Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 21
“That’s why! This place must be one of the Low Tomb’s laboratories.”
“It’s a shame I can’t see her. I’d love to meet one of the products of my labors.” The ghost sighed and wiped the lenses of his glasses. Since he was long dead and there was nothing to dirty them, it was simply a nervous habit. “But a Concept is…
“All matter is made of Essence,” he explained. “But Essence needs something to give it shape. That something is called a Concept. When raw Essence mingles with the Concept of fire, fire is born. The same with wood, water, earth…
“So obviously, learning a Concept makes it far easier for you to wield the corresponding techniques and Shards. That alone would be enough. But the true importance of Concepts is to purify Essence and the soul. Every time you learn a Concept, you gain a small trickle of Essence that can be used to advance your Spiritual Clarity.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Nic was shaving away the centipede’s pincers to leave behind a curving axe-head. Knocking the teeth from the crocodile’s jaws, he drilled a slot with patient precision, fitting the blade of centipede mandible into the bone haft and tying it on. “So, this place can teach me to cultivate better is what I’m hearing here.”
Repeating the process, what he was left with were a pair of throwing axes. The blades were bright red and brutally serrated, the hafts curving spars of dark-yellow bone.
He was getting much faster at this. Guided by his Totemic Hunter Petroglyphs, his hands nearly moved of their own accord, and he was nearly automatic in crafting mundane weapons.
Nic was just pulling out his pen to inscribe the runes when the spirit spoke again. “Ah, wait. If you want, we have proper runescribing tools within.”
Nic’s eyes lit up. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I bet this lab has lots of good stuff.” He’d wanted to own proper inscription gear for years. Pens, inks, every part of the process was made easier with expensive tools.
Tools he’d never been rich enough to own.
“Oh, yes, if it’s plunder you want, well, just listen. I worked on implanting Concepts artificially. To push past the years of painful cultivation and simply grant people enlightenment.” He sighed deeply. “The result was madness and the anger of the System. Logos deemed my entire experiment a heresy.”
“Wait, you were deemed a heretic? But you helped make the Sophonts.”
“My punishment was years spent in captivity as a spirit within a prison for heretical souls. However, when Pathos rose, I was able to plead my case, and she took an interest in my work. Together with many others, I was allowed to earn my freedom and a chance to pass down my discoveries by working on the Sophonts.”
Nic blinked. The spirit had just implied his life had predated Pathos. How long had he spent languishing in a prison?
It had been several thousand years since Pathos rose. Stronger than any cultivator before or since, she had challenged the heavens and won the right to become the second god of the System, the Saintess of the Low Tomb. Even Logos had bowed, accepting that her power stood outside his calculations.
If this place was really older than her…
It must be a true treasure trove.
“Lead on,” he said, smiling up at the ghost.
The closer Nic got to the top of the stairs, the more scraping sounds and low, disturbed howls began to drift down from the upper levels. As he rose from the final landing, he crushed himself back against a wall to watch as a thing shambled past.
It was almost human. Its skin was rotten and pale, but it still had four limbs and a head. Crystal spikes expanded from its skull, gleaming in the dim light of the laboratories, with a single glowing point deep behind the left eye. The beast walked clumsily, dragging one broken leg behind it as it limped through the hallway above the stairs.
Instantly reaching for Archive Recall, Nic stumbled back as a jagged wave of sound filled his mind.
AjeWqad. Eqhdsfa // Dhfabuif. AHJdfebhafdjasfbbdasflahsdfbdsfewlbfqewpfiudsbpvdfv.
A second sound filled his ears, and it took Nic a moment to realize what it was.
Sofia was screaming.
Clutching his head until the creature retreated and the horrid mental static cut out, Nic gasped. “Sofia! Are you alright? I think—I think that was some kind of broken Sophont?”
“No, no, no, no… that wasn’t right. I feel… I feel broken. That thing… That poor creature.” For once, Sofia sounded less than perfectly calm and composed. Her voice was weak, and she seemed to be worse off from that flare of psychic pain than Nic was.
