Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 0 Days 18 Hours

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

Nic shot for the gibbon in a fury.

Two monkey warriors leaped into his path. A stone axe swung for his skull. With a thought and a pulse of aura, Nic detonated the explosive Lakash rune he’d hidden on the weapon. The explosion ripped the beast’s arm away, and he caught the second monkey with a poison spray. With two corpses on the ground in the time it took him to take two steps forward, Nic was unstoppable.

The gibbon sneered and plunged its hand into the ground. Before Nic could react, that same hand emerged from the earth underneath him and dug its dirty nails into his leg. He sprawled forward. The gibbon lifted his stolen spear, pointed aimed for the ground underfoot.

Nic bent back and shot a blast of poison at the hand gripping his leg, forcing it to let go. He escaped a split instant before the spear shot upwards from the ground, rolling onto his feet as the rest of the monkey bandits surrounded him.

A wave of his hand and a half-dozen weapons detonated, cutting away limbs and filling the air with stony shrapnel. Several of the smarter monkeys had already abandoned their own tools and poured past their broken companions. They were small- but so was Nic.

They grabbed at him with their claws. He sprayed poison from his mouth in oily clouds of mist that ate away at their flesh, but more kept coming until his aura ran dry. One wrapped around his back and began to claw at his face. Another whipped him across the legs with the broken haft of an axe. He staggered to his knees and they buried him in bodies.

Groaning, his flesh covered in deep scratches, Nic reached for the magic of the Wintertusk Bracer on his right arm. A light flared out through the gaps in the monkey-pile and Nic rose free, swelling to titanic size.

Or at least, larger-than-monkey size.

Grasping the one atop his back he hurled it to the ground and stomped down hard enough to break ribs. With his hands curled into hammer fists he dove punch after massive punch into the mob as they tried to drag him back down to the earth. It was clumsy and crude fighting. It was effective. Each hit shattered bone and pulverized flesh.

He tore his way free as the last survivors fled. On all fours he chased the gibbon’s retreating tail through the cavernous hallway leading to the submerged chamber.

Nic almost caught the bastard. His hand reached out, ready to seize a leg and throw the thief into the walls. Instead, the thief plunged a hand down into the floor and made it reemerge from the cramped ceiling overhead. Seizing the scruff of its own neck it yanked upwards and was shot into the air over Nic’s grasping fingers.

“HOW-” Nic bellowed in rage. “DOES THAT WORK?”

The monkey scrambled along the walls, shooting forward at tremendous speed until they both burst out into the light of day. As they did an enormous hollering cry came from above-

And rocks began to fall.

All while he’d fought below the monkeys above had rolled huge stones to the top of the cavern. Now they used crude levers to push them down and over. A boulder smashed into the ground, nearly cripping his outstretched hand.

Nic was forced back. He yelled in anger and tore a spore-lob from his pack, flinging it out through a gap in the stone. The detonation provoked high-pitched screams of terror but the rocks kept raining down.

Stone dust filled the tunnel and choked off the last of the sunlight. The groaning of stone settled. The way forward was sealed.

“Nic, you have to calm down.”

Nic roared in anger and restrained the urge to throw himself at the barrier, rip at it tooth and claw. For one thing he had neither- and for another the boar-bracer was clearly affecting his mind. Sofia was right.

Forcing his rage into a small, tight ball Nic forced himself to return to normal size. The moment he did waves of exhaustion swept over him. Clearly the bracer exacted a massive toll on his body. Worse, it was a drain he would oblivious to until he ended the transformation.

Gasping, Nic turned and limped back down the tunnel. The few surviving, crippled monkeys got a brutal death at the end of an axe he picked up along the way.

The dead woman lay in a pool of her own blood. Eyes wide, face against the dirt.

His pack had been torn open sometime in the fighting. Packs of spices and herbs were squashed into the thin mud. Most of what had been inside was bones scavenged from the wildfire’s wake. Dozens of curved, glittering teeth sprawled across the floor.

Nic had a plan. What he needed was the energy and calm to execute it.

Settling down in front of the dead woman with closed eyes, he began to think about revenge. When he was a child in the orphanage there were plenty of bigger, older children who saw his unruly eyes and made a target out of him. Plenty of nights he spent gazing at the ceiling, planning a way to get his justice.

It wasn’t quite meditation. But it served the same purpose.

Every fiber of his being resonated with the same purpose. His breathing was steady and rhythmic. His mind was oddly calm, finding the center in a storm of fury.

After the thousandth time he imagined killing the gibbon, his cultivation base was overflowing.

His eyes opened. It felt like minutes had passed.

He laid out the two Shards from the boar and the moth in front of him. Then, grimacing, he bent down to gently the pry the jewels from the dead woman’s face with the tip of a tiger’s claw. It was a final disrespect to the dead- but Nic was alive and needed every advantage he could get.

Echoing Shard. F-Rank (Peak) // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of memory and eternity. 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 Chronos Core or a Myriad Core.

Drowning Shard. F-Rank // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of abyss and elemental water. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard. Well suited to forming a Fathoms Core, a Monstrous Core, or a Storm Core.

Humanity Shard. F-Rank // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of transformation and humility. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard. Well suited to forming a Myriad Core or a Mortal Core.

He looked them over slowly.

“Sofia? I can’t do this alone.”

“Of course. Allow me to advise.” For the first time since he met her Sophia appeared in person. She stepped out of the dark as a half-translucent image, her body made of thorned steel plate and her face a mask of stone floating in a blot of flame over the headless neck.

