Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 2 Days 13 Hours

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

Early that morning before the sun had risen, Nic shot across the sands.

Using the Sandrider Blade he conjured a thin, moving platform of sand, making it flow swiftly across the desert. It felt weightless underfoot, gliding forward, and the peak of every dune was an opportunity to feel the wind rise around him as he picked up speed and shot downwards- pushing aura into the blade to accelerate onward as the sand itself carried him across the desert.

Sofia was being annoying. She had opinions.

“You should at least consider it. Five-thousand First Wave Credits is a fortune, even if you couldn’t defeat Sula. Poisoning their water could reap five figures of credits, and you could escape long before they realized.”

“Are you a sociopath? Did you actually not notice that those people saved my life?” Nic snapped, irritated. “Because that matters to me."

“And are you going to let that control you? I do have empathy, but these people were marked by the System. They’re dangerous. Being personally kind to you doesn’t change their place in the wider world.”

Nic snarled. “I won’t do it. Unless and until they turn out to be secret baby-eaters, they’re my friends. I won’t stick my neck too far out - they can take care of themselves - but I won’t betray someone who’s been that kind to me. Let it drop.”

He’d met people in d23 who believed they could rise to the top by screwing others over. And it usually worked for a time. They managed to burn their friends, to steal what they’d been trusted with, and then-

Then they found out the hard way it only worked for a time. They ran out of friends, and they ran out of trust to abuse. If reaching the top just took a willingness to lie and cheat, well, reaching the top wouldn’t be hard at all.

Pausing on the crest of a hill, Nicolas surveyed the desert world around him and paused to sketch out his map from memory. Days of hard work scribing useless runes had given him an excellent recall for anything drawn.

With the humans and elves also exploring the desert he was on a clock. Sooner or later somebody would find another map and learn all the hidden locations - but for now he had the first shot at them. He’d picked three of the marked nodes on the map to be the focus of his exploration. They were the three closest together, and Nic hoped to explore all of them before the humans found their way to a teleportation circle and saw the full extent of the map.

As he drew, a shadow formed behind him. Nic was careful not to freeze or move suddenly as he felt the presence creep over him. Instead, he pushed his palm down into the sand and layered adhesive aura over the Sandrider Blade’s control.

A black-shelled scorpion drove its pure-white tail towards the back of his head.

Nic rolled away and the ground where he’d been exploded upwards, grasping the tail and binding it into a a grip of swirling desert sand. Sliding partway down the dune, Nic drew his bow and fired three shots in close succession into the beast’s eyes and mouth.

The bow sung in his hands. Each shot was satisfying and powerful.

The beast seized up and died slowly, yellow blood pouring from his shell.

More scorpions erupted from the sands. They were smaller, their shells less defined. Nic didn’t need to aim for the weak points but could punch through the carapaces with easy shots.

He sailed backwards using the Sandrider Blade on his back, circling around them as he nailed one after the other with swift-flying arrows. The ones that survived the initial blow bled out quickly.

It was savage, brief, and joyful.

Nic claimed a segment of the scorpion’s armor, prying it away from the yellow-white meat below. With the black carapace securely stowed within his bag he summoned his sand-board and went sailing down the slope- onwards and out towards adventure.

---

The first location he’d discovered on the map was one he’d never have found on his own. A ring of stone surrounded a seemingly normal dry basin in the center of the desert

But as he stepped past those stones, a barrier suddenly appeared behind him, a thin and translucent bubble of illusionary magic. Without that illusion-

The desert came to life.

The basin that looked dry and desolate from the outside was full of sparkling, beautiful waters. They fed in from numerous waterfalls that tumbled down the rocky sides of the cliffs surrounding the lake below, coming from underground springs. Green life clung to the water-smoothed rocks. From caves and crevices in the cliff-face numerous creatures fed off the greenery. Shaggy goats darted from rock to rock. Huge crawling centipedes emerged from hidden caves to hunt them.

Angler Centipede. G-Class (Peak) // Demi-Sentient. This huge crawling beast disguises itself on cliff walls and hunts using its long and prehensile antenna to bind unsuspecting prey. A uniquely deadly poison qualifies it as a lifeform able to hunt above its Class.

Just a splash of water and the desert began to thrive.

From the center of the lake below rose a ruined building, full of spires and glass windows. It was some kind of church or other holy site, sank below the earth whenever this basin was created. Slimy bodies swam in the waters surrounding its drowned towers.

Nic grinned and began down the slope.

The rocks were slippery with moss and smoothed by ages of erosion, but he managed to use Adhesive Touch to cling on and leap from one to the next. Following a route worn by the goats down the side of the cliff, he watched in fascination as they wedged their hooves into the stone to climb seemingly sheer walls. A huge centipede crawled down towards them, blue tongues and long antenna probing like fishing lines across the stone.

It snatched up one of the goats and an ear-piercing squeal of terror echoed through the valley. The others began to shoot up along the walls, balancing with precision and throwing themselves into brutal, headlong strikes with their horns against the centipedes sides. They were trying to bludgeon and confuse the beast into dropping its prey as it slowly reeled its long body back into the cave from which it emerged. No such miracle occurred. The centipede retreated slowly into its cave and the rending cries of the goat-

Went abruptly silent.

Nic shivered. The valley was a dangerous place.

Step after leaping step, he descended down the goat-path in a low spiral, until a gleam of reflected sunlight caught his eye. Hanging on a ledge on the smoother eastern side of the cliff was something that shone and shimmered in the light. A golden beacon calling to his greed.

