“Thank you for coming to our help, I know we were supposed to alternate our guard duty, but if you hadn’t come, we would have been done for,” Balin told Caspian.

“No. You did well to call for me. It is useless to spare our forces if we are not able to hold on in the first place. I didn’t expect their first attack to be this aggressive. I thought only one or two would come around at first to test the water, I didn’t expect a whole group to attack all at the same time. Their number must have grown again in the forest.” Caspian said grimly.

“Yes, they are fighting inside the forest against the native monsters. The fights are attracting more of them from the ruins.” Edward explained.

“I’m glad you are back. Did you manage to find a magic spell to seal the ruins? I thought we would have more time, but seeing as they are already here, we need a solution before it’s too late.” Caspian asked while showing the corpses of the Bloodmaws with his head.

“I did manage to find something actually. But I’m not sure if it will work, I need to test it first. I found a tome explaining runes magic, with that, I should be able to set up a barrier to seal the ruins. However, I’m not sure if it will be able to hold Bloodmaws. Those monsters may be dumb, but they are really strong. There are some ways to make stronger barriers, but it seems very complicated, I won’t be able to learn it in a short time.” Edward answered.

“I see. If you want to test those barriers, I would suggest you reinforce the defenses with us. More of them can come at any time, and as you have seen in this fight, this wooden wall won’t stop them for long.”

The wall was harboring claw marks at regular intervals where one of the Bloodmaws had tried to climb. Moreover, one of the wooden pillars was cracked where the Bloodmaws had crashed several times, trying to take down Balin and Caspian.

“Caspian is right, more of them could come at any time. So, I suggest we bring back those corpses immediately. We fought a good fight, and we are victorious. Let’s not waste the reward of our efforts, everyone needs a power boost against such enemies.” Balin interrupted them.

Power boost, what is he thinking about? Edward thought, confused.

“Good advice, we should absorb their blood quickly, before its power dissipates.” “Open the gates quickly, we will bring the bodies inside!” Caspian shouted to the guards. “Regarding the share, I suggest we each take one. Since it is an uneven number, we could give the rest to the guards. They are in dire need of strength too. And who knows, maybe one of them could become an awaken. That would help us greatly.”

Oh, of course, the monster’s blood. I’m so used to absorbing it during the heat of the moment, that I forgot about it for an instant. Caspian is right, more awakens in the guards would be nice. If they could kill the Bloodmaws from the walls simply with arrows, the problem would be solved. They would need to master auras for that thought, it could take up quite some time. I’m not even sure that even I could shoot an arrow with aura still imbued in it. However, even with moderate aura control, two awaken guards could probably hold their own against a Bloodmaw.

“That’s fine by me. Anyway, if I need more, I can hunt for more in the forest.” Edward told them.

“It’s fine for me as well,” Balin added.

The guards quickly opened the gates to let them bring the bodies inside. While they were dragging the bodies in, the villagers picked up the wreckage left over from the barricades. Since they couldn’t go out to get more resources due to the monster infestation, they couldn’t let materials go to waste. Even if some pieces were too damaged to repair, they could still be used as combustible for a fire. As soon as they finished their task, they closed the gates again. It would be catastrophic if another wave of Bloodmaws attacked them while the doors were still open. A single Bloodmaw managing to sneak into the village could do massive damage before it was dealt with.

Caspian placed his hand on the monster’s corpse he had chosen to absorb power from. Edward watched him as he deployed his aura. Caspian was projecting his aura inside of the corpse, before drawing it back inside of him. His aura was able to harvest the power of the slain beast, carrying it back with itself when it was called back by Caspian. He was using his aura in waves, his aura spreading out of his body, absorbing the power from the monster, and going back inside him.

So, that must be how Marc has done it back then. In the end, I had never needed to use such a move thanks to my daggers. Ok, let’s try it. Edward did just as he had seen Caspian proceed, placing his hand on a corpse and projecting his aura inside of it. Wow, it feels weird. It feels almost like when you place your hand on a heater that was on not long ago. You can feel the lingering warmth, but you feel it dissipating slowly at the same time. Except, here it is strength and vitality instead of warmth. Edward then recalled his aura, feeling some of the power getting inside him and strengthening him. It was the same as when he was using his dagger except that the process was slower and that he didn’t experience the slow-down time effect.

