Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 61
Beyond the gate was a huge stone chamber, bigger than should have been able to fit inside the exterior structure. The floor dropped away after a few feet, leaving a great dark chasm with a glowing golden gate at the far end. The shadows in the pit were supernaturally dark, and Nic’s adapted eyes couldn’t see through at all—the blackness in the pit gave him a strange, twisting sense of unease like it was a physical creature rather than a mere lack of light.
Standing at the lip where the floor gave way was a lamp on a stone pillar. It blazed with a soft, comforting light, the color of melted butter.
As Nic reached out and picked it up, the floor shook. They both dropped into ready stances, but no enemy emerged.
Instead, stone platforms rose out of the dark, thin roads of weathered orange-gold stone emerging from below to form a maze-like tangle of routes, dead-ends, and twisting paths. With a grinding from below, eight statues rose up—four on each side of the maze. They were in the shape of enormous men wielding blackened, rusted blades, the heads on their shoulders broken away to leave chipped stumps. Their feet were rooted to plinths of heavy stone.
Nic stepped forward to the edge of the maze, looking out. He hopped up onto the wall, getting a higher perspective with sticky mud wrapped around his hands to scout a way forward—all three of the initial paths would eventually lead to the end.
The only problem was the door at the end was sealed.
Set along the maze were colored tiles pressed into the paths. They came in three colors. Deep red tiles marked with hearts, golden tiles marked with feathers, and blue tiles marked with a bird.
“Do you understand what we’re meant to be doing here?” Sula asked from below. “Because all I know is those statues are going to come alive and attack us.”
“Hhhuhhh. Those statues are definitely murder-statues. Actually, I’d like to meet some none murder-statues, once in a while,” Nic opined. “But as for what we’re supposed to do, I think those tiles are some kind of trigger. Maybe we move across the three in some kind of order?”
“Right. I’m looking for something colorful, some kind of pattern, to let us know the order…” Experimentally, Sula flexed her hand. A bridge of ice shot across the gap, and a huge, shadowy claw erupted upwards. The bridge shattered into pieces with force and fury enough to make them both stumble back.
“Doesn’t look like going over is an option…” Sula sighed.
Nic dropped down beside her. “I think if there is an order, we won’t see it until we start the challenge.”
“I’m thinking the same. You ready?”
Nic nodded, and as one, they both stepped forward onto the maze, taking two different paths.
Instantly, the statues moved. Instead of stepping off their plinths, they moved forward atop the stone blocks, taking up all the narrow walkways of the maze as they scraped along with a rumbling stone grinding against stone.
And the colored tiles lit up. There was no order, no hints. “Fuck,” they said in unison.
Sula shot forward. She barely made it to the first turn before the incoming statue cut the intersection off, slowing briefly as it touched upon the crossroads. It swung its sword as she dodged past, taking the fork that led away from the murderous golem. Two more were heading towards her, threatening to cut off her escape.
The challenge wasn’t the statues’ ability to attack. It was their ability to block the way forward and pin her between two golems coming from each direction, leaving her trapped on the narrow paths, doomed to be crushed between them.
It was a challenge to stay ahead and keep from being caught out with nowhere to run.
Nic was faced with his own challenges, statues winding around the bends of the maze to reach him. Every time they hit a turn, they had to grind slowly in place to change facings, but they would quickly make up for lost time as they accelerated down the straight paths of the maze.
Nic pushed his cultivation into his legs and shot forward, making it to the first crossing before the statue could cut him off. They slid into a row of three, one behind the other, chasing him as he bounded down a long road through the maze’s center.
His foot hit against a red tile, and with a splintering noise, a distant part of the maze cracked and fell down into the dark.
And at the same time, a flash of light descended from the ceiling.
Nic looked up to see a massive stone head staring down at them, its eyes blazing red. Motes of crimson light shot downwards and into his body, and he reeled, suddenly weighed down by an immense pressure that felt like it was crushing him from above.
He stumbled, and the statues crashed down. A rusting blade swept for his back, and he barely rolled beneath the blow and back to his feet. It was already swinging again, relentlessly fast, bearing him down towards the edge of the path. Nic had a dozen steps before he plummeted over the edge.
Sula slammed into him from the side, carrying him down a side path as she skated along the ground on a footing of ice. “Did you see that?” she asked, dropping him onto his feet. “The door opened when you stepped on that tile!”