Nic glanced at the route between him and the goal.

It was a smooth, sheer path with a barely discernible lip of stone that human feet could sidle along and a few platforms to leap between. This was clearly something the System had designed, a challenge for agile warriors to face.

Nic coated his limbs in adhesive aura and began to simply crawl along the sheer walls.

He felt very proud of himself until halfway across, when the wall suddenly heaved up into thousands of crawling dark legs. A centipede had camouflaged itself against the stones. Its body shifted colors as it rose- gone was the drab ochre stone shades and now it was bright, violent red as it lunged for him.

Long red antenna and a writhing blue tongue shot for him.

Nic sprayed poison to ward it off, but there was no effect at all. Desperate, he dropped his Adhesive Touch to the point it could no longer sustain his weight and went skidding down the wall. The centipede turned and followed, an inescapable sea of legs.

And then it began to slow.

Nic had smeared the wall where he’d dropped past with adhesive auras and now those countless legs were rapidly becoming stuck in place. It thrashed and hissed, trying to break free, but its upper body was caught fast.

Grasping his tiger-claw, Nic summoned the echo to a high ledge above the centipede. It was a suicidal leap for a living creature- but a ghost knew no fear. The tiger leapt down with a terrifying yowl. Its claws struck the centipede’s back and cut through the armor like butter, and pulled by gravity, the tiger slowly tore a set of deep gouges down the beast’s entire back.

Yellow blood oozed forth. By the time the tiger had vanished the centipede was nearly bisected lengthways, and foul-smelling ichor rained past Nic below. And something else. Small curled bodies tumbled through the air.

Nic immediately realized. Shadows were crawling free of the thing’s broken carapace. Countless tiny, young centipedes with bright-red heads were pouring out of their mother’s broken body.

Panicking, Nic released the adhesive aura and let the beast fall away, its enormous body coiling in the air as it fell into the lake.

Too late. There were crawling masses of children scuttling down the wall towards him. Even as he tried to crush them and throw them off where they crawled aboard, they swarmed onto Nic and bit through his slimy skin. He sprayed Poison Mist from his mouth in retaliation and killed dozens instantly, but there were always more. Venom filled his veins with a stinging pain as he fought and fought to pull free of the swarm.

Until suddenly his adhesive aura was no longer holding him steady to the wall.

Nic dropped hard.

He slammed into a lower ledge and gasped in pain as his rubbery body absorbed a shock that would fold human bones like paper. Tiny centipedes still clung on by their jaws, but clumsily, almost blind with pain, Nic yanked them away and hurled them off the cliff. He flopped back and simply panted, happy to be alive.

A bleat sounded above him.

“Oh no.” Clumsily getting to his feet, Nic stared down the goat. It was a huge specimen with shaggy grey fur and enormous horns. His arms and legs shook from the exertion but he puffed out the antenna behind his gills and tried to look as big as possible. “Go on. Shoo. Get out. Go.”

The beast bleated menacingly.

Nic eyed the space at the end of the ledge. There was water beneath him, but water could hurt like hell if you fell into it hard enough.

Turning back to the goat, he shot an evil glare at the stupid beast. “I’m giving you one last chance…”

It slammed its hooves down and charged. Nic’s mouth shot open to unleash a poison blast- but nothing came out.

Nothing happened when he tried to use his adhesive touch to cling on to the rock, either. With a brutal, thudding impact, the goat bowled into him and flicked him off the ledge.

“Oh.” He thought as he fell. “The poison must restrict my aura.”

“That’s neat.”

And then he crashed into the waters.

Bubbles and froth surged around him as he sunk towards the bottom. There was a feeding frenzy as giant crocodiles devoured the flesh of the centipede, but one broke off, surging towards Nic as his gills opened and he drank in the cool embrace of the lake.

Lifting his little vial of pills to his mouth, he sucked down one of the Spirit Purifying Pills he’d won from the bald brute outside the Dungeon. As the crocodile swam towards him and its jaws opened to rip him in half, he frantically struggled to turn his cultivation base, trying to stir life back into the dead Essence within his veins.

The pill hit his stomach and unfolded into bursts of raw energy. It was like a key into a lock, and suddenly strength was bursting through him again. He spun in the waters as the jaws of the crocodile loomed above him-

And spat poison down its throat.

The crocodile seized as the soft tissues within boiled away, and Nic grabbed hold of its snout to deliver a single finishing blow to its eyesocket. As the dead beast floated towards the bottom he snorted. “Yeah, well, we’re both having bad days.”

Orienting himself in the dark waters, Nic saw that the base of the ruined structure in the lake had a deep breach in the walls. Kicking off he swam towards the darkness within.

---

He emerged from the flooded lower floors onto a staircase, waters cascading down his slippery skin as his gills flicked shut. The lower floors had been full of broken glass jars and dark things that retreated deep into the shadows when he passed by.

“What a strange place.” He mumbled to the empty air.

“Strange indeed.” To Nic’s shock, a ghost made of pale and glowing mist stepped through the wall. It was the ghost of an ancient cultivator- the kind he’d read about in stories. Robes and long, dark hair fluttered in the wind. The ghost gave of an impression of gentle patience, with dark eyes and a small, sad smile. “Welcome to the Hermitage of the Star-Spun Art. A sad place with a sad story to tell.”

“Nicolas?” Sofia said. “This place feels… familiar.”