Chapter 65

The jackal-warrior snarled, lifting his swords into position and beginning to stalk forward, refusing to play Nic’s game, to rush to try and cover the ground between them– leaving him defenseless against the traps Nic had laid.

Instead he moved carefully. As Nic unleashed the first arrow, Hollowsong’s bowstring singing like a melancholy harp, the jackal-warrior snapped up one sword to block. The arrow burst and fire sprayed across its shoulder, but the warrior continued, slicing down into one of Nic’s illusionary doubles; the doppelganger exploded into a spray of water droplets, each one as heavy as a hammerblow. They rained against the warrior’s side and knocked him off-kilter.

Nic fired again.

This time the warrior dodged, using the space opened by destroying Nic’s double to let it fly over his shoulder. In the space of three steps, he halved the distance, cutting a clear path through the misty clones that surrounded him. Each time he took what must have been dozens of blows, scattering against his flesh.

He staggered, each step less sure than the last.

Another arrow. This one–

This one hit true.

The arrow pierced into the jackal-warrior’s shoulder and burst apart, tearing its arm down to the bone. It slammed into another doppelganger and the burst of shimmering water droplets. Nic had already lifted another arrow into place, ready for the killing shot–

The beast roared. The wave of force that extended as it opened its mouth and screamed shattered the nearest water-doubles, threw the arrow back, and even shielded it from the explosion. Everything around the jackal-warrior radiated back under the force of the shout.

Both swords hit the ground, and between them, the jackal-warrior dropped to all fours. Fur crawled over the bare and human half of his skin. His legs twisted and bent into new shapes. It only took a second, barely a heartbeat, before the warrior was no longer human in any way. His entire body was that of a massive jackal, with a long golden streak down its back.

Nic met the beast’s eyes and felt a searing strand of fear cut through his soul. They were old eyes, yellow and full of hate.

Without hesitation, Nic tossed his bow aside and grabbed for Peacemaker. He barely had time to close his hands around the grip before the jackal had burst forward, sliding between his water-clones and escaping before they could detonate, blurring into a thunderbolt zig-zag of black. The reeds and banyans grasped for it and caught nothing but air. The beast’s jaws flashed open, mouth looming over Nic as he lunged for his weapon.

He could have reached it in time. If the Internal Fission Technique had worked, he could have–

But instead, he felt something sear and break in his chest as his cultivation based cracked further, already damaged. His power failed for a fatal second.

The jaws slammed shut.

Nic felt bone-crunching force sink teeth the length of swords into his shoulder, back, and kidneys. Felt the last one rupture as it was pierced. As his muscle and bone split and cracked with a squelching of blood, the creature twisted its head back and forth, shaking him violently as its tooth hooked and dragged deeper into his skin.

He screamed and twisted, leveraging all his strength to turn enough in the grip of those vise-like teeth that he could stab Peacemaker into the depths of its throat. A knot of muscle caught the blade and stopped it from fully piercing down.

The beast lunged forward and smashed Nic into the wall. Pain was all around him, but he felt it only as a distant echo– his mind was cold and clear even as his body was reduced to a series of pains, pain in every component and pain in every fiber of muscle.

Nic spat blood.

Then he hit the wall again, and there was more blood in his mouth, more on his face, more dripping through his vision. The salt of his own blood made his eyes burn. The iron tasted sour on his tongue.

Zenith’s Wrath.

The technique flared above him like a sun, and in the darkened space of the temple, it was blinding. Nic had meant to unleash it as a last ditch attack– but in that moment a thought lit up. He poured aura into the technique in the same moment that he let it collapse–

Breaking apart into an explosion of pure light.

The creature, for a moment, was totally blinded. Its yellow eyes squinted and its attacks relented, just by a hair’s breadth shaved off a split second, but enough that Nic could breathe.

He unleashed a second Zenith’s Wrath, then a third. They went off like flashbangs.

With one arm outside of the creature’s jaws and one fully pinned in place by a fang, he reached out and grabbed hold of the wall, sticking himself with a palmful of adhesive tar. More and more grew around his arm and shot out to seize the wall in a layer of sticky webbing that extended between Nic and the temple’s stone. The beast could no longer let go of him. He’d completely sealed its jaws shut around him.

Twisting his head until the muscle’s ached, Nic spat out a wave of Primordial Mist. The beast’s life was too powerful to drink away in a second, but muscle began to wither and flesh began to dissolve into grey dust. He poured his aura away into the attack, covering the beast until its entire head was engulfed. It began to kick, to struggle, but it was blinded entirely still. It had no clue what was happening. The pain was coming from everywhere as the mist spilled across its muzzle and jaws. It only knew that it couldn’t seem to unclench its jaws, or pull away from the wall– although its efforts made Nic’s flesh break further, caught as the bridge between the two, every kick and struggle and movement tearing away at him and nearly ripping him in half.

