Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 54
The next sphere contained an even more humanoid being.
This one was an enormous albino centipede that reared up into a humanoid torso, the seemingly-human form constructed like a doll made out of carapace. Dark eyes rested in the joints of the overlapping plates, and the entire form had an androgynous, wisp-like beauty—until you saw the bright-red mandibles extending from either side of the mouth, a blue tongue covered in tiny poison spines flickering out from within.
Nic and Redjaw were unanimous in dismissing this one. Its only strength was growing closer to humanoid and cultivating at advanced speeds. A potential for growth, not combat.
There were stone-devouring, rock-shelled centipedes that could drill through the earth and carve massive tunnel complexes. Thinner, smaller ones that had been raised as hunting hounds, with ornate designs of gold growing from their red-shelled heads and lifting up into decorative crests, their thin feelers able to sense prey through aura alone.
Both were strong, strong options.
In the end, the field narrowed to three candidates, each fitting Nic’s needs and the want of his beast to become a combatant of massive power.
The first was a grey-black worm with a head covered by enormous plates of white bone, forming a potent armor and a brutal crushing beak in one. It hunted with long, vibrantly blue tongues that each ended in club-like growth covered in fanged hooks meant to grab people and drag them towards the armor-crushing guillotine of the mouth.
Earthseeker. F-Class // Demi-Sentient. Hunting by vibration, this skull-headed worm tunnels underneath and attacks by ambush. Its powerful build allows it to reel in even massive prey, and the crushing fall of its beak can tear through any defense. Its chief weakness is its slow movement above the ground.
The second was a brilliantly colored creature with interlocking scales of orange and stripes of red fin running along its back. It had a blunt, whiskered head and whip-thin white tendrils extending from its skull. In the place of eyes, long red antenna expanded out from the hollow sockets. In addition to white-yellow fangs, a pair of massive pincers lined with serrated spikes extended from its mouth. The centipede nature survived only in the armored plates running down its back and the numerous small crawling legs that augmented the two huge, powerful limbs that extended from its forebody, ending in two-clawed feet.
Redback Lindwurm. F-Class // Sapient. This descendant of ancient dragons and poisonous worms bears a vicious nature, eternally hungry for flesh in the way dragons hunger for gold. Existing in poison swamps, it can breathe underwater for days, feeds on rotting meat, and kills with its putrifying breath.
The last was a rainbow-shelled, gaudy centipede with countless eye-shaped blotches of vivid colors painted on its carapace. Antenna covered in thin, dark hairs like whip-thin black feathers expanded from its carapace, matching the ink-black march of its legs. It had two-fold pincers, a crushing ‘x’ of interlocking jaws an arms-length long.
Eye-Bite Crawler. F-Class // Demi-Sentient. Native to sweltering jungles where it crawls between the trees and ambushes from above, this terrifying beast hunts by hypnosis, weaving luminous patterns with its antenna to lull its foes into a torpor state—at which point it devours their eyes, and the colors on its shell grow a little more beautiful and hypnotic.
Chapter 80
Dreams of Glory
In the end, the choice to remove the Eye-Biter was easy. Mesmeric attacks could be incredibly potent, but they were the only thing the Eye-Biter brought to the table, not backed up with any significant speed or power. Worse, a mesmer could fail completely—the trapdoor spider that had ambushed Nic had tried such an attack on him and lost its life when the attack failed to faze his reinforced mind.
In the end, mesmers were a gimmick that either opened the way for a single fatal strike or failed to impact the battle entirely, and Nic already had more than proven his ability to take enemies by surprise, ambush them, and open them up to killing blows from tricky angles.
That left the Lindwurm and the Earthseeker.
Both had significantly more power than the Eye-Biter, with the Earthseeker, in particular, standing out as deadly. It could simply crush through most armor and flesh, ripping enemies to shreds once it had them in its jaws, and its tongues gave it a versatile path towards victory, able to strike quickly and efficiently from a distance and then reel stunned enemies in.
