Seven days had passed since Marlon had recovered the Rune of Absorption, and he had recovered from the shock it had caused him.

There was no memory of the trip back to the camp.

He had simply woken up by the fire, with Luna licking his face and the sun's rays already hitting the forest landscape intensely.

Stunned, as if groggy from a sleepless night, he had inspected his body and had found nothing alarming, no wounds or injuries from the period of time his mind had erased, only his clothes were covered with mud and foliage. It was as if he had rolled on the ground with force and many times, but no matter how hard he tried, nothing helped.

His memory was blank on this period and even Loki answered evasively when he asked him the question, assuring the young man only that nothing serious had happened and that he had just decompensated from the stress produced by his creepy and disturbing find.

He insisted but got nothing more from the AI, so he just went back to his hunting routine, even though he knew that his silence did not bode well.

He had reset the various pitfall traps, summarily cleaning the wooden spikes and covering them with rodent blood, captured thanks to the two wolf traps he had set on the wildlife passageways. This had covered the smell of wolf and rot, avoiding the suspicion of their fellow-creatures as to the presence of traps.

Marlon had needed a little more time to reset the counterbalance trap, but after long internal dithering, he finally stuck with it. Strangely, the decomposed and shredded body didn't give him as much trouble when he was confronted with it again, a complete absence of feeling or emotion as he unhooked the human puzzle and cleaned up the place so as not to alert any future prey.

During the day, he did his training routine before going out to kill Arbols, usually three or four, since he had found the perfect technique to kill them and recover resources.

With each trip he made to go hunting or to return to the camp, he paid more and more attention to the vegetation he encountered, attentive to the various species of climbing plants or even to the shades of color present on the herbaceous plants he met.

His book had taught him a great deal, as each type of herb could be found with different grades of quality, and with more or less powerful effects depending on how they were harvested or well preserved.

Of course, he was far from knowing everything, but adding to his knowledge gave him a sense of accomplishment that served as a crutch as his emotions waned more and more with each passing day. Moreover, it filled his Codex a little more each day, which he could access with a simple thought.

He was also careful to go only to parts of the forest he had not yet explored, navigating by the map provided by his interface.

So, one afternoon when he was walking in the eastern part of the forest, opposite where he had set his various traps, he found several plants that could prove to be very useful if used properly.

On the tree trunks, about twenty meters in diameter, Red Dendrion were growing like weeds and were waiting to be picked by the first person who recognized them.

They formed like steps around the trunks they were parasitizing, their leaves as large and shaped like water lilies, weaving a network of small, thin, transparent stems that connected the different trees they were on. It almost looked like spider webs woven by some unknown magical creature.

Red dendritic plants were relatively common, but not usually in this part of the continent, and they had a variety of uses that made them particularly sought-after ingredients in the world of herbalism and alchemy.

It was used to create minor healing potions, a knowledge that Marlon had acquired from the book he had bought, or to create hair growth concoctions.

Remembering the hawkers in the capital, he wondered if the population didn't have a recurring baldness problem in this part of the world, and he instinctively touched his own hair to make sure it didn't start falling out, drawing a mocking chuckle from Loki that he preferred to ignore.

The slightly thicker shade provided by the Dendrions also concealed another interesting find, which was much less common than the latter.

Cyanosed Amanita. It was also a species he had discovered through his herbalist book. The Amanita was a purplish mushroom that was used in the creation of antidotes or lightning poisons, depending on the quantity supplied and the recipe that was followed. The stalk was a clear white, which contrasted with the purple head of the mushroom, and Marlon was very happy to come across this species of fungus, as it was something even more sought after than Dendrion, according to his book.

The Cyanosed Amanita fed on small insects that came to rest on its head, poisoning them as soon as their legs came into contact with it and decomposing the flesh of its prey by absorbing them by osmosis, leaving no trace of its misdeeds for its next victims.

He was careful as he gathered them, wrapping them in several layers of thick green leaves before packing them into a garment and bundling the whole thing with some of the frayed rope he had left.