It was true. The door had slid just a few inches upwards, exposing a dark corridor beyond. Nic and Sula split apart as the statues turned at the corner and came grinding after them. They were being hemmed in, stone guardians sliding around the periphery paths to cut off escape, slowly winding in a net tighter and tighter.
And Nic had slowed down. The red light that had entered his body was covering him with a pressing weight, adding resistance to each step he took forward. He rotated his cultivation to try and break free, but there was no breaking the curse—he had to stumble along weighed down, trying to keep ahead of the guardians as they ground against the path behind him.
Sula slashed the air with a trio of ice knives, but they shattered against the guardians without effect.
“The tiles don’t do anything when I step on them!” she called. “It must be the lantern! I’ll try to distract as many as I can; you hit more tiles…”
“Right,” Nic croaked, turning his path to head to a blue tile. It wasn’t far, but there was a statue dead in the path, threatening to meet him head-on. He pushed his cultivation forward in a desperate attempt to reach the intersection before the guardian could block it off.
But as he stepped across the tile, another burst of light shot from the face in the ceiling. Motes of blue raced through the air towards him, and Nic pushed harder than ever, trying to stay ahead of the descending curse.
He reached the split in the path an instant before the statue did. Its sword swept outwards, and as he stumbled to change directions, using sticky mud on his feet to halt forward momentum, the scimitar ripped down and cut a sweeping gash across his face. One of his axolotl gills was scythed away, blood oozing from the stump as he rolled down the side passage.
The blue sparks entered his skin.
He was slumped on the ground, and suddenly, it felt impossible to get up. The weight on his body was something he could bear. But now a cold, relentless pressure had settled onto his mind.
He could see the door sliding partway open, slowly lifting upwards now that the second tile had activated.
He could hear the statue behind him, grinding against the earth as it turned on its heavy pedestal.
But even while he took in these facts, his mind was dizzy, reeling, barely able to focus. His body refused to obey as he frantically tried to remember what he was doing, why he was fighting so hard. The lantern rolled out of his hands and towards the edge of the pathway...
With an ominous click, the statue finished turning.
Nic bit down on his arm with his new teeth, and the burst of pain and the taste of iron-rich blood in his mouth made him shock awake. He had a brutal, throbbing headache, and his vision was blurred until he could only see vague shapes. It didn’t matter…
His hand shot out and grabbed the lantern an instant before it fell into the dark.
As the statue rushed towards him, he fought his way to his feet, running full tilt. The blade swept the air behind him.
For a second, he crossed paths with Sula. She was leading the remaining statues, dragging them on a wild chase. When he’d stepped on the tile more of the maze had fallen away, narrowing the paths, and now they were running out of ground.
He wove left, and Sula wove right.
There was only a single golden tile. It sat at the very core of the maze, and Nic groaned, seeing it surrounded by enemies. The half-suicidal plan would be to rush for it and hope the statues stopped as soon as the door opened.
But Nic was trying to quit making suicidal plans, and there was no point in doing that by halves.
“Sula! I need a ramp over and out!”
“Right!” she called back.
He ran for it. Ice was forming on the path, turning the stone slippery, lifting into vines with frost-tinged blossoms. A statue was heading straight for him, another grinding into place to prevent escape. He was caught out.
But he wasn’t done yet.
Nic stomped down on the tile and felt it click downwards underfoot.
The maze cracked, Sula nearly toppling into the dark as pathways fell and the remaining roads were cut down to a scarce few, barely enough to contain the statues closing in on them both.
As Nic rushed headlong towards the enemy, the ice-vines lifted upwards and formed a huge, towering ramp. He leapt from the top just as the stone guardian crashed through, smashing the vines into shards of ice and sprays of cold vapor.
He landed, and together with Sula, he rushed for the gate as it slid open. The guardians were close behind. There was only one road to the doorway, and one by one, they snapped into place, chasing them in a long row of glinting swords and faceless, headless bodies.
But as they stepped off the final tile of the path, the door slammed shut behind them.
And they were safe.
Nic hoped.
For the moment.
Chapter 92
Legacies
A Silver Fortune appeared in the air as the door slid shut, illuminating the space beyond the Maze of the Ushabti. The lantern in Nic’s hands had gone out, and it slowly faded into mist as he held it.
