Nic had known where the human’s outer camps were located for ages now. They were large and noisy, sending up dozens of smoke trails each night. The main encampment was clustered around a massive statue of a goddess’ weeping stone face, a Tutelary Statue who provided simple guidance and System access, the Native counterpart of his Settlement’s totem.

What he was surprised by was the stink.

It was a raw, rank odor of sweat and excrement and misery.

The closer he got, the worse the smell on the wind was. He brushed through the undergrowth slowly, feeling the birdsong and movement slowly drain out of the forest. Animals simply refused to approach the camp. That was probably good sense.

There were walls now, made of tree-trunks stabbed into the earth and bound together. They’d burned back the edges of the forest, creating an open field of ash between the makeshift barrier and the deep foliage. Someone had made a pretty good go of securing this little fortress.

It wasn’t a true Settlement. Just a muddy little camp clinging to existence.

Nic came as close as he could, before slipping up a tree to get a better vantage point, up over the wall and into the camp’s core.

He blinked.

The camp was empty. Or at least, he didn’t see any people.

Drifting spheres of light moved through the air. They paused over cooking pots that were still bubbling, clustered together as if talking to one another, and overall, there was simply something human to the way they moved. As he watched segments of the camp would go still and warp slightly, creating the impression they were behind a jagged pane of glass. Then the warping would disappear and things beneath would be slightly changed. The cooking pot was empty now. The gathered lights had dispersed.

He spotted a crow on the edge of the walls and waved to it. A little flutter of wings brought the messenger bird to his hand.

“Hello boss! Good-to-see-you boss!” The little thing cawed. Unlike its croaking leader, it was a bright and chipper voice, if a little rough around the edges.

“Hey lil guy. So uh, you got any clue what we’re looking at?” He was still watching the ‘empty’ camp with concern.

“Nope! Nuh-uh! No-sir!” The bird hopped about, agitated. “People, but not-people too. Very odd!”

Nic nodded. People, but not people. That was as good a way of putting it as any. His hopes weren’t high, but he focused on one of the light-blobs and whispered, “Archive Recall.”

Nothing. Either his ability had never seen this before, or there was some kind of obscuring effect in the way. The more he watched the more Nic bet on the latter. There were people here, but they were behind some kind of veil.

“And you went inside?”

“Yep-yep! Thought-to-myself, cloaking array, it’s a cloaking array! Then, it wasn’t! Cloaking array, you get close, you see through! I got close, almost got eaten!”

“Eaten?” Nic paused. His plan had been to go down there and see for himself...

“Arrow! All-misty-all-strange, but arrow!”

He stopped to think again, but eventually shrugged. It sounded like something he could deal with. Assuming the people were still there, they probably still needed to eat, and a crow was pretty tasty if your stomach was empty. Back in the city he’d spent some days trying to lay traps for pigeons.

It never worked.

“Alright, you keep looking. I’ll handle this.” Letting the crow take flight again, Nic dropped down and cautiously crossed the ashy divide, letting his aura circulate through his Eight-Eyed Mantle to extend his senses in all directions. He was feeling something dangerous, but it was vague, far-away. It didn’t come directly from the ‘abandoned’ camp or its strange wisp-people.

As he stepped inside the wisps froze. He could feel that he was being watched, so he raised a hand and slowly waved. Nic still hadn’t drawn a weapon.

For a moment the wisps moved back and forth, as if they were talking with one another. If Nic imagined people where the lights were, he could almost picture the scene, some frozen in fear while others drew weapons and exchanged quick words trying to decide if they should attack.

He braced slightly, trying not to let his readiness to run show and sour whatever chance he had of doing this peacefully.

There was a distortion in the air in front of him, an awkwardly-shaped geometry of air that had gone hard and still and partially amber-colored. Like time was frozen in sap. When it cleared, one of the wisps had moved in front of him and there was a drawing in the ash by his feet.

It was a tiny axolotl. Beneath were letters Nic couldn’t understand, but as Inkspur crawled onto his shoulder, the wyvern provided an explanation.

“Oh, it’s very boring. And their calligraphy is ATROCIOUS. Children that dull should be DEVOURED YOUNG BEFORE THEY SHAME THEIR PARENTS-”

“Inkspur.” Nic hissed. “I think they can hear you.”

“Well, I say REAR YOUR SPAWN BETTER!”

The wisp took several flickering steps back.

“And how do you know they’re a child?” Nic cocked an eyebrow.

“Either a CHILD or a DULLARD. Look at that PENMANSHIP. It’s not every day that WRITING IN THE DIRT goes and makes the DIRT WORSE OFF!”

“Okay, okay, just- ask them where they are.”

Inkspur leapt off his shoulders, dropping to the ground and sweeping away the wisp-child’s letters with a flick of his tail. Dipping the stinger into the earth, he seemed to take a prideful glee in drawing the most ornate, complex characters Nic had ever seen.

There was a pause and the wisp advanced again. Other lights were coming closer, and Nic made sure to keep a watchful eye out so he wasn’t surrounded.

