Nic absorbed the rune into his body, feeling it sink through his flesh and bone with a strange burning sensation, devoid of heat or pain. As he recalled his quests, a number ticked up

Objective - Obtain the full ‘Antares’ set of Aleph Runes (2/3)

One of the Antares, then. Not enough to complete a set…

Which was a blessing, when he remembered that each complete set would light him up like a beacon for the other Rune-hunters.

Stepping around the fallen acacia tree, Nic walked towards the forest of stone. The air seemed to lose its life and luster, becoming dense and cold on the tongue…

“Archive Recall.”

Tree of Solitude. G-Class // Undead. Formed by an ancient curse that steals life from the land, this tree contains a thread of unholy miasma living in its core. The miasma creeps forth invisibly, corrupting all that it touches, turning living things to stone.

“Miasma…” With each step, Nic could feel it pressing into him. A strange and unearthly energy.

“Gwungo, do you think you can absorb it?” He asked. Gwungo unfurled from wrapping around his arm like a bangle of slime, sprouting a mouth and feeler-eyes akin to a snails.

“Uhhh. Gwungo can… tryyyy..? But it’s strange, very strange. A curious thing that’s very tough to understand, like, like, like…”

Seeing his poor creation was caught in a loop, he pet Gwungo on the head and shushed it. “Just try.”

He lifted his hand and saw patches of gray growing over his skin. As he pressed forward, they only continued to spread, and small warts of stone appeared where his flesh had taken on the ashen shade. He was being consumed…

Petrified…

And each step brought him closer to that fate. The entire forest was a poison trap.

He was just about to turn tail and retreat, seeking a plan to deal with the poison, when a wisp of yellow light drifted through the air. It carried the sweet resinous smell of the acacia. Nic’s eyes lit up, and his teeth bared in a triumphant grin.

Of course.

The System didn’t like to set pure barriers of strength in the way.

It preferred traps and games that tested the chosen from multiple angles.

The name of this game was…

‘Find the next acacia tree before the forest turns you to stone.’

Nic took off. His back foot slammed into the earth and he rocketed forward, feeling the miasma fill his lungs with every breath as he ran, chasing the sparks of luminous resin through the air. They grew thicker and thicker as the sunlight was slowly choked by the stone trees closing in overhead, until at last he arrived, feet meeting soft moss as he charged into a hidden glade.

Flaking chunks of rock fell from his arms and legs. As the living air brushed his skin, the stone bled away and crumbled to dust.

Nic breathed out a sigh of relief.

He had entered a small valley within the forest, where the hills sheltered a gold-green acacia. The richness of the mossy air was sweet against his tongue.

His bet had been right.

The forest was probably littered with sanctuaries like these. Make it there in time, and the petrification would be cured. A little slow and…

That was the end.

Nic paused, and began to examine the glade more thoroughly. There were numerous small totems of carved stone surrounding the tree, each depicting birds in flight. Small tufts of grasses and strange shaped plants grew under the roots of the acacia. He swept over the plants with his Archive Recall and…

“Jackpot.”

Oasis Apocrypha Grass. F-Class // Medicine. An expression of the lifeforce within the desert, growing only in isolated places, this grass bears the secrets of rebirth and can be made into a potent healing medicine.

Century Henu Root. F-Class // Medicine. Known by its spiny purple-pink blossoms, the leaves of this plant can be eaten as a minor healing medicine or ground for sacred pigments, lending strength to runic inks.

Herongrass Aloe. E-Class // Medicine. Thorny on the outside, this strange grass contains a pungent balm that can be applied to the eyes to grant spiritual sight. It can also be refined into a spiritual medicine.

Without hesitation, Nic dug his fingers into the earth and pulled out priceless treasures by the roots. He’d bought a special box of prepared wood from Ol’ Ben Thick, meant for preserving things placed inside. Now he filled it with living herbs and grasses. Transplanting them into the soil of Winterhome would yield years worth of rewards- and he’d be sure to put aside a few for making pills as well, so that he got some benefit in the short term.

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But even as he licked his lips, Nic left a few of each species rooted in the calm soil of the valley.

He’d done enough to destroy this world; a little care and at least this small, hidden portion might continue to thrive.

As he dug, he uncovered something, buried underneath the tree’s shadow. Brushing away the dirt he uncovered a palette of stone inscribed with ancient runes. As he ran his fingers across the hieroglyphs, a wind began to blow and a voice began to speak.

Once, the goddess of hidden plants and vipers walked through the underworld. On the shore of the dead river, she discovered a poison so deadly it could kill a god. Three drops of its ichor fell upon her hand as she harvested the plant, and so she was doomed, but she hid it away in her grave, knowing the day would someday come that the eternal must die.

