As Nic and Tarquin returned to Winterhome, a familiar shape flitted through the air to meet them, as small as Nic’s hand but ferociously loud.

“The TRIUMPHANT HERO returns! From the DESERT SANDS were NO MAN CAN WALK without FEELING THE SHADOW OF DEATH UPON HIS BACK!” Inkspur belowed, circling around them happily.

For all that the cat-like, snobby dragon pretended not to care…

He sure was happy when Nic came home.

They set down on the ground, Inkspur fluttering onto his shoulder. Up came Redjaw, the massive lindwurm dripping venom from its jaws as it scuttled through the forest to nuzzle its huge, slimy head against his hand, eagerly begging for affection like a puppy left at home while its master was at work.

Nic grinned and scratched the chitinous, smooth plates and the sluggish flesh between, making the big beast shiver happily.

And Redjaw was getting big. The beast was nearly half again the size it had been when Nic saw him last, a massive slab of pink-yellow flesh with orange-tipped legs and tremendous red mandibles. The antenna extending from the blind sockets where its eyes should be whipped about in excitement, feeling the air, each as thick as a man’s arm.

“Hey there big guy. I guess you’re enjoying your new Shard…”

The Chainbreaker, which extended physical capabilities beyond anything normally possible. One of the simplest Shards - perfect for an aggressive, brutish beast like Redjaw.

And Nic was giddy, not just because he had a way to accelerate his own advancement…

But because by taking Redjaw and Sunfire and Inkspur with him, he could funnel energy to them, allowing them to catch up to him in E-Class.

Sunfire was the last to appear, emerging from a shallow den amidst the roots of an old oak. His frilled head poked up curiously, and the crests to either side of his head expanded out with a sudden, excited flick. He vanished back down and reappeared with a shiny rock held in his mouth, scuttling up to drop it into Nic’s hand.

“For me?” Nic reached down and pet those silky, translucent head-crests, digging his finger into the little bony hollow behind each frill until the little lizard’s right foot was thumping up and down. “Thanks lil guy.”

Sunfire belched a little drooling tongue of flame.

Clearly, he’d been working on his own advancement. Nic had spent good money buying him a special treasure to convert his Physical Strength into a fiery new body cultivation method…

Standing up, Nic smiled at them all. Family, in their own weird way.

“I’m gonna do some cultivation. Would you guys mind standing guard?” He asked.

Redjaw dipped his slimy head, nodding. Inkspur fluttered up to watch from a nearby tree. Sunfire, not really understanding, clambered into Nic’s lap as he settled down in the lotus position, bumping his head into Nic’s hands to demand more attention.

Nic just chuckled and gave it to him.

Drawing out the Eight-Color Coral Pills, Nic took one and placed it into his mouth. The taste was rich and somehow savory, like fatty roast meat dissolving to grease on his tongue, but briny as well, salted and fishy.

Swallowing it whole, Nic closed his eyes.

The pill unfurled into a flame in his stomach, and his teeth gritted as pain lanced through his body. Body refining treasures…

Another word for them was ‘poison’.

Poison you survived.

Poison that made you stronger.

But poison, nonetheless. One too many and you’d end up ‘refined’ into a corpse. Now his arms began to twitch, burning with a fierce internal flame that made the individual sinews, the long strands of hard-won muscle, squeeze down inadvertently. It was a popping, electric sensation, feeling his body try to thrash out of his control and barely holding down the twitching impulses.

He sat there, face contorting, sweat dripping from his face. The heat was unbearable.

Sunfire scrambled out of his lap as Nic abruptly stood, rising to his unsteady feet. He began to move, to stomp down with his feet, lash out with his hands. Eyes still clenched shut as he focused on holding his cultivation base in check, he began to practice his martial forms. The twitching in his muscles was too much to restrain - so he didn’t try.

Instead he channeled it.

His fist smashed into a tree. Again and again, he struck out, blows raining like lightning. His muscles were distended, bulging against his skin with wriggling veins etched across them like thunderbolts. Steam poured from his arms as he pulverized the old oak, smashing its skin of bark into splinters and slowly wearing a crater deeper and deeper into the trunk.

Until he suddenly felt the flame inside him collapse, spent, and his body dropped with it.