Its great weakness was the speed of its main body. Above ground, it was almost immobile. Most enemies would simply be able to outpace it if they chose to retreat.
The Lindwurm was overall faster—and especially fast when it delved underwater. Its mix of slug, dragon, and centipede was bizarre, but its slithy form gave it immense survivability. The slime-coating scales could turn aside swords, and the lingering poisons of its breath could hold enemies back. It was strong through sheer resilience, without the stunning power of the Earthseeker’s crushing jaws but able to hold its own with deadly bites and its powerful foreleg claws.
Nic hesitated.
Beneath the Bloodline Sea, the distant suns glowed brilliantly like different worlds, different timelines he could go down. Redjaw was coiled around him, waiting for his decision. Obedient as a puppy.
“The Lindwurm…”
It was simply better adapted for what Nic needed. Not as deadly, but tougher, able to hold up longer in a fight and absorb pressure from Nic. The ability to tunnel was something he’d desperately miss, but Redjaw’s overwhelming strength was in his venomous bite—which could now be extended into Poison Mist and augmented by the Lindwurm’s deadly natural breath. Nic could even add the Frostbind Shard to augment that same single trick further.
A single breath wiping out the enemy’s ability to fight back and sowing their veins with deadly rot.
Together they swam for the Bloodline Spark, which seemed to shrink the closer they came. While from a distance it was the size of a burning sun, with each moment they moved forward, it was reduced until it was no bigger than a fingernail shard of blazing fire.
Redjaw’s mandibles closed over it. The glow burned within his throat, moving down towards his belly.
And the Bloodline Sea began to shake. The other suns blinked out as the waters churned, a roar filling the drowned sea of blood as a maelstrom formed, and Redjaw was consumed from within by the light. His spiritual body dissolved, expanding into a shapeless black blot.
The light was beginning to leave him. Sparks broke away, fleeing into the spinning waters.
With each one that left, his form would be more limited.
Nic slammed his hands down against the cloud of shadows and the lights that flickered within like runaway fireflies. Redjaw was desperately circulating his cultivation, trying to draw in the escaping bloodline powers and break down the glowing core of the Spark, but his mastery of cultivation was weak at best. His Essence flowed sluggishly and without focus.
But Nic could help him now.
His own power flowed into Redjaw, helping to harness the strength washing through his meridians and push it to rush forward, clear, straight, and powerful; Nic’s spirit form ached with the pressure backwash of holding on to two cultivation bases at once, but he gave his all to helping Redjaw mount an assault against the Bloodline Spark, sending wave after wave of focused might to break down the blazing point of energy and sweep the resulting sparks down into the centipede’s core.
Slowly, the dark mass of Redjaw’s spirit took a new form.
The Bloodline Sea was fading, losing its red color and turning black. They only had moments more left in the cultivation dream, and Nic pushed harder, actually burning some of his Essence through the Concept of Sacrifice to fuel the final push.
More and more of the Bloodline Spark shattered, but the innermost core held a final vivid shard of power that refused to be broken down and absorbed.
The dream faded…
Nic awoke with Redjaw wrapped around him. Sweat and even blood clung to his flesh, but the centipede was massively bigger than it had been, longer than his arm, and able to wrap around his entire body. A terrible pattern had appeared on the final plate in its armor—the one that sat over Redjaw’s namesake mandibles and long antenna. It resembled the glare of a draconic set of eyes, with spikes that carried down the whole of Redjaw’s spine.
Clearly, achieving ‘just’ a Warform still had some benefits to the original shape as well.
Nylea was watching from a distance, softly clapping her hands. Inkspur was sitting on the rim of the Saturnalia’s cauldron, refusing to look at his brother-in-arms’s achievement. Nic just grinned, pulling out a cloth to wipe away the black blood summoned by using Sacrifice.
“How long was I out?”
“Oh, three and a half hours. A relatively brief evolution…”
Nic nodded and swallowed. So he could expect an even more intense experience when it came time for him to go through the Bloodline Sea and seek his destiny.
