In the morning Laurence awoke to his face being licked. The wolf cub was up and about, but most of the nastier wounds from the fight had yet to heal properly. It was still a little wobbly, but had eaten all of the meat that had been left for it and was now exploring a mutilated set of bones in the corner of the tree. Laurence sat up, being careful about his arm and looked at his handiwork. The leather was tanned and ready to be stretched, while the vellum was halfway done with stretching out. He was quite happy with how his creations were coming to fruition, but now needed a new top. His old smock was destroyed beyond repair so he needed some better or at least more intact clothes. After about twenty minutes of thought and perusing the red book, he decided that he was going to wait for the next test room to make himself some new armour.

He ushered the wolf close to him and looked at his wounds. None were festering but Laurence washed them with water anyway just to make sure. As he finished cleaning he rubbed the head of the dog and noticed that his tattoo began spreading. It began duplicating, finally splitting and moving onto the wolf cub. As it moved it changed shape, on both its original host and new one. On Laurence the tattoo spread up his forearm and took the shape of a sigil base. It was a circle that seemed to have a nebula-like spiral coming out of it. It still had the character 1 on it, but now it took up far more space on his arm. On the wolf the star moved down to his paw and a small streak of red came out of a point. This streak moved over the body of the wolf, leaving a cloud-like pattern in its wake.

The moment the tattoos stopped changing Laurence heard “Brother” in the back of his head. It was not the word brother, but more the concept. The wolf cub looked up at the boy and licked him. “Brother” He heard again.

"Is that you, little wolf?” Said Laurence.

“Brother!” This time the concept held the feeling of happiness as the wolf cub nuzzled the boy, ticking him with his fur. Laurence laughed.

“Do you have a name little wolf?”

The wolf looked at Laurence, it tilted its head and scrunched up its nose. He did not seem to understand what Laurence was asking. He simply licked Laurence’s hand and sent him a happy sensation. Laurence frowned and then pointed at himself and said “Laurence.” He tried to communicate in the same way as the wolf did and sent an image of himself with the sound. The wolf made a short whining sound in response and sent back the image of a small red cloud.

"So is your name ‘Yun’?” Laurence tried to make the closest similar sound to the noise the wolf had made. It butted its head against his leg and barked, sending over that happy feeling again. “I guess I got it to right.” Thought the young boy. He smiled as he seemed to have picked up a new friend, even though he was injured.

For the rest of the day Laurence continued to work on his leather based projects, taking some time in the middle of the day to eat and then carve some healing and restoration runes on his cast. This way his arm would heal far quicker than it would, and if it was coupled with him infusing his arm with mana it would heal in no time at all.

By late afternoon, with the use of the speed up box the leather and vellum was complete. Laurence took the materials he would need and began the second last stage of his pet project. Laurence cut the rest of his harvested wood so that he had two pieces that were two hands tall, two hands wide and about half a centimetre thick. He then split the vellum he had made into thin sheets and made sure there were seven pages that were about the same height and breadth as the blocks of wood. Next he cut the leather so it had a body that would wrap the two pieces of wood up snugly.

He took all his cut pieces and began compiling the book. After twenty minutes of hard one handed sewing he had finally completed the book itself. Throughout the process Laurence had been infusing mana into the pieces, so they were far more durable than they otherwise would have been, and that was what would allow for Laurence to succeed with his idea. On the first page Laurence inscribed a series of runes, combining caveats and various sigils, to make the book itself impervious to damage and self repairing. He then sealed the page into the book itself to prevent tampering. The second page would contain runes that would affect the general pages of the book, so Laurence began inscribing.

In the end, the book had three attributes. Storing and recalling information, ‘infinite’ pages and illumination for night use. It was a masterwork, especially seeing as most of the creation was done by Laurence with a broken arm. It was also something Laurence was proud of. The final touch was to give the object a name, and Laurence found this stage far harder than the previous one. He thought up various names but nothing felt right. Finally he decided on ‘The Absolution Codex’. Laurence would be using it a journal to note all the interesting things on his journey, and so his first entry was that fish he found with the useful bones.

After writing down all his sights and discoveries thus far, the boy and his wolf decided to call it a night and start traveling the next day. In the morning Laurence checked the corpse of the orik in his slow down box, put everything that he and Yun would need and said to the excitable wolf, “Are you ready to go hunting?”

Yun barked happily in response and immediately tried to get tangled in Laurence's legs. The boy laughed, stepped over the foot and a half tall pup, and continued to follow the direction of his pointer stone. It led the two companions back the way Laurence had fled when he was being hunted by the orik, so they had an easy time for the first hour of travel. Once they reached the forest proper it was much slower going.

They travelled during the day and slept safely during the night. Over the next eight days the two youths saw countless incredible sights. There was a waterfall in reverse, a small forest of trees with inner flames, and even a geyser that seemed to fire out small gemstones rather than water. Laurence would have liked to collect some of the gems, but they were shot out with such force that they could be considered lethal weapons. Laurence did not have a strong sense of self preservation, but he did have one when the stones shot a bird or of the sky from over four hundred meters up. The most exciting part of the journey for the two friends was seeing new things. Neither of them had been alive for that long, so almost everything they encountered was new to them. In the first three days of travel Laurence jotted down and sketched over fifty creatures and interesting plants. By the time they actually reached the tower, fourteen days after Laurence entered the first floor, almost two hundred articles had been written in the codex.

Writing in the codex was not the only thing the two young challengers did over their journey. Laurence also showed Yun the red book and the wolf began ‘reading’ it. He also tried to teach Yun to more clearly understand language, rather than using sensation to express things. The latter was the far harder task. By the end of their time in Yun’s birth plane he had picked up the rudiments of language. Not speaking in sentences or even having much of a vocabulary, but he knew how to express the important things like ‘food’, ‘sleep’ and ‘Laurence’. He couldn't talk, but he was projecting words into Laurence's head rather than rudimentary images that Laurence barely understood.

They walked up to the large stone stele in the middle of the jungle and looked at it carefully. “Are you ready, brother?” Said Laurence, and Yun just barked in the affirmative. The two youths walked up to the door and pushed it open, once again stepping into the void waiting just beyond.