Breaker of Horizons: A LitRPG Adventure, page 69
“Yeah. Nobody eats me, buddy,” Nic spat out, kicking his way from its open mouth.
Nobody yet. And that had been closer than he would’ve liked.
Chapter 104
Showdown
Nic struggled, using Mire-Caller to lodge his feet in tar as he strained and fought. The beast’s body was huge, and the river’s currents were dragging it rapidly downwards. There was no bottom to the river, only a miles-high drop.
One that would take his prey out of his reach for good and give it to the scavengers below.
Already, shrieking river birds were landing along the leviathan’s back and trying to feast on the bare red meat where he’d wounded it. Nic glared at them as he fought to keep his meal from falling. Inkspur, Redjaw, and Sunfire all ignored his outrage to peck away alongside the greedy birds, squabbling for the best scraps.
It wasn’t easy being king.
Nic used the Sandrider Blade to shape spikes of hardened and compressed sand, hooking the beast onto the side of the island. No matter how much weight or force was applied to the floating islands of stone, they never seemed to move at all as if they were fixed points in space.
He grunted in satisfaction as the spears held. It would only last so long as his aura reinforced them, but it would give him time to take his cut.
As much as he protested, the truth was he couldn’t hope to eat the entire thing himself.
“Any advice on where to start?”
“The organs will have the most concentrated Essence, but as for the bones, it’s difficult to say. These specimens sometimes have a cage of bone around their heart, or otherwise, their power is contained in the spine. Could go either way with this one.”
Nic nodded, taking a moment to lean on one knee. The water was being painted red by the corpse, and the birds were turning the air into a riot of fighting and singing. All the while, the sun beat down.
He felt good. As always, the fight left him burning with adrenaline until his wounds barely seemed to matter. Taking up his trusty hatchet, he dove down and carved away.
An hour later, Nic was coated in blood despite the water continuously trying to wash him clean. As he surfaced and climbed back onto the island, he carried a cluster of freshly-cut bones over his back, tied together with a loose string. His bag was already full, and so was his stomach.
To say the beast was full of medicinal power was an understatement. Its three Shards were all for bodily refinement, and the result was every portion of its flesh being overfull with Essence.
He’d packed away the heart and liver for later and eaten most of the lesser organs, pausing to dig through and find the Shards. As usual, his first and second tries at cutting them out had ended with the precious crystals being destroyed…
But the third was clutched firmly in his grasp. Apparently some life had lingered in that massive body, enough to preserve the precious stone.
Chainbreaker Shard. E-Class (Peak) // Primary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of strength and evolution. It allows the bearer to enhance their physical strengths beyond any normal limit. Due to peak quality, the resulting skill will be easy to advance. Well suited to forming a Titan Core or a Mortal Core.
Without a doubt, it was the most valuable Shard he’d managed to claim for himself. As for the bones, they were full of medicinal marrows and good materials to work with. As he released the spikes of sand and the rest of the beast slowly sank, he hauled himself ashore.
Nic was certain nothing could ruin his mood. Not when he could spend the whole day enjoying sun, water, and meditation beneath the godly shrine.
He was wrong on both counts.
The angel, Azel, was perched atop the goddess’s shoulder, looking down with a look of perpetual amusement carved into its mask.
“Hello, Nicolas Winterhome.”
“Hey, get off there. If you’re going to talk, come down here and talk to me face-to-face!” Nicolas snapped. He could already feel the afterglow of honest work and close combat fading in his soul, replaced by dark anger.
“Very well.” In one smooth movement, Azel dropped to the earth and stood over him, leaning down. Nicolas refused to back away. “I have news.”
The last time he’d seen the angel, it had flown away to search for the Dimensional Anchor holding back the arrival of the Inquisitor and the hunt for the heretic. “Have you found it?”
“Oh, yes. And we won’t be alone.” The angel’s musical voice was full of satisfaction. “Tell me, why did you give the elves such a terrible weapon?”
“They asked nicely!” Nic snapped.
“Interesting. Because they, too, are headed for the Anchor.”
“What?”
“Allow me to show you.” It lifted its hands, and an image appeared between them, first out of focus but growing in clarity until Nic could see ships moving across the desert. Elves at the wheel and the railing, grim-faced, ready for war. Sula manned the helm herself, and strapped down against the sail was the nuclear fire, that terrible army-green cylinder of metal. The image swooped back and out over the sands. He saw the anchor. It was a pillar of stone wrapped in glyphs, hidden among a cluster of ruined buildings and broken statues.
“And”—the angel’s voice could not be more self-satisfied—“I fear Logos is not entirely confident in you. They have elected a second representative.”
The image pulled back farther. Another ship was coming from the opposite direction, from the human’s camp. As the unseen eye closed in, Nic saw their leader standing at the prow. Azmin Hale. This was the first time he’d directly laid eyes on her, but she was unmistakable. Just like Sula, she carried an aura around her, a billowing stormcloud of power and potential that charged the air where she stood with raw possibility.
She had a grim, narrow face, coming to a pointed chin and a small, grimacing mouth. Her eyes were ice-cold, and her hair was shaved to an almost-bald fringe, her arms light and covered by ropey muscle, scars, and peeling flecks of sunburnt skin.
