George was happy to see him when Milo appeared in his camp after dying.

He spent some time playing with the little lizard, and ate quite a bit of his stored cheese.

He knew the depression and exhaustion would go away soon, but it felt intolerable to feel like crap and not be taking advantage of the downtime to snack on his favorite food.

He also caught up on his experience gains for the last week.

You have gained 500 experience in Mining and 500 experience in STR.

You have gained 100 experience in Identify and 100 experience in PER.You have gained 100 experience in Poison Resistance and 100 experience in CONYou have gained 50 experience in Fleet of Foot and 50 experience in AGIYou have gained 100 experience in Climbing and 100 experience in AGIYou have gained 200 experience in Bonecasting and 200 experience in INTYou have gained 200 experience in Bone carving and 200 experience in INTYou have gained 200 experience in Rune lore and 200 experience in INTYou have gained 900 Boss experience.

You will gain an equal amount of experience in the skills you apply this experience to.

You have gained 6 Core Skill Points.

He made his decisions quickly.

6 points into the second level of Fiendish Traps.

The 900 experience went into Dodge and AGI.

Before, he had only had Mechanic and left the second open.

His plans for revenge on the snake would need more skills.

He added Trap Making, Tool Making, and Smithing.

On Cichol’s advice, he added Rune Crafting.

How the different crafting skills, regular skills, and lore skills worked could be confusing at times, but with the help of the old Bonecaster, he was figuring it all out.

Rune lore was Lore Skill.

It was all book learning and memorization.

You could become a scholar in Runes without ever having crafted one yourself.

Bone Carving would let him carve bone into tools, weapons, parts for an automaton, and give him the skill to carve a rune onto a bone.

Without Rune Lore, Bone Carving was a practical crafting skill.

Together, and backed up by Bonecasting, they would let him produce the magical runes that enhanced materials, held spells, and thousands of other things.

The Rune Crafting skill expanded his options to more than just bone.

It tied together all the practical and theoretical knowledge.

Of course, he still had to go acquire all that knowledge.

Milo was excited by it all.

Getting back his pack and gear proved to be a bit difficult.

He carefully climbed the cables up to the mining level, and started working his way through the corridors.

His hopes that the huge copperhead had gone back to its lair were dashed as he saw it moving down a corridor far ahead.

The problem was that while he knew where part of its body was, and the direction it was headed, he didn't know where its head was.

He quietly moved around for a couple of hours, avoiding the snake as it moved through the corridors.

At one point, he saw it turn a corner far down the hall and move away from him.

It looked different.

Sharp growths on its head formed a natural crown.

He was able to identify it and cursed.

Queen Salasha the Rat-SlayerLevel 8 Epic Boss Health 2200/2200(Huge size, elemental, constriction, tremor sense, keen sense of smell, hammerhead.)