He sighed and opened his cultivation map.
Burning through the Essence had put him back, but he was still on track to advance his cultivation in time to assist with evolution. His only hindrance now was finding an appropriate Secondary Shard to fuse now that he’d given away the Wasteland Shard to Tarquin.
Sighing, Nic dropped back onto the cultivation map, waved to Nylea, and flopped onto his back. It was time for a well-earned rest…
Nic awoke to the feeling of his cultivation base overflowing, a brilliant star burning in his chest waiting to be harnessed. He sat up, wiped his eyes groggily, and yawned before repeating the familiar process of pushing it towards the nodes of the Poison Mist Shard clustered around his throat.
It was a second before his half-sleeping brain processed what he’d forgotten to do.
He hadn’t used the cultivation map at all. He’d simply pushed the Essence by his own will down into the nodes, using it to slowly expand and hollow out the reservoirs of each darkened space within his meridian lines. By now they were faintly glowing, like half-born stars.
“Huh.”
Nic had always known that it was possible to cultivate without the System. After all, many of the worlds the System integrated already had cultivators, who had been practicing for years without maps or techniques provided by the System.
And countless worlds still practiced their own arts, far beyond the System’s ever-expanding reach.
But being a cultivator on his own merits—a true cultivator—was something Nic had never really expected. Even in the days of practicing desperately for the Marchesa’s Legion, he’d simply imagined himself as a soldier and a fighter.
This new world was changing him.
It was demanding that he become more.
And a faint smile hung on Nic’s face as he reached for his mystic bag. Opening his bag, he took out several treasures he’d accumulated. All of them had been marked by the System’s Archive Recall with the same descriptor—‘Astral’.
As best he could figure out, that meant they were creations of the System itself.
The first he’d gotten was the plastic capsule Matteos had given him. Contained within was a plastic diorama of a bee tending a garden of sunflowers. It was some kind of contained, miniaturized space intended to attach to a Settlement and expand it.
The next was the crystal palace that contained his System Adjunct, who would apparently act as a miniature Tutelary Statue and allow him to gain rewards for killing enemies, as well as buy services like messages to other worlds.
The third was the most recent. It was the jade seal that summoned the Wreckrunner, a System-approved merchant from a world of endless water.
But the last group was the most interesting. They were the crystals Nic had taken from Azmin Hale’s tent, each containing a training simulation the System had sent to help guide the young prodigy as she learned to cultivate.
Of course, there was also the pearl. Nic didn’t even like touching it—the pain was too intense, reminding him of the soul-numbing agony he’d suffered when struck by the Guardian’s scythe. Sadly, while Sula and the System Adjunct both might have been able to help him decipher its secrets and learn how it had helped Azmin grow so powerful, in the end, he simply didn’t trust either of them.
And as for sticking it in his head to find out what it did, that was right out.
He thought he might ask Nylea about it once they sealed the deal and formed a Settlement together, but he wasn’t sure she’d be able to help. The pearl seemed even more mysterious than her cursed bloodline and ancient family roots.
Sighing, he left it in the bag and picked up the Seal of the Wreckrunner. Infusing a tinge of aura into the squared seal, he saw the characters written along the front light up, and the stone began to resonate, but nothing more happened.
Something was missing, and Nic could guess what.
Sweeping his treasures back into his bag, he crossed to the small fountain within the temple and tossed the seal down into the shallow waters. Instantly, they foamed as a pitch blackness opened beneath as if the mouth of an enormous abyssal trench had replaced the ground. The seal sank out of sight, its glow dimming and dimming as it fell into infinite green-black depths.
“Are you going to show or what?” Nic called.
Then a hand thrust out of the water. It was grey-black and sleek-skinned with rough scales and humanoid fingers. Broken iron shackles clung to the thick wrist behind it. A huge creature hauled itself up, a blue-skinned mer-kin with the broad anvil-shaped face of a hammerhead shark and curling green tattoos over the entirety of his skin. He was broad and powerfully built, with a fishing net cast over one shoulder and a loose belt of rope. Rusted golden coins with holes pierced in them to make rings hung from his ears.
