Moira spent a solid hour practicing before she met any success. Each time she fired she got a little farther in controlling her aura. She was learning to space the shots less widely so they hit in a trident pattern rather than a spreading cone, and enhancing the degree to which her homing shot could bend through the air towards a target.

But combining the two escaped her try after try.

Nic sat on a rock nearby, carving an amulet out of a snake tooth. It was the simplest work he’d done in a while but it gave him something to keep his hands busy as he offered words of guidance. He dug in a simple glyph to summon the spirit of the beast, the snake he’d fought in the Valley of Memories that could swim through the earth like water.

He’d finally discovered the reason Naming mattered so much to the Totemic Petroglyphs.

Before he’d had to wheedle and cajole the spirits, appealing to their nature. That was still a strong and viable tactic. But now, as he pressed his chosen name onto the spirit of the snake, he found he could drag it into the totem by force, using the name to obliterate the trace memories of the spirit and brand it with a new nature.

The spirit wasn’t truly a soul after all. It was more of a memory.

The snake had been sneaky, cunning, an assassin- but Nic chose a new name. Caduceus. The snake of medicine. The spirit was no match for his strengthened will and spiritual power. He drew out its poison nature and forged a new one.

Sealing the glyph in place, he added a secondary design, a reversed poison cultivation glyph.

Benefactor’s Amulet (F)

Fine Glyph of the Benevolent Spirit

(100% Charged)

Glyph of Poison Absorption

(100% Charged)

This snake tooth amulet is a potent ward against all kinds of poison, and bears the spirit of a noble guardian who once watched over ancient tombs. Summoned forth, the echo of this beast will protect you for the space of three breaths.

He had just finished the final flourish when a sudden, triumphant shout made his head snap up. Three identical bolts sat side by side punched into the bark of the tree. The two at the sides dissolved, slowly melting into blue mist.

Nic grinned. “Congrats.”

Sweat was dripping down Moira’s face. “I don’t understand how I just did that. Like…” She paused, and bit her lip. “I get that weird shit is happening to me, constantly. I’ve noticed. But me being the one doing it is a whole new level.”

“The weirdest thing is how normal it’ll be.” Nic noted. He dropped off his perch and went to find Shane, who was weaving rune circles in the dirt. They were enormously complex, but he was still clumsy, and most of the runic characters were half-formed and powerless.

A shadow shifted and slipped away from the boy as Nic approached. Nic glared at the retreating darkness, and heard the rustling of enormous wings mixed with distant, childish laughter.

“Hey Nic. Azel was just telling me about you.” Shane grinned.

“Oh yeah? What did he say?” Nic glanced around, but the shadow was gone.

“He said you were on a death quest.” Shane looked at him with a very serious expression. “You’re not, right?”

Nic winced. He felt like he was on the opposite, but- “I’m hard to kill.” Was all he said.

Taking out the necklace he put it around Shane’s neck. “This is Caduceus. If you call his name, he’ll protect you. Caduceus, got that? But he can only do it once a day, so be really sure before you call him.”

Shane nodded.

Nic patted him on the head. He paused at the bank of the river, leaning down to plant a lotus seed. It was close enough to three different locations - the poison grove, the slime forest, and the drowned city - to be worthwhile, and it would let him keep an eye on them both.

He settled down on a stone, briefly flicking open his cultivation map and assigning points without looking twice. Everything went into unlocking the Secondary Slot for his Adhesive Touch, and he was halfway to the milestone in one go.

He would unlock it by midday at this rate.

But there was no more staying here. Nic needed to keep moving, or he’d fall behind. Taking a break from the Dungeon already left him lagging behind Azmin and Baby Boots as they explored the treasure rich sands. If he was going to spend three days outside he could at least clear another Node and carve out another corner to his would-be empire.

He chose the underwater town because he expected there to be a fair amount of treasure left there. The underwater zones were naturally isolated. Meanwhile, the slime forest was simply a puzzle he hadn’t solved. Sunfire provided him with explosives, but he didn’t have anywhere near enough to wipe out the slimes before they could adapt.

So he set off for the distant Node.

The forest was bright and sunny, the dark patches where the trees wove together into a canopy of shade lit by the veins and blossoms of glowing lumenarch flowers. Strange insects gnawed on the bark and strange birdcalls filled the air.

Nic was briefly dragged off track by an incredibly sweet smell wafting through the air- but when he arrived he quickly shrank back into the underbrush, horrified. The source of the smell was an enormous black bear with thorns protrusions on its joints and gaping sideways mouth covered by writhing purple tendrils where it’s muzzle should be, like its face had been cleaved open with a sword. It was hunched over the body of an enormous white-furred stag, and as its tentacles made contact the flesh and bones of the dead beast were quickly turned to dripping masses of golden honey.

