I'd propped myself up against a second, rolled up bedroll I'd created. My legs still rested within my actual sleeping sack.

Gwen was slumbering peacefully by the tent's small fire; the leather and hide popup was large enough, and vented enough at the top, to accommodate a few little flames.

I'd slept well enough within my furs and now it was my shift of the watch.

Still, it was a chilly night and that had only grown more apparently true the further we moved into what we now knew to be the Webspinner's territory.

Not being able to sleep while I was keeping watch, without defeating the purpose of it, I'd used up a few bestial shards to create a new spell.

[Heat Body [1st]: Channel your mana into warming your body.]

It was a simple one, but a spell that went a long way towards keeping me comfortable.

And yes, things were a lot more life and death than they'd been in my past life, but, at the end of the day, what was the point in having magic if you couldn't use it for the small things?

Other people might judge my use of the lesser shards as a waste, but those people probably weren't sitting up at night shivering.

Gwen had her fur. I had my magic.

My magic.

How cool was that?

Besides, if this strange System ever took me to someplace truly frigid, and not just uncomfortably cold, then my new [Heat Body] spell would no doubt pay its dividends.

And, whether I cleared this dungeon or not, I had a feeling the 'Centrality' wasn't going to be done with me, Gwen, or Earth any time soon.

I still wasn't sure how I felt about that.

I could still feel the nipping, and growing cold, as it pawed at the outside of my comfortably-heated skin.

My core, however, radiated with a comfortable warmth that spread throughout me like a warm, Christmas night, and the mana expenditure was hardly noticeable at all.

I breathed out and watched my comparatively hot breath create a cloud of moisture in the dry air.

There weren't many sounds in the old feeling, black forest. Not many things moved about in the cold. Insects certainly didn't. Fluffy animals might, and Gwen had managed to find a few small rabbits throughout the past days, but we'd seen noticeably less life overall than we had in the dungeon's western sector.

My mind drifting to another concern that had been sitting at the back of my mind, I held my hand up and stared at it. Slowly, a noxious looking dark green covered it as I activated [Sickening Touch].

My eyes lingered on the necrotic magic. I watched as the strange cloud, somewhere between a miasma and a flame, continuously curled up and around my fingers before dissipating a few scant inches form my skin.

I wanted to get home. It was the quiet moments like this that reminded me of that: the times of reflection and contemplation, divorced from the battle that was already becoming my new normal.

No matter how many times I reflected on it, once the dust of whatever latest near-death experience Gwen and I had walked into had cleared, I'd always find myself stuck for a least a little while on just how insane everything was.

I was a liberal arts major. A focus in English literature, with a minor in mythology. Academia was the end goal and even that fanciful dream was only made possible by my very generous, adoptive family; they'd opened so many doors and completely changed my life.

I was sporty, sure, and I liked a good bit of athletic fighting, but I was just a normal college student. On all accounts I shouldn't be killing and risking my life in pitched battle on the norm.

But here I was.

I'd woken up enough times in this new world, and in this new skin, to realize that this was all for real.

And, on that note, no matter how much I missed my family and friends... they wouldn't even recognize me.

My hair was completely different. I had what was pretty much elf ears and my skin was definitely far from the deep tan it'd once been.

I sighed.

Things were fucking weird right now.

Regardless, I had to actually get home to sort the problems that would come up once I got there.

My family might not recognize me, but if I could get their attention and convince them of who I was then I knew they'd accept me no matter what.

They loved me in a way I knew I was really lucky to have.

But to get home I would have to keep surviving and, as lucky as I'd gotten, with as much pain as I'd already endured, and--my eyes moved to Gwen--even with the new ally I'd found, I still needed to keep preparing myself for victory in every way that I could.

The enemies that we'd seen in the south so far seemed to mostly focus on web and poison based magics, but they dropped both frost and poison shards in their loot. So, even if I hadn't yet seen it, I still expected some ice magic to pop up sometime soon.