This was one of the System’s chosen.
And if he wasn’t ready, she’d destroy him.
“I’m guessing she wants a rematch with Sula. But, here’s the thing. You happened to choose the one asshole who wants me dead, too,” Nic spat, looking into Azel’s eyes.
“Don’t look at me. I would never endanger you recklessly. If this was decided, well, my superiors must think it will be in both your interests to… settle this grudge. The rewards for the winner are likely… magnificent.”
“Sofia? How true do you reckon that is?”
Sofia’s voice was tight and controlled. “Servants of Logos don’t strictly lie, Nicolas. They just bend the truth until it screams.”
But Nic barely heard him. Something had fallen into place.
Azel told him where the Dimensional Anchor was.
Logos told Azmin.
But Sula was also headed towards the Dimensional Anchor. And nobody had told her where it was. She had just known the whole time.
The thought that Sula might be the heretic had crossed his mind before. It was obvious, so obvious he’d chosen to follow his gut reading of her instead. She cared about her people. She wanted to save them. Unleashing rampaging monsters on the humans didn’t get her closer to any of that.
Except…
She wasn’t taking the nuclear fire home to save her people. Maybe they couldn’t even be saved. Or maybe, maybe they could, and she knew she was the wrong person for the job.
One by one, the pieces fell.
Her mother had been taken by the Inquisitor.
But that wasn’t the end of things. The heretics weren’t just killed but captured. Their souls were tortured and turned into angels in the service of Logos over hundreds of years of torment.
How long had Sula’s mother been gone? Not a hundred years.
Could she still be brought back?
If they could kill the Inquisitor—if they could find a weapon capable of harming the jailor—they could set the prisoner free.
Nic’s hands curled into fists as he saw it all now. The sand devils would draw suspicion, summoning the Inquisitor, but the Anchor would stop him from arriving until the weapon was ready. When they had their nuclear toy, they’d break the Anchor, and the Inquisitor would step through only to be turned to ash before he could lift a hand.
Nic had no love for the System, but he’d seen what it took to be branded heretical. He’d seen Lavhin’s work and the breeding pools where the sand devils were made. If the devils had really run amok, they would’ve eaten every living thing for miles.
And all of this he could have walked away from if she hadn’t dragged him into the middle of it.
“For your information. If you were to abandon this quest now, there would be no consequences for you. Alas, the same could not be said for Shane and myself…”
“You don’t need to threaten him. I’m going,” Nic said coldly. “How long until they arrive at the Anchor?”
“Hours still. You are the closest of the three forces. You could break it long before either of them comes close...”
“No. We’re going to settle this, once and for all,” Nic stated. “So I’m going to spend the time resting and getting my warform back. Sofia, wake me up when we have to go…”
He walked straight past Azel.
But the angel couldn’t resist taking a last poke at him. “You know, you’re wrong on one count. Azmin Hale doesn’t head for the Anchor to fight Sula. She is coming to reclaim something she feels was taken unjustly.”
Nic turned back. “She can take whatever she wants from my corpse. Same goes the other way.”
He then settled down into a meditation posture, forcing all thought from his head.
Chapter 105
Calm and Storm
Nic was getting better at meditating. His constant spiritual growth was letting him control his own thoughts with more and more ease, sweeping away the constant worries and distractions. For the first time, he understood how battle-hardened warriors who lived to fight could be happy settling down to meditate for days on end.
In a way, combat and meditation…
They were the same.
When he fought, the world fell away, and his world narrowed to the single points of himself and his opponents. He had no worries, no nagging thoughts, he only moved. And meditation…
Once again, it made everything simple and clean. The only things in his mind were the moving of his lungs, drawing in energy and swirling it through his veins towards his core.
They both allowed him to escape the world.
And right now he needed that, but it was hard to find.
All through the hours he spent in silent practice, thoughts kept flashing through his head to disturb him. He was furious with Sula for lying to his face. Angry at himself for giving up the nuclear fire on trust. The field of the dead left behind by the ascended sand devils swept through his mind more than once…
Alongside the sneering face of Azel…
And the cold, piercing stare of Azmin Hale…
He snarled and swept them away again, trying to turn his mind into a blank, dark space. It was no good.
Nic cracked an eye open.
The angel was gone.
Nic rose with a sigh, swiping the dust off his legs and stretching his arms overhead. His spine let out a series of satisfying pops as his muscular frame twisted this way and that, warming up for the day ahead. In just over a week, he’d changed the body he was given until it was almost unrecognizable.
The sheer strength on his form made the newt-folk’s original soft-bodied charm almost vanish. He was thick and solid around his middle like a tree trunk, and his arms were clearly defined by the bulges of muscle. Tattoos sat on his skin, moving gently as the spirits within stirred.
It felt good. He’d come to this world as an outsider in a borrowed body.
Now, it finally felt like his own skin.
Kicking off from the ground, Nic darted up a palm tree, running up the trunk and seizing a great green leaf as he dropped back to the ground. In moments, his hands had skillfully woven in a frame of driftwood from the river, and he dipped a finger into his reserve of ink to draw runes of wind and durability.