“Called and answered, boyo,” the Wreckrunner declared, opening his arms wide. “And I must say, I’m pleased as hell to make land on your fine world.”
Chapter 81
Messages from the Deep
“The depths are full of treasures, and few dive deeper or know the dark waters better than I. Old Ben Thick at your service, sir.”
The shark-man sat on the edge of the fountain. His broad, thick fingers shuffled a deck of red-backed playing cards, making them bend and snap out to dance from hand to hand with an almost hypnotically easy motion.
“So, what’s your pleasure, cappy’tan. I’ve got spices and I’ve got liquors, of course, but more’n that I see you’re a fighting man, so…” With a casual movement, he caught a card between two fingers and flipped it over. Depicted in bright colors was a flintlock pistol made of what looked like brass and ivory, with roses carved into the white grip. “Taken from a captain of the Marchesa’s own fleet. Made of whalebone and charmed to fire underwater.”
“Or…” Another card, another illustration. This one was a blade of blue stone carved with concentric green patterns. It was a broad cleaver with no hilt—the crudest form of cutlass. “The sea-fire carver. Blazes with blue flame when put underwater, and damn good for a wielder of fire Shards who needs to travel the deeps.”
The cards danced. More images appeared in the shark-man’s hands. “A brass knife from the witches of the green depths, what summons a tendril to seize your foes. A grudgetaker’s harpoon, to channel your rage and bitter hatred into strength. A brimstone rifle that carries the might of the deep’s volcanoes. Just say the word. What can Ol’ Ben Thick do for you?”
Nic reached into his bag and pulled out the miniature ship. It had been stored within the mystic bag when he found it in a shipyard full of rotting, ancient wrecks. “Can you tell me what this is, exactly?”
“Oh, usually there’s a charge for that sort of thing.” Ben smiled a sharp-toothed smile. “But seeing as I could recognize one’a those piss-drunk and staggering, and you’re my new favorite customer, I’ll tell you a secret for free. That’s what it looks like, a ship what’s been shrunk down. I’m guessing you’re struggling to get it to do somethin’, and that’s because it takes a whole crew’s aura to fuel one up.
“By the looks, that one’s made for sand rather than sea, but I still have some fixings that might interest you. Behold...”
He turned his palm to show four cards. A sail patterned with golden waves that spiraled in geometric patterns. A blood-red fiddle with a mermaid carved into the neck and scroll. A ship’s wheel made of green malachite and covered with iron chains. And last, a masthead in the shape of a gorgon.
“A sail that knows how best to catch the wind, and a fiddle to summon one to your command. A wheel that binds the souls of the dead to serve as your crew—seeing as you don’t seem to have one ready. And a masthead that knows the course towards your desires.”
“Useful. Now I’m guessing you say the price, and I feel pain.”
“For the lot? Fourteen thousand. An’ that’s a bargain.” He smiled till his one gold-capped fang shone.
Nic nodded, flashing a pained smile. “We’ll talk about it. I’ve already got a few things I need to spend my first few fortunes on.”
“Oh, that’s always the way. Now, anything more immediate? Or shall I make myself scarce till I’m needed?”
“Have any Secondary Shards?”
“Aye, that’s a thing I can sell you for a song. Shards of all kinds…” His deck flashed a few. “Secondary’s easy enough, cause those of us who can survive the deeps will surely find more than a few resting among the bones of those who couldn’t. What kinda Shard were you lookin’ to augment, hoa?”
“Poison Mist.” He paused, and then added, “And one for ice if you have it…”
“Northern seas and poison waters, I hear.” The snap and flick of the cards multiplied for a second. The deck seemed to move on its own, and the same card was never seen twice.