It was oddly comforting to see her again.

“The Phantasmal Shard is low-quality and ill-suited to your fighting style. Although creating a hallucinogenic Poison Mist would be interesting, it would ultimately detract from the Shard’s use as a killing tool. With that out of the way the Shard can be consigned to fodder for trade.”

Nic nodded. He liked to think he was a fighter who could think on their feet and lure his enemies into traps, but he didn’t need a Shard for that. Or rather- he could use any Shard to that end without needing a specialized one.

“The Wasteland Shard holds interesting possibilities. Combined with your Adhesive Shard it would simply make your touch cause rot and decay, becoming redundant with Poison Mist. Combined with the other two, it would allow you to breath a death-infused smog with a Breath of Miasma or create Titanic Osteoglyphs, a Hunter-Gatherer variant focused on raw strength but only able to work with bone. These are simple options but not to be ignored.”

In short it was a brute offensive path. That held an appeal to Nic in his present state but he refused to follow his anger and choose it right away.

“Echoing is perhaps the hardest to predict. Its interactions with your first two shards are complete unknowns, although I could speculate that combined with Adhesive Touch it might be able to steal aura or even abilities from others. However, combined with Hunter-Gatherer it would create Totemic Hunter Glyphs, the ability to summon phantoms of the creatures you’ve incorporated into your weapons.”

“Drowning has known interactions with every one of your Shards. Combined with Poison Mist or Adhesive Touch it could create either a Shard of Caustic Spew or Mire-Calling, each focused on summoning and controlling an area of liquid. The former focuses on destruction across a wide area, while the latter is for restraining and controlling foes. Combined with Hunter-Gatherer Petroglyphs it would create Ice Age Petroglyphs- a variant focusing on infusions of ice and water.”

The Mire-Calling Shard was especially tempting, because Adhesive Touch had so few potential routes. It also seemed like it would bring Adhesive Touch closer into alignment with his other two Shards, making eventually forming a core much easier.

“Humanity is more mysterious. This is the Shard that allowed the Kelpie to regain human form. Combined with Poison Mist it would allow you to do the same, but your ‘human’ form would poison anything it touched. This is called the Shard of the Cursed Child.” She paused. “I am unsure what combining it with Adhesive Touch would do, which is becoming an irritating running theme, but I’m certain it could create a Hunter-Gatherer Technoglyphs Shard, a flat upgrade enabling you to work with more advanced materials and form crude machines.”

Nic thought carefully.

Sofia was definitely trying to guide him towards Hunter-Gatherer Technoglyphs. Likely she saw the most growth potential there. On the other hand, taking Breath of Miasma or Mire-Caller would be the most immediate rush of strength. Breath of Miasma would enforce his strongest offensive option, while Mire-Caller would take a Shard he struggled to wield and give it an immediate and obvious combat use.

“Nicolas? I should be clear. I’m working from estimation and guesswork here. Nobody knows the true path of cultivation. If they did, there would be no need for the Integrations. And if your instincts weren’t worth something, there’d be no need for you to have a Sophont.”

“You know...” Nic reached for the Echoing Shard. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me. Actually, it’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me for a long time.”

Why the Echoing Shard? Because he wanted the strength of the boar. He wanted the sad majesty of the kelpie. He wanted these things to live on through him, and make him stronger. The Shard spoke to him.

He pushed his abundance of Essence down into Hunter-Gather Petroglyphs, beginning to hollow out a space within the core of the technique, a place for the Secondary Shard to join seamlessly with the Primary. It was like trying to guide a river that was overflowing its banks, roaring up into frothing whitewaters.

The strain made his eyes ache and turn red, and his head felt like a drum was beating inside it by the time he’d finished fully emptying his Essence pool.

And he’d have to do it again.

Reaching into his bag he took out the peach pit. The evil thing leered up at him as he shuddered and tossed it into his mouth.

The sudden hunger as he swallowed was unbearable. It was as if that hard pit was a bottomless hole in his stomach. He couldn’t help but be savage as he ate, tearing the corpses of the monkeys apart for organs and marrow. With each body he consumed the hunger grew stronger and he felt strands of demonic Essence joining his own.

Until his Essence pool was full again, straining violently as he continued to consume. There was so much meat and blood to be had. So much red.

It wasn’t until the monkeys were picked down to bones that his eyes turned towards the kelpie’s corpse.

“Nicolas!”

The sound shocked him through his dizzy state, and in one deep breath, he flung off the compulsion. A sudden retch bent him over and he clutched his hands to his mouth as he vomited up the peach pit.

The unnatural hunger bled away and he was left bursting at the seams with unused Essence. Settling into the lotus pose once more he pushed it down, finishing the work of breaking open the nodule of energy around the Shard.

Lifting the Echoing Shard to the place between his brows he pushed it down.

The stone slid through his skin with a fizzing crackle of electricity. It passed through bone and brain like nothing to meld with the nodes of energy within, filling them with a sudden new power.

He’d expected the experience to be violent or unruly. Instead it was as simple as sliding a key into a lock. The key turned, and his power flared.

The glyphs filling his head were unlike anything he’d ever learned. Rather than being functions of Essence shaped by his hand, they were spiritual things, full of intent and will of their own. They could only be drawn where that same spirit resided in the material, seeking a way to speak.

He looked at the tusks of the boar. The turtle’s shell. The tigers’ fangs.

Yes. There was a voice there.