Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 11
Jessie didn’t seem inclined to stop. Not even with a broken hand. The grin on her face was vicious.
“JESSIE! HELP!” The roar of Matteos made her snap her head around quickly. The giant was pinned against a tree, his body stone from the waist down. His hands clung on to the boar’s tusks, trying to keep it from goring him, but holding back an angry boar was damn hard work. Already his chest was torn open with long, deep gouges that bled until his entire lower body was turned a gory red color.
With an echoing snort, the beast opened its mouth and spat a terrible spray of frost. For a moment, Nic thought the man was dead then and there—but as the steam cleared, he saw Matteos had let go of its horns and turned himself fully to stone before the mist could kill him. Ice gleamed on the surface of his rocky skin.
Jessie ran forward, her good arm raised. A windbolt half-formed in her hand and shot forward, punching across the side of the boar’s face.
Moira fired another guided bolt that hit the boar between the front and back legs in the meat of its belly. The beast was losing blood from a dozen places now, but it was still fighting hard. Jessie slipped around it and threw a weak left jab toward its blinded side. The blow couldn’t do a damn thing except keep it distracted.
This time it didn’t take the bait.
Turning away from Jessie, the boar lowered its head, pawed the earth, and aimed its tusks at Moira—and Shane.
Nic was getting ready to slip away into the forest. He had gotten enough suspicion and bruises for trying to make friends with these people. But he saw the kid clinging to Moira’s legs, snot on his ugly face. The face of total terror.
It was a scene he’d known too many times at the orphanage.
It was hard to watch a kid die and know you could’ve done something about it.
It got harder knowing exactly what that would look like.
Nic scowled and shot forward, striking his spear through the air two times in quick succession. Each time, a stony spike erupted from below and jabbed into the boar’s sides. It wheeled about, bellowing in pain and unable to keep its balance to start the charge.
It saw him. Their eyes locked.
They charged each other across the field.
And at the last moment, Nic slammed his spear forward. The beast spat out a cloud of deadly frost in response, ready for the spike to appear directly in its path, braced to take the blow head-on and crash through to kill Nic.
Nic wasn’t there. Neither was the spike. Instead, Nic conjured the spear underneath his own feet and used the rising earth to throw himself up high. As the boar smashed through the smokescreen its own attack had created, Nic dropped onto its back. Sticky aura spread across his hands and glued him to the beast as it bucked and fought, trying to throw him off.
It was over.
Breath after breath of Poison Mist poured across its skull. The beast’s flesh boiled, and its lungs were dissolving with each breath it took. With a pained, exhausted grunt, the boar simply fell over.
“Jesus,” Moira said in a hollow tone of voice. “Sweet Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.”
Nic walked over wearily and took Shane by the arm. Moira seemed to grasp what he was doing and gently pushed the child forward, saying, “It’ll be okay.”
The boar’s belly was still rising and falling as it struggled to breathe. Pink foam was built up around its skeletal muzzle. He pulled the child toward its neck and made Shane lift the knife.
“Shane…” Moira said carefully. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes, he does,” Jessie spat. “He has to. Everyone has to. That’s the way it works now.”
Shane didn’t appear to hear either of them. He looked at Nic.
Nic nodded.
The knife fell.
Chapter 13
Just Desserts
0 Days 8 Hours
A golden sphere drifted up as the boar died.
Immediately, Jessie and Moira’s eyes went wide. Even Matteos, still shaking off the effects of turning to stone, blinked and went wide-mouthed like a fish.
“Kid has all the luck,” Jessie grumbled.
Reaching up, Shane touched the bubble, and it popped into a drift of hazy-colored smoke like a tiny nebula. Floating within were a pair of bone bracers lined with boar-fur.
Moira stepped forward and snatched them out of the air. “These”—she was so happy she was almost crying— “will keep you safe.” She bent down and slipped them over Shane’s wrist, where they immediately resized to fit him.
