Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 3
Mist Armor (0/50,000)
Secondary Slot (0/50,000)
* * *
Adhesive Touch (G)
Creates adhesive threads of pure Aura.
Base Enhancement (0/1,000)
Secondary Slot (0/10,000)
Permanency (0/10,000)
Toxic Binding (0/50,000)
* * *
Hunter-Gatherer Petroglyphs (G)
Creates crude tools from bone, rock, and wood, using Essence to bind them.
Base Enhancement (0/1,000)
Secondary Slot (0/10,000)
Metallurgy (0/100,000)
It was a small blow to lose all the cultivation he’d done in his old body. He’d barely been able to invest a few dozen, with the Essence so thin and his work trying to Scribe taking up so much, but it felt oddly meaningful to see that he had been set back to absolute zero.
But his passive cultivation number was absolutely monstrous. Before, it had easily been two levels of magnitude lower. Maybe 0.02 at best, weighed down by pollution, bad food, and other “toxins” that had accumulated in his system.
Now, he would cultivate at immense speed just from living—faster by devouring enemies and treasures. The local modifier represented the thickness of Essence in the air, and the plus signs below represented the different ways his body could absorb Essence faster. For a human, the only modifier available was linked to life-or-death danger, but it was high.
The newt had three, all of them relatively low.
Currently, toxic environment was active, meaning he’d missed something. The world outside his hiding hole had seemed normal.
But—
Ignoring that for the moment.
Three Shards. Three.
Each of them had the ability to accept a Secondary, a half-formed Shard, once they were fully cultivated. Attaching a Secondary Shard would alter the ability and allow it to grow again, following a new path.
These were things Nic knew. Things he’d been taught by the Beldam and in dry educational simulations. Not things he’d expected to experience. Things that would happen to him.
Mentally selecting Poison Synthesis, he pushed in twenty of his Essence to get a feel for the process. The immediate sensation was akin to ice water running through his veins, then igniting into fire as it reached the base of his throat. It should’ve been unbearably painful.
Instead, it felt amazing. Like the burn in his muscles after a long run.
He wanted more. More of the blue skies and open fields. More power running in his veins. And the only way to get them was to keep moving, to keep exploring.
To conquer the new world.
Every few seconds, Nic’s tongue would slither from his mouth and taste the air. It was as involuntary to his new form as breathing was. Each time, he received a burst of information: the taste of nearby water, the countless monkey creatures in the trees, or sour, older tastes from monsters passing by. Blood and rot and fresh growth.
He paused at the stream’s edge to get a look at himself. His newt-folk body was slippery and smooth with a flat, slimy head. His “face” had almost no features beyond a wide, rubbery smile and two beady eyes. Thick antenna with feathery frills extended from the gills on his throat. Turning around, he could just see his three Shards implanted in a constellation of glowing tattoo lines along his back.
“Well, I’m ugly. But I’m rich? Seems fair. Verrrry fair.”
Experimentally, he opened his mouth and shot out a bubble of aura, converting it easily into a pearl of poisonous mist that slowly dissolved into the air. Aura was basically the secondary form of Essence— learning to cultivate caused Essence to “stick” to your body and form an outer layer, which you could use to fuel techniques and Shards.
The grassy field was full of dead things. Bones littered the moss, and from their hollow eyes grew pale yellow flowers that filled the air with glowing pollen spore. The air was thick with drifting spots of light. That was where the ‘toxic environment’ came from.
The monkeys survived by staying high up. They only came down out of the trees when they were far from the sporing fields, and they used the poison clouds below as a defense while they slept. That meant the lower ground was basically unoccupied. A few fist-sized beetles and bright-orange snails with spiny shells roamed the fields of slimy algae that grew on the dead bodies.
It was a good home territory, and Nic could thank Logos for giving him solid ground to stand on.
In the distance, apartment towers stuck crookedly out of the earth. Moss clung to the sides like the towers had already been abandoned for thousands of years, even though the Integration was only weeks old. Huge red windmill blades had been grafted to the upper level, not just one set but dozens, interlocked like the wheels of a gear and slowly turning in the wind.
Nicolas would be avoiding the towers. Human buildings would draw human attention.
On his side of the river was a rolling, open plain full of white flowers that spun like pinwheels in the wind. The sight was whimsical and joyful, but every so often, an enormous winged shadow would drift across the green grass.
Predators high above. Searching for small, soft-skinned prey like Nic.