A long hallway ran upwards, the walls covered in peeling gold and blue paints depicting gods above rows and rows of hieroglyphs. Nic touched them, running his finger over the indentations in the wall looking for some trigger to receive Anet-Mu’s final message.
Nothing occurred.
Three open doorways branched out along the left-hand side, with a final sealed door at the end.
Sula drew out a vial of some blue liquid, spinning it with a flick of her wrist until it lit up a brilliant starry white. She moved into the final one of the three open rooms, turning back to nod at Nic.
It was time to loot.
Reaching up, he touched the Silver Fortune and received a puff of cosmic dust, quickly forming into a quiver of patterned white snakeskin full of brightly feathered arrows. Pulling one out, Nic conjured Archive Recall.
Feather-Flight Arrow. G-Class // Treasured Artifact. Made from the feathers of sacred birds who traveled the entire world and became sages, these arrows bear the enchantment of the traveler. Where they land, the archer will appear, leaping alongside his shot.
Slinging it over his back, Nic moved on.
He entered the first chamber to find four sarcophagi laid out in a half-ring around the doorway. As he entered, a torch flared to life above each of the four, but one by one they fell away, sputtering out. Only two remained lit.
Each of the coffins had an extravagantly detailed face carved onto it: A warrior’s proud visage with a smile twisted by scars, a beautiful woman with a shaved head and spears of bone stuck through her nose, an ugly, plague-scarred face, a huge tattoo branded into the left side, and a proud and delicate man who was nearly androgynous save for his chinstrap beard.
The woman and the branded slave were the ones beneath the burning torches. Nic moved to them first, laying his hand on the coffin lid of the beautiful warrior.
A ghost of billowing golden energy emerged from within. She appeared like an apparition of the past, every bit as gorgeous here as in the still carving of her face. With a sickle sword and a thin dagger crossed over her chest, her piercing eyes gazed down at Nic.
“I am Tamehu. In life, none could match my grace or the speed of my feet. I entered the arena as a girl from an unknown land and left as the goddess of the cheering masses. When the new gods came, of course, I prospered. To fight endlessly? To grow strong from the blood of the dead? These were meat and wine to me.”
Her voice was oddly flat, and Nic instinctively knew this wasn’t a true ghost or even an echo of the real person. It was a facsimile—an image made in her likeness.
“I leave my legacy to the strong and the fleet.” A small ring of golden bells floated in her hand. It was an anklet of silver strung with chimes that floated towards his hand.
Bangle of the Four Cardinal Bells. F-Class // Treasured Artifact. Made from precious metals taken from the four corners of a destroyed Earth, this simple bangle allows the bearer to feel the ‘wind’ of enemy strikes and evade with ease.
As it settled into his hand, the ghost vanished.
Nic moved to the next sarcophagus—the branded and scarred man. As he touched the sarcophagus, another specter arose, bent and hunched, grinning a wry smile that made Nic see instantly that this man—whatever cruelties his life had inflicted on him—had never stopped living.
“I am Nut. I was a slave to the priests of the high temple, and in secret, I chipped away the gold, the lapis, the rich materials of their godly statues. In the dark of my small quarters, I made my own gods, clever things woven together from what I had stolen. Small gods, to defend the small folks, little totems of medicine to heal sickly slaves, and charms to ease the pain of a whipping. When the new gods came, my pantheon defended me and allowed me to rise while my former masters fell.”
He held out his hand. A scarab idol materialized, its body made of a single sky-blue shard set into a frame of gold and jade stone.
“I give my legacy to those who come from below and do not forget their roots.”
Hierophant Shard F-Class (Peak) // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of immortality and bestowal. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard, but due to peak quality, the resulting skill will be easy to advance. Well suited to forming a Divinity Core, a Gracious Core, or an Ecclesiarch Core.
Nic accepted the Shard, turning it over in his hand. The ghost had already dissolved into the shadows, but he dipped his head, bowing to both sarcophagi. “Thank you.”
These were people who, even through the ages, saw some connection in him. A spark of themselves reflected in his struggle. Anet-Mu had left this place to memorialize his fallen companions and pass on small shards of their legacies.
It would be up to him to carry those hopes.
Nic entered the next chamber, but none of the sarcophagi lit up for him. No voices spoke as he ran his hands over them. He met Sula coming the other way, smiling as she looked down at a small fragment of carved bone in her hand. A flute.
“This place is something special. A little fragment of memory someone set aside for us.”
