You have claimed Dominus Node ae32c7

‘The Throne of Tides’

This is a Fortune Type node. Unique treasures and opportunities will occur here, gathering over time.

So long as you remain the ruler, your growth shall lift into the sky. Luck be with you.

As soon as Nic sat on the throne, he felt a rush of Essence run through his skin. It wasn’t quite as electrifying as his first time claiming a Node but it was still an exhilarating, powerful sensation, one that left him hungry for more.

But there was more to a Node than just the Essence.

Instantly the water in the room began to seethe. Torrents of foam and bubbles formed into humanoid shapes, and Nic found himself surrounded by pale, wide-eyed ghosts. They stared at him, a great wall of faces that wailed in soft anguish.

One of them stepped forward and bowed. He had a more distinct shape than the rest of them. Dark clothes surrounded his flesh, and he carried a ghostly saber at his hip.

“My lord.”

“Uhhh, Nic is… fine…” The throne was stern and uncomfortable, and the fact it was made for a giant made Nic seem all the smaller. “Are you part of the throne?”

“We are the souls of the drowned. The throne binds us to do you one service before we can pass on. We will search the known seas for any object you desire. With each day, more of us gather to the throne, and you may ask for greater treasures the longer you wait.”

“Uh-huh.” Nic couldn’t say he was comfortable with the idea of dead souls being bound to his command. The eyes of the damned were dark and accusing. “And how long have you been waiting for someone to come along and tell you what to do?”

“It has been seven centuries since there was a lord of the tides. We have waited all this time.”

“Hoo boy. Well, no reason to keep you any longer. My command…”

Nic hesitated for a moment. He already had a lead on a cultivation tome in the Plates of the Sun God, and asking them to hunt for information on the black pearl could potentially lead to nothing: even if he knew everything about the cursed thing it could still be too dangerous to use.

He lifted his hand. “Find me the most powerful medicine for monster evolution you can in two and a half days.”

There was an enormous wail and the ghosts vanished, leaving maelstroms in the water where they’d been. Only the sailor remained, still bowing. “Generous of you, to give us such a short sentence. I’ll tell you this. The throne of the tides was made from the bones of krakens, and anyone who sits upon it will be their enemy for all time. If you ever fully claim it- they and their cultists will come for you.”

And then he was gone.

Nic waited for a long moment before letting out an exhausted glub and slumping onto the throne. Fighting giant undead eels was one thing. Being made complicit in the slavery of what looked like hundreds of souls was-

Less something he was able to manage with his home blend of sneaky, inventive violence.

Pushing off from the throne he swam around the cave and searched for the golden carp, but it was nowhere to be found. Either it had slipped away or it was a System construct and had simply been dissolved once it led him here.

Either way, he would have to face the giant predators circling above when he left.

Settling back on the throne he began to meditate. He had achieved the first step of Scion Ascension, the mapping of the hair-thin meridian lines within his heart. Now he needed to gently sweep away impurities. It was much the same process as he performed during the oasis, but much more delicate, owing to happening within his heart. Even small deposits of toxic Essence could harm him here, so he had to carefully run a fine net of aura through the paths he’d mapped to gently sweep them clean.

It was slow…

Tedious…

And once he broke through how boring it was, oddly calming. He entered a state of flow where time barely seemed to matter, feeling nothing but the movement of aura in tune with his own breath as he closed his eyes. Peeling away each spark of darkened Essence was satisfying like picking a scab.

When he opened his eyes again it was because his cultivation base was overflowing. Flicking open the map, he pushed the full allotment towards opening the secondary slot, and drew out the Drowning Shard.

It felt like forever ago he’d gotten it.

Pushing it against his skin, he felt an electric crackle as the solid crystal began to buzz and dissolve into sparks of Essence. They burned across his body, sinking down, racing across his meridians. The gem was pushing inwards, a spike of Essence driving towards the cluster of nodes in his shoulders that contained the Adhesive Touch skill.

As the Shard sliced into him, Nic’s palms curled into fists.

The sensation of power was so overwhelming it felt like pain. He went blind-eyed, lost in a white void where sparks of electric blue danced.

When his vision cleared the water was swirling all around him. Mud from the bottom of the chamber was rising up, cutting through the water in a spiral.

Nic reached out a hand and it stopped. He curled his fist and willed the muddy sediment to move, and it wadded itself into a ball. He made it turn like a planet in orbit, drawing up more threads of mud to join the sphere, building it bigger and heavier.

Then, with a grin, he punched his hand forward.

The mud-ball shot forward like a rocket and exploded against the walls with a heavy impact.

He lifted his hand, and made a waving tendril form. He grasped and it thickened, becoming a squeeze wave of mud that swept up from the floor to constrict an imaginary foe. The aura-drain of using the skill was surprisingly light.