The far side of the river seemed more promising, with tall golden grass in an enormous sea that promised to hide him away. The only problem was reaching it without being snapped up by one of the enormous fish.
Finally, following the course of the river led him toward a deep, dark forest. Huge tendrils of fleshy blue curled around the trees and pulsed with luminous power. Glowing, star-shaped flowers burst from the bark like parasites.
It was definitely alluring. If all went well, he hoped to explore it thoroughly.
But first, he’d thoroughly search out his own surroundings. The poisonous yellow flowers and their spores were a protective blanket, but they didn’t just hide him. In a matter of minutes, Nic began to find shy sky-blue berries hidden in little crevices of the earth. Each time he plucked a handful from their thorny beds, he was rewarded with a deliciously tart flavor and the sensation of Essence sparks drifting outward from his belly into his web of meridians.
Rotating his cultivation base like he’d practiced fruitlessly on d23, Nic delighted in the feeling of the sparks of Essence being dragged in and consumed. Four hours. In four hours, he’d have over a thousand Essence stored—enough to fully develop one of his shards.
The thought made him giddy.
Soon enough, his berry-hunting gathered fruit. As he plucked cautiously at the thorny undergrowth, something gleamed below. A shattered flint arrowhead lay among the tangles. Grasping it carefully, Nic pushed through the brush and deeper within.
One of the hills was hollow, and Nic discovered a hidden entrance just big enough for a crawling human to slide into the dark and damp, full of aged bones turned grey and dark. Venomous bugs crawled through the eye sockets of skulls.
In the center of the cave, a single intact corpse clutched a brilliant red feather. Nic instantly smelled a trap. He cautiously grasped a centipede from the walls and flung the squirming thing forward as a test, but nothing happened. He’d almost expected the dead to come alive.
But no. Nothing.
Step by step, Nicolas began to realize it was just his nerves. As he advanced into the dark of the cave, his wide yellow eyes blinked, and the shadows retreated. A secret membrane had closed over his gaze and given him nightvision.
This place was hidden but not especially dangerous. A prize waiting to be found.
His hand reached out for the feather—
And a pearly barrier snapped into place around it.
This treasure has been Sealed.
Monstrous-class beings must wait 47:59:59 before they can claim their prize.
Yelping and jumping back, Nicolas only processed the message once his heart had stopped racing. The dead man grinned at him. The treasure was sealed…
This meant the locals and invading troops would have two days to find it before some lowly monster was allowed to steal their prize. It was blatant favoritism, but Nic wasn’t surprised. In fact, he was overjoyed. The hiding place was untouched, the whole poison meadow seemed like it was safe from invaders, and the monkeys clearly didn’t know about this place, even if they had a way of coming down from the trees.
In short, in two days this prize was his.
Nic was careful to shift the bushes to hide the entrance as he left. His heart racing, he looked high and low for other treasures. To his surprise, there were plenty that he’d missed on his first scouting trip through the area. Flowers and plants that had seemed normal were marked as medicines by the presence of a faint, pearly bubble that hovered around them, almost impossible to see. When he reached for them, that bubble became solid and opaque, starting a timer.
What was worrying was how many of the timers had already been started. Either the monkeys or some other creature had managed to brave the poison field just under a day ago.
Following the trail, Nicolas found himself heading deeper and deeper into the territory of the monkeys. They followed him along the tree branches above, trying to scare him off by howling and tossing pinecones.
He proceeded undaunted.
At the core of their grove was a single dead tree, and from the instant Nicolas saw it, he knew. There. That was where Logos would hide the treasure. That was the right place.
He took a step toward the tree, and the monkeys above screamed in fury. The sound was overwhelming, a physical wave of bone-shaking shouts and high-pitched, ear-rending squeals. From all sides, pinecones, stones, and fecal matter came rattling down, pelting Nicolas and the earth around him.
Staggering back, he lifted a hand to his face and took two more steps forward.
The oak tree was split open down the middle, and within the hollow rotten center, a golden flower bloomed. It was tall and elegant like an angel’s trumpet, radiating a sense of holy power. The pearlescent shield sphere was so large it encapsulated the entire tree.
That was as far as he got.
Unable to stop him from above, the monkeys threw one of their own out of the tree. The unfortunate creature crashed down beside him and rolled over, dazed for a moment, struggling to stand on its long, lanky limbs covered in white fur.