I couldn't do much about the web magic as far as resistances went, but my fire magic had already proven to at least be somewhat effective in keeping it from tying me up.

My eyes stared hesitantly at my poison-enshrouded hand.

My poison resistance needed work though.

[Sickening Touch] didn't really drain mana unless I was actively using it to sicken something. So, for the past minute or so, I'd just been watching the spell's aura closely.

I had the mana and health regeneration to do what I was about to do. As long as I didn't push it.

It wouldn't affect my guard shift either. I wouldn't go so far as to impair myself in any way that would keep me from keeping watch.

I had a few hours to work and I intended to make those hours count.

I took a deep breath and sighed once again as I placed my hand atop my opposite wrist.

The gross-looking aura of my spell floated like a rotten-feeling blob against my skin, but it didn't penetrate my body.

My own magic couldn't hurt me, not if I didn't want it to. As always, mana seemed to be self-selecting for who it damaged and the intent that guided that selectivity was everything.

I pulsed my will into [Sickening Touch] and, while gritting my teeth in anticipation, allowed the tasked mana to enter my body.

The skin of the area that I was grasping instantly surged with a deadening feeling. To my surprise there was no sharp pain, only a dull ache that spread out.

I hadn't been using much mana at all, though.

I increased the flow of my power into the necrotic spell.

The System alerted me then that I'd been poisoned.

[You have been affected by necrotic poisoning.]

[+1 Poison Resistance.]

[+1 Necrotic Resistance.]

The dull ache became a deep ringing in my flesh, mixed with a warm burning. I could feel my cells dying as I poured more power into my forearm.

Feeling my breathing becoming labored, and not wanting to push too far, I removed my hand from my wrist.

My eyes grew wide at what was left behind. Where my fingers had touched had now become completely blackened.

The wrong-feeling throbbing spread deeper into my body as my health continued to drop.

I could already feel my hand growing stiff as its feeder capillaries and veins were eaten away at by my magic.

I felt a little unnerved by my own spell as I activated [Accelerate Metabolism].

[Sickening Touch] was only a first tier spell, but, as with all spells which grew stronger to scale with how much mana you fed them, I could see it becoming truly debilitating over time and if properly provided with mystical energy to burn.

My heart thundered in my ears as I felt the magic of my radiant type spell combining with my body's natural defenses. Slowly, but surely, the feeling of [Sickening Touch]'s taint slowed to a crawl and stopped just short of reaching deep enough to touch my bones.

My [Poison Resistance] and [Necrotic Resistance] went up a few more points, along with my [Radiant Manipulation] but I noticed that the actual damaged [Sickening Touch] had already done only seemed to be fading slightly faster than my normal hp regeneration would suggest it should.

But that made sense, [Accelerate Metabolism] wasn't designed to allow self-healing after all.

The dark green aura over my right hand faded and was replaced with a luminous, golden glow as I activated [Healing Hands].

I wrapped the soothing, warming light of my restorative spell over my self-injured skin. Almost instantly, I felt a comforting relief seep into me.

Less than a minute later, as I was still doing my best not to overdue my mana expenditure, and I was removing my hand from my wrist to see nothing but restored flesh where the blackened finger marks had once been.

I was given a few more points in all the involved skills, along with a few mostly forgotten, but promising notifications.

[+1/50 Healer I.]

[+1/50 Overclocked I.]

[1/50 Antivenom I.]

I'd seen those System alerts before. Earlier in the day in-fact.

"System, show me the requirements for [Healer I]," I said quietly as to not disturb Gwen's very sensitive hearing.

I felt a small spike in the panther's consciousness, nonetheless, but quickly relaxed my worry as it settled back down into restfulness right after it had jumped up a bit.

[Available Achievements: Filtered for Healer I]

Healer I: Heal yourself or others. Grants a small reduction in the cost of all healing spells. (Progress: 3/50).

Hm. I'd gotten perks from achievements before. Namely in the form of the [Incinerator I] and the [Spelldancer I] perk.

Incinerator was just another tool in my toolbox, as it provided a passive increase in fire damage against enemies.

