The sun was at its zenith the next day when something finally changed. The forest was still spread in every direction but from one step to another Blake felt the air become heavier. He felt like the world was attempting to restrain him and his movements.

  He suspected he knew what was happening but didn’t take the moment to verify through meditation as his attention had been caught by something else. The forest ahead of him had darkened. It wasn’t some magical darkness that bent the rules of reality, it was more an eery silence and trees more dense blocking the sunlight.

  It might have been his imagination but Blake thought he heard a wolf howl in the distance.

  ‘Nope!’ Blake thought and turned around without a second thought.

  He was confident in his intuition that what he just experienced was a higher density region and likely not a single increase from low to medium but rather a larger jump to at least high maybe even peak. Without more reference points he couldn’t be certain.

  Meditation might have let him get a better feel for it and at least confirm that it was indeed a higher region and not his imagination but he did not under any circumstances want to take his attention away from his potentially very hostile surroundings.

  Even after exiting the higher region, Blake did not stop. While monsters spawned based on their region they were not limited to that region there was just no reason for them to leave usually. Humans were one of the few things that could encourage a monster to leave their region for another. If he stayed too close to the higher region he risked being spotted.

  Only once he was certain that no monsters from outside his current region could spot him did Blake stop moving to contemplate his next actions. He had been under the, apparently, incorrect assumption that he would have to fight before ever reaching a higher rarity region and even then the region would only be medium density.

  His plan had been to set up a forward base to not only mark out the border of the medium-density region but to also have a safe place to rest between short excursions into the higher region looking for answers.

  There was no way Blake was going into anything higher than a medium-density region as he was. He wanted to fight some rabbicorns before even that to get more comfortable with combat and to help bring his various skills together into something more cohesive.

  Seeing as he still needed to mark where the higher density region was Blake decided to continue with his plan to make a forward operating base but instead of using it to launch excursions he would instead leave it behind for a while to continue his journey in search of a monster to fight and a medium density region to explore.

  Blake had already decided on how he was going to design his secondary bases before leaving his glade. The primary purpose was to have a safe place to rest his head each night so they would get defenses on nearly the same level as his home base.

  His home base had the cabin and a small wooden wall that had been added behind the trench and spikes but those made little difference for the amount of effort required so for his forward bases there would only be spikes in front of a trench that was filled with more spikes.

  Blake had also decided to add another layer of spikes behind the trench that had not been part of his original home base design as it was so time-consuming to make at the time. Now that he had a proper knife, wooden spikes were a matter of seconds to construct.

  Using a stone shovel, axe and a rabbicorn knife made the work go quickly. This base was bigger than the small camp he had made the night before so the work was not yet done as night fell but it was well on its way. As he worked Blake reviewed his plans for the rest of the base.

  Besides defenses, there were a few more things Blake needed from his secondary bases. The simplest was a bed and fire pit. Those were a mainstay for any place he was staying the night. The fire pit would be a little more fleshed out than at his temporary camp and the bed would be made to a higher standard but otherwise the same.

  From there things diverged from his temporary camp. This base was meant to act as a marker of what was ahead, the higher region, so it needed to be easy to find. As it was everything he made was low to the ground and difficult to find. So to help him find his way back Blake was going to make something he had seen in a museum that ancient civilizations used to make.

  A totem pole. He could have just used a tall log stripped of branches but it would be easy to confuse with any other tree so Blake was going to carve figures into it. While his justification was practical in reality he thought it would be a fun project. It tapped into his enjoyment of working on larger projects.

  There was another more mystical reason to do so. Blake had always wanted to get a magic Talent and had done lots of research to that end. One of the things he had learned about was the nature of mana, or at least the theories that existed.

  Prior to the discovery of awakening and the introduction of mana to Earth magic was thought to be a myth. Stories existed of it of course but no actual magic. However, after magic was proven to exist many of those stories, especially the older ones that modern ones were based on, were reanalyzed.

  Mana might not be native to Earth anymore but was it always that way? Many old stories and oral histories talk about magic in a way that lines up with the most basic forms of magic that exist nowadays.