Then its eyes went wide as it realized where it was—what had happened.
With an insane shriek, it flung itself at Nic, trying to claw him, gouge at him with its nails. The sting-tipped scorpion tail shot for Nic’s throat.
He threw himself out of the way and retreated on all fours, shooting across the ground in a slither. For a moment, the enraged monkey grasped hold of his tail, and the whole thing ripped away, letting Nicolas escape forward across the poisoned ground.
It took three more steps, each clumsier than the last. On the fourth, it simply slumped over. Foam ran from its mouth, and its body twitched violently with poison.
Nic approached cautiously, the flint arrowhead clutched in both hands. The beast’s eyes looked up, and it reached for him weakly.
He brought the arrowhead down across its throat—a merciful kill when the poison was already eating it from within.
Slinging the corpse over his shoulders as compensation for his stolen tail, Nicolas departed the monkey’s grove.
But he’d be back.
In four days, when the barrier dropped on their precious treasure, he’d be back.
Monkeys followed him through the trees. With so many eyes watching, Nicolas didn’t dare return to the hidden cave. Instead, he propped himself against a rotten stump.
The dead monkey stared up at him.
He put the thought of eating another sentient out of his mind for the moment and considered what he’d learned.
The monkeys couldn’t easily get to him on the ground, but they had to have some way of reaching the golden flower when the shield dropped. That meant they could travel to the ground, even if it was difficult, and thus he wouldn’t be safe sleeping unguarded.
Moreover…
He wasn’t convinced the entity that had started the timers on so many plants was them. Was there another monster roaming through here as it pleased?
Nicolas would need to grow quickly if he wanted to survive. Even this poisoned earth wouldn’t protect him for too long.
Closing his eyes, he circulated his Essence. The day’s gains drifted through his veins like liquid fire, moving sluggishly at first, then faster and faster. A resonating pulse flowed through his entire body.
As the Essence in his core swirled, he pushed it all toward the Petroglyph Shard and felt something slide into place. The Shard between his eyes glowed through his skin, the light taking the shape of three golden runes. The more Essence he fed them, the hungrier they became, guiding the flow of power to take a new and complicated shape like a snowflake or a spider’s web.
Lifting the flint arrowhead in one hand, he crushed a sky-blue berry in the other. As he dabbed the makeshift paint across the surface, Nicolas used the skills he had honed in his room, trying fruitlessly to become a Scribe. With each stroke, he filled his hand with intention. Each dash of paint became a reservoir for his Inner Essence to carry that intent into the material.
It was exactly like his practice but far, far easier. Where before he’d been fighting a resisting force, now moving his hand was like water flowing down a dry riverbed. There was a natural suggestion of how to move that guided his motions. A calm in his mind that let his thoughts run clear and true.
As he carved the last stroke of the symbol onto the arrowhead, Nic wedged it into the top of a moss-covered branch. The bottom of the flint arrow split open like a seed, and green vines coiled down to connect it to the spear’s haft.
The pulse settled. The essence in his veins became slow and peaceful again.
In his hand, he held a weapon of his own creation.
Spear of Moss and Stone (G)
(100% Charged)
This humble spear made from driftwood and ancient stone can strike two-fold, summoning a duplicate from the earth.
He was ready to set out.
Chapter 3
Forest of Giants
The forest was dark, and Nic could no longer see the sky. Instead, luminous blue veins with a disturbingly fleshy texture wove from tree to tree, forming a net that glowed like starlight between their branches. The bark of the trees was broken by flowers with the same color and eerie light.
The first creature he met was like a fox with moss-colored fur, twigs and roots woven into its light green hide. It ran on the branches above and tried to steal eggs from a bird’s nest, only for the owner to leap from a higher bough, lashing at it with wing and claw until the unfortunate scavenger fell from its perch…
And landed, stunned, in front of Nicolas.
It twisted up onto all fours immediately, but the impact had obviously stunned it. Although its sleek, quick body resembled a fox, it had the banded-mask face of a raccoon. Its eyes met Nic’s gaze.
Without even pausing to think, Nic’s mouth opened, and he spat out a blob of Poison Mist. The resulting “bullet” only managed to wobble a few feet and then dissolve into the air, but it instantly frightened the bandit fox into retreating, scampering up a tree trunk before Nicolas could follow.
He was left alone again. And he paused, unsatisfied.