Slime dripped from its entire body, covering the earth in a glittering trail as it dragged the corpse of the stag back towards an underground lair.

As his Archive Recall identified it as a Goldenbrand Ursae, Nic swiftly retreated. Some things were too bizarre and disgusting to tangle with. He was just righting his course towards the drowned city when a flash of light split the sky-

And a pillar of blue cut upwards from the earth into the air, rising for miles into the stratosphere as it blazed with a surprisingly gentle glow, like a spiral of fireflies taller than the greatest of skyscrapers.

“What…”

“That, Nicolas, is a Settlement being founded. Turn to your south for a moment?”

Nic swiveled and stared out into empty sky. He was just about to ask what he was looking at when another flash filled the horizon, and a new pillar leapt into the air, this one a malevolent purple-red color.

“And that is an Invading Settlement arriving to oppose it. I’m actually relieved. It was entirely possible it could have arrived closer, and taken valuable space to grow from us. Or even landed on top of us and stunted our plans entirely.”

Nic was still staring.

The second pillar didn’t connect to the earth. It fell into an enormous cloudbank and stopped there, hundreds of feet above the ground, the dull and evil glow illuminating something black within the fog.

There was an island in the sky.

His first thought was how much that was going to annoy Baby Boots.

And his second was something clicking into place. This was why Baby Boots was so zealous about preventing anyone else from flying. Nic turned his gaze towards the open field beside the forest, where a mass of clouds hovered above the wide and flower-filled meadows.

Now that he looked properly, the clouds drifted about a little, but they never actually moved. Small wisps would break away, but a main mass of fluffy white remained almost perfectly stationary.

Baby Boots had a secret.

And Nic was wise to him.

“Nicolas, this means we have another reason to hurry. They’ll begin expanding quickly until they collide with another Settlement that can defend its nodes. Judging by the fact the humans were able to clear a dungeon and claim three Nodes, they’re a fair ways ahead of us. The Invaders will be restricted at first but they’ll also know what they’re doing- they’re likely to burn many of their troops and resources to claim early ground.”

Enemies on both sides, and him in the middle. That sounded about right to Nic. But he wasn’t immediately worried. If he had to guess, none of the humans were actually E-Class yet. They probably just formed a solid team, unlike Azmin and Baby Boots, who neither worked together or trained any of the warriors beneath them effectively.

With his evolution and Class jump, he could still seize the momentum in sheer power.

But he needed to hurry.

---

By the time he arrived at the lake, the sun had reached its peak and was about to begin descending over the midpoint of the sky. Telephone poles lifted out of the water at crooked angles, and he could see the rooftops of buildings below the water, windows and doors spilling open to let dark water fill the hollows of the houses. A lonely church with a belltower was the tallest of the buildings, the top of the tower rising out of the lake. Sylphs moved like flickers of light beneath it all- darting and dancing.

Nic dove in. Bubbles streamed around his body as he kicked deeper and deeper into the cold green depths, heading for the bottom where long streamers of black kelp grew on either side of the cracked asphalt roads. Cars sat rusting in the mud.

“Let’s see what we got. What big, gruesome bad is guarding this Node.” Bubbles escaped his mouth as he spoke, but his gills were cleanly drawing air from the cold waters. It felt good- the weightlessness of the deep was comforting and the pressure of the lake above him was familiar. His alien body moved smoothly and efficiently.

And something gleamed.

As he swum past a golden fish darted out of one of the cars, shooting past in a stream of blurred light. Nic’s hand shot out to grasp it but the fish slid right out through his fingers. It darted into a house and he lost sight of it from there.

“Huhhhh…” He blubbed, eyeing the fading trail of light with suspicion. He turned back to examine the rusting shell of the car and something gleamed in the passenger seat, amidst rotting leather and rocky growths of barnacle.

A single blue pearl the size of an eye. And curled around it, sleeping, the body of a sylph.

“Archive Recall.”

Flawed Pearl of the Depths. F-Class // Treasured Artifact. Formed when fragments of magical or precious material are caught in the flesh of certain thousand-year mollusks, a true Pearl of the Depths is a precious material for weapon forging that appears once in a millenia. These lesser copies merely enhance swimming speed by bringing the water to bear in your favor, amplified with each additional pearl held.

He reached out and took the pearl in his fist-

And the water darkened. A huge shadow passed over the surface, blocking off the rays of sun that streaked in golden-green color down into the lake’s basin.

The world went dark. And huge shapes began to lift up from the bottom of the lake, mud pouring from their backs. Nic’s danger sense suddenly radiated points of threat in all direction.

He spat out a curse contained in a bubble.