He flopped back into the grass, drenched in sweat. Breathing hard. His chest rose and fell, and he felt his muscles tightening up like tempered steel, condensing tighter and more powerful than before.

Carefully, Nic waited ten breaths.

Then he reached for the pills. Taking two out this time, he pressed them into his mouth.

“You…” Inkspur noted. “Have always been an UTTER MORON.”

“Yep.”

Nic stood up, fighting his exhausted body to get on his feet before the pills began to burn. This time, he didn’t waste time. He lifted a healing fruit to his mouth and swallowed it in three bites, mixing the soothing, gentle energy in with the fire and froth of the coral pills within his stomach.

As the fire rose and rose, he began to smash at the tree again, driving down with his fists, his open palms, his elbows, using his whole body as a weapon to throw against the unyielding oak. The fire tore through him, but it was a pain he knew he could survive.

It was a pain that drove him to strike harder-

Harder-

Harder.

Until with a massive cracking split, the tree toppled, tearing at the branches of the nearby oaks as it came crumbling down with a massive thud. Nic was left standing stock still, legs far apart in martial stance, his bruised and bleeding arms hanging limb by his sides as he panted in exhaustion.

His wounds sealed over slowly.

His muscles tightened again, the fibers compacting and thinning until they were closer to iron than flesh. His musculature was actually shrinking, and now bleeding drops of black tar swelled up on his skin, falling away in lines of oozing filth. His muscle was necrosing and regrowing, undergoing a rough weathering process that chipped away at needless bulk, evolving him by the force of thousands of years in a day…

He swallowed another set of two pills…

And repeated…

Another two…

And another tree crushed to splinters…

Until the vial ran dry.

When Nic finally stopped, he was a mess of black tars and blood and sweat, no better off than when he’d fought the undead tooth and nail. He paused to draw out a waterskin and splash it over him, but it did no good. The clinging filth was bad enough that he could only manage to clear his face.

The smell was godawful.

It was the smell of sickness and death, the weaknesses pushed from his skin.

Essence 4,124 / 27,046

+ 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 &%##!~

Cultivation Base (Unranked)

XIV Physical Strength (Completed)

III Mental Acuity (1,051/8,000)*

III Spiritual Clarity (5,035/8,000)*

IV Gift of Life (962/15,000)

IV Mistwater Step (114/15,000)

The Old Speech (117/50,000)

But as he flicked open his cultivation map, a smile covered his features. His Physical Strength had broken through not once, but twice. He had broken nearly to the point where he might actually be able to match a weaker D-Class in pure physical agility. His strength was still limited by his size, his agile physique built more for speed, but in speed…

Nic took three steps. His body seemed to blur, becoming one continuous stream, and there was now barely a heartbeat passed between those three steps. It was like he had vanished into the mist, becoming part of it and flowing on the wind.

His breath was slow and steady, but his excitement was building.

Sitting back down, he took out the dark cherries. It was greedy, to try and wolf down another precious treasure so soon after the cultivation pills…

But he was near to breaking through in Spiritual Clarity. In fact, with the rush of Essence the Trial had gifted him, his three ‘reservoirs’ of spiritual Essence were full again. It was the matter of thinking to break through to the fourth stage and enhance himself again.

That was the feeling Nic chased every waking moment.

Progress.

As he pushed the cherry into his mouth, he drew the energy of his Concepts up, sending it spiraling into the singular node in his forehead that contained his spirit. The world slowed. He felt the taste of the cherry, rich and dark and tart, spill across his tongue in slow motion. He saw every pinprick dot of sweat and filth the fingers of his hand.

The world crawled forward, half-frozen, leaves drifting from the trees.

The cherry’s flesh slowly passed down his throat, stone and all.

And the world began to wither. In a treacle crawl of time, Nic watched it happen. The trees turned to ash, the leaves blowing from their dying branches in trails of white smoke. The world became black and darkened, the sky a slate-gray expanse, the ground desiccating until all that remained was white ash.

He didn’t need his crystal eyes to tell him this was an illusion, but still.

It felt real.

All too real.

Nic flinched as a sudden stab of pain ripped through his chest. He coughed, feeling intense, nauseating agony as something pushed outwards through his veins, scraping and abrading them from within as a frozen pressure grew in the chambers of his heart.

Something was growing within him.