“A kraken’s Shard will make your poisons blind and bind their victim like a spill of darkest ink. A mermaid’s will lull a man into the depths of dreams. But maybe, maybe…”
This one was an enormous albino centipede that reared up into a humanoid torso, the seemingly-human form constructed like a doll made out of carapace. Dark eyes rested in the joints of the overlapping plates, and the entire form had an androgynous, wisp-like beauty—until you saw the bright-red mandibles extending from either side of the mouth, a blue tongue covered in tiny poison spines flickering out from within.
Nic and Redjaw were unanimous in dismissing this one. Its only strength was growing closer to humanoid and cultivating at advanced speeds. A potential for growth, not combat.
There were stone-devouring, rock-shelled centipedes that could drill through the earth and carve massive tunnel complexes. Thinner, smaller ones that had been raised as hunting hounds, with ornate designs of gold growing from their red-shelled heads and lifting up into decorative crests, their thin feelers able to sense prey through aura alone.
Both were strong, strong options.
In the end, the field narrowed to three candidates, each fitting Nic’s needs and the want of his beast to become a combatant of massive power.
The first was a grey-black worm with a head covered by enormous plates of white bone, forming a potent armor and a brutal crushing beak in one. It hunted with long, vibrantly blue tongues that each ended in club-like growth covered in fanged hooks meant to grab people and drag them towards the armor-crushing guillotine of the mouth.
Earthseeker. F-Class // Demi-Sentient. Hunting by vibration, this skull-headed worm tunnels underneath and attacks by ambush. Its powerful build allows it to reel in even massive prey, and the crushing fall of its beak can tear through any defense. Its chief weakness is its slow movement above the ground.
The second was a brilliantly colored creature with interlocking scales of orange and stripes of red fin running along its back. It had a blunt, whiskered head and whip-thin white tendrils extending from its skull. In the place of eyes, long red antenna expanded out from the hollow sockets. In addition to white-yellow fangs, a pair of massive pincers lined with serrated spikes extended from its mouth. The centipede nature survived only in the armored plates running down its back and the numerous small crawling legs that augmented the two huge, powerful limbs that extended from its forebody, ending in two-clawed feet.
Redback Lindwurm. F-Class // Sapient. This descendant of ancient dragons and poisonous worms bears a vicious nature, eternally hungry for flesh in the way dragons hunger for gold. Existing in poison swamps, it can breathe underwater for days, feeds on rotting meat, and kills with its putrifying breath.
The last was a rainbow-shelled, gaudy centipede with countless eye-shaped blotches of vivid colors painted on its carapace. Antenna covered in thin, dark hairs like whip-thin black feathers expanded from its carapace, matching the ink-black march of its legs. It had two-fold pincers, a crushing ‘x’ of interlocking jaws an arms-length long.
Eye-Bite Crawler. F-Class // Demi-Sentient. Native to sweltering jungles where it crawls between the trees and ambushes from above, this terrifying beast hunts by hypnosis, weaving luminous patterns with its antenna to lull its foes into a torpor state—at which point it devours their eyes, and the colors on its shell grow a little more beautiful and hypnotic.
Chapter 80
Dreams of Glory
In the end, the choice to remove the Eye-Biter was easy. Mesmeric attacks could be incredibly potent, but they were the only thing the Eye-Biter brought to the table, not backed up with any significant speed or power. Worse, a mesmer could fail completely—the trapdoor spider that had ambushed Nic had tried such an attack on him and lost its life when the attack failed to faze his reinforced mind.
In the end, mesmers were a gimmick that either opened the way for a single fatal strike or failed to impact the battle entirely, and Nic already had more than proven his ability to take enemies by surprise, ambush them, and open them up to killing blows from tricky angles.
That left the Lindwurm and the Earthseeker.
Both had significantly more power than the Eye-Biter, with the Earthseeker, in particular, standing out as deadly. It could simply crush through most armor and flesh, ripping enemies to shreds once it had them in its jaws, and its tongues gave it a versatile path towards victory, able to strike quickly and efficiently from a distance and then reel stunned enemies in.
