“Lou! Elisa! Shakes! Come with me.”

He found them eating a meal in the communal dining hall, slurping down crude noodles pressed out of wild grains in a broth of fish and salty, savory fruits akin to figs picked from the forests of Winterhome. The smell was enough to make Nic’s stomach growl, but he shook it off.

His body didn’t strictly ‘need’ to eat more than once a week, and filling his belly left him feeling slower, less focused.

A work crew had hastily stitched up the worst of the damage their original spar had done. He nodded to the pagodas at the edge of the platform, branching out from the main pavilion into separate areas of meditation.

“All of you stood out, so… I’m afraid the reward is you get the chance to fight harder, to take on more battles, to have more responsibility. Raw deal, right? But…”

He reached into his bag and took out a cloth, unfolding it. Within were all the Shards he’d collected. Glittering crystals of every shape and color. Some were ones he’d kept from the destruction of Makepeace, while others came from even further back, his adventures in the Scales of Sand. “You do get some pretty spectacular toys. Pick one.”

Shakes was first up. He ran his fingers along the Shards, investigating them. Even someone without Nic’s ability of Archive Recall could sense a Shard’s basic function by making contact…

He chose the Allsight Shard from the locust-demon. It’s ability was similar to that of the Eight-Eyed Mantle, extending the senses, but it also gave full three-hundred-and-sixty degree vision. For an archer eyesight was a supreme virtue.

He nodded, tipping two fingers to his forehead in a quick salute, and departed for the first pagoda to meditate and integrate the Shard.

Nic still wasn’t sure why he disliked Tarquin’s second so much…

Something about him just seemed endlessly sarcastic.

Next up was Lou, selecting the gravity Shard that Nic had claimed from De Vega’s body. It fit well with his ability to lock down enemies and hold them at range with his massive, heavy halberd.

Finally, Elisa…

“My golems aren’t cutting it. They’re good scouts, ‘n I can blow them up if I need, but that doesn’t work for longer fights. An’ it feels like shit…” She knelt down, petting one of the scrapmetal spider-golems fondly as it followed at her heels like a loyal dog. Her other hand ran fingers over the collection of Shards without much interest. “Whatcha got for me then, o’ pink one?”

Nic paused, and then reached for a particular Shard with a sigh…

He still remembered the unsavory way he’d earned this one. “This is a Humanity Shard. It should give your golems human form, so they’ll be able to use weapons.”

She grinned broadly, a crooked smile spreading over her freckled face as she took the clear lozenge of oblong, translucent stone. “That’ll do it.”

The three settled back, sitting under the pagoda and gathering up Essence to combine with their new Shards. As they did, Nic took a seat nearby, unrolling the scroll of the Cloak of the Elements technique.

Unlike many scrolls that directly imbued the technique into the reader and then crumbled to dust, this was simply a guide; it showed how to link together a constellation of seven nodes within the body to produce the desired technique, attuning one node to fire, one to water, one to earth, and one to air. When all four where in place and reinforced with three ancillary nodes, the technique could be performed…

But a seven-node technique was something Nic had never attempted. Despite copious help, he’d barely managed the less complicated bloodline seal that had helped him evolve to E-Class. As for his Hand of Ash? It was only three nodes…

If he tried to rush this, he’d risk destroying his body from the inside out.

For now, all he could do was slowly read through and try to memorize the instructions. It didn’t help that they were written in an archaic, almost poetic style.

Instead of directly saying to link seven nodes starting with his shoulder, it referred to ‘bridging seven stars’ and ‘the yoke of the mountainous chakras’. Even more confusing passages referred to ‘gathering the fruits of the world and the four directions inside the body’...

In short, it was cryptic nonsense written by some poor monk who just needed to get laid.

But as Nic suffered in his studies, his pupils were also advancing…

Lou was the first to break through. He had a broad face hedged in scruffy black sideburns with a blunt nose and wide, goofy smile, a face that would instantly remind you of some long-lost friend; he stood up and stepped out of the pagoda.

Lifting his hands into the air he conjured a moon.

Frost wreathed through the sky in a swirling spiral, and a globe of alabaster-silver light blossomed within. The floating pavillion groaned under the sudden addition of weight as gravity pressed down on everything below the moon.

