Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 4 Days 11 Hours

Goal: Save Tarquin

The third fountain-source was at the very edge of the valley. In fact, the statue was built into the walls, towering up to massive heights above a series of red-rock ruins. Nic picked his way carefully through the single walls orphaned from their original structures, around hollow buildings full of shadows, and over bodies lying in the sand.

There were more of the frog people here. They seemed to be the original inhabitants of this valley, with their rough, pebbled skin well-adjusted to the desert sands and harsh heat. Nic’s own pink flesh was flaking away as his regeneration worked to keep the sun from peeling him like an orange.

He knelt down. The corpses were old, but the sand and heat had worked to preserve them. They felt light, strangely hollow, as he turned them over.

Their throats and bodies were intact. He had to search for a moment to find the killing wound, low on the backs of their legs. The cuts were huge and blunt. The skin around each wound was turned black by poison.

Nic hissed. He slipped the scarf from around his neck, wrapping it around his leg instead.

Almost every one of the fountain’s defenders had been killed the same way, but Nic managed to find a few who’d been crushed instead. Something huge had squeezed down on their chest and arms until the bones beneath broke into shards. The violence of the death meant their bodies were far more decayed and hidden in the sand, and Nic almost missed them.

He slowly advanced deeper and deeper, rotating his cultivation base and feeding aura into the Eight-Eyed Mantle. His senses extended until every shadow on the dunes, every brush of the wind lifting red sand into the air, was within his sight.

Nothing living moved, and for some reason, his danger sense could only detect a vague, omnipresent threat. Whatever was coming had the ability to evade the Mantle’s strongest component.

Around the statue’s feet, the valley walls had been carved into dozens of small caves and houses that rose directly out of the stone. Stairwells ran up and down between the entrances in a complex web of rough redrock steps.

It had been a city, or at least a large village. And every single thing Nic could see was dead.

He peered into a house. Everything that could rot had, leaving only the pottery and a few scraps of furniture. Nothing interesting.

Nic turned away from the empty houses, waiting for the threat to emerge as he circled closer and closer to the wide pool of flat stones that surrounded the goddess’ feet. Steps descended down into the basin, and he could imagine how beautiful this place had been many years ago.

Sparkling water would have filled the pool. The husks of ancient palms would have been whole, healthy trees, with grass around their base. The village was beautiful in an exotic way, built vertically up the cliff face and full of small crossings where two stairways joined.

He advanced on the fountain. The third and final sword was plunged into a break in the earth.

And like clockwork the guardian arrived. The earth rippled like water and it burst through the solid stone, jaw unhinging to strike for the back of his leg.

The beast was a massive serpent with golden scales and bright silver eyes on the underside of its hood, and long, whip-like tendrils extending from its body. It shot like an arrow for the back of his leg-

And caught a brutal backhand from the scarf wrapped around that leg as Nic spun around, dodging away. The scarf unfurled, wrapping around the snake’s neck while Nic seized the far end and quickly stuck it to the wall with adhesive aura, creating a leash.

The snake was already trying to retreat back into the ground, but Nic had anchored it in place. It thrashed like a fish caught on the fisherman’s line.

Its tendrils snapped forward to try and seize him. Nic slipped through, axe raised, and hacked down into its skull with a double-handed chop. Blood spurted up as the blade bit through bone and muscle. As he pulled his blade back he realized it was regenerating, the wound starting to knit closed. Two more brutal swings and he’d put an end to that.

All in all, it was an immensely quick fight. The assassin could slide through sand and earth easily, striking from any angle. Any wound that didn’t kill it outright could be shrugged off as it retreated underground to regenerate.

But none of that protected it from being bound in place and immobilized.

So far, most of the guardians Nic met had distinct weaknesses. He was least equipped to deal with the River-Drinker, which matched his own strengths in mobility and easily outranged him. The bismuth golem had been strong but slow and easily defeated with tactics beyond a straight fight. The earth-serpent…

Had been counting on being able to surprise him.

It showed that his own weakness was his limited reach. Even the bow was only a stopgap, since it was the weakest of his weapons.

Working with his axe he chopped away the head, and found the Shards implanted on the underside of the cobra’s hood - one in each of the wing-like eye patterns that covered the underside. He began to pry them out with the axe’s edge.

Stonedepths Shard. F-Class // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of earth and travel. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard. Well suited to forming a Mountain Core or an Underdark Core.

Heartspring Shard. F-Class // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of healing, blood, and water. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard. Well suited to forming an Invulnerability Core, a Sanguine Core, or a Rain Core.

“Sofia?” He asked. “What would happen if I combined this Heartspring Shard with my Poison Mist Shard?”

“Hmm. My records indicate something called a Vileblood Shard. It would retain your current ability to create poisons but turn them liquid, and vent them whenever your skin was broken. The usual disadvantage is that bleeding on your enemy as a strategy tends to kill both parties - but your regeneration could solve that problem.”

