Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 51
One of them stepped forward and bowed. He had a more distinct shape than the rest of them. Dark clothes surrounded his flesh, and he carried a ghostly saber at his hip.
“My lord.”
“Uhhh, Nic is… fine…” The throne was stern and uncomfortable, and the fact it was made for a giant made Nic seem all the smaller. “Are you part of the throne?”
“We are the souls of the drowned. The throne binds us to do you one service before we can pass on. We will search the known seas for any object you desire. With each day, more of us gather to the throne, and you may ask for greater treasures the longer you wait.”
“Uh-huh.” Nic couldn’t say he was comfortable with the idea of dead souls being bound to his command. The eyes of the damned were dark and accusing. “And how long have you been waiting for someone to come along and tell you what to do?”
“It has been seven centuries since there was a lord of the tides. We have waited all this time.”
“Hoo boy. Well, no reason to keep you any longer. My command…”
Nic hesitated for a moment. He already had a lead on a cultivation tome in the Plates of the Sun God, and asking them to hunt for information on the black pearl could potentially lead to nothing: even if he knew everything about the cursed thing it could still be too dangerous to use.
He lifted his hand. “Find me the most powerful medicine for monster evolution you can in two and a half days.”
There was an enormous wail, and the ghosts vanished, leaving maelstroms in the water where they’d been. Only the sailor remained, still bowing. “Generous of you, to give us such a short sentence. I’ll tell you this. The throne of the tides was made from the bones of krakens, and anyone who sits upon it will be their enemy for all time. If you ever fully claim it, they and their cultists will come for you.”
And then he was gone.
Nic waited for a long moment before letting out an exhausted glub and slumping onto the throne. Fighting giant undead eels was one thing. Being made complicit in the slavery of what looked like hundreds of souls was… well, it was Less something he was able to manage with his home blend of sneaky, inventive violence.
Pushing off from the throne, he swam around the cave and searched for the golden carp, but it was nowhere to be found. Either it had slipped away or it was a System construct and had simply been dissolved once it led him here.
Either way, he would have to face the giant predators circling above when he left.
Settling back on the throne, he began to meditate. He had achieved the first step of Scion Ascension, the mapping of the hair-thin meridian lines within his heart. Now he needed to gently sweep away impurities. It was much the same process as he performed during the oasis but much more delicate, owing to happening within his heart. Even small deposits of toxic Essence could harm him here, so he had to carefully run a fine net of aura through the paths he’d mapped to gently sweep them clean.
It was slow…
Tedious…
And once he broke through how boring it was, he found it oddly calming. He entered a state of flow where time barely seemed to matter, feeling nothing but the movement of aura in tune with his own breath as he closed his eyes. Peeling away each spark of darkened Essence was satisfying like picking a scab.
When he opened his eyes again, it was because his cultivation base was overflowing. Flicking open the map, he pushed the full allotment towards opening the secondary slot and drew out the Drowning Shard.
It felt like forever ago he’d gotten it.
Pushing it against his skin, he felt an electric crackle as the solid crystal began to buzz and dissolve into sparks of Essence. They burned across his body, sinking down, racing across his meridians. The gem was pushing inwards, a spike of Essence driving towards the cluster of nodes in his shoulders that contained the Adhesive Touch skill.
As the Shard sliced into him, Nic’s palms curled into fists.
The sensation of power was so overwhelming it felt like pain. He went blind-eyed, lost in a white void where sparks of electric blue danced.
When his vision cleared, the water was swirling all around him. Mud from the bottom of the chamber was rising up, cutting through the water in a spiral.
Nic reached out a hand and it stopped. He curled his fist and willed the muddy sediment to move, and it wadded itself into a ball. He made it turn like a planet in orbit, drawing up more threads of mud to join the sphere, building it bigger and heavier.
Then, with a grin, he punched his hand forward.
The mud-ball shot forward like a rocket and exploded against the walls with a heavy impact.