He had understood that the ecosystem of this continent was very interdependent. Each plant, each liana, each insect had its utility, its precise function, and all functioned in symbiosis with other natural elements. He was therefore careful not to harvest the whole of his finds, and especially to harvest relatively equal parts so as not to disturb this delicate balance. That would be useful to him in the medium term if he wanted to find these plants without having to push back the entirety of the forest.

All of his finds had a place near his tent, and the pile was starting to be substantial, between the wolf skins, the Arbol bark, and the bundles of plants and herbs he had collected since his arrival in front of the Cronande forest.

During these seven days, he did not sleep much, and only during the day, not wanting to relive the infernal night during which he had been attacked by wolves.

To pass the nights, besides the assiduous reading of his book, which he had finished and was now applying himself to reread to record all the information it contained, he tried various mixtures of herbs and other plants to improve his knowledge of alchemy.

There were some basic rules that he already understood, even if the lack of materials prevented him from doing real alchemy.

It had taken him many attempts, most of which turned out to be monumental failures.

With what he had at his disposal, he could only prepare two types of alchemical recipes: decoctions and pastes.

The decoctions could be considered as soups in which he infused or crushed various ingredients, mixing them continuously to avoid the heat being too strong and making the whole thing totally ineffective, something very difficult to do on a campfire that had no stability to speak of.

The solution had been to raise his pot slightly so that the flames would not be in direct contact with the metal and corrupt his concoctions because of the unstable heat.

For the latter, ingredients with similar properties were needed and this is where his knowledge of herbalism came in handy, but he only managed to create a poisonous concoction with it.

He had mixed Cyanosed Amanita, Silky Ivy which triggers hives but cures stomach cramps, and finally Arbol blood which was mentioned in his book as being a good intestinal cleanser but which turned into a powerful diarrheic if badly dosed.

He must have consumed one of the two antidotes he had after testing the solution on himself, believing that he had succeeded in producing a solution to restore energy to anyone who consumed it. Unfortunately for him, only the negative effects of the ingredients had been retained and none of the positive effects remained.

Loki had laughed a lot that night, and Luna had stayed away from her master until he went to wash in the stream to get rid of the lingering odors.

As for the second type of creation, the pastes or balms, they were much simpler to make. All that was needed was a single ingredient, pounded or torn, then boiled until only the famous paste remained at the bottom of the pot.

He had collected leaves from a tree called Liptus, which had a very strong minty smell when brought to the nose. Recognized thanks to his work, once again, he knew that they had disinfectant virtues, and so he had hastened to create this famous balm with them.

After several attempts where the mixture had burned at the bottom of the pot, he had finally managed to get what he wanted but had not been able to test it because of the lack of a purulent wound to disinfect. He was not going to voluntarily injure himself and let a wound get infected for the pleasure of checking its effects, but his innate knowledge told him that the balm would have the desired effects, which was more than enough for him.

The night he succeeded in mixing, he sat down, exhausted by many sleepless nights and short rests during the day and sighed heavily before addressing Loki.

"How long do you think I should stay in this forest, Loki?"

There was silence for a few more seconds before the AI answered the young man.

"In a little over a week, you have killed more than thirty Arbols and, thanks to your traps, about twenty timber wolves. I think you should change the locations of your traps now, the predators will start to get suspicious. That's more than fifty creatures in one week, so fifty silver coins... and you still have almost three months to go before the tournament starts."

The young man nodded, a total absence of emotions on his face except for annoyance because of the fatigue that was constantly assailing him.

"One month. I'm going to stay another month or so. If I continue at this pace, I will be able to equip myself for all professions and especially acquire more books like this one," he says, holding up his herbalist book.

"It's a reasonable amount of time. But stay cautious, a mistake happens quickly."

Loki did not elaborate on his answer, but he was inwardly concerned.

He was worried that during this time, Marlon's madness would take another turn. He remembered his blackout, perfectly, and he had realized then that they had a big problem on their hands, much more than he had thought.