“Worth taking a look at.”

He examined the first of the two, the Stonedepths Shard. If he was able to retrieve the full Primary this would be an ideal Shard for his centipede - allowing it to tunnel through the earth for ambushes even more deadly than the snake’s.

And he knew the beetles in the valley had something similar.

But the fact he’d never retrieved a single Primary Shard was lending credibility to his theory- in order to claim a Primary he’d need to capture his prey alive.

For now he tucked away the Shards, along with the severed head. The teeth and the poison were both valuable to him. After a moment of consideration he took the body as well, planning to strip away the scales when he had more time.

And then it was time for the sword. Grasping it in both hands, Nic pulled until the blade shattered and retreated quickly. This time it was a little less violent than the flooding of the cavern. A thin geyser of water shot up, and the crystalline spray of droplets filled the air with mist. Bubbling water filled the stone pool as Nic scrambled up the steps.

The eyes of the goddess statue burned bright. Her frog-headed face lit up as the eyes blazed blue.

“Little one. You have awakened the valley.” In the distance he could see the eyes of the other statue flare. “We are grateful. Return to the fountain, and gain our blessing.” For a moment there was a presence in the statue. A sense of something watching him through the stone visage.

Then the eyes went out, and the presence faded.

Nic was left alone as the patter of falling water filled the pool.

With his prizes claimed, Nic slid through the ruined village. He explored high and low, searching for the golden marks that would combine to form a hidden rune. He found them only when he climbed onto the goddess’ shoulder and looked down, the wind sweeping away the dust to reveal a grand design carved into the rooftops under her shadow.

“Sofia? Do your thing.”

As the notification filled his mind with the words of the System, Sofia intervened. A crystal ringing filled his ears as she changed the message and revealed what was below.

Logos ruled in the seven hundredth and eighteenth year,

Twelve of us remained. We were the strongest and the best, and our arms were heavy from swinging countless swords, taking countless lives. This was the Integration. We had gone from men to weapons.

But we were still unprepared.

To save our world, we were asked to take the core of another. To venture into a maddening place called the Rift and seek out a destroyed planet within, cracked like an egg, to take its yolk - its heart. I alone have returned from this task. And I have failed.

Nic shivered as the voice faded away. Was that the end of Integration? Hunting out another world’s core from some kind of graveyard?

You have discovered

Lore Fragment of the Scales of Sand

200 Essence Awarded

Discover four Lore Fragments to bind and weaken the Guardian ‘Chimeric Soul-Drinker'

“Sofia? Why does the System leave this for us to discover? I know its hidden from most people, but why record this at all?” Nic asked as he climbed down. “It would be easy to make sure we never uncovered any of these stories.”

“The System can’t fully create or destroy anything, Nicolas. It can only arrange and shape.” Sofia said as he began to sweep through the houses. “For all its power, the System has incredibly sharp limits. That’s why it needed Logos and Pathos.”

“Uh-huh.” He found little in the first few he explored, except for a golden beetle that he snapped up for its Essence. “And none of this is even restricted information? It feels like there are entire worlds of stuff everyone else knows.”

“Not everyone. Maybe one in a ten thousand become cultivators, and most of those are footsoldiers. This information isn’t held as a secret - but nobody bothers to tell those lower on the ladder anything.”

“I dunno. There were some monks who tried to teach us stuff, back at the orphanage. The Akashic Brotherhood. Believed some real bunk tho’. Like, they tried to tell me about crawly little things that get under your skin and make you sick.”

“Nicolas, those are real. They’re called germs.”

“Naaah.”

“Nicolas, I cannot lie to you.”

“Relax, relax. I knowww. It’s just weird to think of them, crawling all over everything.” Nicolas put his hand to a strange door.

It was unlike anything else in the little town. It stood at the very height of the stairwells, above all the other houses, and unlike their open doorways, this entrance was sealed by a massive slab of stone. Fading paints covered the door in hieroglyphs that Nic still couldn’t read.

He drew his arm back and punched it with all the force he could. His bones creaked but the door barely shifted, and Nic grunted in pain. “Solid.”

He was just about to give up when he remembered what Levanth had taught him. A song to try on secret doors. The only problem was-

“Fuck. I can’t whistle.” His rubbery axolotl lips couldn’t purse up to make the sound. Nic cast an eye around, finding a scrap of yellow desert grass, and rolled it up. He blew through, producing the little tune the giant had spun. High and low, high and high, low and high again.

And with a creak the door rumbled open. Dust fell as it turned on secret hinges.

Within was a small monastery chamber, full of tall stone cylinders covered in ancient scripts. As Nic brushed against them they began to turn, squeaking on ancient, rusted axles. At the far end of the room, beneath a hidden window that let in a single shaft of light, a mummified frogman held a knot of black-red matter the size of a human fist in his hands.

“Wanna bet it’s cursed?”