Beacon Crystal. F-Class // Treasure. Created by imprinting a splintered fragment of soul into a piece of neutral spiritstone, when shattered this crystal token will allow you to speak a single short message, which the token’s creator will hear and be able to trace to the source regardless of distance.

As soon as Nic accepted the crystal, the elf smiled and began to dissolve into the aether- green-white flames burned away at the corners of his being, while his flesh turned more and more transparent, fading him out of reality.

“One time, when you crush this token, I will come to save your life. Consider the offer.” Were his final words.

As he vanished, the people around Nic came back to their senses. Laughs choked off as they realized they were laughing at nothing; people who’d seen nothing before saw Nic standing over the fire, his blade extended at empty air.

With an awkward cough, Nic said, “Just thought I saw something…” as he sat back down. The hexagonal crystal was strangely warm in his hand, as if it was a living thing.

Nic shivered.

He wasn’t in a hurry to learn whatever technique this cursed thing held.

---

Nic left the raucous campfire and the celebrating hunters behind. He didn’t want to pour cold water on their parade, but the truth was, they’d need to do better tomorrow. Only three of the seven gates that had opened on the surface, and of those three, they’d managed to kill the waves from one.

One of seven?

It wasn’t close to enough.

Meanwhile, the ogre Settlement had broken into the pit and set a guard to keep anyone from following them. While they probably couldn’t massacre the survivors of the remaining six gates alone, they could let the wretches kill each other and finish off the E-Class survivors.

They were eating the feast. Nic’s Settlement was taking the scraps.

He walked away from the campfire and found a secluded space at the edge of the chasm.

“Gwungo?”

The slime slithered off his skin and formed into a small, grinning lizard on his shoulder. Nic reached up and gave the good boy scritches under the chin. Gwungo shivered and flailed about, making bubbly, burbling noises.

“I wanna see what you can do…”

Nic had chosen the narrow path. Instead of reaching for every source of power he could at once, Nic had chosen to practice, hone, and refine every technique until it gave him all of its potential. His goal was to know every move and every tool in his arsenal, and bring out their full strength.

Gwungo…

Gwungo was a mystery, even now.

The little slime had been born in the last gasp of a creature that confused even the System’s infinite cold logic. It was born from Nic’s strange and mutative Concept of the Aleph, warping it further from the System’s knowledge; it was an enigma.

“Yes, Maker-Mine? Oh yes. I can do many things! Sometimes the things I do, they scare me a little…”

Nic nodded. “What scares you?”

“Sometimes I get hungry…” Gwungo mumbled. “And I start thinking, oh, this would taste good. And that too! And it doesn’t stop…”

Nic grimaced. It was about what he was afraid of. Gwungo still had the instincts from his old form, his old life. Instincts that demanded he devour and grow until nothing else remained.

“And if I eat something, I finally understand! I know all the things about it, and I don’t need to ask so many questions…”

Nic paused.

“You understand what you eat?”

“Mhm! Yes yes, Maker-Mine, I understand so well. I understand the meat and the make, the little stars that glow in the dark, circling one another to make the wholeness of a thing!”

Nic could only shake his head. Now he could understand why the System had showed such interest in the little slime. Given a master who could afford to feed Gwungo’s curiosities, the slime could dissect and understand almost infinite things. He was a learning machine with an appetite that could never be sated.

But if it came down to the System or Nic benefiting from Gwungo’s existence, Nic would choose himself every time. Even if he couldn’t afford to feed the slime’s appetites…

It was as simple as that.

“Well…” Nic groaned internally. He never knew what to say in moments like these. “You can’t eat me, okay? Or anyone really. There’s more to people than you’d understand, just by eating someone. There’s more to them than their flesh or their bones. It’s all up in their head. You can’t get what’s inside there by eating…”

“...” Gwungo was suspiciously silent.

“Ooookay.” Retreating from the topic, Nic took out the sword he’d taken from the dead dhampir. “Here, eat this…”

No sooner said than it was gone, slurped out of his hand. Gwungo began to dissolve it slowly, chunks of metal breaking away and dissolving into sparks that faded into his being.

“Can you make a sword? The strongest, sharpest sword you can.” Nic cut the conversation off there.

“Yes yes! I can do that!” With a ripple, Gwungo ran up Nic’s flesh and took shape around his forearm, extending into a cruel crystalline spike.

Nic swung it experimentally. The sound it made…

It cut the air apart, ringing with a crystal chime. Nic stabbed into a nearby tree-trunk, and the blade cut through without any difficulty, slipping through bark and wooden tissue as easily as butter. It was as sharp and durable as any weapon Nic had owned…

He really had underestimated Gwungo. The slime’s abilities weren’t limited to ‘eating’ energy that might harm Nic; it could take the form of any weapon it had eaten…

Next he took out something that had been precious to him. His scarf. Sadly, it was worn and torn now, frayed from overuse and his inability to repair it. This would be a good way to ensure it lived on.

With as sigh, Nic let Gwungo gobble it up.

“Gwungo, can you turn into a long, sticky thread, and shoot for where my hand is aiming?”

“Oh, yes yes!” Experimentally, the blade around his arm turned into a waving, prehensible limb that ended in a wide, spade-shaped pad. It wriggled through the air, searching for something to grab ahold of.

