The next Monument that Nic found was a stepwell, a submerged and squared crater dug into the earth where numerous stairs branched out across walls of red clay, forming a kind of inverse ziggurat that wove up and down in an enchantingly complex manner. It vaguely reminded him of some impossible, upside-down stairways he’d seen drawn in books as puzzles of illusion. Green ivy tumbled down from each step, reaching their thirsty strands of green into the water pooling below around a pillar of blue stone in the basin.

Sadly, the trial was another gathering array, drawing in spirits. Not a guardian he could learn from.

As undead flooded down the walls of the stepwell, Nic fought in the deep water and mud, using the environment to his advantage to slow his attackers. Underwater nobody could match him- he was a blur, darting about, and without Tarquin to protect his only goal was to shield the crystal while it drew in ghostly mists.

The trial was done in ten minutes, and Nic’s body was covered in thin scratches that quickly sealed together.

As the energy flooded into him, he could only agree with Sofia; the second wave really was when things heated up. The others who had raced ahead like him would be collecting their own spoils now, finishing off the Trials. Even people like the top crust of Winterhome would have a chance. The Trials were easy enough that an F-Class group could manage to brave them together…

As for the Trainings, Nic expected that receiving a single free chance was more of a lifeline than the Natives might realize. It was possible- even likely- that some of the top-tier Training experiences would cost hundreds of thousands of credits.

They’d be hard.

Probably close to impossible.

But if one in a hundred thousand Natives broke through and attained a top-tier Technique, that would be enough for their factions to survive. All they needed were hegemons to shelter behind while they grew…

And a truly top-tier Technique could make a hegemon out of a nobody.

Nic flicked open his cultivation map and invested the new wealth of Essence into Futile Struggle. He felt the nodes shift as energy swirled into them, deepening, becoming polished and pristine. The connections between them fractured and reformed, a more complex pattern appearing around the Mire-Caller Shard.

He reached out and manipulated a glob of mud. It moved sluggishly, rising into a tendril that twisted in the air.

He waved its hand and it swatted down on a nearby frog, capturing the croaking beast as it panicked and kicked its long, powerful legs. Nic could feel the mud beginning to drain strength from the creature, locking down and absorbing the paltry aura within its body.

Nic smiled. Letting the frog hop free, he returned the tendril to the earth and flexed his fingers.

That one change made Mire-Caller far more dangerous. Now it wasn’t just a binding technique, but one that grew more deadly over time, making it all too easy for foes without the explosive strength for a fast escape to be dragged under.

Now he just needed to raise the Base Enhancement until it could hold pace with his other Shards…

---

The next Trial that Nic found was high among the rocky hills of the forest, with massive beehives that covered the trees and filled the air with buzzing, bright bodies of gold, stinging at him ineffectually as he casually scooped up some honey to taste. It was delicious. Golden-rich and full of subtle, mellow flavors, hints of the medicinal flowers the bees had devoured to make it…

He greedily filled a few gourds as the bees continued to swarm around him, breaking their stingers against his flesh. If they had been sapients, he might even have felt bad for the daylight robbery, but as it was…

The rules of nature applied. Everyone out from themselves.

With his bag full of such prizes, harvested from the replenished wilds, Nic was in high spirits.

And good news was still arriving.

“Nicolas, excellent news. Tarquin has been helping us take Dominus Nodes in the east. We’ve fully cleared a segment of the available territory, and we’ll be ready for the town to rank up as soon as we’ve built our third gathering array.”

Nic paused.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Available territory? Did we run into someone else’s?”

“Not quite. We appear to be on the border of a Wasteland. A kind of no-man’s territory, that the System will use to cage in a group of factions until they’re ready to cross it. It keeps runaway factions from spreading infinitely by isolating them into islands.”

“Gotcha.” Being on the edge was good. It limited how many factions they could be surrounded by…

“There is one holdout Node we’d like you to deal with, when you have time. Tarquin couldn’t quite manage to defeat its guardian.”

“Goootcha.” He had set eyes on the Monument. It was a tall, ivory-white tower, rising up beyond the trees. It had a desolate and abandoned atmosphere, its thin walls ending suddenly where the top had been broken away. “I guess we should keep expanding north for now. The dhampyr aren’t bothering us after getting their teeth kicked in, and if I can, I’d prefer to wipe them out myself without getting Winterhome involved again.”