Clearly, the skill wasn’t meant to be used as a projectile. Instead, Nic tried to project forward a beam of poisonous smoke, “pushing” the forward point outward by creating more and more smog behind it. The result was a toxic spray that managed to burst out to the length of his spear before dissolving.
It was good enough to head deeper.
Unfortunately, the first thing Nic learned was that the humans were closer than he thought. The huge carcass of a long-necked turtle lay on the ground, overturned and hacked at by blades to pry away its Shards. The dark eyes stared up blindly, flies swarming over them.
“I guess you were a person, once.” Nicolas swung his spear through the buzzing masses, sending them flying away for a moment. “I can’t really promise to avenge you. Or to tell your family what happened. Actually… there’s not a damn thing I can do for you. But I’m sorry it ended this way.”
It was a shitty prayer for the dead, but somebody had to say something.
The blood was fresh on the ground, and there were no scavengers bigger than insects. This had happened recently—maybe minutes ago. Looking to the trees, he could see where the humans had hacked their way through the lower branches and left a trail of destruction coming from the east.
“And I’m avoiding you like my life depends on it. Because it does.” Croaking to himself in his newty voice, Nicolas slithered away on all fours.
There were more of the long-necked turtles. They stomped between the trees, eating the luminous flowers with their curved beaks, and their shells glittered with twin Shards. Judging by how they stuck close together in a pack, whatever Shards they’d been given functioned best in combination. The one who’d been torn apart had simply wandered too far from his fellows.
They watched Nicolas with wary eyes, dark beady gazes set into deep wrinkles. Just the sight of that cautious watchfulness reminded him they were people, too.
There was no point in trying to communicate. Even if Nic understood the series of squawks and croaks he spoke, they were a totally different language than the Cosmic All-Tongue spoken in d23. Logos had simply ripped one language out of his brain and replaced it with a new one. In the process, the fodder monsters had lost the ability to communicate and cooperate.
He was glad that hadn’t turned them into bloodthirsty maniacs. Yet.
Numerous pearly barriers surrounded medicinal herbs, but other patches were torn up already. The only time the turtles showed outright hostility was when he tried to approach a patch of brightly shielded fruit trees they were protecting. Instantly, lightning arced across their shells, and Nic hurriedly retreated until they ceased charging up.
Secondary Slot (0/50,000)
* * *
Adhesive Touch (G)
Creates adhesive threads of pure Aura.
Base Enhancement (0/1,000)
Secondary Slot (0/10,000)
Permanency (0/10,000)
Toxic Binding (0/50,000)
* * *
Hunter-Gatherer Petroglyphs (G)
Creates crude tools from bone, rock, and wood, using Essence to bind them.
Base Enhancement (0/1,000)
Secondary Slot (0/10,000)
Metallurgy (0/100,000)
It was a small blow to lose all the cultivation he’d done in his old body. He’d barely been able to invest a few dozen, with the Essence so thin and his work trying to Scribe taking up so much, but it felt oddly meaningful to see that he had been set back to absolute zero.
But his passive cultivation number was absolutely monstrous. Before, it had easily been two levels of magnitude lower. Maybe 0.02 at best, weighed down by pollution, bad food, and other “toxins” that had accumulated in his system.
Now, he would cultivate at immense speed just from living—faster by devouring enemies and treasures. The local modifier represented the thickness of Essence in the air, and the plus signs below represented the different ways his body could absorb Essence faster. For a human, the only modifier available was linked to life-or-death danger, but it was high.
The newt had three, all of them relatively low.
Currently, toxic environment was active, meaning he’d missed something. The world outside his hiding hole had seemed normal.
But—
Ignoring that for the moment.
Three Shards. Three.
Each of them had the ability to accept a Secondary, a half-formed Shard, once they were fully cultivated. Attaching a Secondary Shard would alter the ability and allow it to grow again, following a new path.
These were things Nic knew. Things he’d been taught by the Beldam and in dry educational simulations. Not things he’d expected to experience. Things that would happen to him.
Mentally selecting Poison Synthesis, he pushed in twenty of his Essence to get a feel for the process. The immediate sensation was akin to ice water running through his veins, then igniting into fire as it reached the base of his throat. It should’ve been unbearably painful.
Instead, it felt amazing. Like the burn in his muscles after a long run.
He wanted more. More of the blue skies and open fields. More power running in his veins. And the only way to get them was to keep moving, to keep exploring.
To conquer the new world.
