Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 3 Days 18 Hours

Goal: Kill 'Baby Boots'

Nic blinked as the vision ended. It was… confusing…

He had inhabited the scavenger’s body and mind, feeling its thoughts as his own, sharing every emotion. But he couldn’t lift an arm or speak a word. He was along for the ride, like a dream where you had no power to move your own body.

The scavenger had awoken a hidden god by giving it a name, if only by accident. “Mine.”

What kind of god had a name like Mine?

He shook his head. The sudden flip from one body to the next was making his head dizzy, like waking up suddenly from a deep dream. The vague thoughts and fuzzy logic were dangerous. The System had shown him this vision for a reason-

Was he supposed to give his weapon echoes names? Was that somehow key to their power?

He considered for a moment, before lifting the first spirit weapon he’d made, the boar-tusk shield. The beast he’d claimed the tusks from had been an angry, defiant soul. It had taken blow after blow to bring it down, and even then the boar had refused to die as it lay on the ground unable to stand. Even beyond death it had resisted being made into a weapon with its whole heart and had nearly defeated Nic by pure exhaustion.

But since that day it had served him. It had fought by his side.

“Steadfast. I’ll name you Steadfast.” Nic said, and the shield resonated briefly against his mind. The spirit within had accepted the name.

Next he lifted his right-hand claw, the one formed of tiger-teeth scared by wildfire. He hadn’t known the spirit within in life, but in death it had resisted until he flattered its strength and appealed to its pride. Every time he summoned the tiger it fought to the death, terrifying enemies with its claws and tearing them apart if they faltered. It was a noble monster…

“Regent.” He chose. Regent, because it was still his beast. Not a king in its own right.

Finally, the centipede-axe. The beast had less of a mind than the other two. It had been born as one among millions of crawling children and only its raw malice, its sheer hunger, had allowed it to devour its brothers and sisters to grow to massive size. The centipede had spawned a brood of its own, and would one day have been devoured by them when it grew too weak to defend itself.

“Centurion.” Nic named it. Leader of the crawling legions.

With his weapons named, Nic dropped back into the oasis and swam to shore. His belly was rumbling, and it had been too long since he’d cooked himself a proper meal.

His centipede served as a hunting hound, ferreting out fat, squirming grubs and heavy-bellied beetles beneath fallen chunks of ancient stone and half-rotted logs. Rolling the hiding places over, Nic snatched up the prize before his companion could gobble it up.

The centipede hissed and reared up in anger. “Relax. You’ll get your share.” Nic promised.

He had firewood, oil, and flint. Everything he needed to start a fire, with the addition of some dry desert grass for kindling. As the flame licked up he pushed his treasure trove of insects onto a stick and held them out over the flames to roast away.

It reminded him…

It reminded Nic of one of the dream-realms he’d been forced to go through as part of the legion training mandated for every child in d23 The entire simulated world was nothing but endless, boggy swamplands full of sandpits and lurking predators. Malarial insects buzzed everywhere.

And as they discovered, insects were all there was to eat.

It had been a hard week, but they’d gotten through it together.

Him. Markus. Kyto. Tawley…

Nic shook off the memory before he could sink any deeper into it. His insects were already overcooked, stained with black char, and the centipede was swaying with outrage.

“Sorry, sorry. Tomb, but you’re an angry little guy..” Laughing, Nic pushed the furthest and ripest of the bugs off the skewer for his companion and began to scarf down the rest as breakfast. They were sweet and juicy and tasted - almost - like chicken. He just wished he’d managed to make the spices from Nylea’s tree last a little longer.

Tossing the skewer aside he kicked sand over the firepit. His centipede curled over his arm and melded into his skin as a tattoo, sensing it was time.

All this relaxation was good, but Nic could never sit around and think forever. The itch was already starting in the back of his mind. The need to feel forward progress. Sitting around like this just let memories creep back up on him, and he didn’t care to remember.

So they were off to adventure.

---

Nic raced along on his sandboard, chasing the second of the three dots on his map he’d picked out to try and explore before the humans. This location had been depicted as a huge valley, and as he approached he could see birds wheeling in the sky. Weather-eroded statues of red stone guarded the edges of the rift.

He hopped off his sandboard and peered down.

The triangular chasm was carved out of the earth in red rock walls. There was nothing particularly interesting about the valley bed, where scrubby grasses grew from red sand, nothing but small pools of water and thin trees.

But the walls themselves?

Countless small caverns had been carved into the side, connected by narrow footpaths that the wind had worn down until a human would struggle to walk across them. The entrance of each cave was guarded by two statues, all the same; the one on the right had the head of an eagle and the one on the left had the head of a crocodile.