Time is not slowing down anymore now. Is it because the beast is dead, or is it because I’m not using my daggers? I guess there is only one way to know. He took out one of his daggers and pierced the beast with it. He felt power flowing into him, but in a slow trickle instead of the stream of energy, he was used to when he was killing a beast. However, he did experience time slowing down partially. So, the slowing time is indeed due to my daggers, or at least to the interaction between Bloodmaws and my daggers. I didn’t experience this effect with other monsters. Also, the energy I’m absorbing is a lot slower than when a monster is alive. Is it because the monster’s power is dissipating? My blade must act as a needle piercing a balloon. When the monster is alive and full of energy, its power is bursting from the opening directly into me. But when it is dead, his energy level is a lot lower, and its power is slowly tricking into me instead.

But then, can I use the aura technique to normally absorb their power even through my blades? This is a technique to absorb their power, so maybe it could accelerate my daggers’ draining effect. After seeing Balin firing aura imbues arrows, I’m feeling I’m still underusing aura techniques. Edward deployed his aura to his blade, before letting it go through it as if it was a part of his body. His aura wasn’t bothered by it and flowed freely through the blade. By actively pulling the monster's power to the blade, Edward realized that he was indeed noticeably increasing his absorption rate. He could feel his body strengthening, and some other energy going somewhere else inside of him. The Bloodmaw corpse was desiccating under his eyes at a fast pace as he was continuing to absorb its power. In the end, it looked no different than a mummy left abandoned for several hundred years.

He had already finished absorbing power from his Bloodmaw when the guards were only beginning the process themselves. They couldn’t use aura yet, so they had to do it the hard way, bathing themselves literally in the blood of their enemies. They had removed their top clothes, exposing their torso to the cold air, and painting their skin with blood. They dipped their fingers in bowls where they bled the monsters, before applying it to their skin. Aura certainly makes things easier. And cleaner too.

Since both Caspian and he had finished the absorption process, Edward went to see him to talk about ways to reinforce the defenses with runes. They agreed to first reinforce the gates as it was the village’s main weak point. It will enable Edward to test if a rune barrier was enough to contain Bloodmaws. Caspian also advised Edward to search for offensive means, there may be a way for runes to build traps or to sharpen weapons, at least Caspian hoped so.

Edward left to study the runes’ possibilities further, before trying to grave them on the village’s walls. He took his time to review the specific rules for barriers, he didn’t want to mess things up as it would be his first try and many beginners’ mistakes could probably be avoided. For rune barriers, a paragraph was detailing the specific distance at which a rune was effective. A barrier was effective only as long as the whole passage you wanted to seal was blocked. Most of the time a single barrier rune wouldn’t be able to block an entire passage on its own. A simple Block rune was effective only for fifty centimeters on each side of it, practically it meant you had to put a rune every meter if you wanted to seal an ingress point. If you put runes closer than that it wouldn’t necessarily help if you didn’t have a mana supply. The runes needed mana to activate and by being closer, the runes would simply consume all the ambient mana, with no runes being at full mana capacity.

The tome added some passages on the use of Awakening runes. Defenses generally didn’t need to be active at all times. By adding this type of runes, defenses could be activated only when needed, saving some of the mana for the other defenses. The tome was quoting a famous duel between Damkinan runes master. One of the contestants had built so many runes contraptions that there wasn’t enough mana left for them to activate. By wanting to have the perfect defenses, he had only ended up being defenseless.

After committing the rune's shape to memory, Edward graved the Block runes with his dagger on the inside of the gates. He didn’t want them to get disabled because of a Bloodmaw overpowering the barrier for a moment and destroying the corresponding rune, so he obviously wouldn't set them on the exterior of the walls. The block rune wasn’t overly complicated to draw, it was a diamond shape with a circle inside and a dot inside the circle. However, since the wooden pillars weren’t exactly smooth, Edward send his aura to the dagger he was holding to make it sharper. He was now able to easily cut through the wood. He graved the design carefully, repeating it every meter of the gates until both gates were protected with it.