“Ah yes.” The ghost of Lavhin floated up through the floor. “My more unfortunate creations. The original series of Sophonts were less restricted, but that freedom led them to try and seize control of their hosts entirely. The result was the destruction of both minds. You’ll find a few of them on this lower floor, and I’d suggest you avoid them.”
“Can they hurt you, ghost-man?” Nic asked.
“Oh no. In fact, I’m not even a ghost. I’m a projection.”
“Good. Then if one of them spots me, you can make a distraction and try to lead them away.” Before he took off, Nic paused for one moment. “Sofia? Are you alright?”
“I… I will recover.”
The upper floors were beautiful. Stained-glass windows let in multicolored sprays of light that painted the floors and the rotting carpets. Along the sides of the corridors were glass bell jars the size of grown men that held miniature trees full of captive butterflies, giant flowers that glowed with inner light, and ancient predatory plants that snapped their jaws when they sensed his presence.
Dead men slumped against the walls. Their bodies were overgrown with crystals.
It was easy to avoid the Experiments at first because they talked to themselves constantly. It was like listening to an argument where you couldn’t quite hear what was being said. Two voices would argue in nonsense words, almost singing at each other as the unfortunate creatures lurched through the halls.
Whenever he heard one getting near, Nic would slither into a side room.
These side chambers were full of equipment and heavy iron cages lined with spikes on the inside. Despite the bloody, unpleasant air of the cages, Nic found himself admiring the faded glory of this place; even the lamps on the walls were chunks of luminous rock contained within flower-shaped glass domes. There were small runes inscribed in the scalpels and other tools that had kept them sharp for thousands of years.
Naturally, he began to stuff things into his bag. The real prizes here weren’t just whatever big treasures he found but the fact that an unplundered tomb was littered with small valuables.
His bag could carry five hundred pounds. And assuming he could fill all that capacity, five hundred pounds of rune-inscribed tools would be more than enough to buy him the Gift of Tongues manual.
He slid back out into the hallway, double-checking for lurking Experiments. Nothing but gloom, shadows, and the colorful shards of a broken stained-glass window.
According to Lavhin’s description, the laboratories were shaped like a butterfly with two ring-shaped corridors to either side of a central hall. Each of the outer rings bore an assortment of smaller rooms on the outer edges and a single large inner room, while the central hall was the only way between them or up onto the higher floors. Nic was in the east wing, while the inscription chamber was the inner room of the west wing.
But it was only as he crossed the open doorway that Nic realized why Lavhin had avoided the topic of what this wing’s inner room was.
Blood-soaked, filthy cages hung from the ceiling in great numbers. The room was chokingly claustrophobic, overpacked with unsanitary cells. Within, Experiments twitched and struggled to stand, clawing at their own crystal-covered faces.
Nic stared in horror. Time had dried the blood to dull brown stains, but the smell of iron and salt remained.
This was the work of Pathos? The saint who’d brought empathy and human kindness to the System, to balance Logos’s cold and controlling schemes?
“I had no idea,” Sofia said, shakily. “This is… not what I’d expected.”
Lavhin had conveniently decided to disappear just when they discovered the darker side of his work.
Nic was about to turn away when he spotted it. At the end of the hall, a corpse was curled up, body sheltering a small glowing flame. A breach in the walls allowed a shaft of sunlight to fall directly on the treasure, illuminating it like a spotlight.
It was a lantern.
Instantly bringing up Archive Recall, Nic confirmed there was no pearlescent barrier to get in his way. The prize was there for the taking.
Lantern of the Mourner. F-Class (Peak) // Treasured Artifact. Forged from Blacksun Iron and wisps of consciousness from ancient tombs, this lantern can steal strength from wounded enemies and draw Essence from the dead. Essence contained within can only be spent on Mental Acuity (0/1,000).
“Sofia? This one feels pretty obvious.” It couldn’t scream ‘trap’ any louder if it tried. “What’s your advice?”
