Belladonna glared at the hole in the hill in annoyance and discomfort. It had been ten minutes since she had initially found it, and after a few tests, she was not pleased with what she had discovered.

Naturally this hole was incredibly tight, far too tight for her to get through. If she tried, she would have to crawl through with her hands above her head, her armour unequipped (although a fat load of good it had been doing lately) and her gut seriously sucked in. All of that was assuming that it did not get even tighter further down, or that it did not make twists or turns that would be impossible for her to make.

Such a change in structure was honestly incredibly likely, as anything choosing such a hole would find, or dig, a tunnel that would do its best to ward off any predators such as herself, or better yet get them killed in their attempt so they became free food.

Of course, that tightness had an issue to it. The farmer, and the notice from the Tower, had mentioned that the Grimshawls had taken victims, such as the farmer’s wife and children. There was no way that they were getting these victims through this hole, and if they were taking them it was naturally to take back to their lair for god knows what reasons.

So there had to be another way through to their nest. Some kind of alternate entrance that they used for their victims and larger hauls, right? That was Belladonna’s thought process, and what she had hoped for when she laid out her trap.

She had wandered off and collected a prime piece of meat for her bait. It came from a type of deer that was striped like a tiger. This one in particular had been killed by some other Grimshawls, and Belladonna had killed them before they could do anything with it.

She brought back the corpse, which was easily double the size of that tiny hole, and just dumped it outside and waited.

When one of the Grimshawls had come back from its ’hunting’ and stumbled across such a bounty, Belladonna had thought it would take it to the other entrance. Instead, it had other ideas.

The four arms poking out from under its shawl extended. The forearms stayed the same length, but the upper arms grew without end, giving it the look of a demented spider. It dug its grubby little hands into the corpse, and dragged it towards itself, all while the front of its shawl opened to reveal the impenetrable darkness underneath.

It was like a snake, unhinging its jaw, only much more disturbing and impossible. Bit by bit, the Grimshawl fed the corpse into the darkness beneath its shawl, and the corpse just disappeared. The shawl did not bulge, like when it had spawned another one of its kind. It barely shifted, as a mass bigger than the creature itself was shovelled underneath its protection.

Once the corpse was gone, completely submerged in the darkness, the shawl closed and the Grimshawl’s arms retreated back to their usual size. Then the creature simply hopped into the hole, and disappeared down into the depths with a spring in its step, leaving Belladonna right where we started, staring at the hole in annoyance and discomfort.

It really was the only entrance. There was no way around it.

Beans leapt off of Belladonna’s shoulder and bounded over to the side of the hole. He looked down it with an adorable tilt of the head, before looking over his shoulder at Belladonna in confusion, as if he was asking her just to follow him down like it was nothing.

"Yeah, I know you can fit. For one, you don’t have to worry about a collarbone getting in the way. But you can also do your little shadow form thing, and I can’t. I can only go where I see, so unless you are gonna go down there and look for me then... Huh." Belladonna complained to her cat, before her complaint drifted off half way and her brow creased in contemplation.

A smile spread across her lips, as a plan jolted across her mind. "Actually, that’s not a bad idea."

With a snap of Belladonna’s fingers, her grimoire appeared floating in the air before her and immediately flipped itself open to the section containing her own notes, as if it had a mind of its own. Her hands blurred across the pages, flipping forwards, pausing to flip back one, before continuing again.

Her eyes darted across the page, her lips muttering silent words, as she formulated the new spell in her mind.

She pulled out one of the spare pages that she had bought for spellcraft, and sketched out a few designs of the circle. It took her a few attempts, not just to get the wording right but to get it to flow together in the right way.

It was like building an electrical circuit and writing a poem at the same time, and needing to have both make sense for it to actually work. Although in this case her poetry work was lacklustre, and had the articulation of a caveman as it loosely strung together words that somewhat resembled her intent.

But it was enough for an amateur like herself, and it was not just her that thought that.

[Congratulations! You have developed the skill:- Adept Spell-scribe

Esoterica + 30]

[Your understanding of Mystica has developed to a higher level. Your skill Basic Mana Manipulation has increased to Advanced Mana Manipulation.]

The notifications appeared before Belladonna’s eyes, causing her to smirk to herself, as she continued with her work uninterrupted.

Once she got the structure of the spell circle down, she miniaturised it before cutting out the drawing of the circle, and turning the piece of paper into a stencil. It was with that stencil, that she finally put crystal to skin, and started to carve it into her flesh. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Using the farmers prized shiny belt buckle to see what she was doing, Belladonna slowly and steadily carved the runic circle into her temple, following the lines of the stencil with surgical precision.

A pulse of mana flowed through her body as the final line was added, as her body’s mana passively adjusted to accept the new load. After a few seconds of waiting, where nothing went wrong, it finally came for the moment of truth.

Tapping her fingers against her temple, Belladonna activated the circle.