Every few seconds, Nic’s tongue would slither from his mouth and taste the air. It was as involuntary to his new form as breathing was. Each time, he received a burst of information: the taste of nearby water, the countless monkey creatures in the trees, or sour, older tastes from monsters passing by. Blood and rot and fresh growth.
He paused at the stream’s edge to get a look at himself. His newt-folk body was slippery and smooth with a flat, slimy head. His “face” had almost no features beyond a wide, rubbery smile and two beady eyes. Thick antenna with feathery frills extended from the gills on his throat. Turning around, he could just see his three Shards implanted in a constellation of glowing tattoo lines along his back.
“Well, I’m ugly. But I’m rich? Seems fair. Verrrry fair.”
Experimentally, he opened his mouth and shot out a bubble of aura, converting it easily into a pearl of poisonous mist that slowly dissolved into the air. Aura was basically the secondary form of Essence— learning to cultivate caused Essence to “stick” to your body and form an outer layer, which you could use to fuel techniques and Shards.
The grassy field was full of dead things. Bones littered the moss, and from their hollow eyes grew pale yellow flowers that filled the air with glowing pollen spore. The air was thick with drifting spots of light. That was where the ‘toxic environment’ came from.
The monkeys survived by staying high up. They only came down out of the trees when they were far from the sporing fields, and they used the poison clouds below as a defense while they slept. That meant the lower ground was basically unoccupied. A few fist-sized beetles and bright-orange snails with spiny shells roamed the fields of slimy algae that grew on the dead bodies.
It was a good home territory, and Nic could thank Logos for giving him solid ground to stand on.
In the distance, apartment towers stuck crookedly out of the earth. Moss clung to the sides like the towers had already been abandoned for thousands of years, even though the Integration was only weeks old. Huge red windmill blades had been grafted to the upper level, not just one set but dozens, interlocked like the wheels of a gear and slowly turning in the wind.
Nicolas would be avoiding the towers. Human buildings would draw human attention.
On his side of the river was a rolling, open plain full of white flowers that spun like pinwheels in the wind. The sight was whimsical and joyful, but every so often, an enormous winged shadow would drift across the green grass.
Predators high above. Searching for small, soft-skinned prey like Nic.
The far side of the river seemed more promising, with tall golden grass in an enormous sea that promised to hide him away. The only problem was reaching it without being snapped up by one of the enormous fish.
Finally, following the course of the river led him toward a deep, dark forest. Huge tendrils of fleshy blue curled around the trees and pulsed with luminous power. Glowing, star-shaped flowers burst from the bark like parasites.
It was definitely alluring. If all went well, he hoped to explore it thoroughly.
But first, he’d thoroughly search out his own surroundings. The poisonous yellow flowers and their spores were a protective blanket, but they didn’t just hide him. In a matter of minutes, Nic began to find shy sky-blue berries hidden in little crevices of the earth. Each time he plucked a handful from their thorny beds, he was rewarded with a deliciously tart flavor and the sensation of Essence sparks drifting outward from his belly into his web of meridians.
Rotating his cultivation base like he’d practiced fruitlessly on d23, Nic delighted in the feeling of the sparks of Essence being dragged in and consumed. Four hours. In four hours, he’d have over a thousand Essence stored—enough to fully develop one of his shards.
The thought made him giddy.
Soon enough, his berry-hunting gathered fruit. As he plucked cautiously at the thorny undergrowth, something gleamed below. A shattered flint arrowhead lay among the tangles. Grasping it carefully, Nic pushed through the brush and deeper within.
One of the hills was hollow, and Nic discovered a hidden entrance just big enough for a crawling human to slide into the dark and damp, full of aged bones turned grey and dark. Venomous bugs crawled through the eye sockets of skulls.
In the center of the cave, a single intact corpse clutched a brilliant red feather. Nic instantly smelled a trap. He cautiously grasped a centipede from the walls and flung the squirming thing forward as a test, but nothing happened. He’d almost expected the dead to come alive.
But no. Nothing.
Step by step, Nicolas began to realize it was just his nerves. As he advanced into the dark of the cave, his wide yellow eyes blinked, and the shadows retreated. A secret membrane had closed over his gaze and given him nightvision.
This place was hidden but not especially dangerous. A prize waiting to be found.
His hand reached out for the feather—
And a pearly barrier snapped into place around it.
This treasure has been Sealed.