Its great weakness was the speed of its main body. Above ground, it was almost immobile. Most enemies would simply be able to outpace it if they chose to retreat.
The Lindwurm was overall faster—and especially fast when it delved underwater. Its mix of slug, dragon, and centipede was bizarre, but its slithy form gave it immense survivability. The slime-coating scales could turn aside swords, and the lingering poisons of its breath could hold enemies back. It was strong through sheer resilience, without the stunning power of the Earthseeker’s crushing jaws but able to hold its own with deadly bites and its powerful foreleg claws.
Nic hesitated.
Beneath the Bloodline Sea, the distant suns glowed brilliantly like different worlds, different timelines he could go down. Redjaw was coiled around him, waiting for his decision. Obedient as a puppy.
“The Lindwurm…”
It was simply better adapted for what Nic needed. Not as deadly, but tougher, able to hold up longer in a fight and absorb pressure from Nic. The ability to tunnel was something he’d desperately miss, but Redjaw’s overwhelming strength was in his venomous bite—which could now be extended into Poison Mist and augmented by the Lindwurm’s deadly natural breath. Nic could even add the Frostbind Shard to augment that same single trick further.
A single breath wiping out the enemy’s ability to fight back and sowing their veins with deadly rot.
Together they swam for the Bloodline Spark, which seemed to shrink the closer they came. While from a distance it was the size of a burning sun, with each moment they moved forward, it was reduced until it was no bigger than a fingernail shard of blazing fire.
Redjaw’s mandibles closed over it. The glow burned within his throat, moving down towards his belly.
And the Bloodline Sea began to shake. The other suns blinked out as the waters churned, a roar filling the drowned sea of blood as a maelstrom formed, and Redjaw was consumed from within by the light. His spiritual body dissolved, expanding into a shapeless black blot.
The light was beginning to leave him. Sparks broke away, fleeing into the spinning waters.
With each one that left, his form would be more limited.
Nic slammed his hands down against the cloud of shadows and the lights that flickered within like runaway fireflies. Redjaw was desperately circulating his cultivation, trying to draw in the escaping bloodline powers and break down the glowing core of the Spark, but his mastery of cultivation was weak at best. His Essence flowed sluggishly and without focus.
But Nic could help him now.
His own power flowed into Redjaw, helping to harness the strength washing through his meridians and push it to rush forward, clear, straight, and powerful; Nic’s spirit form ached with the pressure backwash of holding on to two cultivation bases at once, but he gave his all to helping Redjaw mount an assault against the Bloodline Spark, sending wave after wave of focused might to break down the blazing point of energy and sweep the resulting sparks down into the centipede’s core.
Slowly, the dark mass of Redjaw’s spirit took a new form.
The Bloodline Sea was fading, losing its red color and turning black. They only had moments more left in the cultivation dream, and Nic pushed harder, actually burning some of his Essence through the Concept of Sacrifice to fuel the final push.
More and more of the Bloodline Spark shattered, but the innermost core held a final vivid shard of power that refused to be broken down and absorbed.
The dream faded…
Nic awoke with Redjaw wrapped around him. Sweat and even blood clung to his flesh, but the centipede was massively bigger than it had been, longer than his arm, and able to wrap around his entire body. A terrible pattern had appeared on the final plate in its armor—the one that sat over Redjaw’s namesake mandibles and long antenna. It resembled the glare of a draconic set of eyes, with spikes that carried down the whole of Redjaw’s spine.
Clearly, achieving ‘just’ a Warform still had some benefits to the original shape as well.
Nylea was watching from a distance, softly clapping her hands. Inkspur was sitting on the rim of the Saturnalia’s cauldron, refusing to look at his brother-in-arms’s achievement. Nic just grinned, pulling out a cloth to wipe away the black blood summoned by using Sacrifice.
“How long was I out?”
“Oh, three and a half hours. A relatively brief evolution…”
Nic nodded and swallowed. So he could expect an even more intense experience when it came time for him to go through the Bloodline Sea and seek his destiny.
