Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 2 Days 17 Hours

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

Nic groaned like an animal as he lay on the stairs trying to make his cultivation base flare to life. It was like fighting a stuck engine. Now and then he’d get a sudden jolt of movement, then the Essence would freeze in his veins again, and trying to make it move would be like dragging jagged glass through his insides.

He finally appreciated his axolotl body’s true strengths. It wasn’t the strongest or fastest. But it was relentless, letting him leap from battle to battle at a truly hectic pace. Without that safety net to rely on-

He’d have killed himself ages ago by pushing too far and too fast.

He grasped the pouch of Spirit Purifying Pills. Counting out three he set those aside and gulped the rest, forcing them down his throat by the fistful. His cultivation base roared like a sea of poison fire, overloaded, and Nic coughed up blood as his organs began to struggle against the overwhelming fury in his veins.

He forced himself to cycle Essence through his body until his eyes began to blur with effort and exhaustion. All the while his leg hurt. Regrowing a limb had been easy when he was asleep and Sofia had taken over. Awake, it was grueling and painful work.

But with the help of a sickening amount of spirit medicines seething through his veins he managed. The new limb felt weaker than the original, and he suspected he’d have a limp until he fully cleansed the poison from his system and was able to heal properly.

But it was one more leg than he’d had a few painful minutes ago.

Nic slowly stood and reached for the silver bubble containing his first prize.

As soon as he touched it the bubble unfurled into a tiny galaxy of luminous mist. Floating at the center of the divine mist was a brilliant red scarf with a golden hand embroidered on one end. Five tassels connected to the golden palm, so it had five long fingers of gold.

Scarf of the Divine Grasp. G-Class (Peak) // Treasured Artifact. Woven by monks who practiced martial arts but had forsworn ever laying a hand on an enemy or lifting a weapon, this innocent scarf has the power to strike fearsome blows or serve as a third hand. It abhors weapons and will not touch them, but otherwise has the dexterity of a true limb.

Nic licked his lips instinctively. It was a good treasure to find from a silver capsule. Not directly powerful, but incredibly useful. He wound it around his throat and made the golden hand rise with a thought-

To give a high-five to his hand of flesh and slimy skin.

Reaching out, he opened the next capsule. This one was larger and brighter with a shade of deep ocean green instead of tarnished silver. The puff of divine mist that escaped shone with little stars.

Within was a scroll made of incredibly soft, white silk. Written on it were complex diagrams of cultivation patterns and meridian nodes that resembled constellations. He didn’t truly understand much of what he was looking at, but as Nic read across the scroll, the System began to speak into his mind.

A Technique is Studied

“The Book of the Eight-Eyed Mantle”

A low-level perception technique, containing both a passive sense for incoming danger and a powerful, exhausting active skill that opens this perception to its fullest.

Learn Technique - Y/N?

“Yes.” Nic said, and the scroll tore itself into pieces. Fragments of silk paper swirled through the air and formed a circle overhead. At its center, collecting in a bead of blue, a light blossomed. It shone for a second before shooting down into Nic’s temples.

He could feel the nodes of his cultivation base sing.

The paper fragments fell down and burned away as Nic was left reeling, a new knowledge crammed into his brain. His five senses were joined by a sixth. He could feel a kind of presence in the air, even through the walls and ceilings of the stairwell. They were moving slowly, lurching, and instinctively he knew these were more Experiments wandering through the halls above.

Nic could sense them simply by the fact they were a threat to him. It was a new and dark kind of sense, belonging to a creature that hid itself away in shadows.

He thought it suited him.

Lavhin’s head emerged from the floor. “Oh, excellent. You survived.” The rest of him floated up after, the edges of his ghostly body flickering like static. “I have such exciting things to show you. This way, please! This is where we made our attempts at greatness.”

The projection drifted up the stairs and turned back, waiting for Nic to follow.

Nic’s eyes narrowed. His new sense of ‘threat’ was screaming at the sight of Lavhin.