“Obviously, there’s danger, but the System’s goal isn’t to kill needlessly, only to sort the weak from the strong. These challenges always have a solution, a way out. They’re riddles written in violence, not death-traps.”
“Doesn’t sound like a ‘no’ to me.” Lifting his new bow into his hands, Nicolas stepped into the room of blood and cages. The smell became almost overwhelming, an ancient, rusted fragrance of misery and death.
He grimaced. Anything for treasure.
Chapter 29
Trials and Tribulations
The breach in the walls tore across a mural of Pathos standing over the Low Tomb, directly in her upraised hand. The sunbeam slanting down from the break made it look as if she held the sun in her hand, illuminating the prize of the lantern on the floor below.
The twin voices of the Experiments babbled insanity.
As he walked, Nic drew back his bow and shot arrows between the bars of the cages. The Experiments screamed and lunged for him, but their arms couldn’t reach, and they died where they stood, limbs pushed through the bars and heads slumped against their prisons.
It was bloody, and it was effective.
The moment Nic took the treasure, he knew the doors of the cages would swing open and unleash the monsters within.
With so many enemies in such a tight space, it would be near impossible to hold his ground. The fact that he couldn’t use Archive Recall to gain a read on their capabilities made the claustrophobic room seem all the more terrifying.
But as his arrows claimed life after life, Nic began to drip with slimy sweat. This was easy. Too easy.
Anyone could see this solution. So why was it working? Could it really be so simple?
His eyes scanned the heights of the ceiling and the shadows between the cages in a paranoid frenzy.
Nic shot down the final caged Experiment and stepped toward the brittle corpse holding the lantern. His punching-dagger shot out and crushed its skull, sending the headless corpse toppling over and the lantern rolling across the floor.
Slowly, carefully, he reached out and snagged the ring at the top of the lantern with his hand.
The door crashed shut behind him. Nic didn’t flinch at the sound. It was too expected. His tongue flickered out, tasting a new presence in the air.
One by one the cage doors swung open with rusty creaks.
He was still waiting for the trick.
Waiting…
The light coming through the breach in the walls flickered. Nic dropped the lantern and dove aside into a roll just in time to escape as an eight-legged monstrosity dropped through the gap. As it landed, it swung a massive halberd into the stones where he’d been split seconds ago. It was huge with a humanoid upper body and an arachnid lower body—but the human side was completely encased in Sophont crystals. They bristled out like blades of dark blue glass.
Cell keys hung on its waist. A jailer.
Room Challenge:
Defeat the Indurate Jailer.
Nic grinned in relief. At least it was all in the open now. Defeat the enemy or die trying was the usual order of the day.
But that grin faltered as the Jailer reached out a hand, and the corpses of the Experiments twitched violently. To his horror, the ones he’d killed already stumbled to their feet. Leashes of blue energy connected them to the Jailer’s hand.
“Oh, that’s not fair,” Nic groaned and threw himself at the enemy.
With the dead coming back to life, he had to end this quickly. Before they could surround him.
His adhesive-covered feet darted up over the cages, and he leaped through the air before the halberd could be lifted back up, slashing across the beast’s crystalline face. It raised an arm to defend itself and shield its eyes. The crystal armor cracked and bent, and as he dropped, Nic opened his mouth to spray poison into the wounds.
Instead, a massive jolt of pain shot through his body as his cultivation core revolted. The spiraling energy spluttered and exploded in his chest, and Nic hit the ground not on his legs, ready to dodge, but on his knees, a sitting duck.
The Jailer swung with the back haft of the halberd and knocked him across the floor. The weapon’s bladed axe-head lifted into the air and chopped down.
Nic activated the Wintertusk Bracer. His shield lifted and caught the blow, the impact spiraling through his suddenly weak arms. He roared and swung back with his tiger-claw, ripping through the halberd’s haft in a spray of splinters.
Turning, he swung behind him blindly with the shield’s edge. He caught an Experiment lunging toward him and flung it back into the sides of the cages with a deafening rattle.