In moments, he had made a glider.
“Sofia, which way are we going?” He bent down at the edge of the island, staring out into the desert.
“North. We’re not far away. If you keep going, you’ll see the ruins.” She paused. “If you kill Azmin, you’re only going to infuriate my sisters more.”
“Yeah, but I’m not seeing the peaceful option between me and her. And your sisters have enough genius brats to watch over. They’ll get over losing one.”
“Maybe. But that pearl is something else. Something very powerful. If they gave her that, it’s a sign of true favor. I wish we could use it for ourselves…”
“Something tells me that thing is cursed as all hell.”
“I can’t tell you what it is. That information is restricted. But if I said to trust your instincts…”
“I know what you mean.”
One week on, and it didn’t feel so strange sharing the inside of his head with Sofia. And he’d started to forge an alliance with Lady Nylea, met and saved Matteos, and even Sula was some kind of connection, enough so that he felt obligated to be there when her story reached its end.
He was starting to think...
It was a strange kind of thought, one that resonated through his cultivation almost in the way learning his Concept had.
But he’d started to think this would be the end.
His first week had been a mad tumble of fighting, feasting, and practicing, then fighting again. It had been an all-out rush to claim everything he could. But soon, he’d start a Settlement.
Soon, there’d be a new kind of fight.
This was his chance not to carry any loose ends over. To settle the scores—one way or another.
Before he took off, Nic knelt.
Digging into his bag, he took out one of the wind-blown little lotus seeds from the small flower he kept preserved in a wrapping of loose cloth. Every one of them represented precious second chances, the ability to return to a place in an instant.
He pushed one into the soil and fed it aura until a sprout of green started to twist up from the earth. In moments, there was a small, delicate lotus flower blooming beneath the statue of the goddess.
Lifting his glider onto his back, Nic took a running start and jumped into open sky.
The wind billowed into his sail and caught him, lifting him up into a long, smooth glide over the desert, the sand rushing away below him so quickly the massive dunes seemed to move like waves on the ocean and created an illusion of a red-orange sea below him.
There were ruins prodding up from the sand. Pale white remnants of ages past. He flowed over them, staring down at the faces of massive statues that seemed to be drowning in the sand sea.
Ahead…
Clouds circled a single point, and he saw the rising of a pillar in the distance, surrounded by haphazard ruins. Unlike the fallen buildings and collapsed statues, the pillar stood straight towards the sky, and a thin misty light swirled around it constantly.
The danger-sense from his Eight-Eyed Mantle screamed in sudden terror, and Nic didn’t hesitate. He dropped from his glider and slammed into the sand at massive speed, sending him rolling.
Above, a wave of heat and raw power flew overhead, annihilating the glider. It had come close enough to leave a burning sensation across his back, even through the thick scales of his armor.
Nic rolled onto his feet with hatchet in hand. He looked up and saw a familiar floating figure.
Baby Boots slowly descended towards the ground, pausing a few inches before his red-leather cowboy boots made contact. The wind whipped across his clothes, lifting the short dark cape that hung around his shoulders. Beneath he wore a vest of green silk emblazoned with golden dragons that moved like fish, swimming through a land of embroidered lilies and suns.
Nic couldn’t help himself.
He snickered. Inkspur popped out, climbing up his back to perch on his shoulder and puff up his little scaly chest. “My master wishes to know! Does your MOMMY still think it’s cute to dress you up like that for SCHOOL?”
Instantly, the smirk on Baby Boot’s face was gone. His hand whipped out, aiming two fingers towards the wyvern as a terrible glow filled his skin. Veins of fire erupted down his hand and the twin fingers became a single blazing spearpoint of gold-green light.
Nic flung himself one way as Inkspur kicked off his shoulder and flew the other. The bolt shot between them, and Inkspur crowed out triumphantly. “Temper, temper! My master only wanted to offer you a chance to KILL YOURSELF QUIETLY before he’s forced to REND THE FLESH FROM YOUR BONES.”
For a moment, Baby Boot’s attention was split. Nic hoped—hoped beyond hope—that the idiot would try to focus on the loud, obnoxious target and not the very quiet, very dangerous one.
He had a plan for Baby Boots. His hand was already crawling towards his bag, moving slowly…
Baby Boots made up his mind. He swung towards Nic, snapping his fingers together. Thin darts of gold-green flame cascaded in all directions.
Nic kicked backward, dodging the half-hearted attack. They burned the sand where they landed, leaving long tunnels of glowing glass burrowed through the dune.
“If you cut off both your arms and plunge the sword through your belly, the young master might still spare you!”
Baby Boot’s face twitched. “If I cut off both my arms, how the hell would I put a sword through my belly, you idiot bird?”
“Ooh, you think I’m a BIRD, do you? Somebody doesn’t get to sit in the BIG KID CLASSES, I bet. Got held back a few grades, no?”
Just for an instant, his opponent’s attention flickered.
Nic moved. Pushing his foot down into the sand, he circulated aura into the Sandrider Blade.