But for now he didn’t see any way out of this mess but to follow the ghost.

---

The upper hall was an immense dark room lit by a high circular window of stained glass. The colored lights fell down on broken suits of armor that reminded Nic of the humanoid-insect sand devils, with thorny growths on the joints and triangular, sharp helms. Every inch of their black metal was covered in golden runes.

Nic sensed no threat, but carefully refused to use Archive Recall on them. Something was eerie about the lifelike way they slumped against the walls or over the floor. They all had died the same way - clinging to huge glass bell jars that contained flickering white lights.

“What is this?” He asked, searching the room for enemies. His new sense might be sharp - but he doubted it was absolute.

“The remnants of our first attempts. You see, Sophonts, the polished and crystal minds, weren’t working at first. They were rejecting and destroying the host. So of course, we set out to build them better bodies. Artificial ones!”

The armor-dolls stared up with empty glass eyes.

As Lavhin rambled, Nic made his way through them, stepping over broken bodies. At the head of the hall was a raised platform with a teleportation circle and a map carved into the floor within the runic diagram. Unfortunately, there were no power crystals to be found - he discovered an empty box instead. A thin layer of dust confirmed it had been empty for a long time.

“Only, we had the opposite problem. With no spirit to latch to the Sophonts simply withered away. What was left were these mindless husks. And they’ll do anything for a wisp of spiritual essence. They’ll tear a person apart, for instance.”

Nic glared at him. The dolls weren’t showing any sign of waking for him.

“Oh not you. You’re delightfully unenlightened. But if these jars were to crack…” He slid a ghostly finger through the glass. Wisps of white light broke away from the glowing cloud to float towards him. “Well, this whole room would wake up in a hurry. Which would get… messy… if you were still about…”

“That sounds awfully like a threat.” Nic noted. The ghost’s madness was showing through.

But Lavhin only threw his hands up. “No no! I’m just saying you’d better not waste time here. Yes, best we be getting on and finding that antidote as quickly as possible.”

“Uh-huh. Show me where it is, then.”

He was starting to feel very, very glad he had this skill, if his guide was going to be someone so obviously planning to lead him astray.

Following Lavhin, Nic crept into the side wing. His new senses let him evade the clumsy Experiments easily by ducking into side rooms as he prowled down the circular hallays; he discovered rooms full of staring, rune-marked skulls and butterflies with dusty wings pinned to artificial trees. The whole place had a grisly air despite the lack of any bodies.

Nic had noticed that. Despite everyone in this lab having died long ago, the only actual corpse he’d seen had been the one holding the Mourner’s Lantern.

Similarly there were empty spaces in the lab. Places where there should have been equipment, or valuable tools, that had been cleared away. If everything else wasn’t so pristine Nic would’ve said the place had been looted. But there were no signs of search, leaving either the options that they had been extraordinarily polite looters… or something else was at play…

“Sofia?”

“Yes?” Her voice was strained, but she answered quickly as if trying to cover up her weakness. “What is it Nic?”

“Do you think the System could be hiding something? There’s just too much missing here, and I think someone’s trying to cover something up.” He stared at a mark on the wall where a scroll had been. The change in color still marked out the edges.

“Possibly, but I’d blame this Lavhin character first.” The ghost hovered impatiently at the doorway, watching Nic as he searched for more tools and other goodies to shove into his bag. “The System doesn’t care about keeping secrets. It doesn’t have a mind capable of choosing to hide something. Logos and Pathos could, but what would they want to hide from you?”

“They certainly don’t care if I see how many people they murdered making the Sophonts.” Nic said, and felt Sofia flinch. He could feel enough of her emotion now to know that one had stung. “Sorry, sorry. You… Pathos is like your mother, right? Tell me about her.”

As Sofia began to speak, Nic crept back out into the hallway.

“She’s everything you’d expect of a god. Intense like a fire. Changing like the winds. She confused me, to be honest. I never fully understood why she did what she did, and she had no time to explain to us. She could only say it would all be worthwhile. And it was.”