He sighed and opened his cultivation map.
Burning through the Essence had put him back, but he was still on track to advance his cultivation in time to assist with evolution. His only hindrance now was finding an appropriate Secondary Shard to fuse now that he’d given away the Wasteland Shard to Tarquin.
Sighing, Nic dropped back onto the cultivation map, waved to Nylea, and flopped onto his back. It was time for a well-earned rest…
Nic awoke to the feeling of his cultivation base overflowing, a brilliant star burning in his chest waiting to be harnessed. He sat up, wiped his eyes groggily, and yawned before repeating the familiar process of pushing it towards the nodes of the Poison Mist Shard clustered around his throat.
It was a second before his half-sleeping brain processed what he’d forgotten to do.
He hadn’t used the cultivation map at all. He’d simply pushed the Essence by his own will down into the nodes, using it to slowly expand and hollow out the reservoirs of each darkened space within his meridian lines. By now they were faintly glowing, like half-born stars.
“Huh.”
Nic had always known that it was possible to cultivate without the System. After all, many of the worlds the System integrated already had cultivators, who had been practicing for years without maps or techniques provided by the System.
And countless worlds still practiced their own arts, far beyond the System’s ever-expanding reach.
But being a cultivator on his own merits—a true cultivator—was something Nic had never really expected. Even in the days of practicing desperately for the Marchesa’s Legion, he’d simply imagined himself as a soldier and a fighter.
This new world was changing him.
It was demanding that he become more.
And a faint smile hung on Nic’s face as he reached for his mystic bag. Opening his bag, he took out several treasures he’d accumulated. All of them had been marked by the System’s Archive Recall with the same descriptor—‘Astral’.
As best he could figure out, that meant they were creations of the System itself.
The first he’d gotten was the plastic capsule Matteos had given him. Contained within was a plastic diorama of a bee tending a garden of sunflowers. It was some kind of contained, miniaturized space intended to attach to a Settlement and expand it.
The next was the crystal palace that contained his System Adjunct, who would apparently act as a miniature Tutelary Statue and allow him to gain rewards for killing enemies, as well as buy services like messages to other worlds.
The third was the most recent. It was the jade seal that summoned the Wreckrunner, a System-approved merchant from a world of endless water.
But the last group was the most interesting. They were the crystals Nic had taken from Azmin Hale’s tent, each containing a training simulation the System had sent to help guide the young prodigy as she learned to cultivate.
Of course, there was also the pearl. Nic didn’t even like touching it—the pain was too intense, reminding him of the soul-numbing agony he’d suffered when struck by the Guardian’s scythe. Sadly, while Sula and the System Adjunct both might have been able to help him decipher its secrets and learn how it had helped Azmin grow so powerful, in the end, he simply didn’t trust either of them.
And as for sticking it in his head to find out what it did, that was right out.
He thought he might ask Nylea about it once they sealed the deal and formed a Settlement together, but he wasn’t sure she’d be able to help. The pearl seemed even more mysterious than her cursed bloodline and ancient family roots.
Sighing, he left it in the bag and picked up the Seal of the Wreckrunner. Infusing a tinge of aura into the squared seal, he saw the characters written along the front light up, and the stone began to resonate, but nothing more happened.
Something was missing, and Nic could guess what.
Sweeping his treasures back into his bag, he crossed to the small fountain within the temple and tossed the seal down into the shallow waters. Instantly, they foamed as a pitch blackness opened beneath as if the mouth of an enormous abyssal trench had replaced the ground. The seal sank out of sight, its glow dimming and dimming as it fell into infinite green-black depths.
“Are you going to show or what?” Nic called.
Then a hand thrust out of the water. It was grey-black and sleek-skinned with rough scales and humanoid fingers. Broken iron shackles clung to the thick wrist behind it. A huge creature hauled itself up, a blue-skinned mer-kin with the broad anvil-shaped face of a hammerhead shark and curling green tattoos over the entirety of his skin. He was broad and powerfully built, with a fishing net cast over one shoulder and a loose belt of rope. Rusted golden coins with holes pierced in them to make rings hung from his ears.
