Above, Winterhome rebuilt itself. Rubble was cleared, and new foundations were laid. The bodies of the enemy were swept away and burned. Bruised and cut but undefeated, the city marched on.

In the center of the city there was a temple of red stone rising out of the lake.

And in the depths of that temple, beneath the weight of the deep water, Nic cultivated.

The chamber was a place of lapis stone, delicately interwoven with snow-white tracery that spilled across the walls like a jungle of bone-colored vines. Within those walls, the energy of the world was drawn in and concentrated, creating a space of immense spiritual pressure- a crucible for cultivation.

A single mat of solid lapis lazuli was carved into the floor, rising above a mosaic that depicted crashing waves emerging from a godly hand.

Nic sat there, concentrating on his future.

Requirements to open the Path of the Great Chain are as follows:

+ Devour or Attune to a Settlement Pillar (1/1)

+ Gain understanding of two synergistic or opposed Concepts (1/2)

+ Gain a total of five Ranks beyond X in your Cultivation Base (2/5)

+ Defeat an opponent of D-Class or higher. (1/1)

Three of the four must be completed before the Path is opened.

In addition, you walk the Path of the Red Wastes. The following trials must be completed before evolution is possible:

Slay an E-Class child of Pandemonium or receive a Hellfire Baptism (0/1)

Cultivate two techniques to Rank X using Demon Essence (0/2)

In truth, the requirements for D-Class were ten times as strenuous as stepping into E-Class. He’d cultivated his strength beyond the normal limit…

He’d acquired three concepts…

He’d fought a D-Class opponent and survived…

And yet he’d only scratched the surface of his needed tasks. His demonic heritage was no help; Nic had been reluctant to accept its strength, and so it had only hindered him so far. He reached into his magic bag and drew out the gemstone the demonic emissary had gifted him. It was dark, with only the faintest of red tones within the octagonal jewel, the edges smooth to the touch. He could feel a faint heat trapped within.

Nic was suspicious of his demonic heritage. Not because it was a slaughter path- Nic knew he was well suited to that aspect of his blood.

But because of the Legions. They were vast and powerful organizations, spanning dozens of worlds at the least. To be called a Legion one needed to win the System’s recognition…

To be able to conquer an entire planet by your own force.

This jewel was the Ghost-Toll Legion’s offering to him. And if he took that deal, he wondered if he’d ever be free again.

“Cultivation map…” He said.

Essence 26,114 / 27,046

+ 25.696 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

---

Bloodline Progenitor

(You are the first of your kind. All costs related to innate abilities are halved. Title is lost if you lose your current form without furthering the bloodline.)

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.)

Sage-Artisan

(The Hand of Ash technique is recognized as your creation, and all costs related to it are halved.)

Cultivation Base (Unranked)

XII Physical Strength (Completed)

III Mental Acuity (851/8,000)*

III Spiritual Clarity (1,917/8,000)*

III Gift of Life (824/12,500)

III Mistwater Step (154/12,500)

The Old Speech (0/50,000)

Primordial Mist Shard (E)

Creates a mist that contains the weight of the ages, stealing life and weakening those who survive. An almost truly unique Shard, with few if any defenses existing to its power.

III Increase Toxicity (334/8,000)

Add Aura Efficiency (0/5,000)

I Secondary Slot (0/100,000)

Poison Devouring (Complete)

Mist Armor (0/50,000)

Petrified Warriors (0/200,000)

Jewel of Ages (0/500,000)

Mire-Caller (F)

Calls to and creates binding masses of mud, sludge, or tar. A powerful Shard for binding and controlling that requires work and imagination to master.

II Base Enhancement (414/2,000)

Add Aura Efficiency (0/1,000)

I Secondary Slot (0/50,000)

Mire-Drowned Remnants (0/50,000)

Futile Struggle (0/50,000)

Mire-Dweller (0/10,000)

Clay Idols (0/50,000)

Totemic Hieroglyphs (E)

Creates tools of bone, rock, and leather that contain nascent divinities, able to grow and rise towards the heavens as they serve you. A high-quality magical shard.

VIII Base Enhancement (114/4,500)

I Add Essence Efficiency (346/2,000)*

II Additional Secondary Slot (0/100,000)

Summoning Limit (0/50,000)

Spirits of the Earth (Complete)

Shard-Crafting (0/100,000)

Speaker of the Lost (0/10,000)

Tributes for the Divine (0/100,000)

Techniques (22% Capacity)

Eight-Eyed Mantle (1,914/12,200)

Inner Sacrifice Cauldron Technique (514/6,600)

III Hand of Ash (318/3,100)

Concept of Sacrifice

We get only one chance to die. We must make it count.

Converts Essence to aura. Rate of conversion doubles when seriously wounded.

(1% of Essence gained as Spiritual Essence.) (1,000/1,000 Spiritual Essence stored.)

Concept of Aleph

Angels of death dance on a single spark of light.

Sparks mutation and growth.