He lifted his hand and made a waving tendril form. He grasped and it thickened, becoming a squeeze wave of mud that swept up from the floor to constrict an imaginary foe. The aura-drain of using the skill was surprisingly light.
He was guessing it would be more intense in environments that didn’t have abundant raw material to shape.
Flicking open his cultivation map for the new-formed Shard, Nic examined his options to expand the ability. They were tantalizing.
Mire-Caller (F)
Calls to and creates binding masses of mud, sludge, or tar. A powerful Shard for binding and controlling that requires work and imagination to master.
II Base Enhancement (216/2,000)
I Secondary Slot (0/50,000)
Mire-Drowned Remnants (0/50,000)
Futile Struggle (0/50,000)
Mire-Dweller (0/10,000)
Every one of the three new options was a mystery, and unlocking them all would take over a hundred thousand Essence. Cultivation was just climbing one mountain to find a new one, and on some level, Nic loved the feeling. He couldn’t wait to crack open the new abilities and see what was in store.
But first, he had to survive.
At some point, he was just going to sit down, cultivate for a solid week, and come out stronger than he’d ever been.
But that would require a week where no enemy Settlements dropped out of the sky, none of his friends needed saving, and he wasn’t leaping from one deadly situation to the next.
A whole week of quiet…
Nic laughed. It just wasn’t in the cards for him. He could look back on the weeks where he’d had nothing better to do than shuffle his body from one dead-end job to the next, eating cheap noodles in spicy oil, and spending his nights hunched over his runecrafting…
But he couldn’t go back.
And when he remembered how those weeks became years, eating away at his life, each day leaving him no further ahead than he started…
He didn’t want to. He had been no better than one of the throne’s lost souls.
Nic slipped the ring of Day-into-Night onto his finger. It was still golden, so he had some sunlight left to power him.
Kicking up, Nic headed for the surface. He pushed through the ruins of the church and lifted a wave of sedimentary mud behind him. It formed a spiral, pushing him towards the surface like a rocket. The eels shifted, their eyes fixing on him, their gnashing mouths opening.
Nic pushed everything into his cultivation and kept shooting for the surface, using a cape of mud to propel him like an elongated tail. His aura was draining fast, but he was outpacing the swarm of yellow-skinned eels chasing him.
He burst up from the water and tore through the barrier, winding his body in mud to absorb the impact. The eels slammed into the surface, turning back, the lake becoming a frothing whitewater as they writhed and thrashed at the water’s edge. His launch was powerful enough to send him flying into the treetops, crashlanding amidst the branches. Water clung to his skin, and he laughed, exhausted, exhilarated…more powerful than he was a few hours ago.
The feeling of forward momentum was intoxicating. Dropping down out of the tree, he examined the jade seal in his hand, shivering at the sight of the black tendrils enveloping the squared green stone. Characters in an ancient script ran along each side.
Seal of the Wreckrunner. Astral // Treasured Artifact. This seal of sea-worn jade summons a merchant from the depths of the Tartherus Oceans, a vast series of drowned abyssal spheres connected by a single astral river. They bring goods from the wrecks of great merchant vessels and brave pirate runners and from the sea-cults, the deep cities, from a thousand strange ports.
Nic grinned. Since he was set on building a Settlement, merchants were absolutely something he needed.
Tucking it away, he headed for the great tree, satisfied with what he’d done for the day. The addition of a new Node to his territory put him one away from having the full swathe of land needed to begin a settlement, and the promise of a gift to help cultivate his evolution was enough to nearly make him salivate.
The wandering lotus, helping Moira, and replenishing his supply of poison flowers were all just added benefits to a day well spent.
The only issue was climbing back up the tree. God, he was going to look forward to never making the climb again once he planted a lotus seed at the top.
It took him until sunset was beginning to break over the trees to reach the observation platform. The spiders were already leaving, winding up their silk into tight bundles and carrying it up the tree to their restored nest.