Nic nodded. “Anet-Mu. Last standing Integration. I guess...” He scratched his head. “I guess this was his way of trying to help the next world the System ate?”
They crossed ways as she went to explore the chambers where he’d already been and test her luck. Nic stepped into the final chamber.
A single torch sputtered into life.
The sarcophagus it stood over was that of a priest, cowled and covered in fine ornaments of bone. He held a staff in his carved hands and had a bald, shaven head with a forward prow of a nose and an expression both determined and kind.
As his projection rose into the air, it spoke.
“My name is Anen. I was highborn but of little wealth, and I found myself obliged to work washing corpses to pay for my own parents’ funerals. When the corpse of a pharaoh came under my care, it spoke to me and whispered secrets of the crown. In exchange, I stole his heart and buried it in the desert, so our cruel gods could not claim his soul.”
Forming in the priest’s hand was a familiar sight. A bronze plate hammered with hieroglyphs.
“My legacy goes to those who will use it to regrow the green earth and good world I once knew.”
As it descended into Nic’s hands, he grinned. Four of the six Plates of the Sun God’s Dictate he needed were in his possession. Two more, and he’d be able to assemble the cultivation manual that was divided among them.
But none of them were what he was searching for.
As he returned to the central hallway, Sula was waiting, smoking a cigarette. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.” They both looked towards the sealed final door.
“Considering the last time I tried to force a door open, it unleashed a horde of stone soldiers, I don’t think trying to crack this one by force will do us any good. Any chance you’ve got a trick up your sleeve, Nic?”
“Maybe.” Something was off here. Twelve warriors had been sent on the final mission, which only Anet-Mu had survived. And there were twelve empty sarcophagi in this tomb.
But none of them had a face Nic could imagine as belonging to Anet-Mu. He had heard the man’s voice three times now, and his impression was of a wise, patient sage, moved to incredible anger by watching his world be torn apart. Of immense bitterness lurking in a heart that had once been full of kindness.
He walked back through the rooms, searching for what didn’t belong. What was out of place and clumsy.
The System had tried to hide the last three of Anet-Mu’s messages. It hadn’t fully destroyed them but disguised them, twisted the words about so they became part of the System’s grand game.
Among the faces of the dead, Nic found an ancient king, the sarcophagus covered in gilt, the young face decorated with a headdress and golden paints. He held a sword in one hand and a crook in the other, both incredibly decorated with jewels and symbols.
Standing at the lip where the floor gave way was a lamp on a stone pillar. It blazed with a soft, comforting light, the color of melted butter.
As Nic reached out and picked it up, the floor shook. They both dropped into ready stances, but no enemy emerged.
Instead, stone platforms rose out of the dark, thin roads of weathered orange-gold stone emerging from below to form a maze-like tangle of routes, dead-ends, and twisting paths. With a grinding from below, eight statues rose up—four on each side of the maze. They were in the shape of enormous men wielding blackened, rusted blades, the heads on their shoulders broken away to leave chipped stumps. Their feet were rooted to plinths of heavy stone.
Nic stepped forward to the edge of the maze, looking out. He hopped up onto the wall, getting a higher perspective with sticky mud wrapped around his hands to scout a way forward—all three of the initial paths would eventually lead to the end.
The only problem was the door at the end was sealed.
Set along the maze were colored tiles pressed into the paths. They came in three colors. Deep red tiles marked with hearts, golden tiles marked with feathers, and blue tiles marked with a bird.
“Do you understand what we’re meant to be doing here?” Sula asked from below. “Because all I know is those statues are going to come alive and attack us.”
“Hhhuhhh. Those statues are definitely murder-statues. Actually, I’d like to meet some none murder-statues, once in a while,” Nic opined. “But as for what we’re supposed to do, I think those tiles are some kind of trigger. Maybe we move across the three in some kind of order?”
“Right. I’m looking for something colorful, some kind of pattern, to let us know the order…” Experimentally, Sula flexed her hand. A bridge of ice shot across the gap, and a huge, shadowy claw erupted upwards. The bridge shattered into pieces with force and fury enough to make them both stumble back.
“Doesn’t look like going over is an option…” Sula sighed.
Nic dropped down beside her. “I think if there is an order, we won’t see it until we start the challenge.”
“I’m thinking the same. You ready?”
Nic nodded, and as one, they both stepped forward onto the maze, taking two different paths.