(1% of Essence gained as Spiritual Essence.) (1,000/1,000 Spiritual Essence stored.)

Concept of Desolation

All that is sacred will become ash.

Restricts opposing aura.

(1% of Essence gained as Spiritual Essence.) (1,000/1,000 Spiritual Essence stored.)

Looking over his progress, Nic felt a familiar flame of happiness. Of satisfaction. Reaching for the three reservoirs of Spiritual Essence within his Concepts, Nic drew the energy down into the spiritual node at the core of his forehead, enhancing his third eye.

It wasn’t a full stage, but it was a beginning. Another four days and he’d be on the verge of breakthrough.

Breathing in and out slowly, he took control of his Essence, guiding it towards the singular node where his Mistwater Step resided in the base of his spine. Slowly, working with painstaking care, he polished and attuned that node; he pushed his Essence to carve the internal space deeper, allowing it to hold more aura.

By the time he ran dry, it had advanced by three steps.

And Nic hadn’t used the System’s guidance at all; he had cultivated and improved his body with his own knowledge, helped along by the golden informational runes that blossomed in the sight of his crystal left eye, letting him measure and precisely monitor every step.

Before, he’d managed to vaguely guide his own Essence, but it had been clumsy and inefficient. Much of the power was lost. Now he could manage while only losing a few percentages of the overall Essence.

And would it be possible to go beyond that?

To cultivate his own strength better than the System could?

It seemed impossible.

But many things seemed impossible, until they happened.

A faint smile on his lips, Nic rose and examined his newly-empowered ability. With each movement, however slight, he left behind a rippling thread of mist. Within that mist illusory doubles of him were born, flickering in and out of view, while his own body sporadically disappeared and came back into focus. If he moved his hand just slightly, it was already hard to tell which of the dopplegangers of his arm was the real thing…

When he moved swiftly, the world filled with his image and he became an army unto himself, striking out from all angles. Only one body was real- but how would his enemies ever find it?

As he wove in the teleportations of his Eight-Directions ring the difficulty redoubled. Now he could disappear and appear anywhere on the battlefield, so that even a sharp-eyed foe couldn’t hope to predict where he’d be.

Nic’s body was small. Larger creatures would receive two or three times the benefit in pure power from raising their Physical Strength. But his speed was unmatched, especially now that his evolution had granted him frog-like, incredibly powerful legs. A single movement could flick him across a space that would take a man dozens of steps to cross.

And the hazards of leaping, and giving up his stance on the ground, were rounded out by his ability to teleport and thus dodge mid-air.

Something was coming together. Nic could feel it on the edge of his mind. An inspiration dawning, coming into focus like a dream.

A new way he could fight.

A slippery, evasive style that utilized all the ways he could move that a normal human could not, and combined them until his attacks became unpredictable, even bizarre. He felt an itch in the space between his brows, the folded little region that appeared when his gaze furrowed up. The Key of Omens…

He had absorbed the Key in a fit of what he could only describe as madness for cultivation, and it had split the air above Winterhome with a rift into some kind of spiritual plane. Now, a mental force leaked out, entering the minds of all who resided in Winterhome as a strange and erratic inspiration.

If he let that door open wider…

The Key’s influence would let him drink deep from the well of inspiration, and create something beautiful out of this moment.

He could sense the shape of it. A technique to escape his limitations, to move bonelessly and smoothly through the viscera of dimensions. When he tried to describe what he saw in his imagination with his body, the result was crooked and ugly, but that was only because he was in the wrong set of angles, the wrong folds of reality, to truly perform the move.

It was like trying to walk sideways of time.

It made sense- just not here, in these constricting laws.

It was an idea born in a plane of pure thought.

Many things seem impossible… His own words rang in his head, echoed back to him by the Key’s whispers. Nic gritted his teeth and pushed back, silencing the voice.

No.

Not today.

As wonderful and powerful as the technique he’d glimpsed was, Nic refused to trust the Key and open the gateway wider. It wanted something. Something that could only happen if it was allowed into this world. And without knowing exactly what that would cost Winterhome, Nic refused to be drawn in a second time.

He was already being pulled in so many directions; the Ghost-Toll Legion, the strange thing beneath the Bloodline Sea, even the System itself had all tried to take a piece of him.

He refused to give any more of himself away.

For a moment the visions increased, growing brighter, almost replacing the world before his eyes with an imagined one. A world where he could go anywhere, escape any attack, appear like a ghost…

He held firm and the moment faded. The visions receded like a dream melting away, leaving Nic with an eerie sense of loss.

The Key wouldn’t offer this dream again.

But Nic didn’t feel resentment. If anything, he should be grateful.

He’d seen what he could do. And if he’d refused the shortest path to that power, he was confident the cosmos would provide another, someday. If not- he’d make one.

Cultivation was a path of infinite mountains, and for mortals, with only a little time to explore among them and only a little strength to climb towards the peak, simply seeing the view from atop one such mountain…

That was something to be treasured.