Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 12
Nic stared in horror at the infected orchard. Every few seconds, there was a wet, squishy, slapping sound as a slime fell from the trees. And every time one fell, dozens more were born. The earth was writhing with the dark splotches of ooze seeking out their next feast. Their tiny bodies burned away the grass and falling leaves with some kind of acid so that they left mowed-down trails on the forest floor.
“How many days until this lot reaches the poison grove?” he asked.
“Two weeks,” Sofia answered grimly. “We’re lucky the forest fire didn’t reach here. These creatures start out vulnerable but will rapidly adapt once presented with something that can harm them. The fire would have given them the chance to grow defenses against heat.”
“So, if I used fire, I have to be sure to wipe them out on the first try.”
“Precisely.”
The ugly creatures seemed entirely oblivious to his presence, so Nic advanced into the orchard. With a stick, he prodded one of the crawling slimelets until it grabbed onto the end.
Experimentally he sprayed it with poison. To his surprise, the slime curled and shrank, dying rapidly as the branch below blackened and fell apart.
“How does the resistance spread?”
“Small amounts of these creatures will periodically break off and return to a central node. The node collects their ‘thoughts’ and returns ‘packets’ of information contained within messengers. If you look closely, they’re no bigger than a caterpillar, but they contain tightly-packed information. It’s quite amusing. On one hand, these life forms are pathetically stupid. On the other, they function as a single enormous brain.”
Looking closely, Nic saw that as the slime died, a single thread of its core broke away and inched along the ground like a worm. He leaned down and sprayed poison again, leaving no survivors to tell the story.
As he straightened up, Nic smelled something. It was just a hint of fragrance on the wind, but it smelled of jasmine balm and mint. Of orange blossom and almond oil. Cinnamon and clove. Sweet, heavy fragrances, mouth-watering and delicious. Every second, the scents changed.
And it was calling him.
“Sofia? This feels… off…”
“Correct. This is an enchantment, trying to lure you deeper.”
Continuing deeper into the grove, Nic was surprised to see a wolf with a long, scaly tail, ending in a serpent’s head, dart past. The predator completely ignored him. Instead, it seemed occupied by something deeper within, and as it ran, dozens of slimes fell from the branches above; they were trying to hunt by ambush, dropping from the branches when they sensed movement in hopes of landing atop a living body and capturing some poor creature in their grasp.
Nic groaned as the sound of slimes breaking filled his path with crawling, tiny bodies, each deadly to the touch. The wind blew through the slimy branches, and the mysterious fragrance wandered past again. He picked his way forward slowly—
And then faster—
Faster—
He kicked a slime in his haste, and the pain brought him back to his senses. The spell had almost managed to catch him, even knowing it was there and trying to lure him deeper.
Ahead, animals were gathering. Dozens of beasts were snarling, fighting, starting to show their teeth and bare their claws as they tried to push forward through the mob and reach the source of that enchanting scent.
A tree with pink leaves grew in the center of the grove in front of a deep chasm.
Immediately, Nic’s mind was split. His heart yearned for the smell of the blossoms that were so powerfully sweet as to be otherworldly. His mind was recoiling at the danger, especially from that chasm.
A single look gave him a sense of ancient threat from within. It was a crawling, terrible sensation like some primal part of his mind had encountered the enemy in that pit before…and feared it.
The tree was actually growing before his eyes. As he watched, the smell intensified until Nic’s legs began to march him forward without his mind being able to stop him. He instantly raised his hand and bit into the pad of flesh beneath his thumb. The pain stopped him cold as the other animals shot forward, fighting amongst themselves.
In moments, the tree had grown from a sapling to a towering elder. A single fruit grew from a green bud to ripe, peach-pink lusciousness in seconds.
All around its roots were thousands of gnawed bones.
“Archive Recall…” he mumbled through a full mouth.
Demonsmoke Peach Tree. G-Class (Peak) // Flora. This tree will produce a single fruit in its lifetime, and that fruit will bear a single tree from its pit. This life cycle can repeat a dozen times in a day, fueled by the bloody combats inspired by the fruit’s fragrances. Beasts will war to the death over a single bite. Beware, for the flesh carries a poison of unstoppable hunger, and only the pit is safe to eat.
The fragrance was unbearable. Nic bit down until his own blood entered his mouth, but he could only barely keep his body from following that unearthly scent.
The animals were frozen.
With a sound so small it should have been impossible to hear, the fruit fell. Before it could touch the ground, the mob erupted into violence. Beasts snarled, fought, and clawed forward desperately to try and gnaw away a precious bite of the flesh. Its juice and pulp flew in all directions as any animal that devoured even a fragment was torn apart.
It was a bloodbath.
As he watched, the numbers thinned. A single victor, a blood-soaked creature like a cross between a porcupine and a vulture, chewed the gristle away from the pit…
And when that was gone, it began to eat itself. Savage and cloudy-eyed, the dark bird ripped its own flesh to shreds until it fell dead.
Nic darted forward to retrieve the pit-stone from the peach’s center, but it had already touched the ground. As soon as it did, it began to sprout, green shoots rushing upward. The blood and meat of the dead bodies surrounding the tree rose in a red mist and shot into its branches. It shivered and rose taller and taller, growing so fast Nic could hear the creak of the wood.