Instantly, the statues moved. Instead of stepping off their plinths, they moved forward atop the stone blocks, taking up all the narrow walkways of the maze as they scraped along with a rumbling stone grinding against stone.
And the colored tiles lit up. There was no order, no hints. “Fuck,” they said in unison.
Sula shot forward. She barely made it to the first turn before the incoming statue cut the intersection off, slowing briefly as it touched upon the crossroads. It swung its sword as she dodged past, taking the fork that led away from the murderous golem. Two more were heading towards her, threatening to cut off her escape.
The challenge wasn’t the statues’ ability to attack. It was their ability to block the way forward and pin her between two golems coming from each direction, leaving her trapped on the narrow paths, doomed to be crushed between them.
It was a challenge to stay ahead and keep from being caught out with nowhere to run.
Nic was faced with his own challenges, statues winding around the bends of the maze to reach him. Every time they hit a turn, they had to grind slowly in place to change facings, but they would quickly make up for lost time as they accelerated down the straight paths of the maze.
Nic pushed his cultivation into his legs and shot forward, making it to the first crossing before the statue could cut him off. They slid into a row of three, one behind the other, chasing him as he bounded down a long road through the maze’s center.
His foot hit against a red tile, and with a splintering noise, a distant part of the maze cracked and fell down into the dark.
And at the same time, a flash of light descended from the ceiling.
Nic looked up to see a massive stone head staring down at them, its eyes blazing red. Motes of crimson light shot downwards and into his body, and he reeled, suddenly weighed down by an immense pressure that felt like it was crushing him from above.
He stumbled, and the statues crashed down. A rusting blade swept for his back, and he barely rolled beneath the blow and back to his feet. It was already swinging again, relentlessly fast, bearing him down towards the edge of the path. Nic had a dozen steps before he plummeted over the edge.
Sula slammed into him from the side, carrying him down a side path as she skated along the ground on a footing of ice. “Did you see that?” she asked, dropping him onto his feet. “The door opened when you stepped on that tile!”
It was true. The door had slid just a few inches upwards, exposing a dark corridor beyond. Nic and Sula split apart as the statues turned at the corner and came grinding after them. They were being hemmed in, stone guardians sliding around the periphery paths to cut off escape, slowly winding in a net tighter and tighter.
And Nic had slowed down. The red light that had entered his body was covering him with a pressing weight, adding resistance to each step he took forward. He rotated his cultivation to try and break free, but there was no breaking the curse—he had to stumble along weighed down, trying to keep ahead of the guardians as they ground against the path behind him.
Sula slashed the air with a trio of ice knives, but they shattered against the guardians without effect.
“The tiles don’t do anything when I step on them!” she called. “It must be the lantern! I’ll try to distract as many as I can; you hit more tiles…”
“Right,” Nic croaked, turning his path to head to a blue tile. It wasn’t far, but there was a statue dead in the path, threatening to meet him head-on. He pushed his cultivation forward in a desperate attempt to reach the intersection before the guardian could block it off.
But as he stepped across the tile, another burst of light shot from the face in the ceiling. Motes of blue raced through the air towards him, and Nic pushed harder than ever, trying to stay ahead of the descending curse.
He reached the split in the path an instant before the statue did. Its sword swept outwards, and as he stumbled to change directions, using sticky mud on his feet to halt forward momentum, the scimitar ripped down and cut a sweeping gash across his face. One of his axolotl gills was scythed away, blood oozing from the stump as he rolled down the side passage.
The blue sparks entered his skin.
He was slumped on the ground, and suddenly, it felt impossible to get up. The weight on his body was something he could bear. But now a cold, relentless pressure had settled onto his mind.
He could see the door sliding partway open, slowly lifting upwards now that the second tile had activated.
He could hear the statue behind him, grinding against the earth as it turned on its heavy pedestal.
But even while he took in these facts, his mind was dizzy, reeling, barely able to focus. His body refused to obey as he frantically tried to remember what he was doing, why he was fighting so hard. The lantern rolled out of his hands and towards the edge of the pathway...
With an ominous click, the statue finished turning.
Nic bit down on his arm with his new teeth, and the burst of pain and the taste of iron-rich blood in his mouth made him shock awake. He had a brutal, throbbing headache, and his vision was blurred until he could only see vague shapes. It didn’t matter…
His hand shot out and grabbed the lantern an instant before it fell into the dark.