Spelldancer, meanwhile, was invaluable as it essentially made me move and react faster just for channeling magic--which I was generally always doing in battle anyway.

Spelldancer had, also, as of our last fight, leveled up, though I hadn't until now thought to glance at it.

I split my vision as I pulled up my character sheet beside the filtered achievement list. My eyes scrolled down to the perk in question.

Spelldancer II: When you are channeling mana your reaction time and movement speed increase significantly.

The perk hadn't really evolved much from what it had originally done, but the switch from providing a 'moderate' to a 'significant' increase made me excited to test it out sometime soon.

The fact that the achievements were numbered and could be further upgraded as well, was an interesting, and perhaps exploitable, concept.

"System, show me the requirements for [Spelldancer III]."

[Available Achievements: Filtered for Spelldancer III]

Spelldancer III: Level your Agility and Intelligence in tandem for twenty additional levels. Adds a moderate reduction to the cost of all movement granting spells to the perk. (Progress: 0/20).

So that was a divergence from the previous pattern, however, but it still seemed to be in the flavor of what the perk seemed to be getting at.

Twenty levels, though? It seemed the requirements to level an achievement perk up might just double every time you climbed up the ladder of their progression. if that were true then it'd likely eventually become very hard to progress further, if the achievements didn't haven an outright cap, after a certain point.

"System, how many bonuses can you get for leveling Attributes in tandem?" I inquired.

[You may gain a bonus for leveling a maximum of two Attributes in tandem. All combination of Attributes grant a specific perk after maintaining them for a number of levels, but you will be slowed in gaining the bonuses granted at specific Attribute point milestones.]

Which meant that everything was a tradeoff. Fair enough.

Spelldancer and Agility plus Intelligence fit my fighting style, though. For now I was content; granted there might be an argument towards leveling up only a single Attribute in the future if the rewards from my current path ever dwindled or became underwhelming. Perhaps that would happen once spelldancer presumably started to require forty plus levels to advance.

I closed the window and dismissed the System's answers.

My mana had ticked back up to about where it'd been before.

I took another very deep breath and allowed the energy from [Heat Body] to stop reaching into both of my arms.

I then struggled, once again, to activate [Frostbite].

A number of small icicles formed along my fingers and a misty fog of cold blue started to seep off of my frozen, but not too cold-feeling flesh.

I was using way more mana than I felt I should need to, but, ultimately [Frost Resistance] could likely also prove to be vital in the days to come.

Mimicking what I'd done with [Sickening Touch], I brought [Frostbite] down onto my opposite wrist.

The painful cold of the spell was a lot more immediately noticeable than the necrotic magic had been and it stung me deep the moment I allowed it to enter my body.

It didn't take me long to gain my first point in [Frost Resistance], though the gains with [Frost Manipulation] came a lot slower.

Eventually, when I couldn't take the sheer cold, burning, throbbing of my flesh, I pulled my icy fingers off of my now wounded skin.

In a much different way, my wrist was once again blackened, but this time it also looked altogether stiff and frozen.

After inspecting the damage, I quickly replaced my hand back over it and began healing the cold induced injury.

When I was confident that rapid warming wouldn't cause more harm than good, I also allowed [Heat Body] to once again flow into my arms.

[+1/50 Insulated I.]

"Fuck," I whispered to myself in recognition of the harshness of what I was doing.

Frost magic fucking stung.

I reached up to wipe off the cold sweat that was forming on my forehead, despite my body already becoming quite comfortably toasty once again.

It took me a few minutes to mentally recover from my initial foray into the training of specific resistances. The shit was brutal to say the least.

Still, just as I was briefly wondering if it was all really worth it, images of my sisters and adoptive mother filled my mind. Followed by that of my friends, my father, and of a particular old lover whom I promptly cut off from my thoughts.

I glanced over to Gwen once again, still sleeping soundly, although I noticed that she'd twitched somewhat when I'd hurt myself with the magic.