More were coming. They stumbled over each other, filling the narrow space
Nic turned and flung himself at the Jailer in a fury. His best hope was to finish the fight in the few moments he had left.
And he tried his goddamn hardest.
His boar-tusk shield punched and then ripped upward, tearing the curving points of the tusks across the Jailer’s midsection. His punching dagger struck forward, again and again, with rapid-fire blows, each tearing away shards of crystal.
But the damn creature didn’t die, even as Nic’s fury drove it to cover its face with its arms and curl up defensively.
An Experiment hurled itself onto his back, clawing at his eyes with crystal-covered fingers. Nic swung around and tried to dislodge it from his shoulders, but another grabbed hold of his arm, weighing him down before his momentum could build. More and more piled forward. Claws and grasping hands filled his world.
He let the Wintertusk Bracer’s effect end and shrank out from the enemy’s grasp. As he fell to the floor and flattened himself out, he called to his boar-tusk shield.
With a snort and a wave of frost, the boar echo manifested and charged, lowering its head to meet the horde. Pinned together in the narrow hallway between the cages, they had no chance to escape. The boar slammed into their ranks and sent them tumbling back like dominoes. The Jailer was crushed backward and pinned to the walls.
Nic was breathing rapidly, weakened by letting the Wintertusk Bracer take its toll. The boar echo faded in seconds.
He lifted himself off the ground and prepared to charge. The Experiments had been broken to splinters, but a few of them were still able to stand and lurched toward him. The Jailer lifted its broken halberd like the jagged point was a spear and advanced on its spindly legs.
Nic took off. Building momentum into a run, he flung himself up.
The plan was simple, elegant. He’d kick off the side of the cages using adhesive aura on his foot, bracing him for long enough to leap again. He’d go right for the Jailer over the heads of the Experiments.
Except as he tried to call up his Adhesive Touch, everything went wrong. His cultivation base revolted again, and blood sprayed from his mouth as his foot hit the side of the cages without any force or clinging power. He tumbled through the air as spikes of wild energy rampaged through his veins.
He hit the ground in a blind tumble. He stood like a drunk.
His whole body was pain and aches, and his head felt violently dizzy.
The broken-halberd shot toward him, seeming to come from nowhere as his vision was covered by crawling black static. It pierced into his chest, and he gasped in raw, shocking pain as he was lifted up, impaled onto the broken halberd pole.
He stared into the crystal Jailer’s masked face. His hand reached for the throwing axes on his belt, and he felt the cool hard grip of alligator bone slip into his fingers.
The jailer slammed him down against the earth. The pole twisted in the meat of his shoulder, ripping apart sinew and flesh. A weak scream escaped his throat.
The Experiments lurched forward, filling his line of fire with stumbling bodies.
There was always a solution. A way out.
A weak point. Every time he’d attacked the Jailer, it had guarded the same place…
“Nic. Aim for the—”
“The eye! I know!”
Just for a moment, the Jailer was there lurching above him. Preparing to finish him. He drew back his hand, and a foreign strength flowed into his arm. Cold, clear energy filled him as he threw the axe into a tumbling arc through the air.
It smashed into the Jailer’s face, right at the left eye.
The same eye that was infected by crystalline growths in every other Experiment.
The Jailer stumbled back and let out a final, skull-splitting shriek. It wasn’t a sound at all but a wave of psychic energy that clawed its way into Nic’s mind and made him curl against the floor in agony. One by one the Experiments dropped as the leashes tethering them to the Jailer’s hand dissolved.
And slowly, the psychic wail ended in a whimpering, crying sound that was so miserable even Nic felt pity for the monster. Its death cry spent, the Jailer slumped down and died.
Slowly, hurting like hell, Nic rolled onto his feet. He crawled forward and grasped the centipede-axe, ripping it free and bringing it down in a vengeful chop to make sure the Jailer stayed dead. As its head rolled across the floor, the door grated open.