  Magic Talents come in a large variety of forms but pure mana Talents, that is those that use mana not aspected to an element, have many commonalities between them. Pure mana Talents more often than not are based around rituals and symbolism. This matches up with many old stories of magic.

  If mana really did exist on Earth in the ancient past then totems could very well have been a method of harnessing its potential. Blake didn’t know anything about how that would work as the few Talents he had heard of that used totems were reliant on abilities that seemed pretty specific to them.

  Making totems was going to be more a hope for good luck than anything else but maybe his Talent would help him. After the theories involving magic always existing came to pass many had taken to wearing and/or utilizing items and doing rituals that had been culturally significant in history.

  The idea was that maybe a Talent wasn’t required for basic magic. It had never been definitevly proven to work but evidence suggested that it could at least influence Talent evolutions into being more mystical in nature.

  The next day after finishing the defenses Blake got to work on the totem. Since symbolism was generally accepted as the common factor to ‘old’ magic, as it was called, he spent some time thinking over what he wanted to carve into it.

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  Blake had cut down the largest tree he could find with his stone axe and was striping it of branches and bark as he thought about his options. The totem was meant to act as a guide so maybe a lighthouse? But that would only take up the top part. What else should he add?

  While he thought it over he finished preparing the log. No matter how he tried to think through it he couldn’t come up with any other good symbols for guidance. Perhaps if he had spent more time studying ancient cultures he might have been better at symbolism but he hadn’t so he wasn’t.

  Blake gave up on trying to come up with something. The top was the only part that mattered anyway. The whole point was to make the totem distinctive from the surrounding trees and the top was the only part that could be seen from a distance.

  Taking out his rabbicorn horn knife, Blake got to work carving into the top. His fingers were nimble but firm as he worked to carve away the wood. His Talent had progressed his knife skills upon finishing the rabbicorn horn version giving him excellent control over the knife.

  Supernatural Strength combined with the high levels of control to make him great at carving into the wood. The real limiter was Blake’s artistic skills. It was like drawing. Putting pencil to paper was easy. Control over the pencil might vary to different degrees but overall was standard. Putting the image you had in your head though? That was a completly diffrent skill.

  Since arriving in the spirit realm Blake had been working hard to make his imagination reality, that is what crafting is after all, but while he could make things functional there was an artististic touch he was missing. His tools had not allowed for anything detailed until recently so all his practice with crafting had completely dismissed this portion of design.

  It didn’t help that his Talent did nothing to support his skills as an artist. Muscle memory and a detailed understanding of your actions had nothing to do with a clear, concise, and vivid imagination. Really, imagination was the determining factor when it came to how well Blake could use his Talent.

  Everything else he could possibly want was provided to him in the form of his skills and crafting knowledge but if he had no direction what was the point? His experiments with herbalism were a great example of this.

  He did not know anything about herbalism before using his Talent but Blake had a clear idea of what he wanted. His imagination of what could be allowed his Talent to guide him to the how. As long as he was creative in what experiments he did there was nothing stopping his knowledge of herbalism from matching, if not surpassing, that of someone with a focused herbalism Talent.

  Unfortunately, despite how crucial it was to Blake, he was not a good artist. He knew he wanted to make the totem resemble a lighthouse, he could imagine a lighthouse in his mind, but it would not coalesce.

  Days blurred by as Blake worked to carve into the totem. Multiple times he cut off the top of the totem to restart. He even had to find a new log once as the first one had become too short for its intended purpose. He was so entranced with his work that for a time he forgot the reason he was doing all this.

  In the end, he had succeeded in making a symbolic light house. It was not pretty, or even accurate, but it was still clear. There were four rounded columns that held up the roof of his little light house. The roof was rounded and Blake had used a river stone he had brought with him to sand it down to be more smooth.

  In between the columns, at the center of his little lighthouse, was a flame. It looked cartoonish, like a water drop with multiple tips, but it was recognizable to anyone. Along the columns that supported the roof were small swirls and patterns to give the whole thing some more depth to its design.

  It wasn’t much but Blake was proud of how far he had come from his first attempt. Originally it was going to be a box with square columns holding up a flat ceiling with something inside, probably a smaller box.