Nic paused as his Eight-Eyed Mantle informed him of an Experiment coming around the corner. He slithered into the shadows and let it pass.

“There is a place at the core of the cosmos, Nic, where every world is a garden. Beautiful and free of pain. I know your world was a dark place. But the Gardens are expanding, and sooner or later, they will reach city d23. All the petty tyrants and the warlords of the streets will be put to death. The sick will be healed. The hungry fed…”

It might have just been that she was already nervous. But Sofia’s voice shook with an emotional intensity that frightened Nic.

“I know this all seems… is… wretched, Nic. But I promise you Pathos wouldn’t do this, unless whatever is at the end was all worthwhile.

He entered the central room of the wing.

It was a huge vaulted room of glass, the ceiling letting the dull light of the sun shine through from above through dusty green panes like a greenhouse. The light landed on enormous worktables covered with abandoned tools.

Along the walls were immense shelves filled with specimen jars. Strange creatures drifted in yellow pickling liquid. At the end, standing alone, was one of the enormous bell jars full of Spiritual Essence. Nic ached to crack it open like an egg and drink the power inside, but there were three broken doll-soldiers lying around the room.

Waiting to wake up.

Nic paused to examine the specimen jars. Almost all of them were dead things turned soft by years in the pickling solution. Almost. There was an undead creature that thrashed and rattled against the edges of its jar, a thing shaped like a tiny monkey with scabby black fur and a skeletal face.

Nic ran his hands down the line of jars until he reached the enormous glass enclosure that held the flickering thread of Spiritual Essence. As he touched it, a tendril of white energy reached out to press against the far side of the glass.

“Over there. My personal work-station.” Lavhin pointed.

It was a small space raised up on a flight of stairs above the rest of the hall. Nic snorted. Of course Lavhin would want to literally look down on his workers.

Nic wasn’t unaware this room was likely another trap like the cells with the Jailer. But what choice did he have? He needed the antidote. The System had planned it perfectly: from the moment he was bitten by the centipedes he had no choice but to see this twisted adventure through.

He started up the steps. Waiting for the doll-soldiers to leap to life.

Lying on Lavin’s workshops were four objects.

“I-” Lavhin’s face twisted up in confusion. “I didn’t put these there! The only thing that should be there is the antidote!”

The first was a long golden chisel. Nic picked it up and Sofia provided Archive Recall.

Trepanation Blade. G-Class // Treasured Artifact. This ancient tool was used to crack the skull and unleash the mind from the prison of bone. A holy ritual, it neutered as many minds as it freed. One who undertakes this surgery will gain a rank of Spiritual Clarity, but permanently reduce their maximum ranks by up to three.

“Disgusting.” Lavhin sneered. “Savage medicine for savage minds.”

Nic was inclined to agree, but there was a reason it was here.

He reached for the next item. A beautiful quill made of a raven-black feather.

Theoretical Quill. F-Class // Treasured Artifact. Sooner or later, any culture that has followed the path of runescribing will discover or invent this quill. It allows the bearer to draw hypothetical runes with absolute accuracy, learning the difficulty and effects of their creation before committing to the design. Since this costs no Essence it is ideal for practice.

Nic’s fingers clutched tight around the gold-adorned base. This was…

This was what he needed years ago. To completely change the course of his life, this was all he needed.

As he reached for the final two objects - a pair of syringes, one a murky black and the other a light green - the inevitable finally happened.

The monkey screamed and threw itself against the edges of its jar hard enough to send the glass enclosure toppling over. That specimen jar crashed into the next, and that one into the next, like a row of dominoes tumbling down. Heading straight for the glass bell jar with gathering speed.

Until-

Suddenly-

It wasn’t.

The chain of collisions crashed into the second to last jar and just stopped. Dead. It wobbled faintly, but refused to budge further.

Because Nic had covered that one in adhesive aura when he’d paused to touch them.

“Nice try.”