Despite feeling a sense of urgency to ascend, Blake did not go in search of a new den immediately. His second sub-boss fight had left him too injured. Luckily, Blake had never stopped experimenting with herbalism, even if it had fallen to the back burner.

  One of his original goals of herbalism was to create a healing salve for the sunburns he suffered when first arriving in the spirit realm. They had long since disappeared, which he now understood was because of his increased Constitution. Despite that, he came up with a burn salve.

  While sunburns were a problem of the past, Blake could still burn himself with fire and had used that to test his salve while training his Constitution at the same time. That was paying back in spades with the magically induced burn wounds.

  Normal wounds healed within a week in the spirit realm. That was even faster when Constitution was taken into account, as basic rabbicorns could only deal superficial damage to Blake by this point. The burns, however, lingered until the healing salve was applied.

  Blake couldn’t understand why. His Talent gave him an in-depth understanding of how the salve worked as well as a decent idea of how it interacted with the human body, but nothing suggested it was capable of removing a magical affliction, and a magical affliction was all it could be.

  If there was one thing Blake considered himself knowledgable about pre-awakening, it was magic. Magical afflictions were a subset of magic spells that left lingering effects on your opponent. Wounds that refused to heal under the normal enhanced healing factor of the spirit realm were a staple of the spell class.

  Honestly, Blake thought he got off easy. Magic afflictions were very dangerous to even those who were prepared. He had heard of a curse, a kind of magic affliction, that made everyone forget about the person afflicted. They could still have conversations with people and act normally, but the second they stopped talking to someone, they were forgotten.

  Even after the curse was broken, no one’s memories were returned. They had been permanently excised from their friends and family. An affliction like that… actually wouldn’t do much to Blake. He had been a loner long before entering the spirit realm, and it wasn’t like there was anyone to remember him here.

  Even after applying the healing salve, it took time for the burn to fade. Blake spent the time training and practicing his crafting. More totems were added to his growing collection as he tried to create some effect. Any effect.

  Javelin practice was of utmost importance to Blake as he hadn’t forgotten that had he killed the sub-boss in one blow, as had been his goal, he wouldn’t have been burned. He made a second javelin with the new sub-boss horn so that in the future, he had a second chance in case he missed.

  Blake wished he had someone to teach him how to use magical materials, but for now, the horn was little better than a hard, sharp object. Even people without a magic Talent could craft using magical materials to create amazing items, but he lacked even a basic idea of how to go about that. If he had known the basics, he could have relied on his Talent from there, but no such luck.

  After two weeks, Blake was mostly healed, and the den’s sub-boss had respawned. He knew because the basic rabbicorns began to exit the den more frequently and in larger numbers. With two javelins strapped to his back, axe in one hand, and a torch in the other, Blake descended into the den once again.

  Having done the grunt work to map out the den, his previous go-around, Blake was able to quickly and efficiently clear every chamber before moving on to the sub-boss. This time, while he still failed to kill the sub-boss in one blow, Blake was able to take out the big bad with his second javelin before any magic could be launched.

  The death of the basic rabbicorns quickly followed with Blake not taking a single injury. It was almost anticlimactic. A quick check of his stats showed Celerity reaching the second threshold with Alacrity teetering on the edge.

  Blake was already experiencing diminishing returns from the death of the sub-boss’s death. He had seen this happen with the basic rabbicorns, where the more he killed, the less his stats improved, but he had hoped that that wouldn’t apply to boss types. Apparently, it did.

  Altogether, it took Blake less than half the day to clear out the den, with the rest of the day spent harvesting the bodies. After the first time, he cleared the den, he had gained more rabbicorn horns than he knew what to do with. Now, on his third fourth, if you include the run-through without killing the sub-boss, Blake had no idea what to do with so many horns.

  He would need to come up with something to do with them. Well, he didn’t need to, but it would be a waste not to. The only thing he could think of besides making various types of blades was trying to grind it up for his herbalism.