There he was greeted like a hero. Spiders poured up to him, wrapping their furry legs over his shoulders and pulling him towards a central hut.
He grinned the moment he saw what was waiting for him.
The leader of the weavers had done her job beautifully. She’d pieced the snakeskin leather together with underlying silk, forming a short robe of scales, alternating from honey-gold to sand-bronze as they fit together into a suit of armor. A thick plate of midnight-black chitin covered the belly, and a smaller piece was affixed over his heart by a loop of silk that crossed to one shoulder and anchored onto a pauldron spiked by the horns of the stoneskin lizard. Tassets of scale and greaves of chitin covered the legs, protecting him while keeping him agile and flexible.
The whole suit gave off the impression of wildness, of a savage frontier. The gold-bronze scales and the white silk beneath, the thin plates of midnight armor, the spiked shoulder piece—it was perfect and sized perfectly to fit Nic.
The leader of the spiders stood over her work, proudly presenting it to him.
“Better than I could have hoped for,” Nic said, admiring it.
Chapter 76
Liminal Hours
Nic arrived back at the temple atop the tree near nightfall. His strength and the boon of Day-Into-Night were truly becoming apparent as he blazed past his previous record, climbing like a madman. He was pleased to see the spiders moving back into their nest—under the watchful eye of a black Myrmidon standing guard.
Huge predatory hummingbirds with long, spiked tongues briefly hovered around him, wondering if he was prey. A single blast of Poison Mist was enough to convince the survivors he was not.
He arrived back on top to find the mantis-guard staring at him, speaking amongst themselves. It was odd. They usually seemed like they wanted to strangle him just for existing near their lady, and now, they were actively trying to do it with their eyes.
Captain Cegan stepped forward. His mantis-arms were almost twitching with anger, while his human fists were curled. The difference between the two limbs—one set covered in green, hard carapace, the other in bronzed skin—was striking.
“Lady Nylea wishes for you to join her honor guard and gain our rituals. As such…” He grinned. It wasn’t a smile that boded well for Nic. “I invite you to spar tomorrow morning so that I can judge whether you qualify for the test.”
Nic froze, trying to quickly see the angles on this. Cegan was simply angry because this brought him closer to Nylea and likely stole some of Cegan’s authority away. Lady Nylea had phrased this like she’d be giving Nic a gift—and that was likely partially true. There were almost definitely some benefits to be gained.
‘Gain our rituals’ suggested these chumps actually had cultivation methods hidden away.
But he knew that even if Nylea liked him, she wouldn’t offer something so precious for free. Becoming an honor guard might impose real restrictions or binding oaths on him.
But Nic just grinned. “Alright, see you then, champ.”
After all, if he found out the restrictions would be too binding, he could always bow out or throw the fight intentionally.
Proceeding into the temple, Nic eagerly approached the Saturnalia. As always, the sea of little people had raised entire cities in the time he’d been gone, the tiny world moving through years in minutes and days in the blink of an eye.
Redjaw’s poison forest sprawled across a continent, with humanity relegated to the thin beaches of golden sand where the trees and flowers couldn’t spread. They lived in huts extending across the shallow waves on bamboo docks and stilts, with huge cities floating on rafts and wooden platforms. Each house was its own little barge pushing through the waters. Peering down closely, Nic saw that many of the smaller ships were made of shed carapace from Redjaw’s spawn, and centipede statues carved from granite pillars lined the shore in tribute. His greedy little companion beast had become a venerated god.
In the center of the continent, titans fought and brawled. The dark soil of the poison jungle had given rise to constant warfare between titanic creatures, and Nic watched as Redjaw struggled with a pair of contenders for his throne.
A brilliant orange-shelled dragonfly dove from above, stabbing at him with bladed limbs. A fiery-skinned lizard spat tongues of green flame and reared up, hissing, trying to bite down against Redjaw’s endless slithering waves of legs. It was two against one, but they were wild beasts. They had no idea how to work together.
