The windfall was rich. After slaughtering his way through the streets, Nic had collected up shard after shard, more than he’d ever counted before. Add in the equipment from de Vega and his crew, and the spoils were more than Nic had ever won in one go.

As Inkspur rejoined him, Nic was petting Gwungo’s head fondly. The little slime had abandoned its shape as his armor and taken on the form of an oozy, transparent axolotl again. It could change its mass too, storing inconvenient weight as aura and converting it back again.

So now the little fellow sat perched on the back of Nic’s hand, making bubbly purring noises as he stroked its little head-fronds.

“I see the little MENACE somehow FAILED TO GET YOU KILLED. Well, I suppose he must be very proud…” The wyvern purred, clearly dissatisfied that the slime had survived the fight at all.

“Inkspur.” Nic said carefully. “Be nice. Gwungo saved my life.”

“What?” Inkspur’s beak dipped open, and then he squawked loudly, fluttering his wings. “WHAT?! Did the enemy STEP ON HIM AND SLIP?!”

“I ate the stars from the sky!” Gwungo cheerfully announced. “I figured out how!”

“I- I- WELL!” Desperately trying to save his draconic pride, the wyvern mumbled. “I also helped… That girl may have gotten away, but I wounded her quite badly, and she won’t be able to use aura until the poison is cleansed… SO! THERE!”

Nic chuckled.

In the back of his mind, Sofia spoke. “Nicolas, we should take this Settlement and dissolve it. In doing so we will earn a second Spatial Pillar Credit to select our secondary specialty.”

“I’ve thought about that…” Nic admitted. All around him, the streets were full of splintered wood, deep gouges in the earth, and rubble from the buildings broken apart by his rampage.

He’d come for diplomacy, but at this point, he’d accidentally conquered the damn place. So goes life.

Still. “I think it’d be a bad idea. We’re trying to bring people to our side, and a lot of them just arrived. If the first thing they see is me conquering a city by force…”

“That’s why we dissolve, rather than integrate, the Settlement. At this point you’ve taken out all their experts. Quite frankly you’ve put them in a position where they’ll be torn apart by the first enemy they encounter. It’s better that you reap the benefits than leave them with treasures they can’t defend; because someone will take them, and they won’t be as kind as you.”

For the last two days, Nic had missed Sofia. She could be cold, but she always meant the best for people in the long run.

As for why she’d been missing, the prison had blocked her out, and by the time he left the prison, he was willingly suppressing his connection in order to keep the information-runes from flooding his vision. Sofia and the runes were two sides of the same coin, it turned out…

Nic could have kicked himself for not seeing that.

Now that she was here, she could restrain the runes from appearing in his vision, only letting the ones she deemed relevant blossom into view. Where before the knowledge rushing in overwhelmed him, now the runes and diagrams helped Nic understand the world around him.

If he flung a rock, he could calculate the arc before it left his hand.

If he meditated, he could see the efficiency and purity of the Essence within.

It was a guide to the world that was far beyond what Sofia could give him before; a living tapestry of calculations that enmeshed him in cold, logical order. Now he could finally see the world like she did.

“I should note, we can still offer them refuge. But they’ll be in a position to refuse if they choose to go alone.”

Nic nodded. It really was the best course, at this point, to wipe the Settlement clean rather than leave his scraps to become someone else’s dinner.

He began to walk towards the town square. All the opposition lay dead, and when he spotted people, it was as shadows at the edge of his vision. Still…

Nic was looking for someone.

That bastard de Vega had taken the other half of the Wintertusk Bracer from Shane, the child Nic had shared the artifact with. So at some point he and his guardian, Moira, had to have passed through. There was the cold possibility in his stomach that they had both been killed…

But Nic pushed the thought aside. He couldn’t worry about every little thing beyond his control, only hope their paths crossed again.

At the center of the city was a fountain of white marble and blue, luxurious stone laid down in fragmentary tiles like a mosaic of broken glass. At its core was a statue of the Tutelary Spirit, the strange System-delivered goddess who guided the Native side of this war.

Nic laid his hand on the goddess’ face and pushed his aura into the vibrant, buzzing energy that ran beneath her stone skin. The entire city - every Settlement - was a single giant array. Energy gathered in through the Dominus Nodes connected to its center would become fuel for the city’s expansion.

But all it took was a single thread of his aura to begin infecting the foundation, pushing out the lingering will of its last owner to claim control.

A formation the size of a city could come undone if someone struck at precisely the core.

A red beam of light shot into the sky, signalling the city was under attack. Minutes ticked by as Nic casually sat on the fountain’s edge, listening to the stone goddess begin to crack and fall apart, pieces of her stoic face falling down into the water below…

The whole city was shifting. None of the buildings collapsed, the streets didn’t break apart, but the energy in the air changed directions, like the wind going still before a storm.