  Including beast parts, especially magical beast parts, would actually make it alchemy. Herbalism was the study of plant growth and its effects. What he did was an edge case of the field, but since he hadn’t found any need to grow plants, the mixing of plant matter to create salves was all there was to herbalism for him.

  While he was curious as to the alchemic properties of the horns, Blake had to prioritize maxing out his stats so he could advance into the high-density regions. The next morning, he set out at a fast jog towards the nearest medium region he had located.

  While a fast jog to the current him, the Blake that had first arrived in the spirit realm would have called it an all-out sprint. The kind of sprint that was only possible over a very short distance. Now, it was a fast jog, and he could keep it up for hours without feeling any strain. A benefit of having high body stats.

  While Blake had previously located other medium regions, he had never explored them in depth, so he didn’t know where the den was. It took him a day of looking before finding it, but once he did, he went in without pause.

  Blake had left his medium region home base because it would take two weeks to respawn the den, and he had no interest in waiting that long. Despite that, Blake took the time to map out the new den before attacking the boss.

  This den was much smaller than the first one he cleared, but it was still bigger than it should be based on conventional knowledge. Five rooms in a sequence, each filled with at least seven rabbicorns, greeted Blake.

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  Blake was a little upset at the simplicity of the whole thing. The other den had close to twenty rooms with at least ten rabbicorns per room. By comparison, this one was a walk in the park. Even the sub-boss was easier.

  Rather than the super sub-boss that Blake had been facing, a variant he had started calling a savage rabbicorn, the sub-boss of this den was clearly a brawler type. Rabbicorn brawlers were the most common evolution of rabbicorns.

  On their hind legs, they stood about five feet tall. Their hands were comically oversized and perpetually clenched into fists. Rabbicorn brawlers only had a small nub for a horn rather than the elegant foot-long horns other evolved rabbicorns had. Even the basic rabbicorns had longer horns.

  Rather than charging at their enemies to impale them on their horns, brawlers used their fists to bludgeon people to death. For Blake, that meant the sub-boss could not fight back when he launched a javelin at it. Whether because this sub-boss was slower or because of sheer luck, it died in one hit.

  Blake found that the sub-boss provided more stat growth than the savage rabbicorn did now, but it was less than the savage rabbicorn had the first time. From his understanding of the process, that made sense. The rabbicorn savage was stronger than the brawler, which was the key factor to stat growth.

  Alacrity did not tip over the second threshold from the boss fight, but that night, while meditating, Blake was able to push it there. That left only the last spirit stat below the second threshold. Over the next week, he cleared two more dens, trying to push the stat higher.

  One was a brawler, while the other was another savage. There was a clear correlation between den complexity and sub-boss type, as the second savage sub-boss had a den just as large and complex as the first, while both brawlers had comparatively smaller dens.

  After the non-stop fighting, Blake decided to take a break rather than move on to a fifth den. It wasn’t just exhaustion from the constant fights but also frustration with this last stat. Despite being the only stat left, it didn’t grow at anywhere close to the same speed his other stats had.

  Blake was missing something because his current understanding was that all stat growth was being directed towards the only stat left, yet that was clearly not the case. If it had been, the final stat would have long reached the first threshold, probably even the second.

  At the moment, it sat at approximately 75% of the way to the first threshold. That might seem like most of the way, but its growth was only slowing with each boss killed. Blake didn’t even think it was entirely because of the diminishing returns from killing the same thing. Something else was at play.

  Blake needed to clear his mind with some good, honest crafting. That always made sense. He very much did not think about the confusing puzzle that was totems and old magic. He had some alchemy experiments to conduct with the rabbicorn horns.

  Not just the horns, either. The rabbicorn brawler dens didn’t have sub-boss horns as natural treasures and instead had a strange glowing root that grew in the boss rooms. Blake had harvested one from each of the dens, so he had two to play… work with.

  Given the limited supply, Blake decided to work on the horns first. He was only using the basic rabbicorn horns as he still couldn’t damage the rabbicorn savage horns. Perhaps if he used them against each other, but it wasn’t worth wasting two of them for alchemy experiments when he had other materials to work with.