As the statue rushed towards him, he fought his way to his feet, running full tilt. The blade swept the air behind him.
For a second, he crossed paths with Sula. She was leading the remaining statues, dragging them on a wild chase. When he’d stepped on the tile more of the maze had fallen away, narrowing the paths, and now they were running out of ground.
He wove left, and Sula wove right.
There was only a single golden tile. It sat at the very core of the maze, and Nic groaned, seeing it surrounded by enemies. The half-suicidal plan would be to rush for it and hope the statues stopped as soon as the door opened.
But Nic was trying to quit making suicidal plans, and there was no point in doing that by halves.
“Sula! I need a ramp over and out!”
“Right!” she called back.
He ran for it. Ice was forming on the path, turning the stone slippery, lifting into vines with frost-tinged blossoms. A statue was heading straight for him, another grinding into place to prevent escape. He was caught out.
But he wasn’t done yet.
Nic stomped down on the tile and felt it click downwards underfoot.
The maze cracked, Sula nearly toppling into the dark as pathways fell and the remaining roads were cut down to a scarce few, barely enough to contain the statues closing in on them both.
As Nic rushed headlong towards the enemy, the ice-vines lifted upwards and formed a huge, towering ramp. He leapt from the top just as the stone guardian crashed through, smashing the vines into shards of ice and sprays of cold vapor.
He landed, and together with Sula, he rushed for the gate as it slid open. The guardians were close behind. There was only one road to the doorway, and one by one, they snapped into place, chasing them in a long row of glinting swords and faceless, headless bodies.
But as they stepped off the final tile of the path, the door slammed shut behind them.
And they were safe.
Nic hoped.
For the moment.
Chapter 92
Legacies
A Silver Fortune appeared in the air as the door slid shut, illuminating the space beyond the Maze of the Ushabti. The lantern in Nic’s hands had gone out, and it slowly faded into mist as he held it.
A long hallway ran upwards, the walls covered in peeling gold and blue paints depicting gods above rows and rows of hieroglyphs. Nic touched them, running his finger over the indentations in the wall looking for some trigger to receive Anet-Mu’s final message.
Nothing occurred.
Three open doorways branched out along the left-hand side, with a final sealed door at the end.
Sula drew out a vial of some blue liquid, spinning it with a flick of her wrist until it lit up a brilliant starry white. She moved into the final one of the three open rooms, turning back to nod at Nic.
It was time to loot.
Reaching up, he touched the Silver Fortune and received a puff of cosmic dust, quickly forming into a quiver of patterned white snakeskin full of brightly feathered arrows. Pulling one out, Nic conjured Archive Recall.
Feather-Flight Arrow. G-Class // Treasured Artifact. Made from the feathers of sacred birds who traveled the entire world and became sages, these arrows bear the enchantment of the traveler. Where they land, the archer will appear, leaping alongside his shot.
Slinging it over his back, Nic moved on.
He entered the first chamber to find four sarcophagi laid out in a half-ring around the doorway. As he entered, a torch flared to life above each of the four, but one by one they fell away, sputtering out. Only two remained lit.
Each of the coffins had an extravagantly detailed face carved onto it: A warrior’s proud visage with a smile twisted by scars, a beautiful woman with a shaved head and spears of bone stuck through her nose, an ugly, plague-scarred face, a huge tattoo branded into the left side, and a proud and delicate man who was nearly androgynous save for his chinstrap beard.
The woman and the branded slave were the ones beneath the burning torches. Nic moved to them first, laying his hand on the coffin lid of the beautiful warrior.
A ghost of billowing golden energy emerged from within. She appeared like an apparition of the past, every bit as gorgeous here as in the still carving of her face. With a sickle sword and a thin dagger crossed over her chest, her piercing eyes gazed down at Nic.
“I am Tamehu. In life, none could match my grace or the speed of my feet. I entered the arena as a girl from an unknown land and left as the goddess of the cheering masses. When the new gods came, of course, I prospered. To fight endlessly? To grow strong from the blood of the dead? These were meat and wine to me.”
Her voice was oddly flat, and Nic instinctively knew this wasn’t a true ghost or even an echo of the real person. It was a facsimile—an image made in her likeness.
“I leave my legacy to the strong and the fleet.” A small ring of golden bells floated in her hand. It was an anklet of silver strung with chimes that floated towards his hand.