They had won against the dhampyr, but only at brutal cost. Nic wouldn’t willingly ask Winterhome to bear that cost a second time.

Instead he’d simply get powerful enough to wipe the dhampyr away with one hand.

“I think that’s prudent. We’re also in the process of selecting a new quest for the Settlement.”

“Oh?” He grasped ahold of the edge of the tower, wrapping his hands in sticky tar from Mire-Caller. With an easy kick he scrambled up the walls. “What are the options?”

“Building arrays, which will always be the path of least reward and least risk. A hunt for a particular being called the Lightning-Feather Stag. That one’s reward makes me think it will be difficult, perhaps too difficult for the rest to handle without you…”

“Mm.” He accidentally nudged a sparrow’s nest as he climbed, and the bird shot out of its hiding place where a missing brick left a dark hollow. It cawed and called and circled around him bravely, pecking at his face as Nic struggled to wave it off without crushing it.

“But there’s also the quest to hunt down the heretics. I suspect, from the way the System phrased things, this will be the last time it’s offered to us…”

“Right. Fine. Take that one, and we’ll see what we can do. I’m on a collision path with Seoona anyway, might as well take out her ghost-y friends while I’m wiping the floor with her pet bugs.”

“I thought as much. I’ll relay that to the others. And Nicolas?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck. This next Trial could be… difficult…” Her voice conveyed something uncertain, and Nic found himself genuinely pausing.

Why would one Trial be harder than the rest? So much harder that she was worried for him?

Pulling himself over the edge of the tower’s ruined walls, Nic dropped down into a small room. Floating above the floor was an alabaster chunk of luminous stone, round like a miniature moon, orbited by smaller pebbles of white.

This Monument’s Name is the Gibbous Tower

It is a mapping-type array, opening a portal to the Shiftlands, within the chaotic regions of space-time. You can stabilize this area and return home by placing three beacons at three leylines.

Because of the nature of this trial, both the difficulty and rewards will be up to luck.

This Trial will last for one hour. If you have not placed the beacons by then, you will be forever lost.

“Shiftlands? Chaotic regions?” Nic asked quizzically.

“I can’t say. It cuts to the heart of matters the System would rather conceal, but all I’m allowed to relay is that they’re spaces outside of usual, linear space-time. They can be very, very dangerous if your luck is bad.”

Nic reached down and unconsciously touched the bag of stardust that Sula had given him.

The stardust she’d been given by her mother, Seoona. Funny how it all came full circle.

“Okay then.” Nic said. “I guess I’m going in blind.”

The moonstone fractured, breaking into a ring of shards. Within the space they enveloped, the air began to warp, bending inwards to form a funnel of distorted space and time. Leading…

Who knew?

Nic stepped inside, and felt the world twist and bend away, felt his matter dissolve into a thin string of divine numerals. Felt everything warp and dance and shift, a terrible feeling of acceleration flooding through his dissolved matter-

It was terrifying and exhilarating and beautiful.

Like a divine rollercoaster.

And then, all too quickly, he was spat out. Nic tumbled and landed face-first into a green meadow, feeling the soft, velvet brush of the grass.

Grass that…

Twisted.

And writhed.

No. Nic jolted up to his feet, launching himself backwards with a quick, vaulting kick. The ‘meadow’ was full of twisting snakes. Soft-skinned, slippery adders, their bodies joining into the ground to form a carpet of intertwined coils.

He landed atop a rock, and watched. Everything looked blurry. There was a faint, distorted edge of fuzz to everything but his own hands, which he held up for reference. Ripples of motion seemed to flow through these warped boundaries, giving the world the impression of constant motion, of blurred lines.

As he watched…

The field of serpents slowly changed colors. The heads of the adders melted down into the mass of curled bodies.

He couldn’t be sure exactly when it happened, but with every second, the field of serpents was melding into a single, massive shape. A hill of brain matter, green-gray and slippery and folded into wrinkles.

Then it turned to grass again, bristling up, melding into a field of waving stalks topped by thistles of soft fur. Luminous spots drifted among the undergrowth like firing neurons.

Instinctively, he tried to use Archive Recall…

Nothing happened.

Nic looked out onto strange horizons, onto unknown skies. A smile twisted at his features.