Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 68
Right then, he felt light-hearted and free, able to think clearly about his past and his future…
It was almost too good. And Nic never trusted ‘too good’ to be true.
“Sofia? Is… something off here?” he asked.
“You’re not in any danger,” she replied precisely, “but there is a spiritual environment here that’s affecting you. I’m glad you noticed on your own. It’s that statue there.”
Instantly, Nic rolled onto his belly and grinned up at the statue of the goddess. “Sooo… you’re saying if I pillage this shrine, I could feel this way anytime?” It was a good feeling. Like everything bad in the world was distant and toothless. He could still think clearly—in fact, he thought more clearly than ever; all the mental pressure that would blind him or cloud him up with anger was gone.
“No! That is…” He could feel Sofia’s annoyance. Just like she could feel his amusement. “You couldn’t take the whole statue even if you tried, so it’s a null point.”
“I don’t need to take the whole thing, though, really. Look, I bet you the whole statue isn’t magic. There’s probably a smaller device hidden inside.”
“Oh? And you’d go breaking apart shrines like pinatas if I didn’t stop you, I imagine. As a matter of fact, the whole statue probably is magic. This isn’t the cultivation of the System, born of devices and treasures. It’s something older than that. Thousands of years of primitive worship building up to imbue the shrine with a Concept of divinity.”
“Iiinteresting.” Nic slid onto his feet and moved over to the statue, running his hand along the pedestal of sandstone and trying to feel the energy within. There was something there, but it wasn’t Essence. "So anything can become a god if enough people believe in it?" He already knew Concepts demanded something between belief and understanding, a kind of iron conviction, but he'd assumed it had to be internal. If other people believing in you could lend you power...
"It would take millions of years or billions of people for you to gather enough Conceptual energy to ascend. And if you did, your devil heritage would consume the divine power and run rampant within you, likely turning you into a mad beast." She paused. "And, if that doesn't convince you, you should know that you'd need to believe in your own divinity for it to work. I don't think I've let your ego get that out of hand."
"Hey, what ego? I'm very humble. For instance, when I rule this planet, I won't make anyone call me highness or your majesty," Nic replied, grinning. So it was possible. Not likely, and from the sounds of it, dangerous.
But it wasn't necessarily becoming a god that was on his mind. "So if you have people relying on you—say a settlement—could that become a Concept?"
"Well spotted. Yes, it could, and you've shown a willingness to defend the weak. That tells me your internal self is likely compatible with such a Concept. But, Nicolas, I hesitate to say more. Seeking internal Concepts is known to be tricky. If you actively chase a specific one, you might warp your self-image, becoming obsessed, despondent, or confused. They're simply too tightly wound to the core of your being for you to pick and choose."
"If you want to expand your Concepts, look to the world outside yourself. Seek the nature of the elements and the land around you."
Nic nodded slowly, taking it in. Just to see if anything happened, while he was in a playful mood, he dug his fist into the sand and let it pour out between his fingers. Watching the ribbon of dust unfold, he tried to see something of deep and spiritual significance in the dust of a dead world.
There was nothing.
He sighed and threw it away. As the sand swirled through the air, it briefly caught in place as if landing against something invisible. For a moment, the temples and towers of an ancient city materialized in the swirl of dust.
Nic blinked. “What was that?”
“The seed of something,” Sofia said, “but if you chase it too hard, you risk losing it.”
He shrugged. It seemed like all this spiritual stuff worked that way. If you knew precisely what you were looking for, you’d never find it.
Instead, he settled down into the lotus position and closed his eyes.
As he began to practice the simple technique Sofia had taught him, conjuring a light of pure aura in his cupped palm, Nic considered the battle.
He hadn’t made any true errors that he could see. But all the same, he’d nearly died twice.
The first time was when the ape-like sand devil had surprised him with its teleportation trick. That had let the incredibly strong beast lock him in a grapple, and without the featherflight arrows, there would have been no escaping that grip.
His reaction time was fast enough that he didn’t think it was his speed that was lacking. Instead, Nic needed a better way to escape once he was caught.
The second time had been less one mistake and more a death of a thousand cuts. Letting the lantern lift from his hands and float above his shoulders, Nic rose to his feet and began to practice.
He swept the air with his foot and punched forward, shadow-boxing, and tried to replay the exact movements of the fight as he darted across the sand.
The second battle had opened with the Puppetmaster sand-devil distracting him from the queen and leading him on a chase. If he’d been able to catch up to the long-legged creature before it led him into the ambush, that would’ve changed everything.
But once he was surrounded by all three, he’d had to rely on the overpowering strength of his Warform.
They had simply been too good at fighting as a group, intercepting and deflecting his attacks before he could finish off any one of them. It had been a frustrating fight…
Movement. His weakness was movement. He had raw speed and agility, but nothing to help leverage them. The best he could do was infuse aura down into his legs and take off like a cannon shot.
Range. If he had better options for striking at a distance, he could play a very different game when confronted with multiple enemies. The bow the elves had made him did help a little…but he was envisioning something different. He lifted a stone and flung it forward, making it ricochet off a nearby tree trunk. Birds shot into the air as the tree shook back and forth.