Seated on each and every statue’s forehead was a disk of gold. They shone in the light of morning, filling the inner walls of the valley with hundreds of flashing points of light.

Between the various footpaths and small, square temples that covered the walls, huge bridges of stone had been built. Each one must have taken massive effort to create, because they spanned empty air with no clear supports. At the center of each bridge was a small covered pagoda.

And at the end of the valley, at the triangular chasm’s broadest point, two enormous statues lifted up from the earth. They were each the size of a tenement tower from d23, towering up some five hundred feet from the misty base of the valley to lift their heads above the lip of the walls and stare out across the wastes. Between them an entire temple had been built, with pillars and smaller statues holding up three tiers of steps like a ziggurat or a segmented pyramid.

“Yeeeppp…” Nic said to himself. “This looks like it.”

At the narrow end of the valley was a small domed temple that descended down like an inverse tower and connected to the narrow walkways spanning the chasm’s sides. Nic ignored that.

Instead, he coated his hands with adhesive aura and began to climb down towards the nearest open cave. His dreams were full of treasure, tombs full of golden riches, and ancient cultivator secrets left for the taking.

What he got was a near-death experience.

Halfway down his danger sense from the Eight-Eyed Mantle suddenly screamed, and Nic twisted aside just in time to escape being impaled as a rune flared on the wall and a spike of earth shot out from the center. It lingered for a few seconds before slowly melding back into the walls.

Nic gulped. Always good to remember he wasn’t the first idiot to think he was clever.

Climbing more carefully, Nic encountered three more traps before he reached the cavern. Two of them were earthen spikes, while the third was a segment of loose wall that tumbled away as soon as he rested his weight against it. Only a quick grab and his Adhesive Touch kept him safe from a lethal fall to the floor below.

Spiders and scorpions slithered out of the gap where the wall had broken away.

Finally reaching the thin ledge of stone outside the cavern’s mouth, Nic dropped down. The twin statues made no move and didn’t register as life when he swept them with Archive Recall. Within, inside the dark, the walls were covered in blue and red hieroglyphs.

At the end of a short hallway there was a wide burial chamber with a sarcophagus at the center. Nic’s eyes widened. It was full - full - of shining treasures as beautiful as anything he could’ve imagined. There were huge golden urns with jackal-headed lids and jewels set into the sides. Ancient swords that gleamed in the light, shining with runes. Jewelry that dripped with gemstones. Sets of armor worn by clay soldiers.

It was so incredibly opulent that Nic immediately knew something was wrong.

He wasn’t even surprised when his danger sense flared from above. His head snapped up to catch a skinny, ugly creature that resembled a human corpse crawling on the ceiling. It hissed, exposing a mouth where curtains of red flesh hung in tatters around bloodstained teeth.

But rather than attack, it scuttled away, sliding its emaciated body into a hidden tunnel and vanishing from sight.

Nic was left alone with enough riches to fill a palace. And no matter how his fingers itched to begin filling his bag with treasure, he knew-

In his heart of hearts-

Nothing was ever that easy. His sense of threat was warning him of danger on all sides.

“Sofia, give me the bad news.” He pointed at an enormous curved sword held in a statue’s hands. The blade was made of red crystal and the hilt was a curving piece of white wood. “Archive Recall.”

Scimitar of the Ember-Wind. F-Class (Peak) // Spirit Tool. Born when a djinn’s heart was given to a noblewoman to protect her on a journey through the underworld, this beautiful weapon-

“NO.” Sofa spoke with such force that Nic actually took a step back. “That’s- that’s not right. Something is trying to fool me.”

A flicker ran over his vision. The luster faded from the golden grave things as they went green with age, and the rich silks turned to dust. Everything rotted. Even the inscriptions on the wall were worn away. The sword and a few other things remained.

But the story archive recall was telling him changed drastically.

Blade of the Wind’s Grudge. F-Class (Peak) // Spirit Tool. Created when a sorceress tore away the heart of a djinn and bound it into a blade, this ancient scimitar can project a blade of wind to strike distant foes.

From the moment you touch this holy object you will be hunted by the Guardian of the Valley. For each additional treasure you steal, the Guardian will grow stronger. Only in the waters of the Temple fountain may you be released from this curse.

In the back of his mind, Sofia was shaking with exhaustion. Whatever she’d done to reveal the tomb’s secret had a cost.

He could feel the crystal spears starting to grow from his flesh, and he quickly pulled out an Esper fruit and bit down. The growth slowed and Sofia’s panic ebbed away. “All good?” He asked.

“Yes- Although, I need to figure out what I just did.” She said carefully.

A Guardian of the Valley…

And a sacred fountain.

Before he started to loot this place - and he would - Nic needed to know more.