And then with a final note of breaking stone, the statue fell into two halves. The air shuddered, a ripple of energy flowing inwards towards the city’s core, collecting into a point of light that fell into Nic’s hands. It took the shape of a Spatial Pillar Credit, an octagonal seal of grey marble around which a pair of black metal dragons coiled.

He smiled faintly.

This was a victory that could only be called bittersweet. He’d come to bargain, and he’d ended up slaughtering his way through the city. Now that the satisfaction of killing his tormentors had vanished, Nic felt slightly hollow about the whole affair.

Reaching into his bag he took out the Wandering Cloud Lotus. It was how he intended to travel the world and still return home, with its enchantment letting him fly back to wherever he’d planted its seeds as a gust of wind.

“Crows? Tell everyone here that, if they want safety, they can come to Winterhome. I fought their leaders, but I don’t have a grudge against them. If they don’t want to take shelter with me, they should run before scavengers arrive to pick the city over.”

With a last look at Makepeace, Nic was gone. A lonely sweep of wind curled through the dust and flew high into the sky…

---

Nic reemerged in Winterhome. A flurry of wind blew the leaves from the ground up into a spiral, the air rich with the scent of pines, and he appeared atop the great skull he’d made his home.

With a massive sigh he flopped back into the soft bed of moss that filled the skull’s eyesocket, breathing in and out slowly. He was safe. He was home…

His eyes fluttered closed.

His dreams took him back to the city where he’d been born. To the lonely little apartment above the carpenter’s shop; he found the door and the windows were gone. There was no escape, and the sealed cell was slowly filling with dark, cold water…

A Quest is Fulfilled: "Shepherd the New Organism"

You have returned the newborn mind to Winterhome, protecting and sheltering that which you created. In exchange, your sins are forgiven.

Retrieve the variant lifeform (1/1)

Reward- Heretical Absolution, Healing Assistance

As he slept, the ash in his veins slowly cracked apart and loosened.

---

When Nic awoke there was a small, hiccuping snoring coming from his chest. Gwungo had settled there to nap, and sleeping apparently caused the slime to… leak…

There was a great deal of wet blue ooze covering Nic.

He coughed. The little slime-axolotl didn’t stir. Lifting up a hand, he poked at the living booger, stirring it awake.

“Huh? Huh? Oh, it must be another wonderful day…” Dozily the slime shrank back into itself, taking solid form again. The cute little thing reminded Nic of the lazy orphanage cats who’d almost turn to puddles when they laid in a sunbeam. It had about as many teeth as those cranky old bastards…

“Sure, another wonderful day…” Nic rose and stepped out into the sun. He’d slept straight from midday into morning, and his body thrummed with energy. After days in prison, his Essence being sucked away as fast as it could gather, it felt good to settle down and feel the gentle waves of cultivation flow throughout his flesh.

“Cultivation map…”

Essence 18,314 / 18,314

+ 19.27 per Minute

(3.212 Base)

100% Local Modifier

+ 200% Node Dominance

+ 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 18,500 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 (18/4,500)

III Mental Acuity (830/8,000)*

II Spiritual Clarity (1,152/4,000)*

II Regeneration (322/20,000)

Nic was almost taken aback to see how quickly his mental and spiritual strengths had developed. Each had progressed massively over his time away…

It was most likely that he’d invested so much time practicing his basic abilities. Whether he was perfecting the meaning of despair in his strikes or learning to control twin strands of Essence without the System’s help, he had undergone a trial by fire, and the gains were clear.

Taking out his Mourner’s Lantern, he saw the blue flame flickering within was almost full. The evil looking artifact drew mental energy out of the dead, and with his rampage through Makepeace, he had reaped a bloody harvest.

With a single breath he drew in the energy and watched his Mental Acuity rise by nearly 2,000.

Chasing that rush of power, Nic scanned over his choices one final time. He wanted to advance his Totemic Petroglyphs, but the options there were all bizarrely expensive.

The fight had taught him that he needed more brute force to rely on. Without his weapons, he had been forced to rely on his Warform. When his Warform was gone, he was forced to run.

For a long time Nic had been ahead of the curve in physical prowess, but now it was time to invest further.

With a single push of his will, Nic pumped 15,000 motes of raw Essence into the strength nodes that clustered across his shoulders like the yoke of an ox. They flooded with power, and he groaned in satisfaction as he felt every individual strand of muscle relax and tighten in rhythm, growing more like iron as the energy pulsed through them in steady waves. His cells actually began to make a noise as they expanded and contracted, breathing in the abundance of Essence.

His muscles and especially his arms glowed gold, emitting the sound of heavy bells ringing out across the forest glade.

When it was over his strength had reached X. Normally, this would be the top level, but Nic had already consumed treasures that expanded the maximum limit on Physical Strength. With enough Essence he would be able to push all the way to XII…

In fact, with his monstrous rate of cultivation, Nic was confident he’d meet that goal by the end of the day.

He slipped out of the lotus position and down the smooth surface of the skull, landing with both feet rooted in the pine-needle covered bed of the forest floor. It was time to go out and see how his town was developing...