There was a snarl behind him. An enormous, skull-headed crocodile was eyeing him with hunger in its beady gaze.
Creatures were already being drawn by the scent. Nic shot up a tree, hiding in the branches between the glistening bodies of the slimes. They burbled and happily drank the tree’s life Essences.
Why were they immune? Were they simply too stupid?
As he watched the cycle repeat, the tree as tall as blooming flowers growing taller unleashed the dizzying smell, then more animals gathering to fight for the fruit.
Taking from his pack the length of rope he’d “borrowed” from the human’s camp, Nic knotted one end around a thick limb of the tree. As the beasts gathered below, Nic leapt from branch to branch, circling around the enchanted tree and the pit it stood over. He found the highest perch he could and tied the other end of the rope there…leaving it stretched from one end of the clearing to the next in a path crossing directly over the cursed tree.
He waited. Minutes and then hours passed as the growing peach tree swelled from a sapling toward the sky. Its fragrance grew almost unbearable, and more animals began to flood into the glade, another feast gathering. They fought to push forward as the budding fruit finally appeared, growing like a green jewel on the high branches.
As the silent moment before the fall arrived, Nic slipped his spear over the makeshift zipline with one hand on either side of the rope and kicked off. The wind roared as the steep angle instantly translated to a dizzying speed. For a moment, he sailed over the chasm…and stared down into a writhing pit of ooze. A black, dense boil of reaching limbs and shapeless mouths stared back up with eyes of black jelly. It surrounded the broken blade of an enormous sword, left rusted by the ages.
You have discovered Dominus Node ae31c2
“The Blade of the Nephilim”
200 Essence awarded.
This is a Technique Type node. It allows the holder to grasp ancient secrets.
Current Ruler – The Primordial Aberration (E-Class)
And then he sailed past, feet nearly brushing the top of the peach tree. His tongue shot out and snatched the growing fruit from the branches, stealing it away from the horde of creatures below fighting to taste it.
Just that touch flooded his mouth with sweetness, and Nic nearly lost his self-control. After dropping from the zipline, he ran as the beast-horde howled in rage behind him.
Instantly, the fastest of the beasts broke from the pack and began to outpace him. His body was quick and clever, but his legs were short and stubby. Grasping the peach in both hands, Nic tore away a fragment of the flesh and threw it behind him.
The pursuers stopped, unable to turn away from the glimmering shred of fruit that was falling to the forest floor. They turned on each other in an instant, fighting over the scraps while Nic made away with the prize. Each time one came close, he’d simply shred away more of the fruit and throw it behind him.
He fled until free from pursuers, and all that remained in his hands was the dark, grooved surface of the pit. The whorls and grain of the wood formed a terrible and demonic face.
Demonsmoke Pit. G-Class // Flora. This dark, blood-stained pit bears a terrible curse and a powerful boon. One who devours it can consume any amount of flesh and efficiently convert it into Essence but will be overcome by an inescapable hunger, growing more powerful with every bite they take. One who resists the curse will vomit up the pit, while one who succumbs will be consumed from within and used to grow a new tree. Used in a variety of medicines.
Chapter 15
Riptide
0 Days 17 Hours
By the time he arrived at the poison grove, the sun was well above the hills, and Nic was well and truly late. He’d paused—
Well, he’d intended for it to be nothing but a short excursion. He wanted a fragment of shell from one of the giant turtles. Following his rough memory of where he’d encountered a dead one, he managed to find his way back, but the actual harvesting proved difficult.
Hacking, sawing, drilling, biting—all proved ineffective. It was only when he reinforced a tiger’s tooth from his pack with Hunter-Gatherer Petroglyphs that he could slowly scrape through and break away an oblong segment as long as his arm.
By the time he was done, there was no choice but to run full-speed toward the grove.
The monkeys screeched as they saw him coming. In moments, the trees were full of hooting and howling. “Yeah, yeah, I know!”
A guide scrambled down from the trees at the edge of the grove’s toxic influence, waving for him to follow. They left the river and took a course around the grove, finding the stream again on the far side where it rose into a series of short, rocky waterfalls, full of splashing water and heavy, croaking toads.
Numerous cavern entrances split the rock, leading down from the small pools that grew at the top of each waterfall.
Dozens of insect-faced apes were arranged in a warband with the weapons he’d made for them. It was a true war camp. There was drinking from pouches of crudely fermented rotting fruits and gambling as they made a pair of carrion lickers fight at the center of their circle.
All the favorite hobbies of an army.
At the back was the Thief, watching over it all with his wrinkled, dark eyes.
They stared each other down. Nic waved. The monkey bent back his lip and smiled. The inevitable betrayal hung in the air between them.
“Does walking into this count as suicidally reckless?” Nic asked the air. For some reason, he’d decided that Sofia lived on his right shoulder and looked that way when he spoke to her.
“I feel as if you should know the answer by now, but I’m willing to let this one pass. You’ve done enough to prepare for the risk that I won’t hold you back. Every cultivator has to wager their life sometime.”