Nic snorted. He could’ve used magical bracers. Those things were etched with the most complex runework he’d ever seen.
But he had plenty to work with.
First, he pried the surviving Shard from the boar’s socket. The glittering crystal broke away at the edges, crumbling like flakes of salt as his knife dug in. By the time it sat in his palm, the Shard was reduced to nearly half its original size—but what remained glowed like a dark star.
Wasteland Shard. F-Rank (Peak) // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of undeath and strength. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard, but due to peak quality, the resulting skill will be easy to advance. Well suited to forming a Rot Core, a Titanic Core, or an Undying Core.
It was an eerie thing and unsettled Nic slightly, so he tucked it into his pack and got to work on the rest of the body. Driving his kitchen knife into the gap between tusk and skull, he dug and fought to wriggle loose the immense spar of pale bone. Unfortunately, the knife was already chipped and bent from this kind of thing. With a final groan, it snapped in his hands.
“Hells, look at it go,” Jessie commented. She seemed almost disturbed by the speed at which he’d set to stripping the corpse.
“It looks like it knows what it’s doing. Do you think there’s a tribe of those things out there, hunting monsters? The System said there were other worlds. Maybe it’s from one of those,” Moira added. Nic had to give it to her. She might be the smart one of the group.
“Here.” Matteos stood over him, lifting the axe from his belt. Through the whole of combat, he’d never reached once for the weapon. Planting his foot on the tusk, he chopped it away with a single brutal strike. Another blow cut the opposite side free. “There, that’s the least I can do.”
“Actually…” Matteos looked at the corpse thoughtfully. “Maybe I could cook this up for you? I’m pretty good at that sort of thing.”
Nic nodded enthusiastically.
“Can I have some? Mister Nak?” Shane burst out.
He shook his head.
“No, kiddo. It’s been poisoned. I don’t think anybody but our friend should eat it now, even if I took the leg farthest from the head…” Shane’s face dropped as Matteos spoke.
“What? C’mon. We’ve been on those pills for days. You say everything ‘might be poison’ you bore,” Jessie complained.
“Well, this definitely is.” Matteos gave her a level look until she crossed her arms and surrendered.
The System really treated these natives well. Nic’s eyes had gone wide when he’d seen Matteos conjure a cooking pot from thin air and realized every single one of them had access to a subdimensional space. Even the cooking pot itself was no joke: the cauldron heated itself to a boil with power from the runes carved on the sides.
Working together, Nic and Matteos carved away a haunch of boar and stuffed it inside. Nic dug into his bag for the leaf satchels of spices and sprinkled in a few handfuls of good-smelling powder. Matteos sawed some of the fatty meat from the belly and mixed it with berries in Nic’s frying pan to boil up a rich sauce.
Of course, the meat was poisoned. So, everyone else had to enjoy a different meal.
The rest of them grimaced and took pale white pills from bamboo vials, swallowing the fingernail-sized medicines down with water. Judging by context, Nic could guess they were some kind of medicine that replaced food and sated hunger.
They seemed to think those pills were a form of torture. Moira made exaggerated faces of disgust at Shane until he burst out laughing. All Nic could think about was how many sleepless nights he’d spent tossing and turning from the empty pain in his belly.
“Why does the System give them so much?”
Sofia paused for a long moment before she spoke. It was the longest he’d heard her hesitate. “Because the solution Logos seeks doesn’t lie within the System. Billions upon billions live within the controlled worlds, and none of them can produce the results one random outsider might. Consistently, anomalies turn up during Integration. People who defy logic. To them, this is a new world. They haven’t grown up knowing the precise limits of cultivation or being told their place in the world. They are free in all the ways Logos and the people it governs are not.”
Nic groaned and lay down, using his pack as a pillow. The smell of the cooking boar was making everyone’s mouth water, and he was no exception.
As he rested, Moira approached. “Uh…”
He blinked his beady, dark eyes at her.
