Ethan considered a few theories about what the [Primagland] spell was for and even though he could just set it in his wand and test it, he didn’t. He was too tired. It was, in a way, like getting up in the middle of the night, thirsty, but being too sleepy and dazed to do anything about it.

  It barely took a few more minutes for him to black out.

  When he reopened his eyes, he found himself staring at a bundle of orange fur. He was still laying on his back, and the cave was completely still. Quiet. A few monitor corpses were still smoldering, but nothing was moving aside from his own chest and the cat sleeping on him.

  Ethan looked around for an exit. A way to extricate himself, but as soon as he began fidgeting, a growl came out of the fur-ball.

  “[Let me sleep.]”

  Ethan opened his mouth in protest, and for a moment, he had no words. “I can give you five minutes. Then we gotta collect the fragments from the remaining monitors.”

  “[Already done.]”

  He blinked, then shook his head with a smile. “I guess that means I owe you less?”

  “[I guarded you while you were asleep. You still owe me.]”

  Damn.

  Still on his back, Ethan decided to get started on his other rewards. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t multi-task. “How long have I been asleep?”

  He felt… pretty great, actually. Almost as if he’d just had a full night of sleep.

  “[Three hours, I’d say.]”

  He raised a brow at that, then pulled up the tier-3 spell token as he repeated his question from earlier. She’d been tired then, but she shouldn’t have any excuses now. “So. About the rift rewards…”

  The Ignisra flicked her ears and slowly got up to her feet. She stretched, arching her back for a few seconds before she hopped down and began cleaning up her face with a paw. “[It depends. And with this System stuff, it might be a bit different. But generally, once you clear a rift you can lay a claim to the rift core. Anything else is a bonus. Sometimes you get lucky with a creature that generates essence stones like that one over there, and of course, you shouldn’t forget about the fragments and experience you get from clearing a rift. There aren’t that many ways to get your hands on such resources this easily out there.]”

  Ethan nodded along, blinked, then frowned as he sat up. “Essence stones?”

  What was she talking about? He didn’t think he’d heard of that term.

  “[Essence stones. Primagems. They’re the same thing. Did you not notice them on the back of the lord back there?]”

  Ethan looked past the cat at the carcass of the lord, specifically at the still glowing crystalline formations lining up its spine, and as he stared at them, two dots connected into his mind.

  The Primagland spell… is that some way to grow primagems directly on my body?

  He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but he still got up and made his way to the carcass. Leaning down, he examined the jagged crystals, and quickly noticed that not all of them were glowing. Some seemed inert, only reflecting the lights of the others and as he stared at the primagems, he noted how some were clear blues, purple, or even cloudy. But one thing was clear.

  “This is a lot of essence stones.”

  He didn’t want to assimilate them all, but he didn’t know if this could all fit in the pouch either.

  “[What? No. The stones are somewhere in the colored crystals. The rest is just… stuff, I guess. It’s probably valuable, but we don’t have to worry about it.]”

  “Oh,” he said, tapping a purple crystal with a claw. That made more sense.

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  It took a few minutes to wrench out every glowing cluster and once the blood crystals were lined up on the stone ground, Ethan and Ember shared a look. “How do we get them out?”

  The cat paced around one of the clusters, a purple one, tapped with a paw a few times before she looked up at him. “[Try breaking it?]”

  Ethan quickly went through everything he had at his disposal and narrowed his option down to basically just trying to chuck them hard against one of the walls. The crystals were sharp enough he didn’t really want to stomp on them, and he didn’t have any spells that could crush them easily enough. Thankfully, smacking them on the wall was effective enough, and they ended up with a total of 11 low-grade primagems. Three Primagems of Explosion, four of Crystallization, and four of Hardening.

  Ember touched one of the three orange orbs and the Primagem of Explosion disappeared. Then she took one of each of the other two. When she noticed his stare, she blinked. “[You owe me less, now.]”

  Ethan shook his head and picked up the primagems before stuffing them in his pouch while the cat went back to her nap.

  I’m really feeling good. After only three hours of sleep? That’s… kinda amazing. I know I can prolly get back and knock out two more hours, but I can get a move right away. For now, let’s open up some gifts.

  With a mental tap of his interface, Ethan started with the tier-3 spell token and without wasting any time, he selected the Enhancer option. He still had a weight issue, and he needed it fixed asap.

  Come on, he pleaded as the options and the text unrolled in front of him. He went through the options fast, not even dwelling on [Fire Elemental Heart], until he saw the word he was looking for. “Yes!”

  “[Let me sleeeep,]” groused Ember.

  Draconic Skeleton: Empower your bone structure to imitate a dragon’s renown weight and resilience. (Inert).

  Ethan was ready to press the option. And he was absolutely going to. But two options attracted his attention. The first was the Heart, which would allow him control over fire, just like the trait did. But he wouldn't need to have the trait selected. Nor would he need to slot in [Scorching Enhancement].. It would also give him immunity to fire from tier-3 spells and lower. It was interesting, and it immediately made him think of a possible upgrade for his own [Mana Heart.]

  What would a [Draconic Heart] spell do?

  The second option that attracted his attention was not at all tempting. But he couldn’t help but eye it for a moment.

  Drider Claws… creates webs to do all sorts of things. Was that what he had?

  Ethan didn’t think so. In Edwin's case, it seemed to be part of his Prime Arcanum’s kit. He looked through the rest for a moment, then made his choice.

  And now we’re back to the same old problem. Where do I fit this one?

  He had enough Essence to get more slots in his Prime wand, but he’d deal with that in a bit. He was curious to see what sort of bonus he was going to get out of a third form in the Draconic set. For now, he wanted to continue going through his tokens, then he’d take a look at his Arcanums’ loadouts. But as soon as he looked at the tier-2 token, he paused.

  I just got what I was missing. Is it worth using this right this second?

  After all, wand capacity was becoming a pretty severe limitation, and it wasn’t as if he was starved for a new spell. He had plenty that were just sitting in his interface, doing nothing. And what if he consumed the token right now? He would have to choose between a general spell or a modifier. On one hand, it had been a while since he’d selected a modifier and been meaning to pick something up. On the other hand, a general spell could also provide something new.

  After considering for a few more seconds, Ethan grimaced.

  “This could really wait. For a bit, at least.”

  He nodded to himself. He wouldn’t wait long, but honestly, he just wanted to know more about spells in general before he committed to either category. He’d love to see some sort of spell repertoire and take his time to decide but right this second, he wasn’t in a rush for a new spell.

  With that decided, he used the trait token and sat down cross-legged as he began reading his options.

  Select a trait from the list below:

  Enhancer Specialist: Enhancer wands provide 10% extra stats.

  Harvester’s Flames: Opponents vanquished through fire have a higher chance of forming primagems and spellcores.

  Bound Spellform: You can slot one spellform of your Prime Arcanum tier or lower to be always accessible. Changing the bound spell can take a few hours.

  Ethan crossed his arms and sighed. Of course the system won’t make all of his choices easy.

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