Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 0 Days 9 Hours

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

A golden sphere drifted up as the boar died.

Immediately, Jessie and Moira’s eyes went wide. Even Matteos, still shaking off the effects of turning to stone, blinked and went wide-mouthed like a fish.

“Kid has all the luck.” Jessie grumbled.

Reaching up, Shane touched the bubble and it popped into a drift of hazy-colored smoke like a tiny nebula. Floating within were a pair of bone bracers lined with boar-fur.

Moira stepped forward and snatched them out of the air. “These…” She was so happy she was almost crying. “Will keep you safe.” She bent down and slipped them over Shane’s wrist, where they immediately resized to fit him.

Nic snorted. He could’ve used magical bracers. Those things were etched with the most complex runework he’d ever seen.

But he had plenty to work with.

First, he pried the surviving Shard from the boar’s socket. The glittering crystal broke away at the edges, crumbling like flakes of salt as his knife dug in. By the time it sat in his palm the Shard was reduced to nearly half its original size- but what remained glowed like a dark star.

Wasteland Shard. F-Rank (Peak) // Secondary. This shard contains purest Essence attuned to the concepts of undeath and strength. It has been damaged by the death of its previous owner and cannot serve as a Primary Shard, but due to peak quality, the resulting skill will be easy to advance. Well suited to forming a Rot Core, a Titanic Core, or an Undying Core.

It was an eerie thing and unsettled Nic slightly, so he tucked it into his pack and got to work on the rest of the body. Driving his kitchen knife into the gap between tusk and skull he began to dig, trying to wriggle and fight to loosen up the immense spar of pale bone. Unfortunately the knife was already chipped and bent from this kind of thing. With a final groan, it snapped in his hands.

“Hells, look at it go.” Jessie commented. She seemed almost disturbed by the speed at which he’d set to stripping the corpse.

“It looks like it knows what it’s doing. Do you think there’s a tribe of those things out there, hunting monsters? The System said there were other worlds. Maybe it’s from one of those.” Moira added. Nic had to give it to her. She might be the smart one of the group.

“Here.” Matteos stood over him, lifting the axe from his belt. Through the whole of combat he’d never reached once for the weapon. Planting his foot on the tusk, he chopped it away with a single brutal strike. Another blow cut the opposite side free. “There, that’s the least I can do.”

“Actually…” Matteos looked at the corpse thoughtfully. “Maybe I could cook this up for you? I’m pretty good at that sort of thing.”

Nic nodded enthusiastically.

“Can I have some? Mister Nak?” Shane burst out.

He shook his head.

“No kiddo. It’s been poisoned. I don’t think anybody but our friend should eat it now, even if I took the leg farthest from the head…” Shane’s face dropped as Matteos spoke.

“What? C’mon. We’ve been on those pills for days. You say everything ‘might be poison’ you bore.” Jessie complained.

“Well this definitely is.” Matteos gave her a level look until she crossed her arms and surrendered.

---

The System really treated these natives well. Nic’s eyes had gone wide when he’d seen Matteos conjure a cooking pot from thin air and realized every single one of them had access to a subdimensional space. Even the cooking pot itself was no joke: the cauldron heated itself to a boil with power from the runes carved on the sides.

Working together Nic and Matteos carved away a haunch of boar and stuffed it inside. Nic dug into his bag for the leaf-satchels of spices and sprinkled a few handfuls of good smelling powder in. Borrowing his frying pan, Matteos began to draw saw some of the fatty meat from the belly and mix in berries to boil up a rich sauce.

Of course, the meat was poisoned. So everyone else had to enjoy a different meal.

The rest of them grimaced and took pale white pills from bamboo vials, swallowing the fingernail-sized medicines down with water. Judging by context Nic could guess they were some kind of medicine that replaced food and sated hunger.

They seemed to think those pills were a form of torture. Moira made exaggerated faces of disgust at Shane until he burst out laughing. All Nic could think about was how many sleepless nights he’d spent tossing and turning from the empty pain his belly.

“Why does the System give them so much?”

Sofia paused for a long moment before she spoke. It was the longest he’d heard her hesitate. “Because the solution Logos seeks don’t lie within the System. Billions upon billions live within the controlled worlds and none of them can produce the results one random outsider might. Consistently, anomalies turn up during Integration. People who defy logic. To them this is a new world. They haven’t grown up knowing the precise limits of cultivation, or being told their place in the world. They are free in all the ways Logos and the people it governs are not.”

Nic groaned and lay down, using his pack as a pillow. The smell of the cooking boar was making everyone’s mouth water and he was no exception.

As he rested, Moira approached. “Uh…”

He blinked his beady, dark eyes at her.

“Sorry. For shooting you. I thought you’d gone after Shane, and well- I’d shoot anyone who did that. But you were saving him. So. Sorry.” Anyone not anything, Nic noted. “I brought you a bandage.” It was a length of the cleanest white cloth Nic had ever seen, the inside lined with green herbal poultice.

It had the look of something they’d bought from the ‘System merchants.’ It was too clean, too perfect.