The child wrote in the dirt. Once again the actual change was obscured by a jagged panel of amber warping. It was only when the movement stopped that the distortion vanished.

“Aha. Its says they’re stuck. What does that mean? I have NO IDEA. I cannot LOWER MY INTELLECT to the level of these BLOBBISH LUMPS OF STARSTUFF.”

Nic rolled his eyes and kneeled down in the dirt.

Another wisp of light had arrived beside the first one. They had faintly different colors, and Nic watched as the air blurred and new writing appeared. For a moment, in the distortion, he thought he could see the blurred shadow of a human figure.

"Aha! Yes, FINALLY SOME SENSE. This one says they've been trapped somehow. Yes, how very helpfully vague. But there's more. They've been stuck this way for a week, and a beast has picked them off one by one. Anyone who stays past nightfall to help gets pulled in as well.

Nic paused, and then tried something. He reached towards the light. "Ask them to touch my hand."

There was a pause, a flicker in the air, and Inkspur read. "Their hand went right through."

Nic nodded. There was no chance this beast was a coincidence or an opportunist, then. It could touch them when nobody else could. If he was guessing right, this was some kind of net, a snare it had put the people in so it could devour them at its leisure.

“Sofia? What kind of monster turns people into blobs of light?”

“I can’t tell you that, Nicolas, but I can tell you what you’re seeing is their cultivation cores. It’s common for spirits to manifest this way on the visible planes, because Essence transcends the veils between worlds. If they were more developed, you’d see golden veins as well, extending through their bodies…”

Nic smiled softly. As usual, Sofia found a way to slip him something useful through her restrictions. He wouldn’t be helpless if he ended up in their situation.

He’d still have his cultivation.

“Right. Inkspur, we’re staying till nightfall.”

Slinging his sword over his shoulder, Nic walked into the camp, looking for a place to rest.

---

The sun dipped below the horizon. It hurt to spend so much time in one place when the chances to seize First Wave Credits were slipping away, but this was a chance to grow his Settlement. Even the ones who didn’t join would be carrying the word of what had happened to whatever human camps they moved to.

Winterhome would grow.

That was the way Nic justified spending an evening crouched against a threadbare willow tree, bringing out his meditation slab and sitting atop it. He’d finally taken out the medicine pouch he’d claimed from Baby Boots, and now he examined his prizes.

A medicinal aroma spilled out. Inside were four golden pills the size of pine seeds, which smelled strongly of rain and lightning. In addition, there was a walnut-sized ball of dark brown strands clumped together. Their scent reminded Nic of tea. Finally, he found a small black lozenge of caramelized sugar mixed with a single strand of red. It gave off a terrible aura.

Expensive pills for enhancing cultivation, some kind of medicine, and a berserking pill meant to push the body to insane heights for a brief time.

He ate one of the pine-scented golden pills, and immediately felt a thread of spiritual energy break away from the sliver of processed herbs to rise into his forehead. It awoke the node that contained his Spiritual Clarity, and the meridian point began to draw in energy, eagerly absorbing Essence like never before. A small whirlwind formed in the flow of natural power around him, radiating in through his skin.

These were the good shit.

Lightning Purified Pine Pills. Medicine // E-Grade. Created only from thousand year trees that have gained spirituality after being struck by lightning and surviving, these pills are the processed sap, needles, and pine seeds of such rare specimens. One of the first and best known recipes of alchemy, they are precious for their ability to speed spiritual growth.

Over the next hour he gained a little over two hundred points into his Spiritual Clarity. It was only a dent in the ocean needed for the next tier, but making that kind of progress so quickly was intoxicating. His body felt refreshed, too, as if the pure energy sweeping through his veins so quickly had flushed away lingering traces of trauma from his fights.

As the last light trickled between the trees, Nic opened his cultivation map.

Essence 10,940 / 26,922

+ 19.27 per Minute

(3.212 Base)

100% Local Modifier

+ 100% Dominion

+ Devoured an E-Class enemy (200%)

+ Consumed a F-Class treasure (100%)

+ Rested in toxic environment (300%)

Demonic Essence &%##!~

Titles -

Witness of the New Dao

---

Ferocious Beast

(Rewards 14,000 First Wave Credits to your killer. Increase bounty by 500 with each Native you kill. Each dawn, gain credits equal to one tenth of your bounty.)

Cultivation Base (Unranked)

VII Physical Strength (0/4,500)

III Mental Acuity (212/8,000)*

II Spiritual Clarity (708/4,000)*

II Regeneration (6740/20,000)

100% Dominion…

A benefit from running a Settlement, he supposed. One more modifier to stack higher.

Once again, although he desperately wanted to push everything into strength and continue his path, Nic poured energy into his regeneration. With such a slim margin, he relied on the System. Regulating his breathing he watched how the System guided the flow of power within his meridians, trying to understand how it could be so efficient.

Rather than pushing everything though in one go, he spent a few hundred Essence at a time, feeling the cold mechanical power of the System move it through his core. After thirty minutes more of meditation and study, he’d run his stores dry and felt he’d learned something in the process.

He sighed and leaned back, waiting for his chance to put himself to the test.