A throwing knife. Simple, flexible, and he could draw it from his hip and throw in a single movement if he needed to extend his range.
The light was still hovering above his shoulder. He’d gotten better at creating and maintaining them. Lifting his hand, Nic conjured another into the air, letting it drift above his palm. It was smaller and weaker than the first, but progress was progress.
The end goal of the training was to conjure a light for every acupoint in his body and link them together until they formed a complete diagram of his meridian lines. That way, he could examine himself if his ability to conduct aura was ever damaged—a simple training technique that could become a medical tool once its original purpose was done.
It was actually pretty ingenious how cultivators had refined every part of the process. Thousands of years of clever people making little innovations. Cultivating…
It was becoming a part of history, in a way. Taking on everything left by those who came before you and trying to carve your own way with it. Even all the graverobbing and looting, if you looked at it just right and relaxed your morals a smidge, was a form of learning from the past.
So why did the System try to hide the stories of those who’d fought and died to leave a mark on the face of history?
He let out a sigh, unsatisfied, and threw himself back into the shadowboxing with redoubled strength. His blows made the air shake; his footsteps sending the sand exploding upwards. Nic was stronger than he’d ever been. Tomorrow, he’d be stronger still.
But he was still fighting to see the shape of the mountain he was climbing.
Chapter 103
Food Chain
Nic dove into the river. Cool water cascaded off his skin, strings of bubbles churned up by the drop surrounding him. Fish were frightened away in all directions as he kicked, orienting himself to stare up at the sun through the rippling golden surface of the water.
He was miles above the ground. The river was suspended in midair like a diamond string, reflecting the light. All the heat of the desert was gone, replaced by rushing cool currents that swept over his pinkish skin and soothed his wounds.
There was nothing in the world like water for an axolotl. It felt like the exhaustion and wounds of the past were all just dust the river swept away.
Turning, Nic spotted a fat, silver-belled fish chasing a school of small orange minnows. Drawing all his power into his limbs, he kicked off like a harpoon and shot through the water. The carp barely had time to turn before his open palm slapped against its skull and stunned it. Grabbing hold, he didn’t bother with gutting or cleaning his catch.
Three gulps and he’d swallowed it whole, feeling a burst of Essence fill his being. It was like he thought. These fish were treasures for the first people to make it to the floating islands—every one had rich medicinal strength in its flesh.
They were beautiful. Scales sparkled like diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and topazes. Every shade and shine of gemstone, flickering through the water. Little floating lumps of stone in the stream were covered by trailing strands of algae where little fish hid, awaiting the day they could join the race and hunt for their prey.
The biggest fish Nic had seen from above were massive, with long jaws like pairs of scissors that snapped shut and cut lesser specimens in half. Crocodiles, massive hunting eagles, and other beasts all rested on the islands and dove in to feast.
And now, Nic had joined the hunt. Kicking off a floating rock, his hand shot out for a silver flash that darted through the current. He felt something bladed rip against his palm, and instinctively, he drew back, letting the prey escape from his grip.
It was an ornamental fish with sword-sharp ridges of cobalt blue extending from its silver scales and a fat, bulldog head like a goldfish. For a moment it was stunned by the impact with his fingers, but before Nic could move to grab at it again, it shot off, leaving him with blood and fish slime on his fist.
He laughed and shifted position, perching atop the tiny stone that floated in the river’s center and digging his fingers into the coating of mud that surrounded it. A grim smile hung on his face.
It wasn’t long before he saw another flash of silver coming his way. With the way the river bent and turned in the air, he could see for nearly a mile down its azure-green back. As the razor-quick fish shot forward, Nic kicked off and flung a fistful of mud into the waters.
Shaping it with Mire-Caller, he made the muddy silt expand outwards into a shockingly durable net. As the fish slammed into it, those bladed ridges cut away parts of the netting, but it couldn’t pull the whole net free of Nic’s relentlessly strong grip. It slowed and struggled and came to a halt, barely able to keep flopping about as Nic reeled his prize in.
He ate the fish carefully this time, cutting away the blades to get at the pink meat and soft bones beneath. Blood trailed through the waters as he chewed like a monster, gnashing away at the delicious flesh.
It was good to be king.
By now, Baby Boots was likely to be the only other competitor up here, and the idiot would never look twice at the fish in the river. What was he going to do? Cut himself a fishing rod?
So the water belonged to Nic.
He repeated the net trick, again and again, reeling in whole schools of orange-gold fish as they rushed past and snagging a particularly beautiful turtle with patterns of starlight in the shape of constellations glowing atop its shell. The former he ate, and the latter he ate carefully to keep the shell intact, stowing it away.
It was then he caught sight of the goliath.
It was coming down the river slowly, but there was no mistaking the strength in every motion. It was built like a dragon in miniature, with a long trailing neck and tail that made it seem almost serpentine.
Jagged spears of dark bone ran down its back, and its head was a beak of nearly black bony material surrounded by veils and curtains of drifting, translucent-white membranes, all spotted with luminous circles like the frills of a deep-sea jellyfish.