The young man had been rambling for hours, talking to his dead mother as if she were by his side, randomly hitting trees with his sword, mistaking them for creatures attacking him or her. Strange phrases were spoken, as if his personality had split in two under the final impact of the discovery of the shredded body, his voice changing according to who was speaking.

He had rolled around on the floor, howling with laughter or crying his eyes out, alternating between the two without any logic seeming to be part of it.

Then finally, he had arrived at the camp, a miracle according to the AI who had not stopped calling the young man without him answering once to his calls, totally cut off from reality.

Even his chimera had stayed away from him, uttering muffled gasps as the young man had continued to ramble, chatting happily with someone who no longer existed.

The AI did not have any solutions for the moment, considering that the best thing for the young man would indeed be to go and see Jacob, who was the one who had best understood Marlon's problem, having apparently experienced it himself, or at least something close. And not wanting to brace his colt, he avoided bringing the subject on the carpet for the moment.

He would try to guide him delicately so as not to be confronted with another delirious episode like the one he had witnessed, that was all he could do for the moment.

After this short discussion, Marlon had refocused on his training, trying out new combinations of runes with Arbol bark as support and their blood as a catalyst.

For once, it didn't take him long to come up with something new that would undoubtedly serve him well in the future.

Combining Life and Absorption, he saw the runic entanglement light up and then burn up like all the others he knew. In his intention, he had targeted a tree facing him, and he felt a new vitality invade his being as its leaves instantly withered and its bark turned slightly black.

This was of course not enough to kill the hundred-year-old plant he had targeted, but the effects were more than enough for what he could do with it. He tried again, this time inflicting a light cut on his hand, and it partially healed as he reapplied the same spell on his giant training dummy.

It wasn't as effective as his healing spell, but it felt much more energetic, more...alive. It was as if he was directly absorbing the life of his target, his vitality, his very essence. His eyes began to glow and a big smile appeared on his face as he imagined all the possibilities of his new find.

A strong smell of hot chocolate had filled the air and the surrounding sounds were muffled for a few seconds as a sentence reached his ears.

"Oh what a wonderful find, my angel..."

Interloqué, Marlon raised his head, opening his mouth to ask Loki the origin of this new nickname, but he remained silent. The voice did not have the same intonation as the AI, a certain warmth came from it and reassured him deeply.

The conscious part of his mind that wanted to scream in fear at the implication of hearing the voice he seemed to have recognized was silenced, gagged by his unconscious mind that a moment's distraction was nothing. After all, he was entitled to a little comfort, no matter where it came from.

Loki did not hear Marlon's inner speech, nor did he perceive the inner conflict that had just taken place inside him, the young man's madness perfectly obscuring any perception that the AI could have of his consciousness.

The distinctive smell disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and the sounds returned to normal.

The days passed thus, between daily hunting routine, various experiments, whether alchemical or runic and Marlon's inner troubles. No particular event came to disturb this daily routine that the young man found more and more monotonous, if it was not the change of the pitfall traps, that he moved every three or four days to avoid lowering his hunting ratio.

Nothing disturbed him anymore, nothing moved him. He was bored, piling up more and more squares of lupine skins day after day, preparing spells with the bark and blood recovered from the Arbols, and training. Again and again the same gestures, the same meals, the same monotonous discussions...

Until the twentieth day of hunting.

In the morning, Marlon set his traps, as usual, carrying the fallen wolf corpses back to the camp before butchering them and salvaging any materials he had a use for. He went to the counterweight trap last, a ritual he had adopted since the famous day he had found the remains of the human body hanging on it, with a jaded step, sword still in hand or some creature would be present, when he heard screams.

Calls for help, more exactly. And a female voice called out to him between two cries, encouraging him more and more to hurry up.

"Your next prey is here, angel."

The voice had become clearer as if it were just a few feet away from him. And again that chocolaty smell that took over his senses as the surrounding sounds were greatly attenuated as if he was in a piece of cotton surrounding him.