“Sorry. For shooting you. I thought you’d gone after Shane, and well… I’d shoot anyone who did that. But you were saving him. So. Sorry.” Anyone, not anything, Nic noted. “I brought you a bandage.” It was a length of the cleanest white cloth Nic had ever seen, the inside lined with green herbal poultice.
It had the look of something they’d bought from the “System merchants.” It was too clean, too perfect.
She lay it over his back and cinched it shut over the place her arrow had carved across him. An inch better aim and it would have ripped into the meat and muscle of his shoulder.
Thankfully… Moira was pretty shitty with her crossbow.
Actually, they were all confused. Matteos was taking point as a tank when his real talent was the Shard he’d only used once: the one time he’d landed a hit against the boar, his blow had petrified part of its skull. That kind of offensive ability was incredible against any number of opponents.
Meanwhile, Jessie tried to play the mage before giving up and going with her natural inclination to brawl. The truth was she should have been using both. Her wind-spears weren’t meant for range. They were traps. She could create them to fill space and box enemies in, then harass them with her swift but weak strikes, taking slack for Matteos to position and deliver killing blows.
Moira, at least, understood her job, but she was just too inexperienced to combine her skills and send all three arrows arcing to the same target.
And he couldn’t speak their language to explain any of this. Nic croaked in annoyance.
“I know it hurts,” Moira said placatingly. The tone a mother might use for a child with a splinter. “But there, all done.”
“All done!” Matteos declared from across the little camp, echoing her. The smell of the opened cooking pot was heaven. Savory, almost sweet, full of grease and spices.
When Nic dug in, he almost transmigrated again on a sheer wave of flavor. It was too good. Bite after bite was ripped away from the bone and shoved into his toothless mouth, swallowing fistfuls of meat whole and kicking his stubby feet in approval.
“Ha, glad you like it…” Matteos couldn’t keep the envy from shining in his eyes. None of them could.
One by one, they found things to do to stop from staring hungrily at the sight of the little newt-man eating. Matteos and Jessie went to talk by the edge of the clearing. Moira stripped the crossbow down and began oiling the parts.
Shane snuck closer and closer until he was basically staring over Nic’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he whispered, and Nic felt him slide something into his backpack. “Take this. I know you saved me.”
Nic paused. The meat didn’t taste poisonous. Peeling away a chunk, he slipped it to the kid. Shane’s eyes went wide, and he chewed it down in seconds.
Reluctantly, feeling the weight of Shane’s eyes on him and realizing this had become a meal for two, Nic offered over another piece.
But hell. It was good enough for two.
As they parted ways, Nic waved to Shane and Moira, grinned his broad grin toward the still-angry Jessie, and paused to fist-bump Matteos when the giant leaned down.
“Uh, here. I don’t know where you’re going or why, but this might help. I got it from one of those golden bubbles. I figure you might know how to use it.” From his inventory, he took a plastic sphere. It was clear on one side, forming a see-through dome onto a little diorama of a sunflower orchard tended to by a bee with a pitchfork in its humanized hands.
“Uh…” It looked like the kind of cheap trash that kids played with.
“Nicolas? Take it,” Sofia advised instantly.
“Suuure.” Clasping his hand around the plastic bauble, Nic nodded to Matteos.
And then it was time to go. Waving a final goodbye, he headed into the trees as they followed the burn trail of the wildfire, using the cleared path as a road through the forest.
Setting his pack down, he slipped his hand inside, already guessing what Shane had given him. He drew out a single bracer. It was a beautiful thing. The smooth ring of boar-tusk bone was carved with repeating geometric patterns like a helix-shaped knot, folding in seven runes that each resided in their own doubled circle.
They were runes Nic wasn’t even vaguely familiar with.
Wintertusk Bracer of the Boar’s Resilience. F-Class (Peak) // Treasured Artifact. This bracer bears the proud and stoic might of the beast from which it was born. You can call upon this blessing to briefly grow in size and gain immense resistance to physical damage. You can use this ability once from one dawn to the next. Because this item was originally part of a set, the effect is halved.