Monstrous-class beings must wait 47:59:59 before they can claim their prize.
Yelping and jumping back, Nicolas only processed the message once his heart had stopped racing. The dead man grinned at him. The treasure was sealed…
This meant the locals and invading troops would have two days to find it before some lowly monster was allowed to steal their prize. It was blatant favoritism, but Nic wasn’t surprised. In fact, he was overjoyed. The hiding place was untouched, the whole poison meadow seemed like it was safe from invaders, and the monkeys clearly didn’t know about this place, even if they had a way of coming down from the trees.
In short, in two days this prize was his.
Nic was careful to shift the bushes to hide the entrance as he left. His heart racing, he looked high and low for other treasures. To his surprise, there were plenty that he’d missed on his first scouting trip through the area. Flowers and plants that had seemed normal were marked as medicines by the presence of a faint, pearly bubble that hovered around them, almost impossible to see. When he reached for them, that bubble became solid and opaque, starting a timer.
What was worrying was how many of the timers had already been started. Either the monkeys or some other creature had managed to brave the poison field just under a day ago.
Following the trail, Nicolas found himself heading deeper and deeper into the territory of the monkeys. They followed him along the tree branches above, trying to scare him off by howling and tossing pinecones.
He proceeded undaunted.
At the core of their grove was a single dead tree, and from the instant Nicolas saw it, he knew. There. That was where Logos would hide the treasure. That was the right place.
He took a step toward the tree, and the monkeys above screamed in fury. The sound was overwhelming, a physical wave of bone-shaking shouts and high-pitched, ear-rending squeals. From all sides, pinecones, stones, and fecal matter came rattling down, pelting Nicolas and the earth around him.
Staggering back, he lifted a hand to his face and took two more steps forward.
The oak tree was split open down the middle, and within the hollow rotten center, a golden flower bloomed. It was tall and elegant like an angel’s trumpet, radiating a sense of holy power. The pearlescent shield sphere was so large it encapsulated the entire tree.
That was as far as he got.
Unable to stop him from above, the monkeys threw one of their own out of the tree. The unfortunate creature crashed down beside him and rolled over, dazed for a moment, struggling to stand on its long, lanky limbs covered in white fur.
Then its eyes went wide as it realized where it was—what had happened.
With an insane shriek, it flung itself at Nic, trying to claw him, gouge at him with its nails. The sting-tipped scorpion tail shot for Nic’s throat.
He threw himself out of the way and retreated on all fours, shooting across the ground in a slither. For a moment, the enraged monkey grasped hold of his tail, and the whole thing ripped away, letting Nicolas escape forward across the poisoned ground.
It took three more steps, each clumsier than the last. On the fourth, it simply slumped over. Foam ran from its mouth, and its body twitched violently with poison.
Nic approached cautiously, the flint arrowhead clutched in both hands. The beast’s eyes looked up, and it reached for him weakly.
He brought the arrowhead down across its throat—a merciful kill when the poison was already eating it from within.
Slinging the corpse over his shoulders as compensation for his stolen tail, Nicolas departed the monkey’s grove.
But he’d be back.
In four days, when the barrier dropped on their precious treasure, he’d be back.
Monkeys followed him through the trees. With so many eyes watching, Nicolas didn’t dare return to the hidden cave. Instead, he propped himself against a rotten stump.
The dead monkey stared up at him.
He put the thought of eating another sentient out of his mind for the moment and considered what he’d learned.
The monkeys couldn’t easily get to him on the ground, but they had to have some way of reaching the golden flower when the shield dropped. That meant they could travel to the ground, even if it was difficult, and thus he wouldn’t be safe sleeping unguarded.
Moreover…
He wasn’t convinced the entity that had started the timers on so many plants was them. Was there another monster roaming through here as it pleased?
Nicolas would need to grow quickly if he wanted to survive. Even this poisoned earth wouldn’t protect him for too long.
Closing his eyes, he circulated his Essence. The day’s gains drifted through his veins like liquid fire, moving sluggishly at first, then faster and faster. A resonating pulse flowed through his entire body.
As the Essence in his core swirled, he pushed it all toward the Petroglyph Shard and felt something slide into place. The Shard between his eyes glowed through his skin, the light taking the shape of three golden runes. The more Essence he fed them, the hungrier they became, guiding the flow of power to take a new and complicated shape like a snowflake or a spider’s web.