  Arriving back at his base, he got straight to work. Picking up a stone mortar Blake had prepared ahead of time, he began to smash one of the basic horns to pieces. It was difficult work, but over the course of a few hours, the horn was ground up into a fine dust.

  Ingredients now prepared, Blake began to combine the dust with some of his successful experiments. This was a combination of healing salves, adhesives, and a few different colors of paint. It wasn’t true paint, but Blake had been working on creating colorful substances he could use for artistic endeavors.

  The results were… disappointing. The dust either didn’t do anything or was actively detrimental to the final result. The only exception was one of the adhesive recipes, where it became stronger but not due to any magic but rather good old-fashioned chemistry.

  The thing was, the information about his product that Blake’s Talent provided had gaps. He had already noticed that the information he got was more incomplete than he had originally assumed when he first unlocked his Talent, but the gaps were both bigger and stranger this time.

  Normally, the gaps were a matter of scale and scope. Blake did not receive information on the atomic structure and only the most basic understanding of the molecular makeup of his work. The focus was more set to the size of a cell than anything smaller.

  The scope was also limited to the craft’s internal mechanics. External reactions, such as the effect a healing salve would have on a body, were minimal at best. It was more impressions telling Blake that it was a healing salve rather than a breakdown of how it healed.

  This time, there were further gaps in his knowledge, but they applied on a more wide-ranging scope. Blake could understand how the structure of the dust interacted with the other ingredients, but that was it. There was something missing from it. Something chemical or… magical.

  ‘Ah, that’s what it is.’

  Alchemy was the study of magical ingredients, but Blake couldn’t use magic. If the rabbicorn horns interacted with mana, he must not be able to sense it. An unfortunate limitation but one he had been mentally prepared for.

  Realizing that his lack of magic was limiting his ability with alchemy, Blake decided to leave his more rare ingredients for later. He didn’t want to waste the magical potential of the roots just because he was impatient.

  Instead, Blake turned his attention back to totems. His Talent had already hinted at it being a route to magic, and he had to hope it would give him the insight needed for his alchemy. He glanced around at the totems he had already completed.

  There were more than 20 of them of all different shapes, sizes, and of different symbols. Blake had been hoping to stumble upon the missing key to old magic but was having no luck. Despite his failure, he had come to enjoy the artistic skill required for the work.

  His most recent work had all been centered around rabbicorns. It was a cathartic contrast to his constant killing of the creatures to immortalize their existence through his carvings. They weren’t terribly realistic, but that was more due to Blake’s art style than lack of skill.

  Sitting down on his carving chair, which was just a tree stump, Blake got to work on a new totem. This time, he didn’t stop with the carving. He grabbed the ‘paints’ he had prepared via herbalism and some good old-fashioned digging for colorful dirt. Clay was a great earthy red color.

  The white fur of the rabbicorns was hard to reproduce, so instead, Blake was going for a more classic rabbit look rather than the bunny type that rabbicorns were. The brown fur that rabbits had was much easier to reproduce.

  Finishing off the painting, Blake took a step back to admire his work. This was his first attempt at adding color to his totems, so it wasn’t great, but he felt it was still better than nothing. The log he had carved the rabbicorn into was two feet across and three feet high, so it was huge, but he put a lot of effort and detail into it.

  Even rough fur had been carved into the wood with painstaking care. The size of the initial block of wood limited Blake’s options when it came to the horn, so instead of a full-sized one relative to its frame, he instead created a small nub similar to that of a rabbicorn brawler’s horn.

  Done with his latest attempt, Blake sat back down and studied the information downloaded to his brain. He was shocked to find that it was coherent. At least, mostly. Painting the totem was a big step in the right direction, and he could now tell why that was.

  Symbolism. Blake had always known symbology was a defining characteristic of totems, but he had underestimated its impact on magic. He now knew that by painting the totem, he had brought it more in line with the image of a rabbicorn. The symbolism was more clear and, therefore, the craft of better quality.

  Painting wasn’t enough by itself, but Blake now had a direction to his work. He no longer had to flail around blindly, hoping something would stick. He needed to improve how symbolic his totem was.

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