2000 mana from his dungeon, he thrust one of his mana tentacles forward with a quick jerk, effortlessly pushing through the barrier that had separated his sphere of influence from the dungeon. Behind it, he could see moss-covered tunnels that went further into the depths and were equipped with various traps. However, the deeper he tried to sense the dungeon, the more difficult and blurred his senses seemed to become, until he could only perceive crude things. Could this be due to the increased influence of the dungeon core? The closer I get to it, the more it overlaps my own, since I'm in alien territory...?

"Behind the front cave, where the blood wolves must have lived, it goes deeper into the tunnels, and there the dungeon begins... I can otherwise only feel some falling, and some [blood moss], which probably provides a reddish light.... But then the dungeon itself overpowers my perception, and I can quickly make out only blurry things." He explained to the waiting group, who had already been looking at him waitingly after his first statement.

Whether his statement about being able to see so deeply with his senses was met with confusion or surprise, Avan could not tell now, since the focus of all the participants was on the problem in front of them, and not on his perhaps abnormal or unusual abilities.

Dani scratched her chin thoughtfully, while Patris hugged her from behind, and Jen seemed to look slightly envious, her gaze fixed on the ground.

"I think we should proceed very carefully and first see what we are dealing with... Check out the situation, and if it looks too dangerous, it's still enough to complete the system quest if we report it to the adventurers guild. This dungeon is definitely the origin of the red wolves. Probably an overpopulation, which has led to an emigration of the dungeon monsters... But if this dungeon really has to do with blood, which we must assume... However, it could also have devastating consequences for the entire continent if we don't cull the dungeon soon. Bestial vampires spreading their curse among the population, or worse!" Dani revealed, Patris still with his hands around her waist.

Even Linob, as Avan sensed, nodded almost imperceptibly at the statement, reinforcing once again the sense of urgency that this dungeon represented.

"The dungeon itself seems to be of natural origin, probably an inactive dungeon core that slowly awakened over centuries or millennia and initially attracted the natural animals of the forest, resulting in these so-called Vounds. Dungeons are, after all, sites of evolution and development." the ranger finished her explanation, and the group agreed to at least look inside first, and then decide if they wanted to explore deeper or if the danger was too great.

The entrance to the cave system looked no different than what one might imagine a wolf's den to look like, only significantly larger. The cave inside, with what looked like a normal sized tunnel for a normal sized adult branching off in the back left, also looked quite normal and green moss covered most of the ceiling and floor.

"Seems to be a normal cave... Moss for the wolves to sleep on, and otherwise just some bones from unfortunate dead animals." Avan muttered his observation more to himself. "If they ate humans, it seems they did so on the spot in the forest itself."

The group of young adventurers cautiously and quietly walked further into the tunnel branching off from the cave, and Dani also spotted small almost inconspicuous scratch marks here and there, which definitely confirmed the wolves' origin.

Less than two minutes later, a red glow appeared in front of them in the tunnel, eerily outshining the torchlight of patri's torch, and the tunnel passed into another uninhabited cave, but this time overgrown with red glowing blood moss instead of the normal green.

Just as the group had crossed the threshold into the cavern, where the blood moss began to grow as if unnaturally cut off, the dungeon itself greeted them, confirming Avan's statement once again.

You are entering the dungeon [Xavier's Blood Monument].

Someone didn't know beforehand what level a newly appearing dungeon was, and how strong or what monsters were inside, until adventurers report back to the guild how the dungeon was constructed and what was inside.

So the group knew only from the red wolves what level range at least some of the monsters in it were in, even if it wasn't clear whether the wolves were the lowest enemies in the dungeon or had migrated from further down to the surface and were among the stronger ones.

Therefore, it was important to identify the first monsters and get a sense of the difficulty they were up against.

A short conversation later, they all unanimously decided to go further into the dungeon first and only after the first monsters decided whether they should report it to the guild and call it a day, or whether they could explore the dungeon deeper themselves.

Hopefully a more normal dungeon! Maybe finally like I know it from the games? Avan couldn't quite suppress the anticipation of exploring and learning something new again.

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