Redjaw destroyed them. His long, poisoned antenna whipped out and caught the dragonfly as it tried to escape into the sky after a diving attack. With a twist of his head, he threw the delicate insect against the lizard. They both crashed back into the jungle, uprooting tiny trees and sending thousands of birds no larger than grains of sand fleeing up into the air.
Redjaw bore down, an oncoming train of legs bearing bright red mandibles at its front. The dragonfly almost made it up into the air, but Redjaw reared up, chasing it above the treeline as countless legs lifted from the earth. His mandibles snapped down and caught the prey, and his long body swung it down and smashed it against the earth, crushing down until it was split into two.
The lizard had crawled onto his back and was desperately trying to cut through the centipede’s black, slimy armor with a searing blaze of green flame.
Redjaw turned back and surged up around the unfortunate reptile, wrapping coil after coil around its chest to squeeze away all life and breath. As the flame-lizard went limp, Redjaw dragged it back towards his lair to feast.
Nic reached down and petted the beast’s head in appreciation.
“Hey, little guy,” he whispered through the mental link. “Enjoying your time as a god?”
“I eat well. The strong contest my place atop them, and the weak bow and sing to me. It is good. I am almost ready.” Its long, whip-thin antenna wove around his fingers, and he felt a faint tingling. Anyone else would be screaming in pain from the venom within. “But I need something. Something I cannot find. A stone of power.”
Nic nodded. A Shard.
He wasn’t the only one at the edge of a breakthrough. Redjaw just needed to absorb a Shard to advance through to F-Class and likely to evolve in the same moment.
Reaching into his bag, he pulled out the Primary Shards he’d acquired. His selection was still small, but both were potent options for expanding Redjaw’s role. Poison Mist would allow Redjaw to apply his deadly, Essence-destroying venom from afar. Frostbind would directly strengthen those capabilities.
And Nic intended to eventually give him both. But…
“Sofia? Shards influence the path of evolution, right?”
“Absolutely. The primary influences on evolution are how far you’ve cultivated the three core abilities, which Shards and Concepts you’ve grasped, and what bloodlines reside in your current form. Treasures and techniques can enhance these routes, but very few can supplant them.”
Nodding, he selected the Poison Mist Shard. It would give Redjaw—hopefully—paths that focused on his strengths, rather than drawing him away towards new ice-focused ones.
Redjaw had already chewed the dead lizard down to bones and gladly abandoned the carcass as Nic offered him the Poison Mist Shard. The centipede curled over the dark purple shard, which was scarred with veins of black, and sparks drifted away as it absorbed the stone.
As he was searching through his collection of Shards, Nic noticed he’d actually ended up with a fair amount of dusted and broken fragments. He didn’t know if they had any value, but he did know they were made of nearly pure Essence, imbued with certain Concepts.
Digging small holes in the earth surrounding a small town in a distant, unremarkable island chain, Nic let a sparkle of crystalline dust fall into the soil.
“You really enjoy watching the world grow, don’t you?” Nylea had crept up beside him.
Inkspur manifested on his shoulder, eagerly scrambling onto Nylea’s hand as she held it out for him. Nic noticed the grey scars on her skin had retreated slightly, leaving the back of her hand and shrinking down along her arm.
“It’s fun. You never quite know what’s going to happen. The world just keeps growing.” He was turning his attention towards Sunfire.
The volcanic maelstrom that grew from the buckshot had solidified, becoming a rich volcanic island. Verdant jungle grew from the black soil, and a range of fire-tipped mountains curled around the western shore.
Sunfire was asleep. The natives—a race of horned people with jet-black skin like volcanic rock—sung to him and placated him with food, weaving magic. Doing everything they could to keep him snoring.
“And you have new armor, I see. You seem to be rushing ahead into this world of cultivation.” She sighed. “I’ll admit, I was never very talented. I didn’t feel the thrill of growing stronger, only the frustration of days spent restlessly sitting at meditation, failing to make any headway. Alchemy was interesting to me…