He was guessing it would be more intense in environments that didn’t have abundant raw material to shape.

Flicking open his cultivation map for the newformed Shard, Nic examined his options to expand the ability. They were tantalizing.

Mire-Caller (F)

Calls to and creates binding masses of mud, sludge, or tar. A powerful Shard for binding and controlling that requires work and imagination to master.

II Base Enhancement (216/2,000)

I Secondary Slot (0/50,000)

Mire-Drowned Remnants (0/50,000)

Futile Struggle (0/50,000)

Mire-Dweller (0/10,000)

Every one of the three new options was a mystery, and unlocking them all would take over a hundred thousand Essence. Cultivation was just climbing one mountain to find a new one, and on some level, Nic loved the feeling. He couldn’t wait to crack open the new abilities and see what was in store.

But first he had to survive.

At some point he was just going to sit down, cultivate for a solid week, and come out stronger than he’d ever been.

But that would require a week where no enemy Settlements dropped out of the sky, none of his friends needed saving, and he wasn’t leaping from one deadly situation to the next.

A whole week of quiet…

Nic laughed. It just wasn’t in the cards for him. He could look back on the weeks where he’d had nothing better to do than shuffle his body from one dead-end job to the next, eating cheap noodles in spicy oil and spending his nights hunched over his runecrafting…

But he couldn’t go back.

And when he remembered how those weeks became years, eating away at his life, each day leaving him no further ahead than he started…

He didn’t want to. He had been no better than one of the throne’s lost souls.

Nic slipped the ring of Day-into-Night onto his finger. It was still golden, so he had some sunlight left to power him.

Kicking up, Nic headed for the surface. He pushed through the ruins of the church and lifted a wave of sedimentary mud behind him. It formed a spiral, pushing him towards the surface like a rocket. The eels shifted, their eyes fixing on him, their gnashing mouths opening.

Nic pushed everything into his cultivation and kept shooting for the surface, using a cape of mud to propel him like an elongated tail. His aura was draining fast- but he was outpacing the swarm of yellow-skinned eels chasing him.

He burst up from the water and tore through the barrier, winding his body in mud to absorb the impact. The eels slammed into the surface, turning back, the lake becoming a frothing whitewater as they writhed and thrashed at the waters edge. His launch was powerful enough to send him flying into the treetops, crashlanding amidst the branches. Water clung to his skin and he laughed, exhausted, exhilarated…

More powerful than he was a few hours ago.

The feeling of forward momentum was intoxicating. Dropping down out of the tree, he examined the jade seal in his hand, shivering at the sight of the black tendrils enveloping the squared green stone. Characters in an ancient script ran along each side.

Seal of the Wreckrunner. Astral // Treasured Artifact. This seal of sea-worn jade summons a merchant from the depths of the Tartherus Oceans, a vast series of drowned abyssal spheres connected by a single astral river. They bring goods from the wrecks of great merchant vessels and brave pirate runners, and from the sea-cults, the deep cities, from a thousand strange ports.

Nic grinned. Since he was set on building a Settlement, merchants were absolutely something he needed.

Tucking it away he headed for the great tree, satisfied with what he’d done for the day. The addition of a new Node to his territory put him one away from having the full swathe of land needed to begin a settlement, and the promise of a gift to help cultivate his evolution was enough to nearly make him salivate.

The wandering lotus, helping Moira, and replenishing his supply of poison flowers were all just added benefits to a day well spent.

The only issue was climbing back up the tree. God, he was going to look forward to never making the climb again once he planted a lotus seed at the top. He wrapped his hands in sticky tar from Mire-Caller. While the Shard had changed functionalities somewhat, it still contained the old powers in new and useful forms.

It took him until sunset was beginning to break over the trees to reach the observation platform. The spiders were already leaving, winding up their silk into tight bundles and carrying it up the tree to their restored nest.

There he was greeted like a hero. Spiders poured up to him, wrapping their furry legs over his shoulders and pulling him towards a central hut.

He grinned the moment he saw what was waiting for him.

The leader of the weavers had done her job beautifully. She’d pieced the snakeskin leather together with underlying silk, forming a short robe of scales, alternating from honey-gold to sand-bronze as they fit together into a suit of armor. A thick plate of midnight black chitin covered the belly, and a smaller piece was affixed over his heart by a loop of silk that crossed to one shoulder and anchored onto a pauldron spiked by the horns of the stoneskin lizard. Tassets of scale and greaves of chitin covered the legs, protecting him while keeping him agile and flexible.

The whole suit gave off the impression of wildness, of a savage frontier. The gold-bronze scales and the white silk beneath, the thin plates of midnight armor, the spiked shoulderpiece- it was perfect, and sized perfectly to fit Nic.

The leader of the spiders stood over her work, proudly presenting it to him.

“Better than I could have hoped for.” Nic said, admiring it.