You have discovered

Lore Fragment of the Scales of Sand

200 Essence Awarded

Discover four Lore Fragments to bind and weaken the Guardian ‘High Priest of the Red Land’

That was all the confirmation Nic needed. He was on the right track- the System’s histories only showed up when he was close to finding one of the four guardians.

Stowing away his prizes, Nic stepped up to the tree.

He ran his fingers across the bark to collect the sticky sap that wept from the acacia’s open bark, spreading it across the backs of his arms and legs where the stone had begun to grow. Whether or not it would provide any additional protection, Nic couldn’t say for sure…

But it wouldn’t hurt.

Stepping up to the edge of the valley, Nic braced himself on the line where green moss turned to gray stone. The starting line of race for his life. Bending down into a sprinter’s stance, he gathered all his strength into his legs.

A single breath out sent waves of smog billowing from the sides of his mouth.

And he shot forward, moving through the trees at a swift sprint that almost seemed to be floating, his feet touching the ground only for the barest instants between steps. Gray trunks blurred together as he rushed past, his senses straining to the limit to catch sight of even a brief flash of luminous yellow between the endless stone pillars…

It started slow. He felt his skin begin to prickle and sting as the petrification process began, each breath allowing miasma to creep into his lungs. In the back of his head, to keep his will iron and strong, Nic began to count.

If his count reached a thousand, he promised he’d turn back. Let the acacia grove purify him. Try a different direction.

But as he took a step forward, a gray old moth fluttered past him. It moved so swiftly Nic was taken aback- his danger sense had completely failed to warn him. Its wings unleashed a sparkling dust that drifted through the air.

And the world spun.

A wind poured from nowhere, enveloping him, clawing at his mind with an insidious mental force. He sank to his knees as he pushed back, holding onto the count to hold his mind steady.

Six hundred seventy one…

Six hundred seventy two…

Six hundred seventy three…

The wind passed him by. The mental attack ceased.

But when Nic rose to his feet, he discovered his surroundings were totally unfamiliar. The trees loomed up, disorienting in their size, and Nic had no recollection of which way he’d come from. He opened his crystal eyes, burning away what little Esper fighting the mental battle hadn’t taken…

But there was nothing to see. It wasn’t a pure illusion.

Either he’d really been cast into a different part of the forest- or his mind had simply been cleansed of the memories of his journey to get here. The stony ground held no footprints to follow.

With no other choice, Nic began to run.

Mist crawled over the earth, the miasma solidified. Where it touched him the resins he’d smeared on his body burned like fire and then turned inert, crumbling away. It began to corrupt him from the knees down, turning his legs to stone underneath him.

“Gwungo? Any, uh, any progress?” Nic asked hopefully.

“Tryyyying…” Gwungo whined.

Nic didn’t ask again.

His steps became slower and slower.

But just as his count reached eight hundred, and his panic began to rise, he caught sight of a spark drifting on the air. A luminous mote of resin.

With a sudden joy in his heart, Nic pushed through the pain of his paralyzed skin and fought his own slowing body to rush forward. Faster and faster he moved, spending the last of his aura to chase the threads of resin on the wind, the scent of the acacia blossoms, the knowledge that he was a few steps away from survival-

He turned and the acacia tree was dead. An Aleph rune burned in its core, its leaves turned to fire, burning the branches down to husks. It had been consumed.

Nic’s heart felt as heavy as his skin. He didn’t bother to linger. There was no time to take the rune.

He ran…

And ran…

And ran…

With each step, stone gathered on his body. It began to crawl across his limbs and weigh him down, starting as a pebbled roughness but swiftly spreading outwards, joining with itself to cover more and more of him in a shell of ashen gray…

He felt his cultivation start to slow, seizing in his chest as the miasma paralyzed his Essence.

With a growl he burned the infected Essence away using Sacrifice, pushing out an additional burst of speed in the process.

Deeper into the forest…

His eyes caught sight of a spark. He was past feeling hope- panic and adrenaline were holding a tight grip over every part of his mind that might have conjured any- but Nic pushed himself that final rush, chasing the spark.

The mist was so thick he couldn’t see an inch ahead of his face.

He stumbled over a root and fell, toppling.

On the ground before him, a tiny thread of green grew.

His limbs were almost locked in place. Heavy stone weighed down the joints and penetrated into the muscle, paralyzing sinew and tendon. Nic fought his own body in an attempt to rise, but was only able to feebly push himself a few feet.

Feeding Essence into the Eight-Direction Ring, he flickered forward blindly.

The first teleportation led him the wrong way. There was moss on the trees, but it faced away from him.

The next overshot the mark. He ended up in deep, rolling mist, with no reference.

A single mote of resin drifted past.

With the last of his energy, feeling stone crawling up into his lungs, Nic marked its direction and followed it upstream, flinging himself blindly through the labyrinth of mist-clad trees.

He appeared, as helpless as a statue, beneath a green and living acacia tree.