  Taking the time to round out his construction and properly make something to represent the light had been a decision that Blake hadn’t even consciously thought about. He had become absorbed in his work on a level he would not have been capable of prior to entering the spirit realm.

  This level of devotion to one activity was a learned skill he had had to acquire to keep himself sane. He had no access to electronics and the endless media content the internet provided so he had learned to take pride and joy in his crafting. It was a shift in his personality he hadn’t even realized was so large until working on the totem.

  He was in the middle of an expedition to explore the unknown and his goal was to find monsters to fight and map out the realm, stopping for days for a spur-of-the-moment whim to perfect a craft of his was unlike him. Time had lost most of its meaning a long time ago but this was another level.

  And he didn’t regret it one bit. What did it matter if he took time to make a more complete totem than he had originally planned? Nothing was waiting for him or pushing him forward because of a time limit. Blake had long given up on making the one-year deadline to make it to tier 3.

  Daily meditation, which he had kept up even while working on the totem, let him put aside small worries like fines that would have to pay once he found a way out of the spirit realm. It wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it so why did it matter?

  Analyzing his own thoughts shocked Blake. The shift in his attitude and personality had been so gradual that he hadn’t even noticed. Maybe if he had been interacting with people the contrast would have made it more obvious but as it was he had been caught unaware.

  Blake was meditating as he realized all this so he felt when it happened. One of the chains holding him back from ascension reached the tipping point and began to push as much as it pulled. Just like when he had done the same thing with Strength, Blake gained a much clearer sense of what the chain represented.

  The best way Blake could describe it was insight, or maybe Affinity. It represented his ability to sense the world as it is and as it could become. Basically, it was his spiritual sense. The chain was part of the third group of chains that he hadn’t been able to create a label for. It didn’t affect his physical form in any way making it hard to detect its growth without his spiritual senses which Blake found ironic.

  The next day Blake finished the totem and, along with the insight into his craft and skills to use the totem, he crossed the threshold for a third chain, or stat as he was beginning to think of it. This time it was for the group of stats that he had categorized as mental.

  With this stat he now had an understanding of one in each of the three categories that he could identify; body, mind, and unknown. Blake really needed to come up with a better name for the third category. Maybe spirit since spiritual sense was part of it? But then again all these stats were technically affecting his spirit as he was in the spirit realm.

  The newest stat was his Memory. Since many parts of his mind were upgrading all at once when his Talent activated Blake hadn’t been able to separate out different forms of mental growth but now he knew one of them. The memory stat did exactly what it sounded like, it enhanced his ability to remember information.

  Blake would definitely start labeling his memory as superhuman at this point. His memories were always vivid, he suspected that was more an imagination or creativity thing, but they were perfect and complete for the last few weeks.

  Improving his memory didn’t let him remember things he had already forgotten so it helped moving forward otherwise he would have been able to remember perfectly even farther back. While discovering a new stat was exciting something else drew Blake’s attention.

  When his Talent had activated for the totem he had learned, or at least confirmed something groundbreaking. The totem could channel mana into a magical effect. At least it could in theory. Blake didn’t know what he was missing but his totem did nothing, he only knew it could be something more because of hints within the crafting information and what the skill was trying to teach him.

  Since the craft was considered a failure and incapable of doing anything Blake’s Talent provided little in the way of skill and what he did gain was disjointed and to incomplete to put into practice but he could recognize what it was. The skill was for a type of ritual.

  Blake really wanted to get to work on another totem right away to try and get it working. He didn’t have access to mana and this might be a way to do so without expensive natural treasures that required an expert to prepare. He stopped himself though.

  There was something missing with his craft that would take a while to discover. Even completing one totem had taken days and discovering anything with his Talent required a lot of iteration.

  Blake had become less tied down by time and urgency but that didn’t mean he was willing to give up on his current goal just to satisfy a new fascination. First, he would complete his expedition to an extent that he didn’t feel he had cheated, and then he could explore totems and old magic to his heart’s content.

  Mind made up Blake fell into meditation. It was already late so why not delay until the morning? It gave him plenty of time to analyze his new stats some more.

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