“Okay, let’s call this move… ‘Lasso’. When I call lasso, that’s what you do. Shoot for where my arm is pointing and pull me towards it…”

“Right!”

Nic braced, putting his feet down firmly and pointing his arm towards a distant tree.

“Lasso!”

Gwungo snapped out through the air, coiling up like a spring and launching himself far, far into the horizon. He snapped onto the tree’s trunk, grasping ahold with a thousand tiny feelers and anchoring himself firmly as the line that stretched back to Nic’s arm tightened, growing taut…

There was a sudden, elastic force, and Nic was yanked through the air with a raw force that almost ripped his arm out of its socket. Midway through the air, flying fast, he realized he’d forgotten to give Gwungo any instructions about landing…

“Gwungo! Make a cushion!”

In front of him, Gwungo expanded out into a fluffy, expansive cloud. Nic slammed into it feet-first, sinking down into the slimy meat of the cushion. A second later he was spat out, rolling across the ground.

“Not… not so fast, next time…” Nic gasped out. “But otherwise, good!”

“I did good?” Gwungo asked. As Nic nodded, the slime around his wrist began to writhe and palpitate, stretching rubbery limbs in all direction to do a happy little dance.

“You did good.” Nic affirmed. “Now let’s try a shield…” He had kept a spare from Makepeace, in case he needed one for whatever reason. Now, it became food for his companion.

Gwungo blossomed out into a round, mushroom-like shield on his forearm, made of interlocking hexagonal crystals of a soft blue color. In between the cracks was a sticky web of gooey filaments, shifting the weight of each blow that landed against the hard surface and distributing that force among every single scale.

“Pretty good.” Nic admitted.

“Sword!”

“Lasso!”

“Shield!”

Gwungo morphed effortlessly through the three configurations, shapeshifting and snapping from one form to another. Nic began to move his own body, shifting his stances, adjusting his footwork- Gwungo could change from attacking to defending on a moment’s notice. Nic needed to be able to follow, to leave openings for his strikes to become blocks, to let his blocking stances suddenly extend into a killing blows.

He focused on flexibility, restraint, non-commitment; rather than giving his all to slay the enemy, he held back ten percent of his strength to shift and warp one move into another.

Hard strikes, soft defenses. Soft restraints, hard barriers.

One thing flowed into another. Nic worked on his footing, his stances, the gyre around which his attacks and defenses flowed. Sweat poured down his face as he pushed every inch of his bodily strength into each move, accelerating until he was a blur of strikes, lunges, backsteps, dodges…

It came so easily.

Each fight had etched something into his soul. He could see how Azmin would chase him, making long, piercing strikes that probed for his weaknesses with blinding speed. In his mind, he could reply how the ogre swordswoman had tried to beat him with sheer reach, letting the range of her blade force him back time and time again, preventing him from capturing an opening in her stance…

Other foes had tried to overwhelm him with sheer force, closing the distance instantly and weaving together attacks with such ferocity that he never had a chance to recover, to breathe, to think…

Groups had tried to coordinate to overwhelm him, one attacking while the other retreated, creating a deadly rhythm where each fighter covered the flaws of the rest; they moved like dancers and surrounded him with attacks that were awkward to dodge, impossible to catch out…

Nic boxed with the shadows of his past, the fights he’d already overcome, the blood he’d shed along his way…

The monkey chieftain who’d tried to keep him at bay with sheer range…

The frog-assassin that had given its life to force a cursed treasure onto him…

It was part of him now. The struggle and fury of combat. The adrenaline rush, making his mind cool and sharp in the midst of chaotic flames…

Nic found he could remember every single one. Every kill, every near-death. Every fight he’d been in since he entered this world. His crystal eyes had preserved them to be revisited again and again…

He could see the flaws in his own fighting. The moments where he’d been overconfident, or worse, too reluctant to seize on an opening or flaw in his opponent. The moments where a sharper style would have prevailed. Others where a softer, more defensive approach would have ensnared his opponent’s ambitions…

Each fight was a lifetime. Each had decided which of two lives would continue, and which would fade into dust…

But now as he ran through each one in his mind, his body in constant motion, fighting with shadows only he could see…

Now he tore through one fight after another without pause. Now he could wipe his early foes from existence without so much as breaking a sweat. The transformation was total, from his body to his mind; and each fight that had brought him here was etched, crystal-clear, into his soul for all time.

He fought through his own memories time and time again, until the sun was rising. Until Sofia broke into his meditative trance, interrupting the rhythmic thrum of his breath, the steady drip of sweat from his brow…

“Nicolas? It’s been nearly seven hours. You need to rest…”

“G-gwungo would like to sleep…” The little slime chimed in, exhausted after hours of becoming sword, shield, and binding chain. “Just a little?”

Nic rolled to a halt, breathing so hard his shoulder rose and fell, his body shaking with overexertion. There was nothing left in his engines; the moment had seized his attention so completely he’d forgotten all about the hunt.

“Seven hours?” He asked numbly.

“Seven. In two more, the hunt’s next stage begins.” Sofia confirmed.

“Okay, okay.” Nic shook his head, scattering sweat to the air. Reaching up he ran a hand across his slimy, amphibian face. He hadn’t even managed to work the paintbrush into his routines yet; he’d simply focused on incorporating Gwungo’s full capabilities. “I’ll…”

He looked down at his hands.

“I’ll see if I can catch some sleep, before the slaughter starts…”