As his footsteps quickened and the dead leaves crackled happily under his increasingly hurried strides, he saw a figure draped in white stealthily appear behind a tree.

When he reached her, she had disappeared. But he saw her again, a few yards away, a delicate hand inviting him to join her as the figure faded again behind a green conifer.

The screams still echoed in the distance, and he now understood what they were saying.

"Someone! Help me, please! I beg you, someone come help me!"

"Come on, you're almost there, my angel. Just a few more meters and you'll be able to soothe my anger, my sadness. Ha, if you only knew how much I've been waiting for this moment..."

He saw the smiling face of the woman dressed in white between blinks of an eye and a smile crept across his face. The conscious part of his mind took over, however, and he continued to move towards the increasingly loud screams of whoever was caught in his trap.

His heart was beating wildly in his chest, his brain was a jumble of chaotic thoughts that were violently clashing as he tried to put some semblance of normalcy into what he was experiencing, without much success. Tears were streaming down his cheeks again since he had recognized the figure waving indolently and sympathetically at him.

He finally arrived at the site of his trap and saw a young man hanging upside down above the ground, long jet-black hair covering his face and his arms desperately flailing in the air as he tried to find some semblance of a grip to get out of his desperate situation.

Hearing footsteps not far from him, he flipped his hair back and smiled when he saw Marlon, his face red from being upside down for so long. It wouldn't take much longer for him to pass out.

"Oh my god, finally! Please help me! I've fallen into a trap that some idiot has set here, and I don't want to lose a life over this crap! You're a Neo-Life player too, right? Come on, help a fellow player in need, I'll owe you!"

The figure in white had appeared again, standing right next to the one who had just turned out to be a gambler as well, a big smile on her lips, looking at the figure hanging by her feet like a very appetizing confection. Marlon's perception was suddenly diminished, his nostrils still overwhelmed by the chocolate smell as she spoke to him in a soft, warm voice, a loving voice.

"Avenge me, my angel. Slaughter them all, all who stand in your way, without mercy..."

Marlon approached the suspended figure, tears still streaming down his face, and he didn't give his prey a single glance before piercing its abdomen with his sword, withdrawing it in a sharp, vertical motion, blood and guts gushing out as gurgling sounds now escaped from the mouth of his victim, who had thought he had been freed until the last moment.

Wanting to do the right thing, he took out a bark support on which he had traced his new combination of runes and finalized the drawing with a warm smile on his lips.

Black and green smoke rose from the bark as it burned and the dying body of his victim withered away, as if it had dried up on the spot. The burrs died out on their own and Marlon felt an incredible energy enter him, as if his existence had just been boosted with something better than all the adrenaline in the world could give him.

The woman dressed in white then reached out her two hands towards him and made as if she wanted to caress his face, red tears running down her alabaster cheeks, such a loving smile on her face.

He carelessly absorbed the rune that had just formed under the body of his prey, nonchalantly reading the message provided by the system's interface.

Ding

You have learned the Spirit rune.

"Well done, kid. Another rune that should come in handy! A few more hundreds like this and you'll be a real master! Hey, are you okay? You seem to be missing out..."

Marlon shook his head and saw that the figure in white had moved away, disappearing under the trees as he greeted the young man who had just done his bidding, light laughter echoing under the Cronande canopy and gradually fading away.

"It's all right, Mom. I'll make you proud don't worry."

"I'm Loki, kid. Did we lose you? Has your brain finished flipping?"

"Haha, no, no. I was kidding, of course. Don't worry, everything is fine, Loki. I'm fine. We can go back to camp now, I'll take care of cleaning this up tomorrow."

Both of them knew that nothing was right and that Marlon's madness was going to be a problem. Even the latter was aware that his mind was deteriorating, and he had to find a solution, before it became too difficult.

But that thought took a back seat to the happiness he felt at seeing his mother smile at him. She was back, and she seemed happy too, that's all that mattered.