Oh god, my hands ached, my body ached, and I was going cross-eyed from all this carving and crafting. Despite the aches and pains, I had finally managed to get my rune crafting skill up enough to eke out a 4% flexibility boost most of the time and a three percent in the rest, making sure those plates went to non-critical areas on my armor. Turns out runes are very sensitive to the overall depth of the carving and having that depth as consistent as possible increased the effectiveness of the runes. I was sure I was just barely scratching the surface of what runes were capable of.Because of the hard work, I earned the skill armor crafting as I assembled the roughly shaped Chitin Jerkin, using my old jerkin as a template of sorts as well as a backing material. The plates were quite heavy; I mean what had I expected from rock centipede armor coming in at around 15 pounds. I did have to sacrifice a shirt to cover the hole in my leather but it was worth it.Rune crafted leather-backed chit

It was still quite expensive versus my Wind Walk spell but I was glad nonetheless. Even my venerable Earth Fist got a decent bump in damage ability going from the .25 modifier bonus to the .34 which was quite an increase. That bumped the damage potential of Earth Fist from 108 to 144. It was my single most powerful ability to do constant damage at the moment. It also had versatility as a speed-boosting platform if I could train some more with it that way. Now that I was level 8 I wanted to see what my health, mana, and regen rate were at with the boost to the modifier.HP: 432(475)Mana: 432Mana Regen(M): 126Excellent, I was now recovering my mana at 2 per second. It was getting to the point where I would be able to use my cheaper abilities nonstop during a fight without having to worry too much about running out of mana. While I was going over my stats I noticed my icon lit up letting me know Area of denial was reset and it was now time to put

I decided to risk it; at worst I believed I could escape this group. I stood up slowly from behind the house and the group instantly spotted me gripping their weapons tight. I kept my hands high as I approached the group stopping well away from them, mostly because they told me if I got any closer they would shoot me, rude."Hold it right there stranger," Frank said, pointing a shotgun at me.I wasn't overly worried about the shotgun, and I was even close enough to get a read on the group.Frank Castallino | Rider | Level 4Perry 'Squirrel' Mathis | Scout | Level 3I couldn't see the other names as they were outside my range but I expected similar levels to these two. My anxiety ratcheted down at seeing the levels."Whoa there, just passing through, trying to go south," I said calmly. I knew from before the System this area had an uptick in Meth and biker gangs in the last decade and if that's who these people were I didn't want

I wasn't quick enough to avoid the blow entirely and the Orc's nasty curved sword sliced a long furrow in my bicep. I winced at the pain, instead of crying out. Which says a lot about the amount of pain I have received lately. Grabbing my staff I whirled around having to recast Flurry as it cannot remain active on an unequipped weapon and I struck out with my now nine punishing blows.The monster even managed to block one of the blows but his animal-hide armor-covered torso did little to blunt the force of my impacts as he staggered back spitting up blood. I followed that attack up with a quick Stunning Gust causing the creature to topple over. Checking my notices I saw it was still alive. I changed my focus to the second Orc, he had rearmed himself. I took this time while we sized each other up to get his stats.Charlok | Orc Hunter | Level 6This was surprising in and of itself, the only names I had come across had been on Intelligent creatures, not that

I dragged the bodies off the road and into a ditch with tall grass and reeds. It would do for now to keep their bodies from being discovered. I grabbed one of the black armbands. From what I could tell they all appeared to be the same and I hadn't seen anyone saluting or being deferential to anyone but that mage woman.If it got me across the bridge that would be best but if it even got me to within striking distance of the guards on the bridge I could take it from there. I decided to loot the corpses as well. I found a few credits, a knife that I strapped on, and a silver ring.At first glance, I thought it was just a simple ring but when I touched it, it felt odd."No, it can't be," I whispered and opened my inventory tab. There in my inventory was my backpack and the ring as storage items. I did a little shimmy of joy at this, finally, I had a dimensional storage item and decided to check the rings storage space. The ring could store up to three cubic f