“Called and answered, boyo,” the Wreckrunner declared, opening his arms wide. “And I must say, I’m pleased as hell to make land on your fine world.”
Chapter 81
Messages from the Deep
“The depths are full of treasures, and few dive deeper or know the dark waters better than I. Old Ben Thick at your service, sir.”
The shark-man sat on the edge of the fountain. His broad, thick fingers shuffled a deck of red-backed playing cards, making them bend and snap out to dance from hand to hand with an almost hypnotically easy motion.
“So, what’s your pleasure, cappy’tan. I’ve got spices and I’ve got liquors, of course, but more’n that I see you’re a fighting man, so…” With a casual movement, he caught a card between two fingers and flipped it over. Depicted in bright colors was a flintlock pistol made of what looked like brass and ivory, with roses carved into the white grip. “Taken from a captain of the Marchesa’s own fleet. Made of whalebone and charmed to fire underwater.”
“Or…” Another card, another illustration. This one was a blade of blue stone carved with concentric green patterns. It was a broad cleaver with no hilt—the crudest form of cutlass. “The sea-fire carver. Blazes with blue flame when put underwater, and damn good for a wielder of fire Shards who needs to travel the deeps.”
The cards danced. More images appeared in the shark-man’s hands. “A brass knife from the witches of the green depths, what summons a tendril to seize your foes. A grudgetaker’s harpoon, to channel your rage and bitter hatred into strength. A brimstone rifle that carries the might of the deep’s volcanoes. Just say the word. What can Ol’ Ben Thick do for you?”
Nic reached into his bag and pulled out the miniature ship. It had been stored within the mystic bag when he found it in a shipyard full of rotting, ancient wrecks. “Can you tell me what this is, exactly?”
“Oh, usually there’s a charge for that sort of thing.” Ben smiled a sharp-toothed smile. “But seeing as I could recognize one’a those piss-drunk and staggering, and you’re my new favorite customer, I’ll tell you a secret for free. That’s what it looks like, a ship what’s been shrunk down. I’m guessing you’re struggling to get it to do somethin’, and that’s because it takes a whole crew’s aura to fuel one up.
“By the looks, that one’s made for sand rather than sea, but I still have some fixings that might interest you. Behold...”
He turned his palm to show four cards. A sail patterned with golden waves that spiraled in geometric patterns. A blood-red fiddle with a mermaid carved into the neck and scroll. A ship’s wheel made of green malachite and covered with iron chains. And last, a masthead in the shape of a gorgon.
“A sail that knows how best to catch the wind, and a fiddle to summon one to your command. A wheel that binds the souls of the dead to serve as your crew—seeing as you don’t seem to have one ready. And a masthead that knows the course towards your desires.”
“Useful. Now I’m guessing you say the price, and I feel pain.”
“For the lot? Fourteen thousand. An’ that’s a bargain.” He smiled till his one gold-capped fang shone.
Nic nodded, flashing a pained smile. “We’ll talk about it. I’ve already got a few things I need to spend my first few fortunes on.”
“Oh, that’s always the way. Now, anything more immediate? Or shall I make myself scarce till I’m needed?”
“Have any Secondary Shards?”
“Aye, that’s a thing I can sell you for a song. Shards of all kinds…” His deck flashed a few. “Secondary’s easy enough, cause those of us who can survive the deeps will surely find more than a few resting among the bones of those who couldn’t. What kinda Shard were you lookin’ to augment, hoa?”
“Poison Mist.” He paused, and then added, “And one for ice if you have it…”
“Northern seas and poison waters, I hear.” The snap and flick of the cards multiplied for a second. The deck seemed to move on its own, and the same card was never seen twice.
“A kraken’s Shard will make your poisons blind and bind their victim like a spill of darkest ink. A mermaid’s will lull a man into the depths of dreams. But maybe, maybe…”