It was the combination of his slowing frost and De Vega’s gravity. An illusory planet that sapped enemy’s strength and weighed them down.

Elisa was next. Her two scrapmetal spiders suddenly froze in place, twitching slightly, then scuttled towards each other, snapping together as parts of their body flowed and rearranged, recombining until the two had become one; they formed a single gaunt and skeletal humanoid creature that stood nearly six feet tall. Its head resembled a deathshead mask, rust coating the surface to add a bloody red tone.

She burst out laughing when she opened her eyes to see that staring back at her, obedient as could be. “Gods, they sure ain’t cute anymore…”

Shakes was last, or maybe first. There was no obvious sign of his breakthrough and he didn’t show off any of his new power. He just stood up and gave Nic a curt nod.

Lou, meanwhile, had already discovered a second application for his new powers. He swept his halberd through the air, gathering strength with his momentum shard, and then chopped down in a brutal overhand, a miniature moon appearing over the halberd’s head and amplifying its weight until the air shook with the force of the blow. Frost vapors cascaded behind the axehead, carving a silver stream in the halberd’s wake.

“Ha!” His wide face grinned in joy. “A-ha. C’mon, look at that. It’s beautiful!”

He glanced to the other two, who were watching him with bemused expressions. “Hey, somebody spar with me…” He continued. “C’mooon. We’ve got superpowers now, don’t you wanna see what we can do?”

“Alright,” Nic answered, rising and cracking his neck this way and that. “You asked for it…”

Lou’s face immediately fell. “Uh, I was uh, thinking I’d be against one of them…”

Nic just smiled a cold, cruel smile. “Too late now. Don’t worry though, it’s not me you’re fighting.”

Redjaw emerged from his tattoo, slamming his massive forelegs into the platform and making the entire pavilion shake. The lindworm’s body was a mix of snail, centipede, and dragon, flat and slimy with orange-pink flesh that extended into a tapering tail from powerful, muscular shoulders. Numerous small, scuttling legs extended from both sides, and ridges of spines ran down its back.

His head was a blunt, terrible muzzle, hail-snail and half-dragon. Gooey saliva dripped from a pair of centipede jaws, tremendous scythes of chitin that could snap shut like a deadly trap. Tendril-like antenna sprouted from his snout.

The three favored hunters weren’t the only ones with new toys. Redjaw had consumed the Chainbreaker Shard; his natural strength had long since reached the limit, but now he was growing again, gaining size each time he broke through to a new rank.

Lou took a step back.

“Uh, no offense, but- I’m pretty sure I’d rather fight you, boss.”

---

A few minutes later, having thoroughly defused Lou’s bluster before it could become a dangerous source of arrogance, Nic address all three. “We’re coming up on the end of the hunt, now. I need you three to stay back and watch. Because, as far as I see, there’s two ways for the enemy to win here.”

“One’s just to win the hunt, to stay ahead of us in kills.”

“But the other, much better way to win, is to kill all of us dead while we’re busy chasing the prize. I think that’s the kind of winning they’d prefer. So I want you to watch over your squads for tomorrow. Keep ‘em together and keep ‘em ready.”

“Winterhome has to win both fights.”

They nodded slowly, understanding. Lou climbed back to his feet with Elisa’s help.

“We’ve got you, boss.”

---

Nic walked through the forest.

With the whisper of pine bending under the breeze all around him, he settled down in a place where the tree roots made a natural seat.

He had killed nearly two hundred G-Class enemies today. Besides them, he’d claimed the lives of two high class Invaders. His bounty had steadily accumulating wealth into his account…

In a short amount of time, Nic had gathered a staggering amount of wealth. 100,000 First Wave Credits.

And now he was going to spend down to the final drop.

Waving his hand, he opened the First Wave Bounty Board. Selecting his prize, he pressed aura into the System construct. The panel of rippling water and golden runes of the System panel dissolved, collapsing into a golden wisp of energy that slowly took the form of a singular glass vial.

It was shaped like a bell, with a pale gray water inside surrounding a curled flower. The flower had no color at all, from thorny stem to its trumpet-shaped blossom. Flames danced around the curling petals where they emerged above the liquid.

Mist-Vapor Spirit Cordial.

Pulling out the stopper, Nic tilted back the vial and drank it all down.