Bangle of the Four Cardinal Bells. F-Class // Treasured Artifact. Made from precious metals taken from the four corners of a destroyed Earth, this simple bangle allows the bearer to feel the ‘wind’ of enemy strikes and evade with ease.
As it settled into his hand, the ghost vanished.
Nic moved to the next sarcophagus—the branded and scarred man. As he touched the sarcophagus, another specter arose, bent and hunched, grinning a wry smile that made Nic see instantly that this man—whatever cruelties his life had inflicted on him—had never stopped living.
“I am Nut. I was a slave to the priests of the high temple, and in secret, I chipped away the gold, the lapis, the rich materials of their godly statues. In the dark of my small quarters, I made my own gods, clever things woven together from what I had stolen. Small gods, to defend the small folks, little totems of medicine to heal sickly slaves, and charms to ease the pain of a whipping. When the new gods came, my pantheon defended me and allowed me to rise while my former masters fell.”
He held out his hand. A scarab idol materialized, its body made of a single sky-blue shard set into a frame of gold and jade stone.
“I give my legacy to those who come from below and do not forget their roots.”
Hierophant Shard F-Class (Peak) // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of immortality and bestowal. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard, but due to peak quality, the resulting skill will be easy to advance. Well suited to forming a Divinity Core, a Gracious Core, or an Ecclesiarch Core.
Nic accepted the Shard, turning it over in his hand. The ghost had already dissolved into the shadows, but he dipped his head, bowing to both sarcophagi. “Thank you.”
These were people who, even through the ages, saw some connection in him. A spark of themselves reflected in his struggle. Anet-Mu had left this place to memorialize his fallen companions and pass on small shards of their legacies.
It would be up to him to carry those hopes.
Nic entered the next chamber, but none of the sarcophagi lit up for him. No voices spoke as he ran his hands over them. He met Sula coming the other way, smiling as she looked down at a small fragment of carved bone in her hand. A flute.
“This place is something special. A little fragment of memory someone set aside for us.”
Nic nodded. “Anet-Mu. Last standing Integration. I guess...” He scratched his head. “I guess this was his way of trying to help the next world the System ate?”
They crossed ways as she went to explore the chambers where he’d already been and test her luck. Nic stepped into the final chamber.
A single torch sputtered into life.
The sarcophagus it stood over was that of a priest, cowled and covered in fine ornaments of bone. He held a staff in his carved hands and had a bald, shaven head with a forward prow of a nose and an expression both determined and kind.
As his projection rose into the air, it spoke.
“My name is Anen. I was highborn but of little wealth, and I found myself obliged to work washing corpses to pay for my own parents’ funerals. When the corpse of a pharaoh came under my care, it spoke to me and whispered secrets of the crown. In exchange, I stole his heart and buried it in the desert, so our cruel gods could not claim his soul.”
Forming in the priest’s hand was a familiar sight. A bronze plate hammered with hieroglyphs.
“My legacy goes to those who will use it to regrow the green earth and good world I once knew.”
As it descended into Nic’s hands, he grinned. Four of the six Plates of the Sun God’s Dictate he needed were in his possession. Two more, and he’d be able to assemble the cultivation manual that was divided among them.
But none of them were what he was searching for.
As he returned to the central hallway, Sula was waiting, smoking a cigarette. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.” They both looked towards the sealed final door.
“Considering the last time I tried to force a door open, it unleashed a horde of stone soldiers, I don’t think trying to crack this one by force will do us any good. Any chance you’ve got a trick up your sleeve, Nic?”
“Maybe.” Something was off here. Twelve warriors had been sent on the final mission, which only Anet-Mu had survived. And there were twelve empty sarcophagi in this tomb.
But none of them had a face Nic could imagine as belonging to Anet-Mu. He had heard the man’s voice three times now, and his impression was of a wise, patient sage, moved to incredible anger by watching his world be torn apart. Of immense bitterness lurking in a heart that had once been full of kindness.
He walked back through the rooms, searching for what didn’t belong. What was out of place and clumsy.
The System had tried to hide the last three of Anet-Mu’s messages. It hadn’t fully destroyed them but disguised them, twisted the words about so they became part of the System’s grand game.
Among the faces of the dead, Nic found an ancient king, the sarcophagus covered in gilt, the young face decorated with a headdress and golden paints. He held a sword in one hand and a crook in the other, both incredibly decorated with jewels and symbols.