Drifting Cloud Leviathan. E-Class // Demi-Sapient. Ruler of a river far above the earth, this beautiful and tyrannical beast devours treasured fish by the hundreds to sustain its growth. It is a unique specimen with only internal-acting Shards, giving it immense strength but little versatility and a medicinal property to its marrow that has seen much of its species hunted to near-extinction.
Near extinction, huh? Nic wasn’t one to cry over one fewer species of overgrown lizard, not if the bones were as rich in medicinal strength as the Recall suggested.
Nic drew his new glaive, Scarseeker, from his bag. It was far too large for his axolotl-form to wield easily, but he was planning something different.
The beast was coming forwards, chasing a string of terrified fish through the water. It would explode out of the river, jaws first, snapping at the air, then crash back down and pick up speed again as its scaly back trailed through the open air surrounded by frothing white foam.
Nic braced, shifting position again so he was letting the current push him back sideways against the stone, his feet set and the spear pointed forward in his hands.
Like a shadow ripping through the waters, the beast arrived. It had a jaw that split open three ways, unfolding like a flower of teeth and red muscle. Whether it saw him or not, Nic didn’t know—there were no eyes.
He just held fast, wrapping his fingers in sticky tar from Mire-Caller, and slammed the spear forward.
The beast’s own weight skewered it through the neck, where the scales were softest, and its momentum ripped Nic free of his solid ground. He clung on to the spear desperately as the world filled up with bubbling foam from the leviathan thrashing above—it moved like an angry serpent, whipping forward and back trying to dislodge him, the sheer force of its movement making the water clutch and cling to his skin like a thousand grasping hands.
Then it exploded out of the water, towards the sky, and Nic was hauled with it. Blood was coating his fingers and dripping off his face from the massive wound, but the creature was nowhere near dead.
They slammed back into the water again with a force that kicked Nic in the guts. In retribution, he drew in a breath full of clean, cool water and spat out a deadly grey mist. It rolled against the creature’s side and ate away at its scales, leaving them brittle, weak.
The creature roared, water shaking, and twisted. Nic barely saw it coming in time—a shoal of sharp rocks drifting in the water, coated by seaweed. The beast slammed its side against them and tried to scrape him free, raking huge bloody marks in its own side.
The stones smashed down against him, striking against his body. Nic was torn away from his grip on the spear and sent spiraling into the water, which was thick with…mud.
He stretched out his finger, and the explosion of muddy water collapsed into a massive net. It snagged against the bony spines of the beast’s back, holding fast, and Nic grabbed hold again to ride on. The beast was trying to buck off the clinging net, swaying back and forth at violent speeds.
It didn’t stop Nic. He crawled across the net, heading slowly through the torrential water towards the place where the scales were weakest. The beast was picking up speed, surging through the river with all its force, trying to shake him from its back.
He refused.
Inch by inch, he climbed forward and then drew his hatchet into his hands. Attaching his feet firmly with Mire-Caller, he rose and swung down at the weakened scales, piercing through them with the blade and sinking poison into the leviathan’s flesh. Again and again, dropping down to grab hold with another hand, he continued to chop away. Blood exploded into the water and was torn backward by the current, creating a ribbon of red as the creature swam on.
And then it dove down.
Nic felt his stomach lurch as the beast burst out of the underside of the river, quickly diving back up before gravity could seize hold. The moment it left the floating, weightless water, the normal laws of physics asserted themselves, and as Nic was pulled out into the open air, he was nearly thrown aside, a fall that would have sent him tumbling for miles down into the desert below. He clung on.
Kicking with its massive limbs, the leviathan shot upwards this time, breaching through the opposite side of the river like an arrow from a bow. This time Nic couldn’t hold. The sheer inertia lifted him from the beast’s back, and as they crashed down into the water, the impact tore him free, sending him tumbling back in a wave of foam.
The leviathan turned, its roar shook the waters, and it plunged towards him with open jaws. Nic saw only one way out—forward.
He kicked off and threw himself into the beast’s mouth, but as he did, he brought a wave of sticky mud with him. It splattered the inside of its jaws and the gulping abyss of its throat, giving him something to grab hold of within. Drawing the desert lion’s khopesh, he swung with the hooked blade, snagging the soft inner lining of the beast’s mouth as its jaws slammed shut behind him and it tried to swallow him whole. River water surged past, a suction dragging at his feet, and the blade slipped down, cutting a deep trench through the pink flesh.
Nic snarled, drew the Sandrider Blade, and slammed it into place behind him. He planted a foot against the blade’s flat and held on, stuck fast in place as the beast chokingly tried again to swallow him. And again. And again. The disgusting meat of its throat was pressing down on him from all directions, but Nic still had a last trick to play.
He broke open a canister of ink from his wyvern friend and used Mire-Lurker to absorb it down into the mud. Using his aura, he created three large runes from the ink-mud mixture, drawing explosive sigils on the inside of the beast’s throat.
As it made one last attempt to dislodge him, Nic uttered the command word.
Fire blew through its neck and burst into the water, searing up clouds of steam.
The beast’s final roar was choked and weak as it died.
