Nic perched high above, watching the water settle. The ripples spread outwards as the shadow of the wretch-worm broke apart, dissolving into smaller and smaller pieces that settled downwards the underground lake’s distant basin…

The old man stood atop the water. He was a wiry, walnut-toned kind of old. As if age had tightened his tanned skin against the rope-thin muscle below. A staff leaned against his shoulder, over which was cast a saffron-colored robe and strings of red beads. As he turned his gaze up towards Nic, tattoos showed on the right half of his face. They were heavy, thick letters of blue stained into his skin.

Old 13. G-Class // Sapient. A slave from birth, this fearsome warrior has been purposefully crippled and stripped of his Shards to allow him to join the invasion of Earth as a mere G-Class servant, while retaining much of his strength. Proficient in combat with staves, palm-strikes, and needles

They were slave brands.

“Hello little fellow! It’s best you stay up there, because if you come down here, I’ll have to kill you!”

Nic slid down a ways, cautiously, dropping onto a ledge of rough and sandy stone that overlooked the lake. “So, if I stay up here, will you kindly let me shoot you full of arrows?”

He could see a smile cracked across that two-toned face. “No no. That wouldn’t be against my orders, little fellow, but it would certainly go against my better judgment. I’m quite fond of living and drinking wine, you see…”

Nic let out an over-dramatic sigh. “Well, looks like only one of us can get what we want…”

“It appears so…”

They held for a beat. Waiting for the moment this all exploded into violence.

Nic was searching for a way down. Right now, his best bet was to just to leap for the water below, but that was like serving himself up on a silver platter. With no other way to change course to dodge a strike in the air, he’d have to rely on his ring- and if the old man could follow teleportation like the assassins had, that would only be a second mistake.

And at the same time, his opponent was following the same chains of logic. Watching and waiting to see what Nic would do.

Nic reached out with the subtlest thread of aura he could, trying not to make it noticeable.

He grasped for the silt and sediment that the wretch-worm had kicked up from the lakebed before dying. Winding his will through the muddy water with Mire-Caller, he silently reached a tendril of mud towards the old man’s foot.

And jumped.

In the moment he was in the air, the wind filling his ears with a rushing high note, the tendril lashed out and seized the old man by the ankle. Despite his ability to move atop the water, he was pulled under.

Nic joined him instants later, plummeting through the lake’s still surface in a torrent of bubbles. Instantly he struck out with his resonant greatsword, a flexible and soft blade of water forming from the hilt to lash out towards the figure of the old slave as the man thrashed about in surprise.

But before it could reach him-

The man’s staff took on a golden glow and swung about with a single, echoing note, like the holy sound of a thousand monks chanting a single syllable in perfect unison. The lake water shattered aside, and Nic was hurled back by a wave of force that threw him out of the lake and smashed him into the rocky walls of the chasm. He barely even kept his grip on the resonant greatsword, sticking it to his fingers as his strength failed.

As the water sealed over again, the old man hit the bottom of the lake and jumped out. He left the water like a leaping shadow and landed on the rippling surface.

Nic groaned.

“Sorry little fellow. I’m afraid getting past me is a bit harder than that.”

Sighing, Nic pushed off, dropping from the wall back into the water. He could see four paths branching out from the underground lake, four tunnels half-submerged into the water and leading out into the dark…

“Hmm.” From above, the slave swung his staff. The simple wooden stave bent under the force of the blow, then snapped forward, sending a ripple of power cutting through the water. Nic ducked aside, but the strike wasn’t truly aimed at him.

It was simply to keep him from moving towards the nearest tunnel.

“Little fellow, I truly wish you’d give up and retreat…”

Nic snarled, bubbles bursting from the sides of his mouth. Give up and retreat? This was a fight on open water. This was his territory.

Waving his hand, four clumps of mud shot up from the floor of the lake. They went surging past Nic, each sized roughly like him, and with a forward kick Nic shot after them.

In one instant, the lake’s face was calm.

In the next five shadows burst into view. The old slave destroyed the first one with a quick, striking blow from his quarterstaff, only for four more to leap up. In that instant, amidst the spray of water and the dark of the cave-

It was truly impossible to tell which was really Nic.

But faster than Nic would’ve believed possible, he turned, following the weight and momentum of his strike; that first blow had come from near his hip and lifted the staff up to one shoulder. Now, with a simple step, he wove that first blow into a second. The staff came sweeping around like a whirlwind, once again producing a holy sound like a thousand voices chanting.