Vines and reeds were attacking from below. They were anchoring the beast’s limbs, pulling its legs down into the mud below. It was beginning to lose purchase– surrounded on all sides, it was being dragged down by a multitude of foes. Ivy shot up the wall and surrounded Nic, growing over him to reach into the beast’s mouth. They couldn’t resist the full, bone-grinding force of the beast’s jaws, but they could wedge them open just a crack, buying Nic more space.

As the beast lost footing, sinking into the mud, the vines began to constrict around its throat. The Domain was in some ways Nic’s best and worst move. It had no immediate striking force, and could be easily evaded or overpowered at first. But it was relentless, endless, and malleable, and it only took a moment of weakness for it to began to engulf the enemy from all sides.

Slowly, painfully, the fight ended. The vines squeezed the beast’s neck until it had no breath and its last movements were spastic wriggles and dying jolts of struggle. Nic was still trapped in the beast’s teeth, but the beast couldn’t finish him off. The bloodloss alone wasn’t enough to overpower his regeneration, although it left him barely able to move. The beast, by contrast, was sinking deeper and deeper, unable to breathe, unable to move. Its kicks and thrashes slowly went still.

Even still, Nic waited. He waited to be damn sure it was dead before he released the tar and the vines holding him in place, and let the body slump down to the floor. The massive jaws loosed and Nic pulled himself free.

It was a moment before he could stand. His right shoulder was mostly a paste, and it took agonizing seconds for the bone to reform, the muscle to crawl over it, and the flesh to seal up. When it was gone not even a shadow of a scar remained. His flesh was whole, marked only by the Aleph seals that were written on his skin in ashy letters.

But Nic still felt sore.

It was like every time he’d been beaten down, every time he’d been bitten, cut, stabbed, burnt, those wounds had left a memory in him. Now the memories seemed to crowd in, reminding him of the pain, and he felt impossibly tired. Slumped over, the most tempting thing in the world was the thought of laying his head down and sleeping right then and there, before the feeling of triumph faded.

But then he remembered the cherry garden.

It made all this bleeding and feeling sad seem pretty small by comparison; he’d had the worst, and this was just a love bite by comparison. He groaned reluctantly and sat up.

There was a small luminous orb floating down from the ceiling. It was one of the prize orbs that very rarely appeared when a monster died, and it was a color Nic had never seen before. A pure sky blue rippled with tiny threads of cloud.

It looked like a jewel made of sky.

As he touched it, there was a flash and motes of blue light scattered off in all directions, revealing something inside. It was very small.

A string of prayer beads carved out of dark red wood, bearing a tassel and a talisman no larger than a coin. The talisman was nothing but a triangle of stone cut smooth across one face, but pressed into the pale blue rock, their shape still clear and minutely detailed after millenia, was the fossilized impression of two newts spiraling in the image of the taiji.

Token of the Forebearers. C-Class // Treasured Artifact. Those beasts that first rose from the sea to colonize the land bear the power of the true and eternal ancestry, the creation of all that now stands on the earth. Their memory resonates here. This talisman can guide one through body-sculpting techniques of all manner, harnessing the strength of evolution.

Nic frowned for a moment.

This was clearly a gift given to him specifically, the prize for the dungeon and tailored to his needs. But at the same time–

It wasn’t anywhere near what he actually needed.

A weapon. A technique. Anything that gave power immediately. This was for sculpting himself over a long period of time, surely? So what was the System trying to tell him…

“Sofia?”

“I don’t understand either, Nicolas. Dungeon rewards are always what people need most.”

But before they could discuss further, a message echoed through the desert.

The Dungeon’s Final Challenge Has Been Met

Congratulations, Nicolas Winterhome

The Scales of Sand bow before you and your might

To the victor, dominion is given

+100% Local Modifier within the Dungeon

To the victor’s nation, tribute is given

An additional building shall appear in Winterhome. It shall grant dominion over the three arts of this lost civilization: runecrafting, corpse-binding, and alchemy.

To those who bled and struggled, but did not reach the goal

Nothing is given

As the last words faded, Nic turned away and gazed out the temple’s door. The light was dimming. He saw into open sky, and there, through the crystal air of the desert, clouds were beginning to roll out towards the horizon. A distant roar of muffled sound and Nic began to smile.

It was raining.

He smiled slowly, curling his hand around the beads.

A thump echoed through the temple. Then again, and again. It was the thump of a beating heart, and it echoed out from his bag. Nic went to reach inside, but the moment he unlatched the top, it flew open and four glowing objects flew out.

They rotated in the air, orienting to one another. The glow was like four stars, but Nic shaded his eyes and confirmed his suspicions; they were the four organs of the Pharaoh that had been stolen away.

And as the light shrank down, it took the form of a boy, maybe eleven. A boy dressed in a too-heavy crown and a mantle of beads and gold. Nic grimaced–

His sympathies towards Levant dimmed as he realized the ‘unjust king’ they’d brutally disposed of was just a frightened child.

But the child smiled, and lifted up a hand to wave to Nic.

“Come on.” The phantom said. “There’s one last thing.”