She could probably sense my self-caused discomfort on some unconscious level, but hadn't been awoken by it due to my otherwise relative calm even in the face of the pain I'd been feeling.

Motivated by thoughts of my family, I once again allowed my mana to flow out from my hand to create the poisonous aura of [Sickening Touch].

It was going to be a long night.

---

The mini-map led us on roughly a week long journey before we started to near our destination.

The forest had grown very, very thick and cold swamps had replaced the hard mountainous ground that had connected the south to the fringes of the west.

Thankfully, it was too cold for mosquitoes. I imagined they would have thrived in the freezing swamp.

Gwen seemed to do alright, despite being both cold and wet at times, with her sturdy constitution.

For my own part, [Heat Body] kept out the worst of the chill. Though I very much treasured the nights where we'd set camp on whatever secluded away, dry land that we could find.

Sleep was my shelter against the stressful treks of the day.

My guard shifts were, contrastingly, spent building my affinities and resistances to both frost and poison, along with the added bonus of raising my aptitude with radiant magic--and to a much lesser extent my fire affinity.

As it was, I'd gotten my poison and necrotic resistances to about one-hundred points. [Frost Resistance] was sitting at about eighty points, as I'd had trouble conservatively channeling the mana needed to cast [Frostbite] at a great enough strength to keep increasing my resistance quickly. My radiant and necrotic manipulation skills had, meanwhile, hit roughly sixty points, with [Frost Manipulation] lagging behind at forty points.

I'd also gained the [Healer I], [Overclocked I], [Insulated I], and [Antivenom I] perks from their respective achievements.

Healer, as I'd seen before, reduced the cost of my healing spells.

Insulated provided a slight resistance to frost damage.

Antivenom made it so the effective time of poisons you'd already been exposed to was slightly reduced.

Overclocked, meanwhile, had been unlocked by [Accelerate Metabolism] and it increased the effectiveness and reduced the cost of all spells that enhanced the body's natural processes.

After gaining that one, I'd taken the plunge and used a [Greater Bestial Shard] to create another healing spell. This one called [Accelerate Healing].

The new spell did pretty much what it said on the tin; in contrast to [Healing Hands] which was still better at directly treating individual points of damage, [Accelerate Healing] could flow throughout my entire body and target multiple issue points at once--along with being better suited for hitting at internal damage; though the new spell was slower at doing its work than [Healing Hands]--at least for the same mana cost.

We'd encountered scant few monsters in the following days, beyond the occasional stray pod of [Frostblood Spiders].

I'd done my best to avoid being stung by them, even despite my increased [Poison Resistance], and since there hadn't really been anywhere near as big of a group of them as before... well, I'd yet to be able to test how effective my hard-done training had been.

Additionally, and with mixed feelings, I had discovered with Gwen that she couldn't train the same way I was, as she had once again reminded me that she couldn't gain skills in the way I did when I'd brought it up.

Then again, I hadn't wanted to repeatedly poison and heal her anyway as the thought of doing what I was doing to myself to somewhat I cared about made me a little sick to my stomach. Thankfully, she already had a better constitution towards poison resistance that I'd initially had, which still counted for something.

As my mind lingered on her vulnerability, I felt Gwen send a telepathic, but silent, growl through our soul link.

I slowed to a halt, feeling the cold water swirling around my internally heated thighs, as I flashed my consciousness into Gwen's eyes.

Whereas I was almost swimming, the cat had been gracefully leaping from tree to tree, but had now also stilled.

Through my companion's vision I quickly made out the cause of her concern: she was looking suspiciously at what appeared to be a ruin of some sort.

Various shadowy shapes, too far away to make out with even her sharp eyes, milled about the sides of towering but dilapidated, and some half-sunken, stone structures.

My own eyes glanced to our shared mini-map.

We were sure enough close to where we needed to be and both me and Gwen had, not even a half-hour ago, agreed to be on the lookout for anything telling or suspicious.

This was probably it, or at least the entrance to it, though:

The Webspinner's Lair.