He would’ve whistled.
If he could whistle.
Actually, Nic had never figured out whistling even when he had lips.
Slipping it onto his wrist, he turned to Matteos’ gift…
Spatial Bubble: Sunkeeper’s Garden. Astral // Treasured Artifact. Within a Settlement or Residence, this artifact can be used to create a medicinal garden tended by a lonely warrior.
He blinked. Create a medicinal garden? It was hard to believe this tiny plastic capsule would just spring into a fully formed garden but—
“Sofia? How do I get a Residence?”
“It’s a recognition of the System usually bestowed upon Natives and Invaders. Either a Settlement or a Residence can be bestowed by a Spatial Pillar Credit. Your best bet would be to wait for the Invading camps to arrive and attempt to use their Totem, which should grant you access to the Ladder and to the Grand Design.”
Nic had to remember that this wasn’t just a world anymore. This was the Integration. A game was being played between two sides. Totems, Spatial Pillar Credits, Ladders, and Grand Designs… They were all ways the System was nudging its two forces against one another. “Tell me what all of that means.”
“A series of quests. The Ladder seeks personal growth. The Grand Designs offers rewards for taking territory. There is a final option…” Sofia paused dramatically. Nic instantly caught on that this was the option she intended him to take all along. “If you enter a Dungeon and defeat it for the first time, you’re guaranteed to receive a Spatial Pillar Credit.”
“Dungeon later. And you can explain to me how this Invasion works. For now”—Nic glanced up at the sky, noting the sun was sinking below the horizon—“I have to keep earning Shards.”
Chapter 14
Hunger
0 Days 11 Hours
Nic felt good. His stomach was full of rich food, but more importantly, his body thrummed with energy. Even though midnight had turned the sky dark, his new eyes could see, and he wasn’t tired in the least. Instead, his body was awake, alert, his mind cold and focused.
Tales of cultivators had always focused on how they had incredible strength to crush and destroy all rivals. They had never told him how wonderful simply living with that strength would be. How he’d never feel too tired or too sick. How every moment, he would be full of energy to do as he wished. How his mind would grow cool and unburdened by distractions.
Even a few minutes of rest felt like the most satisfying night’s sleep he’d had in his life.
Full of this energy, Nic had decided on a quick detour before returning to the grove.
The Peregrine Rune had revealed a huge swathe of the forest and the lands beyond. It had also allowed him to sense the Dominus Nodes hidden within.
Now he would stake out the first of them, a strange region where the treetop canopy had turned to an oozing blue-green slime, and the earth itself had looked warped by some strange influence. His tongue flicking out, Nic could instantly sense the direction of this malformed grove by its taste on the wind, something like licking a battery, metallic and acidic on his tongue.
He chose a cautious approach. Creeping through the low underbrush, he found a small hill on which to perch and observe.
The forest below was sick. Huge pustules of green ooze clung to the trees, slowly sapping their lifeforce. When these hanging gobs of sticky goo grew too fat, they’d fall from the branches and splatter into dozens of fragments. The first time Nic saw it, he thought the creature had simply died—but instead, he watched in horror as the pieces shivered and came to life. One by one they crawled outward, finding new trees to attach to and leech from.
Like dark and parasitic fruit.
Primordial Ooze. G-Class (Aberration) // Demi-Sentient. These terrible creatures predate all known forms of cultivation and civilization. They crawl, devour, and grow without end—few things can bring them to a halt. Try flame, or if they have adapted, cold.
“Aberration?”
“A creature that cannot cultivate. They are relatively few since most such creatures are simply exterminated or outcompeted by those with access to the System. Those that survive are the ones with overwhelming special advantages. These slimes, for instance. They pose little threat to you, but they could eventually overtake this world by their sheer number and near immortality.”