Nic had no choice. He called to the Plates of the Sun God’s Dictate, and surrounded himself with golden light. The strike was quick and wide-reaching, but weak, and it barely managed to scratch the sunlit shield that had appeared over Nic’s skin.

In retort, Nic’s water-blade thrust forward and extended like a spear. It drove into the man’s skinny chest-

And stopped.

While the force was enough to make the slave take a single step back, it barely punched more than an inch and a half through his incredibly thick, tough skin. With a choked little sound, he swept the back of his hand out and broke the ribbon of bladed water that extended from the greatsword’s hilt.

Nic was in awe.

But he was also furious.

His own right hand left the greatsword’s hilt and shot forward, shadows of swirling ash accumulating around the palm. The blow darkened the air as it slammed into the old man’s ribs, throwing him backwards.

The slave hit the mountain of rubble that merged from the lake, soaked in seawater and coughing. Nic was pushed back down beneath the waves, the light of the shield around him glowing through the dark waters like a drowning sun.

“Oh. That’s quite the strike you’ve got there…” Regaining his footing, the slave twisted his neck and hips, bones cracking underneath his weathered skin. “Unfortunately, this old man has truly had every kind of crap kicked out of him. Truth be told, I’ve gotten worse for spilling the wine…”

Nic wasn’t listening. He was moving for the nearest tunnel at top speed, trying to get out before the old man recovered. The old slave was too powerful to bother fighting and too pitiful for Nic to feel good about killing.

With a single springing leap, the slave darted across the water, each footstep landing on the lake’s surface as if it was solid stone.

That was when Nic’s talismans detonated. One was a simple explosive talisman, disturbing the water underfoot. The second was a more intricate, expensive talisman that simply disrupted aura for a split second.

The combination of the two swept him away on a tide of rising water. Nic looked back and saw the old man preparing to swing his staff again.

The silt from the lake’s base lifted up. It caught him, and with nothing to brace against, the slave was bound hand and foot by a massive hand of sticky mud. As he was dragged down, Nic shot through the water like a speeding blur of pink and vanished into the first cavern tunnel.

---

Nic didn’t stop until he was sure he had a good headstart. He was fastest underwater, and the tunnel was submerged for much of its length. He swept through dismal twists and turns, as dark as hell, letting the fading light of the Sun God’s Dictate illuminate him…

Until even that was gone. The remainder of the path, he found by brushing a hand across the walls.

He emerged into an underground forest. The stone above the water was gripped by furry green mosses, sprouting up with thin, almost opalescent stalks of mushroom that ended in tiny bulbs of light. Massive orange-red fungi rose like trees, and everywhere Nic looked, there were crawling beetles and centipedes.

This was some kind of underground heaven. Clearly it had existed for some time, and the System had simply torn a path open.

Above…

The sounds of battle rung out. The sound of steel against stone echoed down the deep walls of the underground valley, which Nic was positioned at the very base of.

Carefully, Nic climbed onto a half-submerged boulder and looked upwards.

Waves of power were flying out from a ledge high on the valley’s walls, and briefly illuminating the gloomy heights of the ceiling. Eight-foot-tall humanoids with rocky skin and enormous, bat-like wings were circling, throwing javelins and other crude weapons towards the single figure who stood with sword in hand, driving them back with sweeping sword-blows that extended into crescent waves of light.

Nic paused.

It wasn’t even a real fight. The swordsman - no, swordswoman, he recognized the red belt around her waist - was simply warding them off.

As Nic climbed higher he got a reason why.

Tiny crystals emerged from cracks in the stone wall. They were barely the length of his fingers, made of cloudy stone in long geometric prisms. Each crystal shone with a faint and pearly light.

Euhedral-Grained Lustrous Spiritstone. E-Class // Natural Treasure. Born from sealed places within the earth where leylines of natural energy fill ancient caverns, these stones are the energy of the land given shape, and are commonly used to gather power into a location via gathering arrays or fuel other types of formation. This is a fairly common typing of spiritstone, with well-developed characteristics.

Nic paused, and dug the stone out from the walls with his fingers.

No wonder. This must be the ‘precious materials’ that the System announcement had promised. The swordswoman was just holding off the cave’s native creatures while the others gathered up their prizes…

At that moment, his danger sense alerted him. He was part way up a long slop of rubble, and crawling over the very top was a single wretch with a four-limbed body like an ape, its body letting off foul-smelling smoke as it slithered out, planning to ambush him.

Nic’s gaze flicked up as the beast leaped for his throat, and his hand shot forward without thinking. A shadow of ash obliterated the wretch in a single blow.

By the time the swordswoman looked down to see what the sound was, Nic had vanished back into the water.