“Alright.” Turning back to the Thief, he pointed toward the cavern entrance. The gibbon nodded and screeched to its men, and altogether, mustering up into a crude force, they poured down the cavern entrance.
There was no chance for stealth or deceit with these numbers. Nic was caught in the tide of bodies and pushed along, but he managed to sneak a backward glance at the tunnel. About eight of the monkeys had broken off to slide their way into the trees overhead.
So, they would ambush him there, he was guessing. Once the battle was done and he wasn’t useful anymore.
The caverns were damp and dark, the walls grooved with twisting patterns like they’d been formed by the tracks of a million snails. With every step they took, the monkeys grew less organized. They arrived at the creature’s den in an unruly mob that spread out, striking their blades against the earth and screaming with bloodlust.
“Are they…”
“Intoxicated? Yes. They’ve likely been using small doses of the poison spores as a battle drug.”
At the far edges of the cavern, there was a small lake of still, dark water. It shifted from below, and the beast emerged.
A white horse with emerald snakes for a mane whinnied and stamped its hooves as it came up from the waters, a constellation of Shards visible along its sides. The serpents in its hair hissed and spat out thin jets of venom as the beast stalked forward.
Venom-Mane Kelpie. F-Class (Peak) // Sentient. First born from the blood of a drowned god, kelpies are a mysterious breed given to mystical powers and transformations. This degenerate offspring interbred with hydras and snakes, giving them crude offensive power in exchange for losing much of their spiritual ancestry.
One of the monkeys reared back and flung a stone.
The horse exploded into motion. It shot forward like a wave, and dozens of ghostly echoes formed from foaming water appeared on either side of the charging beast. The crowd scattered in all directions, and Nic ran for cover, barely escaping as the ghost-horses smashed into the wall in a pulverizing wave of dark waters.
Not all the monkeys were so lucky. Several broken bodies lay in the receding waters.
With a furious howl, one of the warband leaped forward, axe lifted, ready to strike.
The horse snorted and turned. One of its serpentine heads unhinged its jaw and spat a pressurized jet of water. The razor-sharp spray cut through the monkey’s arm and neck, sending a decapitated body tumbling to the ground.
Nic had to move. There was no choice now—not unless he wanted to lose all his allies in the first moments of the fight. Letting their numbers thin would be an advantage to him in the long run only if they won the battle and got to see the long run.
Thrusting the spear forward, he conjured a spike of stone. The horse twisted aside and reared up to evade, but Nic unslung a spore-lob from his pack and flung it across the ground. The bamboo canister rebounded off the floor and bounced upward to burst in a spray of yellow spores and wooden shrapnel.
The beast slammed its hoof down, and a waterspout burst up, washing away the worst of the poison pollens.
Nic grimaced and struck again, flicking his spear through the air to conjure two more spikes as he advanced. The monkeys were spreading out, stones bouncing off the creature’s flanks and head as they hurled whatever they could grab.
Nic was left to face down the beast head-on.
As his stone spears rose from the earth, the kelpie’s mane of snakes counterattacked, smashing them apart with jets of water. As he prepared to strike again, they twisted and sent two long sprays cutting across the earth toward Nic.
Leading with his spear, he rushed headlong into their path, modifying the trick he’d used to kill the Wintertusk. As his spear stabbed at the air, a spike formed from the wall in front of Nic, serving as a step for him to kick off from and vault over the waterspouts. With his feet clad in adhesive aura, he ran higher along the wall and then leapt, vaulting to swipe his spear down in a brutal arc.
It cleaved a pair of serpents from the beast’s head and ripped down across the neck in a splatter of ruby blood.
The kelpie reared up. Foaming water blades shot from its mouths and stabbed down at Nic as he darted and ducked them. His spear flicked out again to stab into the beast’s side and draw blood. It slammed its hooves down, and a wave of water swept him off his feet.
He collided with the wall in a brutal, dizzying impact and rolled feebly, trying to keep in motion. As he came back to his feet, he saw the monkey horde had finally stepped in.
Five of their warriors were hacking and striking at the beast from all angles. They used their numbers to disorient, two darting forward while the others retreated. The moment the beast turned its attention, they swapped positions. The attacker it tried to focus on darted back while one of the three hanging back shot forward to make a shallow cut across the horse’s legs.
The only problem was... they were slower than the kelpie’s writhing serpent hair. One by one, they were being cut down. From five to four. Four to three. Blades of water turned red as they slashed into flesh.
Nic’s spear was almost exhausted of its powers. There was maybe one good earthen strike left in the runes, and he had to save it for evasion rather than spend it trying to chip away at the beast. Its hide was already stained red as small cuts and gashes joined the spear-strike he’d managed to sink into its ribs, and unlike the boar, stamina wasn’t its overpowering strength.
Those wounds would bring it down if Nic could just stay in the fight.
He spat onto his spear, combining adhesive aura and Poison Mist into a glob of black venom. Advancing, he slashed through the air and drove the kelpie back.
It eyed his spear with clear fear in its gaze. For the first time, Nic hesitated.
So far, he’d only killed in defense. Something else started a fight with him, and Nic was the one who finished it. Simple. Clean. Close to moral.