She lay it over his back and cinched it shut over the place her arrow had carved across him. An inch better aim and it wouldn’t ripped into the meat and muscle of his shoulder. Thankfully-

Moira was pretty shitty with her crossbow.

Actually, they were all confused. Matteos was taking point as a tank when his real talent was the Shard he’d only used once: the one time he’d landed a hit against the boar his blow had petrified part of its skull. That kind of offensive ability was incredible against any number of opponents.

Meanwhile Jessie tried to play the mage before giving up and going with her natural inclination to brawl. The truth was she should have been using both. Her wind-spears weren’t meant for range. They were traps. She could create them to fill space and box enemies in, then harass them with her swift but weak strikes, taking slack for Matteos to position and deliver killing blows.

Moira at least understood her job, she was just too inexperienced to combine her skills and send all three arrows arcing to the same target.

And he couldn’t speak their language to explain any of this. Nic croaked in annoyance. “I know it hurts.” Moira said placatingly. The tone a mother might use for a child with a splinter. “But there, all done.”

“All done!” Matteos declared from across the little camp, echoing her. The smell of the opened cooking pot was heaven. Savory, almost sweet, full of grease and spices.

When Nic dug in he almost transmigrated again on a sheer wave of flavor. It was too good. Bite after bite was ripped away from the bone and shoved into his toothless mouth, swallowing fistfuls of meat whole and kicking his stubby feet in approval.

“Ha, glad you like it…” Matteos couldn’t keep the envy from shining in his eyes. None of them could.

One by one, they found things to do to stop from staring hungrily at the sight of the little newt-man eating. Matteos and Jessie went to talk by the edge of the clearing. Moira stripped the crossbow down and began oiling the parts.

Shane snuck closer and closer until he was basically staring over Nic’s shoulder. “Hey.” He whispered, and Nic felt him slide something into his backpack. “Take this. I know you saved me.”

Nic paused. The meat didn’t taste poisonous. Peeling away a chunk, he slipped it to the kid. Shane’s eyes went wide and he chewed it down in seconds.

Reluctantly, feeling the weight of Shane’s eyes on him and realizing this had become a meal for two, Nic offered over another piece.

But hell. It was good enough for two.

---

As they parted ways, Nic waving to Shane and Moira, grinning his broad grin towards the still-angry Jessie, and pausing to bump his fist against Mattias’ own, the giant leaned down.

“Uh. Here, I don’t know where you’re going or why, but this might help. I got it from one of those golden bubbles. I figure you might know how to use it.” From his inventory he took a plastic sphere. It was clear on one side, forming a see-through dome onto a little diorama of a sunflower orchard tended to by a bee with a pitchfork in its humanized hands.

“Uh…” It looked like the kind of cheap trash that kids played with.

“Nicolas? Take it.” Sofia advised instantly.

“Suuure.” Clasping his hand around the plastic bauble, Nic nodded to Matteos.

And then it was time to go. Waving a final goodbye, he headed into the trees as they followed the burn trail of the wildfire, using the cleared path as a road through the forest.

Setting his pack down he slipped his hand inside, already guessing what Shane had given him. He drew out on half of the bracer pair. It was a beautiful thing. The smooth ring of boar-tusk bone was carved with repeating geometric patterns like a helix-shaped knot, folding in seven runes that each resided in their own doubled circle.

They were runes Nic wasn’t even vaguely familiar with.

Wintertusk Bracer of the Boar’s Resilience. F-Class (Peak) // Treasured Artifact. This bracer bears the proud and stoic might of the beast it was born from. You can call upon this blessing to briefly grow in size and gain immense resistance to physical damage. You can use this ability once from one dawn to the next. Because this item was originally part of a set, the effect is halved.

He would’ve whistled.

If he could whistle.

Actually, Nic had never figured out whistling even when he had lips.

Slipping it onto his wrist, he turned to Matteos’ gift…

Spatial Bubble: Sunkeeper’s Garden. Astral // Treasured Artifact. Within a Settlement or Residence, this artifact can be used to create a medicinal garden tended by a lonely warrior.

He blinked. Create a medicinal garden? It was hard to believe this tiny plastic capsule would just spring into a fully formed garden but-

“Sofia? How do I get a Residence?”

“It’s a recognition of the System usually bestowed upon Natives and Invaders. Either a Settlement or a Residence can be bestowed by a Spatial Pillar Credit. Your best bet would be to wait for the Invading camps to arrive and attempt to use their Totem, which should grant you access to the Ladder and to the Grand Design.”

Nic had to remember that this wasn’t just a world anymore. This was the Integration. A game was being played between two sides. Totems, Spatial Pillar Credits, Ladders and Grand Designs… They were all ways the System was nudging its two forces against one another. “Tell me what all of that means.”

“A series of quests. The Ladder seeks personal growth. The Grand Designs offers rewards for taking territory. There is a final option…” Sofia paused dramatically. Nic instantly caught on that this was the option she intended him to take all along. “If you enter a Dungeon and defeat it for the first time, you’re guaranteed to receive a Spatial Pillar Credit.”

“Dungeon later. And you can explain to me how this Invasion works. For now…” Nic glanced up at the sky. The sun was sinking below the horizon. “I have to keep earning Shards.”