Lifting the flint arrowhead in one hand, he crushed a sky-blue berry in the other. As he dabbed the makeshift paint across the surface, Nicolas used the skills he had honed in his room, trying fruitlessly to become a Scribe. With each stroke, he filled his hand with intention. Each dash of paint became a reservoir for his Inner Essence to carry that intent into the material.
It was exactly like his practice but far, far easier. Where before he’d been fighting a resisting force, now moving his hand was like water flowing down a dry riverbed. There was a natural suggestion of how to move that guided his motions. A calm in his mind that let his thoughts run clear and true.
As he carved the last stroke of the symbol onto the arrowhead, Nic wedged it into the top of a moss-covered branch. The bottom of the flint arrow split open like a seed, and green vines coiled down to connect it to the spear’s haft.
The pulse settled. The essence in his veins became slow and peaceful again.
In his hand, he held a weapon of his own creation.
Spear of Moss and Stone (G)
(100% Charged)
This humble spear made from driftwood and ancient stone can strike two-fold, summoning a duplicate from the earth.
He was ready to set out.
Chapter 3
Forest of Giants
The forest was dark, and Nic could no longer see the sky. Instead, luminous blue veins with a disturbingly fleshy texture wove from tree to tree, forming a net that glowed like starlight between their branches. The bark of the trees was broken by flowers with the same color and eerie light.
The first creature he met was like a fox with moss-colored fur, twigs and roots woven into its light green hide. It ran on the branches above and tried to steal eggs from a bird’s nest, only for the owner to leap from a higher bough, lashing at it with wing and claw until the unfortunate scavenger fell from its perch…
And landed, stunned, in front of Nicolas.
It twisted up onto all fours immediately, but the impact had obviously stunned it. Although its sleek, quick body resembled a fox, it had the banded-mask face of a raccoon. Its eyes met Nic’s gaze.
Without even pausing to think, Nic’s mouth opened, and he spat out a blob of Poison Mist. The resulting “bullet” only managed to wobble a few feet and then dissolve into the air, but it instantly frightened the bandit fox into retreating, scampering up a tree trunk before Nicolas could follow.
He was left alone again. And he paused, unsatisfied.
Clearly, the skill wasn’t meant to be used as a projectile. Instead, Nic tried to project forward a beam of poisonous smoke, “pushing” the forward point outward by creating more and more smog behind it. The result was a toxic spray that managed to burst out to the length of his spear before dissolving.
It was good enough to head deeper.
Unfortunately, the first thing Nic learned was that the humans were closer than he thought. The huge carcass of a long-necked turtle lay on the ground, overturned and hacked at by blades to pry away its Shards. The dark eyes stared up blindly, flies swarming over them.
“I guess you were a person, once.” Nicolas swung his spear through the buzzing masses, sending them flying away for a moment. “I can’t really promise to avenge you. Or to tell your family what happened. Actually… there’s not a damn thing I can do for you. But I’m sorry it ended this way.”
It was a shitty prayer for the dead, but somebody had to say something.
The blood was fresh on the ground, and there were no scavengers bigger than insects. This had happened recently—maybe minutes ago. Looking to the trees, he could see where the humans had hacked their way through the lower branches and left a trail of destruction coming from the east.
“And I’m avoiding you like my life depends on it. Because it does.” Croaking to himself in his newty voice, Nicolas slithered away on all fours.
There were more of the long-necked turtles. They stomped between the trees, eating the luminous flowers with their curved beaks, and their shells glittered with twin Shards. Judging by how they stuck close together in a pack, whatever Shards they’d been given functioned best in combination. The one who’d been torn apart had simply wandered too far from his fellows.
They watched Nicolas with wary eyes, dark beady gazes set into deep wrinkles. Just the sight of that cautious watchfulness reminded him they were people, too.
There was no point in trying to communicate. Even if Nic understood the series of squawks and croaks he spoke, they were a totally different language than the Cosmic All-Tongue spoken in d23. Logos had simply ripped one language out of his brain and replaced it with a new one. In the process, the fodder monsters had lost the ability to communicate and cooperate.
He was glad that hadn’t turned them into bloodthirsty maniacs. Yet.
Numerous pearly barriers surrounded medicinal herbs, but other patches were torn up already. The only time the turtles showed outright hostility was when he tried to approach a patch of brightly shielded fruit trees they were protecting. Instantly, lightning arced across their shells, and Nic hurriedly retreated until they ceased charging up.
